7 ms·

Sue them for what exactly? OP went over the limits of his plan, publicly shamed the company for doing nothing wrong, got refunded and got his data back. Ghost

Sue them for what exactly? OP went over the limits of his plan, publicly shamed the company for doing nothing wrong, got refunded and got his data back. Ghost did fine, in my opinion.

dessant 6y ago
They've terminated the customer's account before the 7 day upgrade window has lapsed, which has caused disruption to their business.
- rovr138 6y ago
  What do the terms and conditions allow? That’s the important question here
  - bccdee 6y ago
    The EULA spells out what is legal, not what is or isn't considered acceptable in society. For a business to arbitrarily remove their customer's data may be entirely legal, but it's a very shitty thing to do, and that business shouldn't expect many customers if it goes around acting like that all the time.
    - JimDabell 6y ago
      > The EULA spells out what is legal, not what is or isn't considered acceptable in society. The question that was asked was: > Sue them for what exactly? So the EULA spelling out what is legal is the relevant factor when answering that question.
      - belorn 6y ago
        In this cases it not the EULA but rather the service contract that is the most relevant document. The same law that binds you to pay a contract once agreed on binds the other party to deliver. A refund does not automatically free the provider from the contract, through its a good step. An EULA can try to side step this but it depend on how the agreement was made, when, what information was provided before agreement, and so on. There is also a bunch of laws for consumer protection and Fair Business Practices, and it depend on where the people involved is located.
    - kemonocode 6y ago
      No, the EULA spells out what a given company allows with their product. Between that and something that's legally enforceable there's a huge leap.
    - andylynch 6y ago
      Not really, it's entirely possible for an EULA to have unenforceable terms, i.e. where they contradict applicable law. Not a good practice! But also not that uncommon.
  - rgbrenner 6y ago
    Out of curiosity I went and read their terms: https://ghost.org/terms/ https://ghost.org/terms/ Of course it says we can terminate your account at any time (immediately and no notice required), like many services do. But, I noticed there's nothing in these terms about the automatic plan changes. So you've raised a good question: did ghost violate their own terms of service each time they "helpfully" upgraded a customer's plan without their express permission? And worse, they have a no refunds policy... so they change your plan, then refuse any refunds. Maybe that's not a big problem for a small plan change, but considering the plan change isn't defined, it could be for literally any amount, with no approval from the customer. And just to preempt the idea this agreement is elsewhere, their terms have an entire agreement provision, which states the terms are the entire agreement, and can only be modified by changing the terms or a "written amendment signed by an authorized executive of Ghost Foundation"... which the email notice does not qualify as since it's not signed.
meowface 6y ago
The problem is the automatic (huge) recurring upcharge when you go over the limit, which doesn't seem sensible. It's much more reasonable to just not let you go above 2 staff users until you upgrade, or to let you have them for some time and then automatically remove the most recent 2 staff users if you don't upgrade in time, or show you a prompt when you log in to the admin panel forcing you to either upgrade or remove 2 staff members. This is how almost any other company would do it. If for some reason they don't want to do these reasonable things, at the very least the onus is on them to make you accept a big red confirmation prompt when adding a third staff user saying "Warning: This is a premium feature. Your plan will now be upgraded to the $99/month tier, and you'll be charged $99/month beginning on [date]. Accept / Deny". They don't even do this, though. Without a doubt, some or many customers have gotten surprise charges due to this. Warning about it once via email 7 days in advance is a bare minimum; that email will inevitably be missed by many and they may be silently upcharged for months (unless there's also a blatant notice in the UI, in which case you're probably only on the hook for just one or two months; which is still pretty bad). And this is likely deliberate and perhaps even a specific strategy on their part. This is what the OP was trying to say and warn people about. I agree with them that this is a shady practice. It's a startup / subscriber model dark pattern. It's not that far off from and in some ways even more deceptive than companies that rely on making most of their money from customers who forget to cancel during trials or discount periods. This isn't some pay-by-resource-usage thing like AWS, where the responsibility largely and (usually) rightfully falls on you to examine pricing and anticipate or prevent big increases in your bill. It'll still happen to some customers, but when it does, it's (generally) not AWS being shady. And it's not something like Cloudflare where going over the limit incurs some concrete additional cost for the company; the 2 staff member limit is completely artificial and arbitrary. It's perfectly reasonable to have as a limit to encourage upgrading, but it's not reasonable to have lying in wait as a potential trap to unknowingly, near-silently fall into. Most users of Ghost probably do not expect anything like this behavior at all and probably have not used any other service that operates like this, so I expect some or many have been caught blind-sided. And on top of that, the CEO had absolutely no justification to cancel their account out of the blue, and then (if I understand correctly) only give them access to their data after a social media outcry. It was blatantly done in retaliation and anger. Maybe the OP's initial tone was a little too hostile, but I probably would've had a similar emotional knee-jerk reaction shortly after I saw this and considered the impact to other unsuspecting users, and I think it's absolutely a shady business practice even if it's perhaps not "extremely" shady, as they stated. Legally, the customer may or may not have any grounds, but ethically, I think the company and CEO are in the wrong, here.
dependenttypes 6y ago
> publicly shamed the company for doing nothing wrong Maybe we have a different understanding of what "wrong" means.

Sue them for what exactly? OP went over the limits of his plan, publicly shamed the company for doing nothing wrong, got refunded and got his data back. Ghost did fine, in my opinion.

dessant 6y ago

They've terminated the customer's account before the 7 day upgrade window has lapsed, which has caused disruption to their business.

rovr138 6y ago
What do the terms and conditions allow? That’s the important question here
- bccdee 6y ago
  The EULA spells out what is legal, not what is or isn't considered acceptable in society. For a business to arbitrarily remove their customer's data may be entirely legal, but it's a very shitty thing to do, and that business shouldn't expect many customers if it goes around acting like that all the time.
  - JimDabell 6y ago
    > The EULA spells out what is legal, not what is or isn't considered acceptable in society. The question that was asked was: > Sue them for what exactly? So the EULA spelling out what is legal is the relevant factor when answering that question.
    - belorn 6y ago
      In this cases it not the EULA but rather the service contract that is the most relevant document. The same law that binds you to pay a contract once agreed on binds the other party to deliver. A refund does not automatically free the provider from the contract, through its a good step. An EULA can try to side step this but it depend on how the agreement was made, when, what information was provided before agreement, and so on. There is also a bunch of laws for consumer protection and Fair Business Practices, and it depend on where the people involved is located.
  - kemonocode 6y ago
    No, the EULA spells out what a given company allows with their product. Between that and something that's legally enforceable there's a huge leap.
  - andylynch 6y ago
    Not really, it's entirely possible for an EULA to have unenforceable terms, i.e. where they contradict applicable law. Not a good practice! But also not that uncommon.
- rgbrenner 6y ago
  Out of curiosity I went and read their terms: https://ghost.org/terms/ https://ghost.org/terms/ Of course it says we can terminate your account at any time (immediately and no notice required), like many services do. But, I noticed there's nothing in these terms about the automatic plan changes. So you've raised a good question: did ghost violate their own terms of service each time they "helpfully" upgraded a customer's plan without their express permission? And worse, they have a no refunds policy... so they change your plan, then refuse any refunds. Maybe that's not a big problem for a small plan change, but considering the plan change isn't defined, it could be for literally any amount, with no approval from the customer. And just to preempt the idea this agreement is elsewhere, their terms have an entire agreement provision, which states the terms are the entire agreement, and can only be modified by changing the terms or a "written amendment signed by an authorized executive of Ghost Foundation"... which the email notice does not qualify as since it's not signed.

meowface 6y ago

The problem is the automatic (huge) recurring upcharge when you go over the limit, which doesn't seem sensible. It's much more reasonable to just not let you go above 2 staff users until you upgrade, or to let you have them for some time and then automatically remove the most recent 2 staff users if you don't upgrade in time, or show you a prompt when you log in to the admin panel forcing you to either upgrade or remove 2 staff members. This is how almost any other company would do it. If for some reason they don't want to do these reasonable things, at the very least the onus is on them to make you accept a big red confirmation prompt when adding a third staff user saying "Warning: This is a premium feature. Your plan will now be upgraded to the $99/month tier, and you'll be charged $99/month beginning on [date]. Accept / Deny". They don't even do this, though. Without a doubt, some or many customers have gotten surprise charges due to this. Warning about it once via email 7 days in advance is a bare minimum; that email will inevitably be missed by many and they may be silently upcharged for months (unless there's also a blatant notice in the UI, in which case you're probably only on the hook for just one or two months; which is still pretty bad). And this is likely deliberate and perhaps even a specific strategy on their part. This is what the OP was trying to say and warn people about. I agree with them that this is a shady practice. It's a startup / subscriber model dark pattern. It's not that far off from and in some ways even more deceptive than companies that rely on making most of their money from customers who forget to cancel during trials or discount periods. This isn't some pay-by-resource-usage thing like AWS, where the responsibility largely and (usually) rightfully falls on you to examine pricing and anticipate or prevent big increases in your bill. It'll still happen to some customers, but when it does, it's (generally) not AWS being shady. And it's not something like Cloudflare where going over the limit incurs some concrete additional cost for the company; the 2 staff member limit is completely artificial and arbitrary. It's perfectly reasonable to have as a limit to encourage upgrading, but it's not reasonable to have lying in wait as a potential trap to unknowingly, near-silently fall into. Most users of Ghost probably do not expect anything like this behavior at all and probably have not used any other service that operates like this, so I expect some or many have been caught blind-sided. And on top of that, the CEO had absolutely no justification to cancel their account out of the blue, and then (if I understand correctly) only give them access to their data after a social media outcry. It was blatantly done in retaliation and anger. Maybe the OP's initial tone was a little too hostile, but I probably would've had a similar emotional knee-jerk reaction shortly after I saw this and considered the impact to other unsuspecting users, and I think it's absolutely a shady business practice even if it's perhaps not "extremely" shady, as they stated. Legally, the customer may or may not have any grounds, but ethically, I think the company and CEO are in the wrong, here.

dependenttypes 6y ago

> publicly shamed the company for doing nothing wrong Maybe we have a different understanding of what "wrong" means.