7 ms·

Red herring. Besides, as far as I understand, Textdrive is in the process of being relaunched, honoring all the lifetime plans.

irahul 14y ago
> Red herring. Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? > Besides, as far as I understand, Textdrive is in the process of being relaunched, honoring all the lifetime plans. From what I know of the story, if they do honor lifetime plans, it isn't out of the goodness of their hearts. They had every intention of flipping the lifetime planholders, and they did, and what they are doing now is damage control.
- xentronium 14y ago
  > Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? That isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability, is it? Maybe it's just me, but I try not to pay much attention to PR bullshit, since they have to make bold claims in order to succeed. p.s. that their blog was down for the last three hours is somewhat ironic, though.
  - josephlord 14y ago
    Whether you fundamentally trust your provider to try to do what they agreed 'isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability'? Did you really mean that?
    - xentronium 14y ago
      The whole lifetime plan debacle was a really big blunder from PR standpoint, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it a rip-off. Deal that started in 2004-2006 and lasted through to 2012 is 6 to 8 years worth of hosting. As far as I understand, they also offer one more year of free hosting as a compensation, which makes it 7 to 9 years. 7 to 9 years of hosting for $500 is okay in my books. Of course, that doesn't make their PR blunder look any better, they should've just swallowed the costs, but I don't 'fundamentally distrust' them based solely on this case.
      - emperorcezar 14y ago
        Maybe not a rip-off, but still a lie.
      - rdtsc 14y ago
        > Deal that started in 2004-2006 and lasted through to 2012 is 6 to 8 years worth of hosting. As far as I understand, they also offer one more year of free hosting as a compensation. You might have to excuse some here who actually understand lifetime and unlimited to mean more than 6 to 8 years. > but I don't 'fundamentally distrust' them based solely on this case. But do you see how others would though?
  - irahul 14y ago
    > Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing a 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? >> That isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability, is it? The claim being made is unlike Amazon, they won't let reddit down. It's relevant to point out these guys have made tall claims in the past and failed to deliver. I won't do business with someone who let's sales swindle customers. Even if the engineering is awesome, there is no guarantee sales didn't sell you something they couldn't deliver. As far as service quality and stability goes, the only way to evaluate it is to actually switch. > Maybe it's just me, but I try not to pay much attention to PR bullshit, since they have to make bold claims in order to succeed. It's possible to do PR without bullshitting. You can always publish your actual numbers viz. number of customers, downtime history, avg issue resolution time. If you are resorting to bullshit, that means you don't have actual goodies.
  - dspillett 14y ago
    > > Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? > That isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability, is it? Not from a technical aspect, no. But it is a very important consideration when looking into any service level agreement that they offer to back up the technical claims. If something goes wrong, will they walk away from the promises made in such an SLA as easily as they thought they could walk away from the lifetime accounts? Unlikely I'm sure, but certainly not impossible and the lifetime thing sets a precedent that is difficult to completely ignore especially if you are talking about the sort of money Reddit must spend on hosting related matters.
  - ianstallings 14y ago
    Well when you make a decision to use a third party, typically the ethics and makeup of that party are evaluated. You can ignore it at your own peril. But IMO it's not very wise.
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    Failing to live up to your service commitments is exactly what quality and stability are about.
anonymouz 14y ago
The problem is that I have no more trust into them honoring an agreement. I'd very much like to keep my lifetime account (I rarely use it for anything, but when I need it, it's there, it's paid for and I can just use it). Problem is, the new Textdrive was essentially launched out of trying to avert this PR debacle, and neither Joyent nor Textdrive have published any information on how this endeavor is funded or supposed to sustain itself (does Joyent pay for the existing customers, as long as Joyent exists? Will it go bankrupt if it can't support the existing customers off of new customers?). The guy running the new Textdrive seems to have all the right intentions from what one reads on the forums, and I wish him to succeed, but at this point I have no simply no trust left that this will go well (which is why wanted to take the refund).
- xentronium 14y ago
  > I have no simply no trust left that this will go well (which is why wanted to take the refund). Hindsight is 20/20, but lifetime service claim sounds too good to be true anyway. Besides, was that 5-6 years of hosting for $500?
  - anonymouz 14y ago
    It seems quite reasonable when you consider that they used the money to bootstrap their operations: Take some money upfront to buy the servers, and in exchange host a bunch of people for free, covering the operating costs from other income. It was ~6 years in total duration for me (though used on and off). I recognize that buying monthly hosting for an entirety of 6 years is not cheaper, but it's not what I bought. I paid the money upfront, knowing fully well that I would not use it continuously, to have a hassle free way to throw up some small stuff if I need it. Others often seem to have similar use cases (or hosting small websites for local community organizations and similar). I think everybody also recognized that there is a risk the company may go bankrupt, and we're out of hosting, but what's actually happened is that they simply wanted to stop offering the service.
    - reitzensteinm 14y ago
minsight 14y ago
Not honoring all the lifetime plans at all. Those with lifetime accelerator plans were told they would get a refund, are not being picked up by Textdrive, and have since been denied the refund they were promised.

irahul 14y ago

> Red herring. Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? > Besides, as far as I understand, Textdrive is in the process of being relaunched, honoring all the lifetime plans. From what I know of the story, if they do honor lifetime plans, it isn't out of the goodness of their hearts. They had every intention of flipping the lifetime planholders, and they did, and what they are doing now is damage control.

xentronium 14y ago
> Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? That isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability, is it? Maybe it's just me, but I try not to pay much attention to PR bullshit, since they have to make bold claims in order to succeed. p.s. that their blog was down for the last three hours is somewhat ironic, though.
- josephlord 14y ago
  Whether you fundamentally trust your provider to try to do what they agreed 'isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability'? Did you really mean that?
  - xentronium 14y ago
    The whole lifetime plan debacle was a really big blunder from PR standpoint, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it a rip-off. Deal that started in 2004-2006 and lasted through to 2012 is 6 to 8 years worth of hosting. As far as I understand, they also offer one more year of free hosting as a compensation, which makes it 7 to 9 years. 7 to 9 years of hosting for $500 is okay in my books. Of course, that doesn't make their PR blunder look any better, they should've just swallowed the costs, but I don't 'fundamentally distrust' them based solely on this case.
    - emperorcezar 14y ago
      Maybe not a rip-off, but still a lie.
    - rdtsc 14y ago
      > Deal that started in 2004-2006 and lasted through to 2012 is 6 to 8 years worth of hosting. As far as I understand, they also offer one more year of free hosting as a compensation. You might have to excuse some here who actually understand lifetime and unlimited to mean more than 6 to 8 years. > but I don't 'fundamentally distrust' them based solely on this case. But do you see how others would though?
- irahul 14y ago
  > Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing a 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? >> That isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability, is it? The claim being made is unlike Amazon, they won't let reddit down. It's relevant to point out these guys have made tall claims in the past and failed to deliver. I won't do business with someone who let's sales swindle customers. Even if the engineering is awesome, there is no guarantee sales didn't sell you something they couldn't deliver. As far as service quality and stability goes, the only way to evaluate it is to actually switch. > Maybe it's just me, but I try not to pay much attention to PR bullshit, since they have to make bold claims in order to succeed. It's possible to do PR without bullshitting. You can always publish your actual numbers viz. number of customers, downtime history, avg issue resolution time. If you are resorting to bullshit, that means you don't have actual goodies.
- dspillett 14y ago
  > > Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? > That isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability, is it? Not from a technical aspect, no. But it is a very important consideration when looking into any service level agreement that they offer to back up the technical claims. If something goes wrong, will they walk away from the promises made in such an SLA as easily as they thought they could walk away from the lifetime accounts? Unlikely I'm sure, but certainly not impossible and the lifetime thing sets a precedent that is difficult to completely ignore especially if you are talking about the sort of money Reddit must spend on hosting related matters.
- ianstallings 14y ago
  Well when you make a decision to use a third party, typically the ethics and makeup of that party are evaluated. You can ignore it at your own peril. But IMO it's not very wise.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Failing to live up to your service commitments is exactly what quality and stability are about.

anonymouz 14y ago

The problem is that I have no more trust into them honoring an agreement. I'd very much like to keep my lifetime account (I rarely use it for anything, but when I need it, it's there, it's paid for and I can just use it). Problem is, the new Textdrive was essentially launched out of trying to avert this PR debacle, and neither Joyent nor Textdrive have published any information on how this endeavor is funded or supposed to sustain itself (does Joyent pay for the existing customers, as long as Joyent exists? Will it go bankrupt if it can't support the existing customers off of new customers?). The guy running the new Textdrive seems to have all the right intentions from what one reads on the forums, and I wish him to succeed, but at this point I have no simply no trust left that this will go well (which is why wanted to take the refund).

xentronium 14y ago
> I have no simply no trust left that this will go well (which is why wanted to take the refund). Hindsight is 20/20, but lifetime service claim sounds too good to be true anyway. Besides, was that 5-6 years of hosting for $500?
- anonymouz 14y ago
  It seems quite reasonable when you consider that they used the money to bootstrap their operations: Take some money upfront to buy the servers, and in exchange host a bunch of people for free, covering the operating costs from other income. It was ~6 years in total duration for me (though used on and off). I recognize that buying monthly hosting for an entirety of 6 years is not cheaper, but it's not what I bought. I paid the money upfront, knowing fully well that I would not use it continuously, to have a hassle free way to throw up some small stuff if I need it. Others often seem to have similar use cases (or hosting small websites for local community organizations and similar). I think everybody also recognized that there is a risk the company may go bankrupt, and we're out of hosting, but what's actually happened is that they simply wanted to stop offering the service.
  - reitzensteinm 14y ago

minsight 14y ago

Not honoring all the lifetime plans at all. Those with lifetime accelerator plans were told they would get a refund, are not being picked up by Textdrive, and have since been denied the refund they were promised.