New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
A can of worms: “Lifetime” deals
Following latest fiasco of myw the following suggestion is born: ban lifetime deals.
There is a reason for that:
- programmed exit scam if this is the only service offered;
- very easy schema to pump and dump;
No, customer should not “read, understand and make a decision” to be scammed. Yet again, forum public image is on the line here.
Cookie cutter arguments: “look, jar with mxroute pulling his lifetime gig just fine”. “Look, fastest vpn pooling their gig also just fine”.
Jar has serious business plan to support “lifetime” deals, and fastest vpn spam like there is no tomorrow by trying to upsell you after selling “life time” crap.
@raindog308, @jbiloh my suggestion is to stop allowing “lifetime” non-sense on this forum. Let it be 99 years, but not life time. It is to obscure.
Comments
i would suggest to cap it at 3 years. unless the DC has equally long plans to support server costs.
@Levi I trust Jar from mxroute with the lifetime plans, but I get what you mean. How would you make good exception rules for people like Jar.
Other than that, I agree, lifetime deals should be banned unless its not run on recurring costs hardware/software and the TOS should list a minimum amount of years contractually bound.
Rest assured that we are looking into this and will announce more in the near future.
But let's not mix lifetime (one time payment) deals, which are in many cases bound to fail, with lifetime/recurring discounted deals.
Everyone likes and wants those recurring deals, which are the essence of LEB/LET, as long as the service is keeped.
(I know that these are two different things and op didn't talk about recurring discounts, I just want to make sure there's no confusion between them)
The rule is already in place for VPS offers:
For the web hosting offers, this rule is missing. It would be ideal to implement the same rule there as well, perhaps even slightly higher limits, considering the lower costs of web hosting.
No.
Time of life is not the time of your stupid life. Or the founder's life time.
It's the lifetime of the business.
Run and ban gambling, stock market investments or donations.
There may be certain requirements, certain control so that anyone without a business plan behind them can not create them, but the simple fact of existing LTD is one more way, one more leg and is part of LET and internet.
I wouldn't do anything else.
The rule is to obscure. It does not deny lifetime type of deals. There should be clear period of service rental, as I said it is possible to treat 99 years as a lifetime. In case of deadpool, there would be a way to calculate refund. (99 - used_time) / paid_amount.
Then a rule update could simply be that it needs to say ’lifetime of the business’
10000% agreed.
Wouldn't have made a difference in this case.
I also told my friend: "being the cheapest isn't a fun business model."
Lifetime deals are fine. Nobody expects them to last for life, and in myw's case, they lasted up to 5 years or so. I’m sure some LET users have saved money on low-end shared hosting by using myw's service.
I have several lifetime deals that have saved me a lot of money. A good example is all the VPN lifetime deals that have been posted over time. Yes, they do try to upsell now and then, but it’s possible to unsubscribe from marketing emails or simply ignore the upsell offers.
If there should be a change, it should be specifying the meaning of "lifetime"—for example, the lifetime of the server, the company, etc. However, it's a waste of time and creates a vicious cycle to micromanage things like this. The admins and mods will drown in work, and we will end up with crazy rules like they have on WHT.
That's a pyramid system. They haven't lasted nowhere close to 5 years or so for the people who purchased them recently.
scamming with lifetime deals it is?
On my opinion, max 3 or 5 years are good. Lifetime bad in the longrun
Again, to obscure. You buy package for 199€ and after 2 months it goes “oopsie”. How did you feel to buy shared hosting for 199€ for 2 months?
Even worse.
Hosting is not software, more users means more ongoing cost investment.
Lifetime deals are fine, but lump sum payments on Lifetime deals tend to be unreliable.
Why not? this latest offers was clearly "lifetime", would have been a different story with a 3 years limit in place.
At least for people expectations.
I thought lifetime was already banned here. I don't think lifetime works well with the kind of margins people live with when they actually compete in the low end market. The major products here are shared hosting, VPS, and dedicated servers. That means everyone here is competing on those and often enough they end up pushing each other into barely being sustainable on those things to begin with.
I'm a bit unique in that I don't compete with anyone here so I'm over here raising prices over time, not competing for pennies for cPanel accounts. But I still don't advertise lifetime packages here, doesn't fit the vibe. I wouldn't request an exception other than to say after I list my Black Friday offers I'm going to link my promo site and it'll have one on there. That's as far as I'm going.
Sorry I misread what you typed earlier, I thought you ment businesses that are older than 1 year can do lifetimes, but you want to ban lifetimes 100%, which leaves the jar/mxroute edge case still up in the air.
Scorned.
You see it as a product, when it is a bet, an act of faith.
It happened to me with a LTD offer from stacksocial, a kind of unlimited cloud.
It just happens. In the case of myw, the result was to have in the ltd a quality of service typical of a big company. Stability, power etc.
It could have been an unstable wild oversell and in my case, it would have been just that, a gamble, an act of faith.
Back to what you say... I can understand it, but I don't think banning is the solution.
tbc: I would simply copy what is already in the rules for the VPS, also in the Shared Hostings
If people can’t handle just that little of responsibility, they shouldn’t be on the internet.
Yes, as one more product, but not as the only pillar of the business.
I think most of us can agree on that point.
Accountability is the main concern here. If not banning, than add disclaimer how many years or months service will stay active after your purchase. Minimal amount, just like guarantee for fridge, after that period I expect nothing, only good will and luck to keep service running.
Buying service is not an investment into someones “good life”. You buy it because you plan to use it.
lifetime deal felt like gamble sometime lmao
I wouldnt ban LTD but maybe add a mandatory explainer what to expect and what the risks are.
As long as they are only a part of the customer base, they can work well for both sides, I have a couple that lasted for >5 years now.
I believe the concept of "lifetime" should not be banned from LET. Even if we add 100 years as time for a service, it still won't help, because it is logically more than the lifespan of a low-end business (hopefully I can be proven wrong in 100 years).
MyW just happened to have lots of "investors" affected. People trusted Miguel because he is one of the most respected members of LET. In this case he just went through a difficult period of life which affected the brand and threatened to crash his whole business. But because LET is a respectful community, a friendly provider helped and Miguel's life will bounce back to normal.
Sometimes lifetime plans fail and investment is lost. Other times it is a success and the investment is fruitful on the long term. Do not take this pleasure away from small investors.
I suggest allowing lifetimes, but on a condition to have some years in business, or to have deeper checks onto company by a staff when allowing such offers (like documents or interview with future plans), or allow lifetimes from a provider if another established provider can vouch for their move.
Miguel was and still is a highly experienced technician, but bad luck simply happens. When shit hits the fan some guys run and some guys stay. We were there for his wonderful emotions and events in life; and a good provider was here in his bad moment to help him and his customers. This is a wonderful part of LET; let's not fear ghosts.
99 years is kind of the same as lifetime. Anyway, maybe ban is not the best way but some extra measures like LET experience, feedback etc should be taken into the account before allowing lifetime to be offered.
@Calin - "lifetime deal" for your next scam idea.
fast and ezz money, too many Bobs.