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Indeed! It's like if I'd invested $100 in Amazon at IPO, which is worth around $64K today but Jeff Bezos could now but my stock back for the original $100 as l

Indeed! It's like if I'd invested $100 in Amazon at IPO, which is worth around $64K today but Jeff Bezos could now but my stock back for the original $100 as long as he offered me half-price on a new Kindle.

jpitz 9y ago
> It's like if I'd invested $100 in Amazon at IPO, which is worth around $64K today but Jeff Bezos could now but my stock back for the original $100 as long as he offered me half-price on a new Kindle. What? No. I don't see how those two things are at all comparable. A lifetime service contract isn't an investment vehicle with variable valuation over time. It is a service contract. Moreover, lifetime service contracts sold for a one time fee should always be regarded with a fiercely critical eye: without recurring revenue, how is the service provider realistically going to be able to provide that service at a profit indefinitely? At some point, they ARE going to drop it, or they've figured out a way to use that service to drive additional profits.
- delhanty 9y ago
  >Moreover, lifetime service contracts sold for a one time fee should always be regarded with a fiercely critical eye: without recurring revenue, how is the service provider realistically going to be able to provide that service at a profit indefinitely? At some point, they ARE going to drop it, or they've figured out a way to use that service to drive additional profits. The fact that FastMail management at that time made the (very) poor business decision to offer lifetime service for a one time fee is NOT MY PROBLEM. Now, I'll just repeat verbatim what I said in the other thread. > FastMail made an agreement - $15 in exchange for a lifetime member account. >Now they don't want to honour that agreement. >And they've created work for me: What to do about my father's email account? >I have his email address as part of the domain that I have associated with my (legacy) FastMail enhanced account. They've discontinued family accounts for new signups. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357905
  - quakenul 9y ago
    It is your problem. Which you can now take to court and likely expect to get some form of compensation, since FastMail is in violation of your agreement. I do realize putting "lifetime" on anything brings heavy emotional weight. But in the end it's simply another contract which, even without any malintent, get broken all the time. If you are the damaged party you can use the legal system to seek damages, if you feel the inflicted damage warrants going through the trouble.
    - delhanty 9y ago
      FastMail and you know it's not worth my time to take them to court for $15. Besides FastMail is in Australia, my father is in the UK and I am in Japan ... Also, would the court order FastMail to continue to offer service to my father, which is what I want. I very much doubt that. FastMail would just be allowed to make the offer of the $15 plus some half-price deal on another plan, which they have done already. On the other hand, companies do seem to rather dislike bad publicity. So when they try and back-out of past agreements and contacts that no longer suit them, it is far more effective to call them out publicly on forums like this one.
      - quakenul 9y ago
        Fair enough :) I understand the trouble that goes along with any "small time" contract breach and if this dissuades companies from doing something like it in the future, I am all for it.
      - vertex-four 9y ago
        I'd think the court would rule that the company should cover your costs incurred as a result of breaking the contract - i.e. they'd either be required to provide the plan for life or cover a plan elsewhere.
      - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
        > FastMail and you know it's not worth my time to take them to court for $15. Now, I don't know the details of the contract, but generally, the value this is about is not $15. The value is the damage caused by them failing to fulfill their contracts, which would be the discounted value of the market price of all future payments needed to replace their failure to perform. There is no general legal option for one party to a contract to simply pull out and give you back your money. They owe you what they promised in the contract, and if they don't deliver, they are liable for the damage that that causes for you.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  > What? No. I don't see how those two things are at all comparable. > A lifetime service contract isn't an investment vehicle with variable valuation over time. It is a service contract. Well, then you are wrong, both legally and economically? An "investment vehicle" doesn't really exist, in that sense. What exists is a contract of sorts where you agree on the terms of payment and other benefits (such as control over a company), and that both/all sides have to honor ... and a contract is a contract is a contract. Whether you happen to hold what amounts to a bond, specifically a perpetuity, that happens to pay its interest in the form of email service is kindof legally completely irrelevant to the question of whether the other party has to honor a contract. Also, it's economical nonsense, as there obviously is a market rate for the kind of email services that fastmail provides, and that's obviously the valuation of that contract to the customer, and that valuation obviously varies over time with the market price for email service. Just because it's an illiquid asset (you can't easily sell the contract to a third party) doesn't make it not have a variable valuation.
  - jpitz 9y ago
    I don't know what you mean by 'doesn't exist.' Shares in publicly traded corporations exist. I can buy them. I can sell them. Their value changes over time. Their purpose is to provide funding to the corporation, in exchange for the perception that they'll provide a return to the investor. It is an exceedingly common thing to sell them to a third party - have a look at the volume on your favorite stock exchange. A service contract, first and foremost, is a contract between a provider and a purchaser, for the provider to provide a service to the purchaser. It may or may not be transferable. It does have a value, but, much of the time, a B2C service contract isn't a thing that is traded or sold. It happens, but not anywhere near the scale of investment vehicles. For example, I purchased a service, a home warranty. I intend to transfer ownership of it to the purchaser of my house. It was expressly purchased with a third party transfer in mind, but this is a low-volume transaction. I certainly don't know anyone who is buying email service with the intent of reselling them for a profit, do you? So, how is it nonsense?
    - deong 9y ago
      He means they don't "exist" in a legal sense. They aren't a special category of things in the law that are separately called out to be treated differently than any other aspect of transactions governed by contract law. Legally, you buy something under either express or implied terms, constrained by the legal system where you bought it. I'm not aware of any distinction made where a service contract doesn't need to be honored, but an "investment vehicle" is treated differently.
pfarnsworth 9y ago
Terrible analogy. The email account is not an investment. You can't "sell" your account. Your father used it for years, and now he's getting his money back. And he has alternatives, he can use gmail, etc.
- deong 9y ago
  Sure, but the law doesn't care whether you sold me something as an investment or not. It cares that you sold me something under terms that were legal in the place where the transaction was made, that the contract was entered into voluntarily by adults with legal authority to make decisions, etc. What you're describing is perfectly true under the terms of service of pretty much any email provider, but that's only because the contracts governing your interaction with those providers are written in a way that makes it true. Fastmail's lifetime plan has a different contract, and under that contract, it's simply not true that you're paying to use the account temporarily. You're paying to have perpetual access to that account as long as the company exists as a legal partner to the contract they signed.
- delhanty 9y ago
  Actually a lifetime (of my father) service contract is very much like an one particular investment, that is an inflation adjusted annuity. FastMail is no more free to terminate the lifetime service contract while my father still lives than the pension company is free to stop paying his annuity backed pension.
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    Another terrible analogy. It's not an annuity at all. You're paying for a service. You pay $15 for "lifetime" email. Your father paid less than $1/year for email service. Stop trying to make it seem like Fastmail owes you money. Quit your bellyaching and move him to gmail.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  That's not how contracts work. If you buy a vase on ebay for $1 because you think it looks nice, and the current owner agrees to that sale, it's yours. Suppose they then find out it's worth a million. The seller cannot unilaterally reverse the contract and "give you your money back". The vase is yours, they owe you the vase, and you owe them a dollar, that's it. If they wanted to own the vase, they would have to make a contract with its owner (that is, you) under terms that the owner is willing to agree to to transfer ownership.

jpitz 9y ago

> It's like if I'd invested $100 in Amazon at IPO, which is worth around $64K today but Jeff Bezos could now but my stock back for the original $100 as long as he offered me half-price on a new Kindle. What? No. I don't see how those two things are at all comparable. A lifetime service contract isn't an investment vehicle with variable valuation over time. It is a service contract. Moreover, lifetime service contracts sold for a one time fee should always be regarded with a fiercely critical eye: without recurring revenue, how is the service provider realistically going to be able to provide that service at a profit indefinitely? At some point, they ARE going to drop it, or they've figured out a way to use that service to drive additional profits.

delhanty 9y ago
>Moreover, lifetime service contracts sold for a one time fee should always be regarded with a fiercely critical eye: without recurring revenue, how is the service provider realistically going to be able to provide that service at a profit indefinitely? At some point, they ARE going to drop it, or they've figured out a way to use that service to drive additional profits. The fact that FastMail management at that time made the (very) poor business decision to offer lifetime service for a one time fee is NOT MY PROBLEM. Now, I'll just repeat verbatim what I said in the other thread. > FastMail made an agreement - $15 in exchange for a lifetime member account. >Now they don't want to honour that agreement. >And they've created work for me: What to do about my father's email account? >I have his email address as part of the domain that I have associated with my (legacy) FastMail enhanced account. They've discontinued family accounts for new signups. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357905
- quakenul 9y ago
  It is your problem. Which you can now take to court and likely expect to get some form of compensation, since FastMail is in violation of your agreement. I do realize putting "lifetime" on anything brings heavy emotional weight. But in the end it's simply another contract which, even without any malintent, get broken all the time. If you are the damaged party you can use the legal system to seek damages, if you feel the inflicted damage warrants going through the trouble.
  - delhanty 9y ago
    FastMail and you know it's not worth my time to take them to court for $15. Besides FastMail is in Australia, my father is in the UK and I am in Japan ... Also, would the court order FastMail to continue to offer service to my father, which is what I want. I very much doubt that. FastMail would just be allowed to make the offer of the $15 plus some half-price deal on another plan, which they have done already. On the other hand, companies do seem to rather dislike bad publicity. So when they try and back-out of past agreements and contacts that no longer suit them, it is far more effective to call them out publicly on forums like this one.
    - quakenul 9y ago
      Fair enough :) I understand the trouble that goes along with any "small time" contract breach and if this dissuades companies from doing something like it in the future, I am all for it.
    - vertex-four 9y ago
      I'd think the court would rule that the company should cover your costs incurred as a result of breaking the contract - i.e. they'd either be required to provide the plan for life or cover a plan elsewhere.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      > FastMail and you know it's not worth my time to take them to court for $15. Now, I don't know the details of the contract, but generally, the value this is about is not $15. The value is the damage caused by them failing to fulfill their contracts, which would be the discounted value of the market price of all future payments needed to replace their failure to perform. There is no general legal option for one party to a contract to simply pull out and give you back your money. They owe you what they promised in the contract, and if they don't deliver, they are liable for the damage that that causes for you.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
> What? No. I don't see how those two things are at all comparable. > A lifetime service contract isn't an investment vehicle with variable valuation over time. It is a service contract. Well, then you are wrong, both legally and economically? An "investment vehicle" doesn't really exist, in that sense. What exists is a contract of sorts where you agree on the terms of payment and other benefits (such as control over a company), and that both/all sides have to honor ... and a contract is a contract is a contract. Whether you happen to hold what amounts to a bond, specifically a perpetuity, that happens to pay its interest in the form of email service is kindof legally completely irrelevant to the question of whether the other party has to honor a contract. Also, it's economical nonsense, as there obviously is a market rate for the kind of email services that fastmail provides, and that's obviously the valuation of that contract to the customer, and that valuation obviously varies over time with the market price for email service. Just because it's an illiquid asset (you can't easily sell the contract to a third party) doesn't make it not have a variable valuation.
- jpitz 9y ago
  I don't know what you mean by 'doesn't exist.' Shares in publicly traded corporations exist. I can buy them. I can sell them. Their value changes over time. Their purpose is to provide funding to the corporation, in exchange for the perception that they'll provide a return to the investor. It is an exceedingly common thing to sell them to a third party - have a look at the volume on your favorite stock exchange. A service contract, first and foremost, is a contract between a provider and a purchaser, for the provider to provide a service to the purchaser. It may or may not be transferable. It does have a value, but, much of the time, a B2C service contract isn't a thing that is traded or sold. It happens, but not anywhere near the scale of investment vehicles. For example, I purchased a service, a home warranty. I intend to transfer ownership of it to the purchaser of my house. It was expressly purchased with a third party transfer in mind, but this is a low-volume transaction. I certainly don't know anyone who is buying email service with the intent of reselling them for a profit, do you? So, how is it nonsense?
  - deong 9y ago
    He means they don't "exist" in a legal sense. They aren't a special category of things in the law that are separately called out to be treated differently than any other aspect of transactions governed by contract law. Legally, you buy something under either express or implied terms, constrained by the legal system where you bought it. I'm not aware of any distinction made where a service contract doesn't need to be honored, but an "investment vehicle" is treated differently.

pfarnsworth 9y ago

Terrible analogy. The email account is not an investment. You can't "sell" your account. Your father used it for years, and now he's getting his money back. And he has alternatives, he can use gmail, etc.

deong 9y ago
Sure, but the law doesn't care whether you sold me something as an investment or not. It cares that you sold me something under terms that were legal in the place where the transaction was made, that the contract was entered into voluntarily by adults with legal authority to make decisions, etc. What you're describing is perfectly true under the terms of service of pretty much any email provider, but that's only because the contracts governing your interaction with those providers are written in a way that makes it true. Fastmail's lifetime plan has a different contract, and under that contract, it's simply not true that you're paying to use the account temporarily. You're paying to have perpetual access to that account as long as the company exists as a legal partner to the contract they signed.
delhanty 9y ago
Actually a lifetime (of my father) service contract is very much like an one particular investment, that is an inflation adjusted annuity. FastMail is no more free to terminate the lifetime service contract while my father still lives than the pension company is free to stop paying his annuity backed pension.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  Another terrible analogy. It's not an annuity at all. You're paying for a service. You pay $15 for "lifetime" email. Your father paid less than $1/year for email service. Stop trying to make it seem like Fastmail owes you money. Quit your bellyaching and move him to gmail.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
That's not how contracts work. If you buy a vase on ebay for $1 because you think it looks nice, and the current owner agrees to that sale, it's yours. Suppose they then find out it's worth a million. The seller cannot unilaterally reverse the contract and "give you your money back". The vase is yours, they owe you the vase, and you owe them a dollar, that's it. If they wanted to own the vase, they would have to make a contract with its owner (that is, you) under terms that the owner is willing to agree to to transfer ownership.