VPNSecure is the company.
Odd how they didn’t just put that in the title.
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.
Oh boy. Someone dig up the Tumblr post I gotta go to bed.
no no no nonononono come back and post it
Off topic: the onion needs to resume making videos again. Their “news” videos were amazing and most of them are still relevant today even though most of them are 12 years old. Also sex house was hilarious. Please bring these gems back 🙏
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.
That would require us to pay for Lemmy, right? Or how do you mean? Where would the money come from, sort of?
Yup. Or perhaps pay into features, like full-page content inside the post. I.e. offset the revenue of the click. Oddly enough, that model would replace ads, too.
What’s odd is that it’s not in the Wired headline either, this is a direct copy of their headline.
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.
That has nothing to do with the end user. In such cases they should sue the original owners.
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?
I have no idea, but the end users should not get fucked because the new owners didn’t know what they were buying. In many countries it is illegal for the old owners to not let the new owners know of such things.
Without being able to offer any idea of a solution though, saying that means nothing. The company either gets shut down and those users get fucked and have no VPN, or the company stays alive and the users have no VPN but have the option to get one again.
The point is there’s no real way the lifetime licenses get honoured.
Just honor them and take the loss. The new owners did a bad deal. In many countries it would be highly illegal to cancel these contracts while continuing the business. Either liquidate the company or honor the deals. Fuck capitalism.
So you’d rather they just close the company down, so then no one can use their VPN. Big brain move.
The people operating the company do not deserve to run it. Maybe they should declare bankruptcy and let somebody who will honor the contracts buy it.
Allowing this kind of anti-consumer behaviour just allows them to juggle the company around to get out of contracts.
I call bullshit. I bet they knew, but saw it as an opportunity for profit and this is all PR spin.
I’m still salty about Cerberus’ ‘lifetime’ subscription
Me TOO!! i sent emails to support, posted on a google forums thread, this was like what, 13 years ago already?, eventually the thread got deleted, reach out to google support, they told me to take it with them, they never ever replied. so since then i never purchased a “lifetime” of anything
fuck them.
the app was very good though, and while typing this i got myself worked out and realized im still livid
edit: bought cerberus un 2015, got the
Hi xta, Your Cerberus license will expire soon. If you want to continue to use our services please consider buying a license. Click here to buy a license through secure payment! Thank You The Cerberus Team
email on late dec 2019.
Same here. I made them refund me and then delete my account. It was a small amount, but I was pissed enough that I wanted them to work for it.
OKAY OMG TRUE I’M SO MAD ABOUT IT. I’M PRETTY SURE I GOT IT FOR FREE ON REDDIT SOMEHOW, I USED IT FOR YEARS AND THEN THEY AXED ME
I had forgotten about that. Now I’m angry again.
Is this even legal? I mean people paid for the lifetime version.
If the new owners purchased the assets, name, and technology and not the company itself, then it’s beholden on the remains of the old company to honour the deal… Good luck with that.
Which is a problem of the legal system around it.
Within most(or all) EU countries this would count as a continuation of business and all previous liabilities (e.g. employees contracts, customers contracts, etc.) would need to be honored.
Why it is done this way? To prevent people from doing exact that.
Except what you’re describing doesn’t make sense. If the new owners purchased all of those things, then in reality they purchased the company. Courts are very likely to agree on this. It looks like a company-wide sale, therefore it probably is, even if someone tries to add a line saying “we aren’t liable”.
But imagine someone could “sell everything other than the liability”. In such a case, the seller would be putting themselves on the hook to pay outstanding debts (i.e., the seller would be liable). And we know they have money – they just sold the thing. So then the seller would pay… But they know that in advance, so they would not agree to such a sale in the first place, unless they were planning to steal that money through creative accounting of some kind… But both parties know all of that that in advance, so they would both be acting fraudulently.
How many people start companies, rack up a bunch of debt, then create another company that buys everything except the debt?
This is the exact reason GM still exists.
NOW you’re getting it.
There’s probably some fine print in the ToS that says they can do this. It may or may not be legal but that makes it a lengthier court battle to try to prove.
There are so many ways they can put the squeeze on. Session time limit, throttle fraffic, restrict usage times etc.
Then you can sell a monthly VPN+ subscription and offer revisiting lifetime users 2 years free if they move to the new “better” service.
I’m not saying I agree with any of this, but it’s certainly not a new strategy. They’ve nothing to lose. Those who are pissed off will leave, you already have their money and those who want to stay will pay up.
The VPN company can have their cake and eat it
They should be refunded tbh.
No, they should get their lifetime membership. They paid the money for the membership because the membership was worth more than the money to them.
A refund on its own is never good enough because of gains from trade. The company broke a contract.
Why would anyone be stupid enough to not honor them? Now, even if they backtrack, their name is mud. It’s so stupid.
Damn straight. I never heard of this company before but you can bet your life I will never do business with them.
They will just change their name in 6 months. They all just get bought and sold non stop so you cant research if they are good or not. Kind of like those one apartments near a college that always change names and colors to trick freshmen into leasing with them.
I mean it seems to happen pretty often. The Curiosity Nebula mess, Crunchyroll had a $10 for the lifetime of your account thing but when Sony bought them they started messing with it. Even Google tried it with Google App domains free tier which they promised for life. I think everyone said fu to the buyout and just waited for the class action until Google blinked at the last minute.
I assume Plex will find a way to start charging lifetime purchasers any day now.
At this point I look for them just to see what sort of train wreck it’ll turn into.
Lifetime services/updates are always a scam. The economics of this are really simple: Nebula is $30 per year or $300 lifetime. That lifetime membership covers only 10 years of subscription. So what’s the plan after that? There’s only really three outcomes:
- They stop providing you service
- They go bankrupt trying to provide you service
- They grow and stay big enough to be able to subsidize your service for your lifetime. I can’t overstate how unlikely this is.
Buying a lifetime membership you’re gambling that Nebula will grow big enough that other people’s subscription will pay for your service. Your membership is a liability for them.
It’s also bad from the other end. Lots of small software devs will sell lifetime updates but eventually need to abandon their products because they simply run out of money.
A service continually costs money to provide. You can’t pay for that with a single payment. Lifetime services are simply incompatible with running a business long term. It’s a bad idea and someone is always getting screwed.
$300 today is quite a bit more valuable than $30 for 10 years.
Sure, but it’s not more valuable than $30 + regular price increases for 60+ years. That’s what a lifetime membership is.
Lets flip that around: For my own finances $300 is a lot more valuable than $30 for 10 years. So if I’m to expect that the company will go out of business in 10 years or so, I would have been better off paying for the subscription.
Lets also not forget that companies don’t take that $300 and responsibly invest it. It gets reinvested in a risky bid to grow the company and get enough people to subscribe in order to pay for your service going forward.
I think a company like this is not planning to linger for years. The owners wanna make a buck for a year or two and then sell it off. If they can stiff their customers in the process, they just don’t care.
For long-lasting companies the motivation would be different. But this is not a world-famous VPN company, not by a long shot.
Especially when we are talking about VPNs. The reason so many companies are sprouting out of the ground to offer VPNs is because the margin they have is huge.
Well, any time you 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.
You’ve never heard of a contract?
Companies aren’t held to contracts like people are held to contracts. One buyout, restructuring, name change, no more contract. It’s meaningless
Is this the case everywhere?
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.
Depending on the terms and jurisdiction, there may be penalties for not honoring a contractual agreement.
Good luck collecting a check for $0.72 from the class action lawsuit. A fraction of a percentage from their profits.
This would be an issue of enforcement.
Yeah, you’re going to have to defend capitalism with someone else.
🤦
Genuinely curious, what was the point of you typing out all 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.
I’m sorry, but did someone having a different opinion from you on something you’ve invested emotional content in upset you? Does that hurt your feelings? Are you triggered? Do you need a safe space?
Tough shit. Welcome to the real adult world. Where not everyone agrees with you, and likes everything you like.
Suck it up, or keep being a bitch.
Lulwut? When did /r/TD start leaking into Lemmy. Did any of what you said have anything to do with what I said?
Are you feeling alright, man?
Edit: seriously leaning towards ‘bot’ at this point. Humans that find their way into Lemmy have generally been much more capable, and much less MGTOW
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.
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.
I’ve seen “fair use policy applies”
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
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)
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.
In this instance at least the regulatory process is simple though
Say what you mean, mean what you say.
We can maybe have some nuance over lifetime being the lifetime of the consumer buying it vs the lifetime of the company although that has to be carefully worded to prevent situations like this. But it’s probably somewhat fair that if your company completely fails the product is done. This should be clear that the company has to completely fail, not a “apple sells lifetime subscription and decides the product isn’t viable so they kill it” situation or “subsidiary company of google fails and google could easily partially refund the lifetime subscription fees as the parent company” situation
But I would argue it’s not as much about legal complexity here but about regulatory capture. There are really two forces on this issue: businesses looking to keep a lack of regulation and continue utilization of vague misleading language, and consumers that would benefit from regulation against said language.
The businesses are aligned, obviously have vast resources, can influence propaganda on the matter, and can lobby lawmakers directly.
The consumers are fragmented because of the propaganda and a lack of education on the issue, they don’t have strong representation among lawmakers, they don’t have resources, etc. they are scattered unless someone decides this specific issue is annoying enough to get up in arms about and make some kind of action network over, gathering people and support. While it is a serious problem there are just so many serious problems facing consumers and Americans right now, so why focus on this?
And thus, our regulatory bodies yet again fail us
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.
I guess Nebula should be meantioned then?
https://go.nebula.tv/lifetime?ref=nebulablog
It’s the only company that comes to mind that still offers something like that.
In the fine print, “lifetime” is defined as the lifetime of a particular mayfly that has not been all that well-treated.
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.
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.
Removed by mod
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.
To be fair, it’s best to not participate in the lottery.
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.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re being smart about the lottery by thinking about which is the smarter course of action in case of a win. The only way to be smart about the lottery is to not play.
The only way to be smart about the lottery is to not play.
I don’t disagree, but I also thing playing the lottery once in a while is fine if you’re just doing it as a daydream or something. Back when I worked in an office, if the jackpot got high enough we’d do an office pool and everyone that wanted to would throw in 10 bucks or something. And I’ve also done the same myself for the above reason but I play at most once or so a year.
That’s the responsible way to enjoy it! But you can’t have any expectations that it’s a good idea beyond having fun with it. And I find that sometimes these posts about how to do the lottery in the smartest way possible kind of detract from the fact that it’s wrong and possibly harmful to think that it’s anything aside from a potentially fun thing to do.
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.
They also take a big wet bite out of the total when you do a lump sum pay out. Then you pay taxes on it too. Oh and of you do the 20 year payout and die they keep it all. You can’t transfer it.
No doubt, but it’s still a lot better than doing the annuity. Half of fuck you money is still fuck you money.
Biggest mistake people do is put it all towards a house for a low or no monthly mortgage. It’s better to invest it. Buy two. One to live in and a multi to rent out.
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.
What’s wrong with hookers and coke?
Nothing… the real issue is all the other money you wasted.
Can’t you open up a trust with the money and put a provision on it saving you from yourself?
Sure you can… but that would mean you are responsible with money ahah
Im talking about someone who doesnt know wtf any of that means. Like the town idiot.
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.
I mean more like someone who is irresponsible and maybe dumb. I was trying to be polite. Someone that doesnt even know what a fidicuary is.
I have bought a lifetime VPN for 15$ in 2018 or 19, still kicking :)
Dang, whio’s it from?
vpnunlimited
Someone selling their data probably
nobody knows dude :)
but now they charge 200 usd for it
Considering how many companies are forcing into their TOSs forced arbitration and waving the right to class action lawsuit, of course this kind of shit was going to happen.
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.
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.
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.
This is why any good merge and acquisition contract have stipulations that update the price of the transaction 6 months or a year after purchase.
So the lifetime subscription offer was not in the subscription list anymore at the time of purchase?
Then you sue them to cover the differential
Glad people care this time, pure VPN did exactly the same thing except without the buyout. 5 years into a lifetime plan they said, “sorry, your account is closed”. They were offering 5 year plans for less when I got the lifetime one. They didn’t care and told me to complain to slashDot because that’s where I bought it.
Pure did the same to me. They’d rather lose lifetime subs and save the traffic than foster customer loyalty. They didn’t expect any of us to pay for a recurring subscription after doing what they did.
Hellgate London Lifetime sub owner here. Also lifetime plex pass.
Can pretty much guarantee they will make sure not to honor this. Lifetime subs for things are always a cash grab, if it goes too much in favor of the purchaser they will find ways to make the deal better for them.
What happened to plex’s lifetime sub?
It’s not that it’s gone, it’s that the platform continues to enshittify.
It’s really hard to remove all their bloatware garbage, and features seem to get worse all the time. Subtitles had a big change and they really don’t do a good job of supporting them anymore, as an example. Had one show that no matter what I did the subtitles just wouldn’t work after updating to a modern version that had the modern ‘updated’ subtitle handling. I’ve continued to update but it’s still questionable.
When I got it they never had ‘ad supported plex tv’, now they do and they promote it everywhere. All I want to do is keep supporting what they have, newer modern codecs, squash bugs, and act as a crappy dynamic dns so I can not setup a domain that goes to my home network connection which is a dynamic ip.
What I don’t want is to have to go into settings to disable or hide all their garbage ad revenue supported services everywhere in my private media library I paid a lifetime license fee for. It didn’t have that advertisement when I bought it, they shouldn’t be adding it afterwards, and I shouldn’t have to keep updating my config just to stay on a version that supports evolving hardware.
I tried Jellyfin but it’s even worse for subtitles which are unfortunately mandatory in my household.
Edit: this literally just popped up in my lemmy feed. https://lemm.ee/post/63954487
Nothing
Still there
Lifetime memberships are kind of a trap, for users and a company. The company gets revenue once and then never again. That is great now, but won’t pay your bills in 2027 or 2032. And the company knows that there are users who are willing to pay a huge amount of money for the service and who are using it. Of course the upper ranks will try to find a way to get money from them.
Hell yeah, diablo with guns.
Yep, two years before Borderlands delivered a much superior experience.
At the time I had spent six years playing EverQuest, Ultima Online, Anarchy Online and World of Warcraft in various capacities, and this was looking like an MMO borderlands like thing. Few MMOs had gone under so soon after release.
Apparently the same devs are making a sequel, and I think i’ll make sure to pirate it unless they give it away to lifetime Hellgate London subscribers.
Nowadays I know better than to trust any kind of weird offer like this announced before launch. They’d only do it if they knew they were going to win… or were so worried they were going to go under.
Yeah it was a different time. The gameplay was solid though imo.
It’s BS they didn’t know about it. They got the financials before the deal. Even if it wasn’t directly listed as a line item it would have been a part of the expenses.
They still thought the deal was worth doing as it was based on incoming revenue and outgoing expenses.
