
FastMail lifetime member plans to be discontinued - delhanty
http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?p=599512
======
michaelbuckbee
With respect to SAAS services, I treat lifeTime plans as maybe even a step
_below_ free plans in terms of longevity.

They typically signal to me that the service is in some kind of bad financial
state (and hoping to prop things up with an influx of one-time payments).

On the part of the providers, they attract pathologically bad customers.
Lifetime memberships set up all kinds of weird incredibly hard to fulfill
expectations.

It's a truism in SAAS community that someone paying $5/mo will be 10x the
support and onboarding nightmare of someone willing to pay $50/mo.

All that being said, Fastmail has moved aggressively away from them to the
extent that I (as a paying Fastmail customer for the last 3 years) never even
knew they existed. And while I think they're a bad idea, I do think that a
promise is a promise and if they offered them they should abide by them.

~~~
delhanty
As the submitter, I agree with all this.

Sure from, FastMail's point of view my father is a bad customer. Not that he's
even aware who FastMail are though ...

But FastMail freely chose to make the poor business decision to offer that
lifetime service for a one-time payment, and I freely chose to purchase that
service for my father.

We had an agreement.

Now I would like them to honour that agreement.

------
zdw
Pretty common - I bought into the TextDrive (became Joyent) lifetime hosting
plans, and then got the shaft a few years later, as everyone else who bought
into it did:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391669](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391669)

I can understand if I bought the lifetime plan and you go under or pivot to
something entirely different and it ends, but it seems churlish if you're
still in the same business and you renege on the first people who believed in
you.

~~~
faitswulff
Is there precedent for a company being sued for something similar? Seems like
false advertising to me.

~~~
yborg
As pointed out elsewhere in thread, it is, and you can then incur the legal
costs of recovering your $50 or whatever the "lifetime" fee was. If the
company wasn't completely retarded about it, even a class action with
attorney's fees is probably not going to be that costly. For the company doing
this, it's essentially a promotional cost. Doing it in such a way that
generates negative PR later seems to make the whole thing a waste of time, but
that's the calculus that a company does.

Seems much smarter to me to make these things "free for x months/years" etc.
and at least cap your costs if this approach is the best way to get signups.

------
mrweasel
What's the point of selling someone a "lifetime" plan of anything, if you're
able to discontinue that plan whenever you feel like it?

It's the equivalent of a "lifetime warranty" where you just fail to stipulate
that it's the lifetime of the product and not the buyer.

~~~
delhanty
Indeed!

It's like if I'd invested $100 in Amazon at IPO, which is worth around $64K
today but Jeff Bezos could now but my stock back for the original $100 as long
as he offered me half-price on a new Kindle.

~~~
pfarnsworth
Terrible analogy. The email account is not an investment. You can't "sell"
your account. Your father used it for years, and now he's getting his money
back.

And he has alternatives, he can use gmail, etc.

~~~
delhanty
Actually a lifetime (of my father) service contract is very much like an one
particular investment, that is an inflation adjusted annuity.

FastMail is no more free to terminate the lifetime service contract while my
father still lives than the pension company is free to stop paying his annuity
backed pension.

~~~
pfarnsworth
Another terrible analogy. It's not an annuity at all. You're paying for a
service. You pay $15 for "lifetime" email. Your father paid less than $1/year
for email service. Stop trying to make it seem like Fastmail owes you money.

Quit your bellyaching and move him to gmail.

------
paulgb
After seeing everyone rave about FastMail in the other thread I signed up for
the demo. I've been looking to move a domain I have off of G Suite and it
seemed like the best option.

Now I'm having second thoughts, if this is how they treat paying customers.

~~~
carussell
> everyone rave about FastMail in the other thread

There's a lack of critical commentary about FastMail in general. In my case,
it's because I don't want to come off as being overly negative/contrarian, and
I'm pretty terrible about leaving reviews for products and services, despite
the fact that I rely heavily on reviews and making purchasing decisions.

I was a subscriber to FastMail for years and recently (last month) switched
away. One of the main selling points you hear about FastMail is that, unlike
the stories you hear about people getting locked out of Gmail and other Google
services with no support line, then ostensibly support is part of the package
you get from FastMail since you're actually a paying customer. Over ~4 years
with FastMail, I filed two tickets, and I walked away both times feeling gross
after nasty encounters with FastMail employees. (Honestly, quietly closing the
tickets would have been better than the responses they left.) So I made a
decision to walk away permanently by not renewing.

FastMail comes off as really well regarded in HN-like communities, but I can
only help feeling like it's from those who set up an account years ago, had no
problem sending and receiving mail, and have only ever coasted like that
since, without ever interacting with the support that everyone feels warm and
fuzzy about paying for but never using. The other thing is that there's a
dearth of competition for FastMail, especially in the age of webmail, so they
don't have to be good, all they have to do is exist.

I'm on Runbox now, which has a less sexy interface if you're using webmail
rather than IMAP, but it turns out to be slightly cheaper for my use case, and
I can attest that, based on my experience during migration from FastMail, at
least the Runbox staff don't come off as jerks.

~~~
delhanty
>at least the Runbox staff don't come off as jerks.

Yeah, that's my main actual service negative. The FM support staff are
condescending, because they're the experts in email and you're just an
ignorant customer.

~~~
lilyball
Have you considered that maybe it's your attitude that's the problem, not
FastMail? I've contacted FastMail support a number of times for various issues
and not once have they ever been condescending.

~~~
vsl
My experience as well. They have the initial assumption that you're
inexperienced (as is common in level 1 support and as I'm pretty sure they do
for a good reason), but they are great at escalating, you don't have to ask
them. And when an issue is escalated to engineers, you often get to talk to
the founders and they are always happy to investigate in depth or explain, in
detail, why things are they way they are or how they plan to address it.

I actually appreciate that they always give honest, straight, no BS answers
and while FM is certainly not perfect, the support I got through the years is
a large part of why I recently moved off my grandfathered plan to multiple
(business/personal separation) more expensive plans.

------
kmfrk
Reminded of this from "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs":

    
    
        "Just fuck 'em" became one of Steve's favorite lines.
        
        When he had taken over, he had inherited a program
        called SOS Apple, which let people sign a contract 
        for unlimited customer support over the telephone 
        for a lifetime. It was a bad financial move for 
        Apple. Steve said to shut it down.
        
        What about the customers who have a contractual 
        obligation? Jeff asked.
        
        "Just fuck 'em," Steve said.
        
        The Federal Trade Commission sued Apple over the issue. 
        Apple lost.

~~~
delhanty
It was probably still worth it for Apple though to be able to dump the
unlimited commitments ... ?

Facebook, LinkedIn etc. have the same playbook when they play fast and loose
with the privacy rules with respect to spamming contact lists. Any penalty is
tiny compared with the gain.

I'm sure that's FastMail's current management's thinking in my case.

~~~
jhall1468
> Facebook, LinkedIn etc. have the same playbook when they play fast and loose
> with the privacy rules with respect to spamming contact lists. Any penalty
> is tiny compared with the gain.

Not even close to the same thing. Apple agreed to a contract to provide
unlimited support. Facebook/LinkedIn privacy policies explicitly state they
can change them with notice, and they do.

~~~
delhanty
This is do with the violation of EXISTING policies.

LinkedIn in particular paid $13 million in 2015 to settle a class action
lawsuit about their slightly misleading "Add Connections" feature.

[http://fortune.com/2015/10/05/linkedin-class-
action/](http://fortune.com/2015/10/05/linkedin-class-action/)

IMO $13 million was a small price to pay compared with the $26.2 billion
Microsoft paid to acquire LinkedIn:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-to-acquire-
linkedin-i...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin-in-
deal-valued-at-26-2-billion-1465821523)

------
infogulch
Monthly service costs / subscriptions are a _feature_. This happens all the
time with mobile apps, for example. You find a nice new shiny todo app that
costs $5 and invest heavily in it, lo and behold, 6 months later the 2k people
that bought it isn't enough to sustain the creator indefinitely and it dies a
slow and neglectful death. But if just 500 of those people paid $5/mo that
would be much more likely for the developer to continue supporting it.

When I'm looking for something that I expect to invest in and rely on for a
long time, "has a paid subscription" becomes an important consideration when
evaluating different options.

~~~
kartickv
I'm building a camera app. Would you suggest I charge annually, instead of
one-time? None of the other camera apps I've used has a subscription.

Would you pay via a subscription?

~~~
mcgrath_sh
Not the person you replied to, but I have pretty strong feelings on this so I
am going to reply.

I have _no_ issue paying for apps/software. My iPhone homescreen is made up
almost entirely of paid apps or apps for services I pay for. Some of these
apps cost $10-20 and I happily pay that every 18-24 months for a new version.
I use Drafts so much that I would gladly pay up to $40 every 18-24 months as
an outright purchase for it.

That being said... if Drafts went to a subscription model for $5 a year, I
would stop using it and find an alternative. Most apps are _not_ services.
Full stop. They are apps. Outside of the apps tied to a service (i.e. Dropbox,
NewsBlur) I would find alternatives to every one of my paid apps if they went
to a subscription model, _even if that subscription was cheaper than buying a
new version in a similar timeframe._

I have this stance for multiple reasons:

\- I have subscription fatigue. I don't want to start managing dozens to use
my computer/phone.

\- I don't want to wake up one morning and find out a utility app isn't
working because I didn't pay, forgot to renew etc. If I have a down month I
don't want to choose between a working text editor and working spreadsheet
software.

\- I value owning software. Period. I know that if the state of my system
doesn't change I can continue to use that version on tht OS for as long as I
can make that OS function. That is important to me.

\- Renting software decreases its value for me as a customer in a way that
paying a comparable sum for an upgrade in a similar time frame does not.

The analogy I fall back on is a drill from a hardware store. If I am drilling
for one project I have no issue renting a drill. But if I am drilling every
weekend for a year and maybe a half dozen times a year going forward I want to
own the drill. I don't want to go to use a drill and suddenly find it non-
functional because I forgot to pay my rental fee. __Most software is not a
service. It is a tool. __If you are providing a tool I will gladly pay to own
that version that works on that OS and preferrably is guaranteed to work for
18-24 months after purchase (much like a warranty on a physical tool). After
that timeframe, I can continue to use the tool in its current state on its
current platform(s) and it should continue to work as long as it "physically"
(i.e. no more updates or new features) lasts. If I want new features or
continued support, I then have to buy a new tool.

To emphasize: _I have no issue buying software and paying devs for the work
they do._ I do, however, heavily object to renting software, especially
because most apps are tools and not services. I have dropped several pieces of
software over the last 18 months as they moved to the SaaS platform because I
wanted to own the tools that they wanted to rent to me.

~~~
kartickv
Thanks for your perspective, and it makes sense from your point of view.

But what about the problem the grandparent raised, which is that with one-time
payments, after a while, the income from the app decreases to below the cost
of maintenance, at which time the rational choice for the developer is to stop
taking a loss, and instead abandon the app and build another one to try to get
more revenue.

Whereas, a subscription incents the developer to continue investing in the
app. Even if the total amount of money earned over the lifetime of the app is
the same.

BTW, you don't expect new features to be delivered unless you pay more. That's
perfectly reasonable. But many users expect regular updates. To which my
response is: Sure, but pay me regularly.

I think whichever way we look at it, we don't end up with a good solution to
this problem :)

~~~
mcgrath_sh
Yup. I think that has been the biggest thing that Apple screwed up, not the
price. The idea that you buy the app once and you own it on iOs forever. Not
that iOS version. Not a subset of iOS versions. iOS. Unfortunately, this means
that most people think of it like a song or similar. (I bought it on my iPhone
3 and therefore the song should play on my iPhone 8.) That mentality does not
work with software. It is unsustainable. The mentality that Apple should have
pushed would be similar to video games (i.e. I bought this for the PS!. And
then the PS2. And then the PS3).

As I stated above, I don't mind regular paid update intervals. I just loathe
the idea of subscriptions. I want to own the software I buy. But the problem
is that the average person thinks that $1 to $20 entitles them to a lot more
than is reasonable. And the best way devs see to fight that off is
subscriptions.

I know I am in a very small minority, but ownership is worth a lot more to me
than price. I just hope that there are devs out there that will continue to
build quality software and sell it outright.

I would like to see Apple give the ability for devs to handle pricing like
JetBrains does. That to me is a subscription I would consider. I am not 100%
sure, but it is about the only model I would be open to.
[https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/207240845-What...](https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/207240845-What-is-perpetual-fallback-license-)

------
delhanty
This is the bit that pissed me off the most. In their most recent email
FastMail wrote:

>We're now contacting you again to remind you that from 31st July, 2017 our
'Member' level plans will be discontinued.

There is no reference to the fact that it was a life-time plan. Do FastMail
think that people are just going to forget that fact? Are we supposed to be
that dim?

------
yladiz
To those that don't want to read the email that was linked here, here are
links to FastMail help that talk about their discontinuation of the Member and
Guest plans:

[https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/member.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/member.html)

[https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/guest.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/guest.html)

Of course it sucks if you use this plan, but I think that giving nearly 6
months of notice after allowing you to use a plan for nearly 8 years after it
was discontinued is generous. I think what they're offering, which is 50% off
any upgrades and a credit equal to the amount they originally paid ($15) is a
good gesture as well, and in the thread it seems they would be okay with
refunding the $15 to those that aren't okay with this.

~~~
delhanty
>it seems they would be okay with refunding the $15 to those that aren't okay
with this.

To that I'll quote what zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC posted just now:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358874](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358874)

>Now, I don't know the details of the contract, but generally, the value this
is about is not $15. The value is the damage caused by them failing to fulfill
their contracts, which would be the discounted value of the market price of
all future payments needed to replace their failure to perform.

>There is no general legal option for one party to a contract to simply pull
out and give you back your money. They owe you what they promised in the
contract, and if they don't deliver, they are liable for the damage that that
causes for you.

~~~
yladiz
Can you link to or post the actual contract from when you signed up? Without
seeing this contract what you're saying is without context.

------
muraiki
Hmm, this post isn't showing up on any page of HN for me. I guess it's been
flagged or moderated into oblivion.

------
delhanty
TL; DR; FastMail support is arrogant and inflexible.

I contacted FastMail support: referencing this thread, explaining my
situation, pointing out that the member accounts were lifetime and asking them
to switch my (legacy) enhanced account to a (legacy) premier family account
and include my father on that.

Technically they could do that, as they will still run the family accounts for
legacy accounts.

But the technical support point blank refused, did not acknowledge that the
member plans were lifetime, did not explain how I am supposed to make the
existing domain that I have associated with my enhanced work with my father's
account once I pay for an unwanted upgrade to a life-time account.

The reply is just a cut & paste job from their existing support material:

Wed, 17 May 6:02 PM (5 hours 58 minutes ago) +0000 Admin : Shifana Hi,

>but you have emailed him to state that you are terminating the agreement.

Today FastMail is a service that requires multiple data centres and a 24 hour
operations team, together with an ongoing commitment to continuing
development, which is why a recurring revenue stream is essential for
developing and maintaining FastMail for all of our customers.

We understand the inconvenience these changes may cause some customers. To
assist existing users that would like to stay with FastMail we are crediting
the initial cost of their account and also offering a significant discount on
any new plan chosen.

So if you were to upgrade to the Basic account for one year from today, with
the discount and account credit you are effectively getting FastMail at no
charge for another 12 months. That's also with a massively upgraded 2 GB of
storage (up from 16 MB).

In addition to this you also receive any remaining time until 31 July for
free. That means at no cost to you, with even more storage, you can still keep
your account active until 31 July 2018.

On top of this we are offering 50% of all upgrades made before 31 July 2017.
This includes our already discounted multi-year plans which for the Basic plan
are $55/ 2 years and $80/ 3 years before any discount is even applied.

> so none of the offers of your current accounts work for me. >I would accept
> is for you to convert my Enhanced account to the Premier Family account

Sorry, we could only provide offers to the users who upgrade their member
accounts to our new plan. Also existing users cannot upgrade to an older
service level. They can only upgrade to a new plan.

We are happy to offer a full refund of the cost you paid for your service if
you would like to close your account instead of upgrading to one of our
current plans

>migrate my father's email to that under the domain ____*.

To migrate emails from your member account to your paid account, you can use
the “Import & Export” screen in the paid account. However, before you do that,
you will first need to create an 'app password' in the member account.

To learn how to do that, see the below link:

[https://www.fastmail.com/help/clients/apppassword.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/clients/apppassword.html)

Once you have created the app password, login to your paid account and go the
'Import & Export' screeen. You can specify the following details there:

    
    
      IMAP server: imap.fastmail.com
      Username: your member username
      Password: your new app password
      Use SSL: Enable
      Folders: <choose the desired option depending on whether you wish 
                    to merge into existing folders or migrate into a separate migrate folder>
    

1\. Click on "Migrate" to migrate the emails from member account into this
account 2\. Wait for the migration to complete. You should get a migration
status email once its done 3\. Make sure all your emails are correctly
migrated.

Hope that clarifies your question. Let me know if there is anything else that
I can help you with.

Regards, We are waiting for more information about this ticket. If your
problem is resolved, you can close this ticket now by checking the 'Close
ticket' box and clicking on the 'Add Update' button.

This ticket will be automatically closed if no update is made in 7 days.

~~~
brongondwana
As you've probably noticed, that response is largely made up of templated
fragments of instruction, since typing that much out for every support request
is a lot of duplicated work. Our support staff have templates for hundreds of
common questions.

This thread started just after I went to bed last night, so I didn't see
anything until this morning.

I have taken over that ticket and will continue the conversation there.

~~~
delhanty
Thank you.

Please make sure to address the following points:

1\. Acknowledge the truth: the member accounts were life-time - it's not
FastMail's legal option to unilaterally terminate them.

2\. Domain sharing: I have domain associated with my Enhanced account and I
assign an email address from that domain as an alias that forwards to the
email address of my father's member account. I require that feature continues
to work as the email address from the domain is my father's public facing
email address. I am also using various email addresses from that domain as
public facing email addresses so that needs to continue to work too. That's
why I suggested merging ur two plans into a family plan that you are still
running as legacy.

3\. My father and I are in different countries. He is in the UK - I won't be
in the UK until August. I don't want to reconfigure his Apple mail (iMac)
account with new login details.

------
delhanty
I submitted this in relation to a comment that I just made:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357780)

edit: removed text duplicated from comment - maybe that was against HN
guidelines ...

~~~
corobo
> removed text duplicated from comment - maybe that was against HN guidelines

I don't know if it was against HN guidelines but it looked an absolute mess.
One giant block of text.

------
tiatia
I mean, this is the case with every "life time" plan. Valid until the company
goes bankrupt or has financial issues or changes it mind.

Once there were life time "all you can fly" airplane passes for US$ 100k.

~~~
carussell
This is not a case of someone going out of business. This is a case of a
healthy business not holding up their end of a purchase.

~~~
tiatia
"..or changes it mind."

~~~
carussell
I don't see what you're getting at. That matches exactly the "not holding up
their end" that I mentioned. What's the problem?

~~~
tiatia
You are irrational expecting any other outcome.

------
sarreph
You. Cannot. Trust. "Lifetime". Guarantees.

...Because you cannot trust the future of _any_ business.

~~~
dustinblake
Sure, a business can cease to operate—that's a risk that seems pretty clear
cut and understandable. Or, if the business completely changes and doesn't
offer that type of product or service anymore. If the lifetime offer was for
unlimited (one at a time) VHS borrowing at the neighborhood video rental, and
then the store shifted to only offering DVDs, or (perhaps better) streaming,
the fact that there are no longer any VHS tapes to borrow makes sense.

But this is a case of an email company (likely profitable) that still offers
email accounts. It's likely that the only difference between the product that
they're taking away and current offerings is that the 'lifetime' accounts have
FAR lower quotas and features offered. The cost of computing, storage and
bandwidth trend downward over time. No new lifetime accounts are being
created, so they've got a fixed quantity of lower-usage level accounts. They
can already forecast the maximum technical cost for these over the next
10/20/30/40 years. Now these accounts may have high costs in terms of
providing customer support, and that would be unpredictable, and potentially
costly. I doubt anyone would fault Fastmail for simply stating that outside of
a few designated problems/issues (either on their side or the most important)
that no technical support would be provided for these accounts. If they wanted
to be nice, they might offer that non-crucial support issues could be handled
at the lowest tier/priority.

That would be a sensible way to move forward.

