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Comment by anonymouz | Hacker News Reader

With the lifetime account fiasco still ongoing [1], they should probably shut up.

[1] Joyent/Textdrive sold lifetime shared hosting accounts for a one time payment in the beginning. Those accounts would exist "as long as we exists". A couple of months back they sent an email that they are "discontinuing" lifetime accounts. After uproar from the community they offered refunds. Many people (including me) agreed to the refund, but then they decided to make another 180 degree turn, not paying out the refund. Instead they are now spinning off a new "Textdrive" that is supposed to "take over" the lifetime customers. No details about funding/general outlook/etc. of this new company has been provided so far. Questions to this end are shrugged off as "everything is perfect, just trust us, ..."

Incidentally, the new Textdrive Forum (discuss.textdrive.com) seems to be down at the moment...

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"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).

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.)

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.

> "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.

Reminds me of the lifetime free flights that were offered in the past: http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2012/05/lifetime-air...

They still honor those passes, except in the case of people clearly abusing them.

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.

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.)

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.

Yes, that's my point exactly. By claiming the absolute right to force upon the counterparty anything they have not explicitly forbidden by contract, you require them to create absurdly lengthy and unnecessarily expansive agreements that enumerate every possible circumstance and give them almost unlimited leeway in the event of a dispute. And then people complain that EULAs are too long and make unnecessary power grabs.

Take a look at the contract that you've entered into with an airline when you buy a regular ticket. These guys are in the pantheon of crossing every t and dotting every i, going do far as to say if we declare something an act of god, then you get no refund, nor recourse.

What part of "a contract stipulates the relationship between two parties" did you not understand?

It goes both ways!

That is exactly what contracts are meant to do, and have always been meant to do. And in order to use them successfully, they don't need to be "absurdly lengthy" or anything. The boilerplate you're referring to generally has nothing to do with "abuse" or "being reasonable", and most of it doesn't even need to be there, because if you'd leave it out, it'd be implied.

What you do have to do, however, is stick to the unique terms that you did write in your contract. And if you cannot, don't put them there, or don't offer the contract.

Simple as that. If you offer people unlimited phonecalls, you should be prepared for them to be on the phone 24/7. If you're not, you really shouldn't be offering them unlimited phonecalls, instead maybe offer them 20,000 minutes per month (that's about half of 24/7).

And if "twenty thousand minutes per month" doesn't sound as snazzy as "unlimited minutes", that's too bad because the reality of the matter is that you apparently cannot afford to actually offer "unlimited minutes".

Order a ticket plus companion ticket to London for every other day of the month. Sell the companion ticket on craigslist for $200 and ferry people you've never met to Europe.

I never read anything that talked about this as part of the problem. It was always "We didn't expect them to use it so much."

That's an awful lot of strangers to make transatlantic flights with at 200 bucks a pop, and it would take quite a long time to recoup the multi-hundred-thousand dollar investment in the companion ticket. Hardly seems worth the time for somebody who can afford half a million for a couple of lifetime passes.

Click through and read the LA Times article.

When bond broker Willard May of Round Rock, Texas, was forced into retirement after a run-in with federal securities regulators in the early 1990s, he turned to his trusty AAirpass to generate income. Using his companion ticket, he began shuttling a Dallas couple back and forth to Europe for $2,000 a month.

"For years, that was all the flying I did," said May, 81. "It's how I got the bills paid."

OK. so there was a guy. I still contend that contracts must stipulate the entire business relationship. If the contract did not forbid accepting money to fly people in his companion seat then fire the lawyer. If it did, then he's in breach of contract, and they can cancel, and sue for damages.

IIRC, some people were selling their free companion ticket--you could make pretty decent money flying someone along with you whenever you flew. And that was definitely prohibited in the original agreement.

Selling the companion ticket falls outside of my definition of "reasonable use".

The article I read said they were annoyed that some of these guys would actually use the tickets to, you know, fly places, all the time. As if they had unlimited access.

Did they really expect to sell a $400k item so somebody and for the buyer to fly three times a year?

"Rothstein made 3,009 reservations in less than four years, almost always booking two seats, but canceled 2,523 of them."

Sounds like he was not actually using the ticket to, you know, fly places.

So what? How far ahead of the flights did make the reservations, and how far ahead did he cancel?

Are we really saying that the handful of wealthy people who bought unlimited tickets are to blame for AA's problems, and not the fact that AA appears to have been bad math?

People were making booking on 3-4 flights per day, on the same route, and just showing up to the one that suited them best on the day.

> "They used it more than we'd anticipated."

If you read the Times article you'll see some pass holders sell tickets, book the same route on different flights (in case they get delayed in traffic) and book two seats in order to have more space. It's not just a case of flying too much.

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

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.

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.

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-stora...

If your needs for service are serious, you should avoid such arrangements.

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

Why not sue them?

Because that is a very poor solution to most problems in the world.

As much as I hate to admit it, the threat of a lawsuit seems to be helpful in keeping many people and corporations in line.

Most people tend a very negative view towards suing. Personally, when you're in the right and have a strong case, as the above seems to have, it works beautifully.

I've had the written threat to sue work, as well as the actual suing. It's not as expensive, or time consuming, as you think and is the primary method of contract enforcement. It's also kinda fun and an interesting intellectual experience.

As far as I understand one would have to sue in small claims court in California to get anything out of it. Since I'm in Europe, it unfortunately is not a cost-effective option. (I think I paid ~500$ for the original plan, so it's cheaper to write it off)

> so it's cheaper to write it off

That's what they're counting on.

Probably. Unfortunately it's still true: I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars and lots of my time to sue them in California.

Red herring.

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

> 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.

> 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.

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?

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.

Maybe not a rip-off, but still a lie.

> 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?

> 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.

> > 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.

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.

Failing to live up to your service commitments is exactly what quality and stability are about.

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).

> 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?

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.

Exactly; selling, say, 2000x$500 lifetime accounts with exponentially decreasing hardware costs is a significantly better deal than the equity you'd give up if you took $1m in VC as an early stage hosting startup.

The early adopters didn't just buy a product, they were essentially angel investors.

It's every bit as ridiculous as sending Ron Conway an email thanking him for his help but informing him that his equity has been "discontinued", since the investment was a long time ago and no longer convenient, but warmly offering him a refund for his portion of the round.

> but lifetime service claim sounds too good to be true anyway.

I like how you quickly turned this into the "blame the victim" issue. It is a pretty clear and obvious failure yet you keep defending them and blaming everyone who believed them.

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.

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