This is going to be Plex Pass in a few years if Plex sells out even more
A VPN Company Canceled All Lifetime Subscriptions, Claiming It Didn’t Know About Them
Submitted 10 hours ago by youradhere@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
nostalgicgamerz@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 32 minutes ago
This is why the first question is, is it open source?
barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 4 hours ago
This is also why if you hit the lottery, you should take the discounted upfront cash payout, and not get it paid in an annual annuity for 20 years. You never know if the government is suddenly going become moral about gambling, and cancel all lottery payments.
Take the money and run.
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
To be fair, it’s best to not participate in the lottery.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
True but that is a situation that doesn’t really apply very often in the “if you hit the lottery” situation mentioned in the post you replied to.
Libra@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
Also because that lump sum is all there is. If you take the annuity they put the lump sum into an investment account and then pay you out of the proceeds (from which they take a cut, of course), and you can get the same returns they get, without losing their cut, doing it yourself.
chilicheeselies@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Absolutely. However, if you are not the best with money, or on the irresponsible side; it might be best to take the annuity. Mathematically it makes no sense to do so, but if it stops you from blowing it all on hookers and coke in two years then its for the best. In other words, if you having it all is riskier than the state keeping track of it.
spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
Even if you’re bad with money, take the lump sum and go get a fiduciary advisor to handle it and give you a regular payout. Being a fiduciary advisor is important since it means they are legally obligated to work to the benefit of your money, not lining their pockets. Using something like a trust is another good way to protect you from yourself.
WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
What’s wrong with hookers and coke?
aceshigh@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Can’t you open up a trust with the money and put a provision on it saving you from yourself?
PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
VPNSecure is the company.
victorz@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Odd how they didn’t just put that in the title.
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 hour ago
Because zero-click internet kills the revenue model. It’s unfortunate, but understandable until something better comes along.
Would love to see a co-op model spring up where views on sites like Lemmy generate revenue for publications without the click. I.E. pay $1 a month to a shared fund that’s distributed by percentage.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
Guessing it was a force copy title for the sub and the article wanted you to click. They put it in the body of the post at least.
Libra@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
What’s odd is that it’s not in the Wired headline either, this is a direct copy of their headline.
asbestos@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
!savedyouaclick@lemmy.world
dryfter@lemm.ee 5 hours ago
I learned my lesson about “lifetime” thanks to SiriusXM.
When Howard Stern got lured to SiriusXM they offered a deal where you buy the receiver and pay $500 for a lifetime subscription with unlimited transfers to different receivers. Fat forward to 2017ish when I bought my last car that had the receiver built into the radio and tried to transfer to the new one. I was told that was the last time I would be able to do that and in the future I’d be paying a $75 transfer fee and be forced into a monthly subscription.
Lifetime is a hoax.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 33 minutes ago
This may be your lucky day then! You can likely use that lifetime sub now!
I did the Sirius lifetime deal a few years offered before the one you did (in 2003 I think?). At the time they called it the “Friends and Family” promotion. It was only $300 at the time for lifetime sub, and they gave you the hardware for free. I’m still using that same lifetime sub today.
I was told that was the last time I would be able to do that and in the future I’d be paying a $75 transfer fee and be forced into a monthly subscription.
This was absolutely true this was the rules at one point. However there was a rule change (via lawsuit maybe?) that allows UNLIMITED TRANSFERS and the fee is only $35/transfer. Its even on the SiriusXM website FAQ:
“Please note: You may transfer an active Lifetime Subscription to another radio an unlimited number of times. For each permitted transfer of a Lifetime Subscription, you will be charged a $35 transfer fee, and the transfer must be effectuated through your Online Account.” source
Your account is likely still alive with your name on it! Contact them and get back into it!
Further, back when you and I bought our lifetime subs the SiriusXM streaming service didn’t exist. It is actually pretty robust now. With your lifetime sub (even without it being on a vehicle), you have full access to unlimited commercial free streaming in their best quality bitrate (there was a time that they offered reduced bitrates for lifetime users but that’s gone now too).
For me, because of a further discount I only paid $230 for my lifetime sub because I got a credit for my previous monthly service and I’ve now had it for over 22 years. So if you do the math, I’m paying 87 cents per month for full in-car and streaming SiriusXM. Lifetime deal was SO worth it!
grue@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Lifetime is a hoax.
No, it’s fraud.
The difference is that one is a funny joke and the other is a criminal act that ought to land corporate executives in prison, if the US weren’t an oligarchy to corrupt to prosecute.
J52@lemmy.nz 8 hours ago
Yes, name and shame the suckers already in the headline so they get what they deserve! VPN SECURE , yeah, right.
SammyJK@programming.dev 10 hours ago
This is absolutely disgusting behavior. “Cannot honor the purchases,” my ass.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I feel like “the new middle ages” really was a correct description of our time. Well, we’re at the dawn of it. All our universal rights and universal truths are going to be subject to who’s holding the dagger at your throat, and we’ll have theocracies, family republics and feudal lords again. The blooming diversity of hell.
OK, this is a bit offtopic, just one can see such behavior in all areas today where they wouldn’t be normal 30 years ago.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
I propose “the new dark ages” might be more appropriate.
Skipcast@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
To be fair to the new owners the previous ones never mentioned the lifetime subscriptions existed and they were sinking the company. Probably the reason the original owners sold in the first place.
ik5pvx@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Due diligence what…?
mindlesscrollyparrot@discuss.tchncs.de 9 hours ago
They also said that they were cancelling lifetime contracts that hadn’t been used in 6 months. Hard to see how those could be sinking the company.
obvs@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
That’s not being fair to the new owners.
It’s the company buyer’s responsibility to make sure they know about and honor existing contracts with the existing company, and it’s the company’s responsibility to provide that information to the buyer.
It is not ANYONE else’s responsibility to make them follow that. If something like this happens, the company(whether before or after the purchase) was in the wrong.
tabular@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I assume most companies write somewhere in their terms that “lifetime” means effectively “whenever the fuck we want”.
If there is a company that uses the word lifetime properly they may be worth a mention.
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
I remember when AT&T had “unlimited” data when the original iPhone came out and severely underestimated how much data people used.
Today, every cell phone provider has an “unlimited” plan and in the fine print says “up to x GB, after which you will be throttled.”
That shit should be illegal.
veroxii@aussie.zone 4 hours ago
I’ve seen “fair use policy applies”
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
That shouldn’t matter
If we had the most basic of regulatory practices over businesses in this country, especially the tech industry, this practice simply wouldn’t be allowed. Even the bullshit doublespeak “life of the product” version
Lifetime means lifetime. If you can’t honor that don’t offer it. If you go back on it you should be harshly penalized.
Looking at you t mobile, rolling stone magazine, filmora, Dropbox, salesforce, mcafee, etc
This should also include if you remove features from lifetime subscriptions and make them contingent on paid monthly subscriptions (looking at you adobe, Evernote, and probably plex in 3-5 years)
taladar@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Lifetime means lifetime
No, actually that is part of the problem, they shouldn’t even be allowed to advertise ‘Lifetime’ without explicitly stating whose lifetime.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I’ve read that laws of most countries have become orders of magnitude more complex since the time when ESG wrote his Perry Mason books.
One could also think that all of the laws functioning in a country at one moment being possible to grasp for one person in a week are a requirement for Heinlein and Asimov’s visions of good future too.
Often touching upon the fundamental aspects like this one - a company sells not what it advertises, but it has somewhere in agreement a line that says otherwise.
While we have enormous amount and volume of active laws that don’t change any fundamental aspects, but function as a minefield for an honest person trying to navigate reality.
A combinatorial explosion if you will.
When the legal apparatus as a whole stops functioning as law and becomes yet another power in the society. In some sense having law is a disturbance, and laws becoming so complex that they are not laws again, but something like medieval privileges, with complex interpretations depending on each side’s power, and sometimes inevitable contradictions, just means that the system of society has responded to that disturbance.
futatorius@lemm.ee 5 hours ago
In the fine print, “lifetime” is defined as the lifetime of a particular mayfly that has not been all that well-treated.
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 4 hours ago
They often tie it to current offerings. So your plan may have unlimited 4G data for life, but won’t include anything faster/newer. So once you want/need 5G, you have to switch to a different plan.
turtlesareneat@discuss.online 2 hours ago
And even then it’s dependent on the availability of the 4G network or whatever. They’re currently sunsetting 2G and 3G networks, that means a lot of old school devices have to be upgraded or cut off, upgrades come with new contracts.
theterrasque@infosec.pub 9 hours ago
I’ve seen some saying that “lifetime” refers to product lifetime, which is not expected to be more than X years. So yeah, slimes gonna slime
vxx@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I guess Nebula should be meantioned then?
aceshigh@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
This is also why I stopped prepaying for things. Sure I’m spending $50 more a year but at least I have flexibility.
ninjascum@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I have bought a lifetime VPN for 15$ in 2018 or 19, still kicking :)
squidspinachfootball@lemm.ee 25 minutes ago
Dang, whio’s it from?
winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 minutes ago
Someone selling their data probably
Luffy879@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
Just saying: Lifetime Licences for Services are a Pyramid scheme
jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
*ponzi scheme
metallic_substance@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
This analogy makes no sense
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 5 hours ago
… in what way? primarily selling products to employees?
Luffy879@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
Edited the comment, used the wrong word
Geetnerd@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Well, anytime your buy any service from any company, you’re depending on them to keep their word.
I’m not saying this is right, or ethical. But you’re taking a chance they’ll honor their service.
Sorry if anyone got screwed.
gradual@lemmings.world 8 hours ago
You’ve never heard of a contract?
acchariya@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Companies aren’t held to contracts like people are held to contracts. One buyout, restructuring, name change, no more contract. It’s meaningless
Geetnerd@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Way to not see the forest for the trees.
I’m stating they don’t always honor the terms of the contract, and change the terms on a whim.
Good luck collecting a check for $0.72 from the class action lawsuit. A fraction of a percentage from their profits.
cardfire@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
Genuinely curious, what was the point of you tuoinga lol of this to put on the internet?
I don’t know how to say this without being rude.
I’m wondering if you’re a bot that just churns out a few semi-relevent sentences or if you thought this was going to contribute to the discussions at hand? Because it felt like it wanted to blame the victims and then pulled back at the end and I ant fathom why you stepped into the tightrope wire in the first place.
nucleative@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
It kind of looks like the new owners of VPN Secure got screwed - the last owner made all these costly lifetime deals and didn’t tell them. The obligation/liability to service those deals wasn’t transferred to the new owners.
Which means the old owner is probably the bad guy here and still owes these customers for their lifetime subscriptions.
teft@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Sounds like the new owner didn’t do due diligence when inspecting what they were purchasing. Which means the new guy is an idiot and you probably shouldn’t trust your data with them.
nucleative@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
You can do due diligence as a buyer forever but if the seller lies or doesn’t disclose… Problems like these happen. Lawsuits are potentially incoming to figure that one out.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 7 hours ago
Seems like the new owners got screwed over by the previous owners who “forgot” to tell them that they had a bunch of highly unprofitable users locked in without ever paying them a cent again.
Shitty situation for those “lifetime” subscription owners, but if the company shuts down because the new owners were sold a lie, they don’t have a VPN to use either.
x00z@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
That has nothing to do with the end user. In such cases they should sue the original owners.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 7 hours ago
The new owners mentioned that in the article. They said it would cost more to do than it would to just shut the business down.
What good outcome do you think the lifetime license owners would get in that situation?
ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 minutes ago
Is this even legal? I mean people paid for the lifetime version.