A year ago I fell for one of BoingBoing/StackSocial’s stupid “lifetime subscriptions” to online backup, and coughed up $55. Today I got an email from LiveDrive, for which “DripBit” was a reseller, saying, surprise surprise, that the company no longer existed, and that they deleted all my data, because I hadn’t paid for a new subscription.
This is a pattern with all of these lifetime subscriptions. One year is actually on the higher end of access, from what I’ve been able to figure out from other unhappy marks customers.
Time and time again, people point out that these backup resellers are scams, and BoingBoing promises to look into them.
Of course there is still a “lifetime” online backup offer in the BoingBoing store.
I think the whole category of “lifetime subscriptions” should be deleted from the store. The only thing that is “lifetime” is something that you own yourself. Everything else is just the lifetime of the company, and these “deals” on StackSocial are almost all cheapo-resellers whose entire business plan is to take money and fold within a year or two. StackSocial depends on crazy-sounding deals. Crazy-sounding deals for lifetime services for things that actually cost companies money (backup, VPNs, even online courses) simply don’t make economic sense, unless the company is planning to fold.
To protect the idiots like me who fall for these things, the whole category should be wiped from the store.
(PS, to be clear, I’m mostly angry at StackSocial, and I know you guys at BoingBoing actually do care enough to try and curate these things a little.)