Why are scammy lifetime subscriptions to online services still in the BoingBoing store?

general topics
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@beschizza @frauenfelder

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.)

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This is a legitimate complaint, stated reasonably, with a specific personal example.

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So when are you guys going to address that other thing people hate?

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Hey, let’s keep me out of this!

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I got the same notice, just today. Totally sucks.
So no ‘lifetime’ subscriptions can be trusted? Anywhere?
This was only a year and suddenly it’s now a paid subscription, with no details on price or terms.
I think boingboing does need to look carefully at this in the future.

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Ok, so if I buy a toaster with a lifetime warranty, is that referring to my lifetime or that of the toaster? Either way it’s a shitty deal.

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Depends on how long you plan on living.

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You would need to read the warranty, the terms can differ.

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Isn’t a promise or guarantee just as illusory as the money you paid? So why would it even be worth looking at? You can’t hold a promise, much less hold someone to a promise.

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I avoid buying living toasters.

Gross.

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NoNoNonono… a promise between us is worth a lot more, because it is between us. With money, the main terms are dictated by whoever issued the currency, hence its unreality. Everything always needs to be negotiated and made explicit between the participants.

I do fairly well at both of these. Most companies take advantage of people because their experience has been that they can get away with it, the average person won’t do anything. Getting companies to keep their word is a compassionate gesture which helps them to be more mindful of their relationships with people.

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I believe @ldobe was messing with you.

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But what I agree to may not be the same thing that you expected that you were agreeing to. Because words and language is fundamentally imprecise. We can never “agree” on the same thing, because we don’t have the same brain, so negotiation is a fallacy.

(@L_Mariachi is right. I’m just giving you a hard time.)

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We can eat the same pizza, we just don’t share the same subjective experience of eating this pizza.

I agree that language can be imprecise. That is why I perform exacting simulations which allow me to approximate how “everybody else” communicates.

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You are getting it all wrong. That’s the kind of product that BoingBoing would expose in an angry article with a clickbait headline if other people sold it. But nothing is so sleazy that it wouldn’t be basic economic necessity and generally accepted practice if they do it.

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That would be bad science. The important thing is that the results are reproducible, not who happens to do it. If the proper procedures are followed it shouldn’t matter who does it. Why would anybody prefer a society based upon bad science?

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Because scaring the villagers with tall tales they buy into means that I get food and shelter in exchange for pleasing the god of the anti-tiger rock.

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Mess with the PopoBull, you’re gonna get the philosophical horns.

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Not horny now… must sleepZZZZZzzzzzz…

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