End of a Lifetime

[mortonfox]

Back in September 2005, I bought lifetime web hosting from TextDrive for a few hundred dollars. I wasn't 100% sure about that at the time. It sounded like TextDrive needed some quick cash to grow, so the risk was that they would go out of business. However, I figured if it lasted at least a few years, it would've been worth getting

Comments

[c_eagle]

rarrrgh

[mortonfox]

I think it was worth more than $1 a month. I have been using a lot of storage and bandwidth. One comparable service at the time was Dreamhost, which was $5/month but has gone up to $8.95/month. That aside, maybe the lesson we should take from this is there is no such thing as lifetime. Unless you get to keep the physical object, consider the "lifetime" item gone in a couple of years so you won't be disappointed when it does go away.

[schnee]

I'm with c_eagle, mostly. I really admire your ability to keep your calm there; myself, I would probably have gotten quite shirty with them

[mortonfox]

I think it would be simplest for Joyent to just refund the original lifetime customers. I don't think there were that many and Joyent has millions of dollars in funding, so it would be at most a rounding-off error in their balance sheet. Anyway, if someone started a class-action lawsuit, I'd certainly go along with that.

[schnee]

That would indeed be the simplest solution.

[tzup]

If you follow the discussion on The Joyent Community forum, it would seem that they are now offering to refund 'lifetime' members the original amount they paid + a novelty T-shirt ;)
Certainly hope this is the case!

[mortonfox]

I checked the updated migration offer and it's either a refund or a five-year credit for Joyent Cloud. I'd take the latter because I'm pretty sure I'll spend more on hosting over the next five years than the refund amount. I wonder if that too comes with a t-shirt. :)