5 ms·

"lifetime" "unlimited" "forever" etc products should always been looked at sceptically for that reason. Anything that is either finite or requires up-keep canno

"lifetime" "unlimited" "forever" etc products should always been looked at sceptically for that reason. Anything that is either finite or requires up-keep cannot be offered on these terms, it is just impossible. I actually avoid unlimited products on purpose because I think a lie is a bad way to start doing business together. Be it web-hosting, broadband, or anything else. I would prefer they just be up front and then we both know where we stand (no ambiguity).

JoachimSchipper 14y ago
If the upkeep is smaller than the cost of capital to the company, such an arrangement probably remains mutually beneficial. Given that the cost of computing resources was falling enormously and continues doing so, I can see why TextDrive expected this arrangement to be profitable for them. Note that pensions and annuities, arrangements with terms best described as "pay $X/month for as long as I live", exist. (Of course, they pivoted out of the hosting business and found that supporting a one-off machine is an expensive headache. But it's not impossible for such an arrangement to work.)
khet 14y ago
If as a business you decide to offer a lifetime plan, it is assumed that you have accounted for the up-keep of the service. Joyent should be held responsible for not holding up their end of the deal.
irahul 14y ago
> "lifetime" "unlimited" "forever" etc products should always been looked at sceptically for that reason. Anything that is either finite or requires up-keep cannot be offered on these terms, it is just impossible. When a company is offering "lifetime", "unlimited", "forever" et al, the most likely reason is it is cash strapped and is hoping to raise some cash with these lucrative schemes. I, as a customer, am well aware about "no free lunches" but we are entering an agreement when I buy your supposedly "lifetime" plan. When you do an 180 later because the initial money you got from me isn't enough to keep me running forever, it isn't something unplanned that happened to you. You always knew that. It's just that you are hell bent on screwing me.
- dalore 14y ago
  Reminds me of the lifetime free flights that were offered in the past: http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2012/05/lifetime-airline-passes http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2012/05/lifetime-air...
  - tedunangst 14y ago
    They still honor those passes, except in the case of people clearly abusing them.
    - vampirechicken 14y ago
      How can you abuse "lifetime, unlimited"? I want a plane ride, I book a ticket. I cannot book multiple simultaneous tickets. So abuse can only be defined as "They used it more than we'd anticipated." That school of thought is very much like the oversubscribed phone lines of yore, which made the phone companies highly intolerant of long modem sessions.
      - chc 14y ago
        This kind of sentiment is why everything nowadays comes with 20 pages of fine print that nobody can wade through. It's not enough just to expect people to be reasonable — everything must be clearly spelled out in excruciating detail, as people will feel free to do any insane thing that comes to their mind if you do not restrict it explicitly, and they will loudly object if you tell them that what they're doing is not reasonable. I'm not sure it is a much more desirable state of affairs. (Clarification: I'm specifically addressing the idea that there can be no "abusive" use of a lifetime offer. Obviously the TextDrive customers are not in this category.)
        vampirechicken 14y ago
        A contract does not provide for what is reasonable. It stipulates the relationship between two parties. if you say unlimited personal use, with no right of resale, then I can fly all day every day without worry. I don't see how flying a lot on an unlimited lifetime ticket can be legitimately called abusive. If I buy a lifetime, fly anytime ticket, and use it all the time, you don't get to call that abuse. If I use the maximum physical quantity of something, for which I have purchased an unlimited supply, that is not abuse. If I am in breach of contract, then I am in breach of contract, but that's not abuse. Abuse implies that you don;t like what I'm doing but I'm not in breach of contract. Calling something abuse generally means that I've found a use of the service that you didn't forecast for and despite being contractually acceptable, it means you aren't getting the advantage you thought you would from the contract. Expecting me to not use the service to my full advantage is naive at best.
fakeer 14y ago
So, what do you think about CrashPlan. A very much known, sort of trustworthy business? They offer unlimited accounts too.
typicalrunt 14y ago
What Joyent forgot about was that by getting rid of the lifetime account holders (I was one) they were effectively silencing their greatest word of mouth sales. I would always recommend their services to others, and I would purchase many of their other products/services as they came out. But by pulling out the rug under me[1], it left me distrustful of them. So let's assume that I got my money's worth, but what Joyent has now lost is the word of mouth. Even worse, instead of not telling people about Joyent, I actively turn them away from Joyent. While Amazon goes down from time to time, at least I have less unknowns with them. With Joyent, I don't know how they are going to fuck me at the last minute when they decide to pivot for the umpteenth time. [1] Not once, but thrice. First, they cancel the lifetime accounts, forcing me to quickly move to another provider (thank you GAFB and Heroku). Then they say I can get a refund for the service, which when I asked for it they first denied that they gave it out and then told me that the offer was rescinded because the Textdrive service was coming out. Third, they keep calling me telling me that I need to move, even though if they spent 2 seconds checking for account activity they would see that no domain routes to them anymore, nor is any data stored with them.
- jamie 14y ago
  Same here - I'll never recommend them, and have actively discouraged people from using or investigating them. They may be great technically, but I always mention their spotty/inconsistent and poor treatment of me as a customer. Even if I'm not the most lucrative customer, how you treat every customer is important. You never know who, dispute being a low-revenue personal user, is a high-revenue business user.
rsync 14y ago
Lifetime provision, or its counterpart: flat rate provisioning (unlimited X for $5/mo) puts the customer into an antagonistic relationship with their provider: http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-storage-services-vs-rsyncnet.html http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-stora... If your needs for service are serious, you should avoid such arrangements.
bitcartel 14y ago
I actually just posted (before I saw this thread) about how to roll your own online storage using a BRIC (Bunch of Redundant Independent Clouds). By striping data across different clouds, you spread the risk of any one storage provider letting you down. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4689238 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4689238

JoachimSchipper 14y ago

If the upkeep is smaller than the cost of capital to the company, such an arrangement probably remains mutually beneficial. Given that the cost of computing resources was falling enormously and continues doing so, I can see why TextDrive expected this arrangement to be profitable for them. Note that pensions and annuities, arrangements with terms best described as "pay $X/month for as long as I live", exist. (Of course, they pivoted out of the hosting business and found that supporting a one-off machine is an expensive headache. But it's not impossible for such an arrangement to work.)

khet 14y ago

If as a business you decide to offer a lifetime plan, it is assumed that you have accounted for the up-keep of the service. Joyent should be held responsible for not holding up their end of the deal.

irahul 14y ago

> "lifetime" "unlimited" "forever" etc products should always been looked at sceptically for that reason. Anything that is either finite or requires up-keep cannot be offered on these terms, it is just impossible. When a company is offering "lifetime", "unlimited", "forever" et al, the most likely reason is it is cash strapped and is hoping to raise some cash with these lucrative schemes. I, as a customer, am well aware about "no free lunches" but we are entering an agreement when I buy your supposedly "lifetime" plan. When you do an 180 later because the initial money you got from me isn't enough to keep me running forever, it isn't something unplanned that happened to you. You always knew that. It's just that you are hell bent on screwing me.

dalore 14y ago
Reminds me of the lifetime free flights that were offered in the past: http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2012/05/lifetime-airline-passes http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2012/05/lifetime-air...
- tedunangst 14y ago
  They still honor those passes, except in the case of people clearly abusing them.
  - vampirechicken 14y ago
    How can you abuse "lifetime, unlimited"? I want a plane ride, I book a ticket. I cannot book multiple simultaneous tickets. So abuse can only be defined as "They used it more than we'd anticipated." That school of thought is very much like the oversubscribed phone lines of yore, which made the phone companies highly intolerant of long modem sessions.
    - chc 14y ago
      This kind of sentiment is why everything nowadays comes with 20 pages of fine print that nobody can wade through. It's not enough just to expect people to be reasonable — everything must be clearly spelled out in excruciating detail, as people will feel free to do any insane thing that comes to their mind if you do not restrict it explicitly, and they will loudly object if you tell them that what they're doing is not reasonable. I'm not sure it is a much more desirable state of affairs. (Clarification: I'm specifically addressing the idea that there can be no "abusive" use of a lifetime offer. Obviously the TextDrive customers are not in this category.)
      - vampirechicken 14y ago
        A contract does not provide for what is reasonable. It stipulates the relationship between two parties. if you say unlimited personal use, with no right of resale, then I can fly all day every day without worry. I don't see how flying a lot on an unlimited lifetime ticket can be legitimately called abusive. If I buy a lifetime, fly anytime ticket, and use it all the time, you don't get to call that abuse. If I use the maximum physical quantity of something, for which I have purchased an unlimited supply, that is not abuse. If I am in breach of contract, then I am in breach of contract, but that's not abuse. Abuse implies that you don;t like what I'm doing but I'm not in breach of contract. Calling something abuse generally means that I've found a use of the service that you didn't forecast for and despite being contractually acceptable, it means you aren't getting the advantage you thought you would from the contract. Expecting me to not use the service to my full advantage is naive at best.

fakeer 14y ago

So, what do you think about CrashPlan. A very much known, sort of trustworthy business? They offer unlimited accounts too.

typicalrunt 14y ago

What Joyent forgot about was that by getting rid of the lifetime account holders (I was one) they were effectively silencing their greatest word of mouth sales. I would always recommend their services to others, and I would purchase many of their other products/services as they came out. But by pulling out the rug under me[1], it left me distrustful of them. So let's assume that I got my money's worth, but what Joyent has now lost is the word of mouth. Even worse, instead of not telling people about Joyent, I actively turn them away from Joyent. While Amazon goes down from time to time, at least I have less unknowns with them. With Joyent, I don't know how they are going to fuck me at the last minute when they decide to pivot for the umpteenth time. [1] Not once, but thrice. First, they cancel the lifetime accounts, forcing me to quickly move to another provider (thank you GAFB and Heroku). Then they say I can get a refund for the service, which when I asked for it they first denied that they gave it out and then told me that the offer was rescinded because the Textdrive service was coming out. Third, they keep calling me telling me that I need to move, even though if they spent 2 seconds checking for account activity they would see that no domain routes to them anymore, nor is any data stored with them.

jamie 14y ago
Same here - I'll never recommend them, and have actively discouraged people from using or investigating them. They may be great technically, but I always mention their spotty/inconsistent and poor treatment of me as a customer. Even if I'm not the most lucrative customer, how you treat every customer is important. You never know who, dispute being a low-revenue personal user, is a high-revenue business user.

rsync 14y ago

Lifetime provision, or its counterpart: flat rate provisioning (unlimited X for $5/mo) puts the customer into an antagonistic relationship with their provider: http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-storage-services-vs-rsyncnet.html http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-stora... If your needs for service are serious, you should avoid such arrangements.

bitcartel 14y ago

I actually just posted (before I saw this thread) about how to roll your own online storage using a BRIC (Bunch of Redundant Independent Clouds). By striping data across different clouds, you spread the risk of any one storage provider letting you down. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4689238 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4689238