The reason this is more of a scam is that many people are glad to initially pay more in return for a lifetime price lock.
Many of us stuck it out with T-Mobile plans despite better options at the time because we're okay paying more now in return for a guarantee of not paying more later.
If T-Mobile is not honoring this once it no longer benefits them, a minimum penalty should be the price difference between T-Mobile and the cheapest similar option over the lifetime of the plan.
If I paid $50/month, and there was a $30/month option through Mint, MetroPCS, etc. for four years with the same data / talk limit, I should get back a minimum of 48 months * $20 ≈ $1000 (increased by a bit, assuming money was held in an index fund in the meantime).
Part of the reason this matters is many companies use similar lifetime tactics to get started. Nebula has $300 lifetime plans, which provided much of the early capital they needed. If this doesn't work anymore, it pisses in the pool for everyone wanting to do something similar.
It's perfectly fine to have early customers fund you with (eventually money-losing) lifetime plans, to buy marketshare this way, etc. There are a lot of business models which go away if this can't be relied on.
I's say that they should refund to you the entirety of your expected payments over the course of your expected lifetime. That would be their recourse towards you if you were to breach a contract with them, no? If you sign a $50/month contract for 36 months, and back out after 10 months, will they not come after you for $50 * 26 = $1300?
A "lifetime warranty" often refers to the "lifetime" of the product, not your lifetime or the expected lifetime of any person.
In that sense, T-Mobile has played this pretty straight. Customers got a price lock for the lifetime of the offer.
Just on a quick read, it looks like a "lifetime warranty" must actually define a length of time though. Which for a product you can, at least claim to, stress test or base on the weakest component.
Fastmail is a pretty well-regarded email service here. When they started out, there was a $50 "lifetime" account offer, which I took. They continued to honor this, even after they stopped offering it to new customers. As far as I know they still do, but at some point, I wanted more storage or some other feature, but I'd have to give up that "lifetime" plan to make any changes, so now I'm on a yearly paid plan. I grumbled a bit but they technically kept their word.
That reminds me of Flickr, which took my monthly fee with the promise of lifetime storage for uploaded photos, even if I stopped paying. Of course, they broke that promise. I don’t use them anymore, but some of my friends still do, despite the betrayal of trust.
The backstory is that the company was sold, but I don’t think that’s an excuse. If a buyer is allowed to purchase the business and keep the name and customers, they should take on the previous obligations. Otherwise, they should call it something else or make customers re-register.
Google Photos made a similar promise. They said "as long as you let us optimize your photos, the service will be free and unlimited". I started syncing my photos and I think 12 months later they announced the end of the policy.
I never paid so I'm not really that surprised but it was a quick about-face.
Was it a particularly fast (or even complete) about-face?
They offered it for over 6 years, beginning in May of 2015[0] and ending in June of 2021, with previously-uploaded photos remaining free still today, and they gave ~7 months of warning before changing things[1].
The bitterest irony about photos or similar is it's quite unlikely they really deleted (or will delete) the photos. I mean. What an amazing walled garden data set for image models. Literally the fuel for Meta or twitter's AI. So here they are sitting on your data, taking advantage, training models, etc.. oh but you want to access the data? Oh no, you didn't pay every month, can't help you.
However it does make me wonder if california's consumer privacy act would cover the right to retrieve photographic data such as this.
OneDrive also promised unlimited storage space for files, and it just lasted a few years.
Of course, most “unlimited” things are impractical from a business point of view. But I think the burden of dealing with this should fall on the companies making unrealistic promises rather than on the customers.
Sorry, they promised to store your photos even if you stopped paying? Was the idea that you couldn't upload new, but you'd still have access to old, or did you have to pay a "get them out of cold storage" fee? Either way, that's a bizarre business model.
They promised to keep the files hosted forever with live URLs so people could see them. I agree; it is a bizarre business model. I recall they had a limit on how much you could upload each month, so I guess they calculated how monthly fees would cover the lifetime storage.
It feels like a breach of contract. Of course, there is no (formal) contract between the corporation and the individual user, beyond the ToS which generally favors the corp not the user.
If I have 100M users paying $10/mo on an estimated 3 year term, I have essentially $30B revenue spread over 100M not-quite-contracts and can largely ignore any simgle one of them. But over in B2B, if I sold a $30B contract to a customer, you can be very sure the lawyering would be top notch and airtight. This is why regulators like the FTC and concepts like class action are so useful..and so disliked by corporations. I already note the vitriol directed at Lina Khan at the FTC for example.
Lifetime X is a great promise to make when you're trying to grow, but flickr can't provide free storage indefinitely, and at some point, inflation will catch up with T-Mobile's locked-in price.
I'm fine with regulators punishing companies for misleading advertising or not fulfilling their obligations, buy as savvy consumers, we have to also realize forever deals are too good to be true.
This reminds me of when I went in to a Patagonia store to repair a jacket with a “lifetime” warranty. Turns out they define lifetime as the “useful” lifetime of the product, which is a couple years. They refused to help and instead tried to sell me a new jacket.
I forget who owns Black Diamond, but they're kind of similar.
They haven't fully replaced the product, but what is cool is that they have a repair shop that has been doing free repairs for me. I've sent a very lightweight, very heavily used puffy jacket in twice for repairs at no charge.
Realistically I know that jacket isn't going to last forever, but I respect they are at least trying to help me extract as much life out of it as I can from a sustainability perspective.
It's using less material and less landfill, but I wonder if it really is more sustainable in the grand scheme of things, at the scale of clothing and similarly sized items. The additional round trip shipping and workshop operations (HVAC, lighting, commuting, etc.) could potentially exceed the footprint of just sending you a replacement right off the production line. Obviously there's a crossover point above which this couldn't possibly be (cars, etc.) but it's probably a very blurry line, and I wouldn't be surprised if some companies knowingly take the worse but ostensibly sustainable option, i.e. greenwashing, for the resulting brand loyalty and word of mouth advertising.
Darn tough socks still honor their lifetime warranty no matter how long passes, though obviously no socks can last forever. Generally reading online you find people mentioning you should be reasonable about it.
I don't get it. Shouldn't it be the seller's obligation to give a reasonable lifetime estimate? Like, give me a five year warranty, if you want to advertise your socks last for five years of regular use. Don't pretend it's unlimited when it isn't.
Tilley hats as well. It was probably twenty years on, and both of ours fell apart enough to call about their lifetime (“put it in your will!”) warranty. Other than arguing that Tilley never made that model of hat, they sent us an equivalent without fuss.
By that standard we would have "lifetime" warranty on everything sold in The Nederlands, since by law we require warranty as long as you can reasonably expect a product to last.
My Tomtom GPS is like this. I have an older model. "Lifetime maps". For many years, plug it in, new map, download done.
Eventually I try to update it and it says "oh no, do you want to buy a map!?". I mean. What? Doesn't even cost anything to the company to keep on giving me free maps - well I guess it's lost revenue if that they could earn by dishonoring the agreement, which is what they did. Clearly meant to extract more money from me in map purchase or to buy another "lifetime" map.
I have another TomTom on my other vehicle (despite the shitty practices, their kit doesn't randomly crash like Garmin in my experience) which about every 2 days nags me about an update. So here I am, newer model is way too aggressive with updates all the time, old "lifetime map" model is a disaster.
What it is here, is there needs to be legislation that if a company uses "lifetime" or equivalent word in marketing, they are on the hook for life to honor that, with some prescribed action to make customers whole if they should want to drop it.
Now a good guy legend in this field, craftsman tools, for many decades in america people would buy craftsman from their sears knowing they could always go back easily and get a replacement. Sears in the day was like if Wal mart and amazon was the same company. An institution.
I've taken multiple 10 year old T-Shirts with holes through 10% of them in to the Patagonia store and they've let me walk out with new product off the rack.
Not anymore. I had a pair of boots that one of the soles fell off of one day. They were about 20 years old but still in good shape except for the glue failure. I called up LL Bean and they said they had no record of the purchase (I didn’t have a receipt but I bought them directly from them). After I insisted I had bought from them they changed their tune to saying 20 years is long enough and I should know that glue on the soles of shoes fails after a while. I just wanted them to repair the boots but they refused, so I won’t be buying anything from them anymore.
But also don't be a complete rube as a customer. Caveat Emptor. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. There is an escape clause somewhere in the fine print, you'll find it if you read it.
Maybe it's not the exact same thing, but I got suckered into a similar thing for a "lifetime" NordVPN subscription for $120 or something, only to get re-billed 2 years later. I like the service so I kept it, but it really rankled me. Seems like you shouldn't be able to do things like this so easily - companies, especially telecoms, have gone full "fuck you" mode the last 10 years to their customers and this is a prime example.
There are VPNs out there with better business practices. You'll find these are ones that don't blow disproportionate amounts of money on advertising strategies like "carpet bomb you with influencer endorsements"
I have my own VPN I setup for anything serious. I like the interface and convenience of this one better than anything else, but yea, I agree. Their claim also that they don't keep logs or give any user info away I know is disputed and probably generally untrue, but they seem like one of the better behaved commercial ones that won't use your bandwidth as an unwitting node in their network (at least from what I can tell, if this is untrue, please correct me).
It's one of those tiny costs that ultimately don't matter, "the principle" of it is sometimes not worth it to me to do anything about. VPN is a generally scummy business from what I can tell.
Buyer beware with "lifetime**" guarantees. The asterisks and fine print often are enlightening.
Scammers always have an out too... go out of business and setup shop under a different name. I remember hearing a local tire shop offering some type of "tires for life" deal. They went "out of business" and the owners started a new shop.
More recent news that super irks me, T-Mobile bought a bunch of mmWave spectrum promising to deploy into it, and now are like, oh, sorry it would be expensive to actually meet the requirements & deploy to all this area; can we only take the good areas we want & give up the spectrum everywhere else?
Ok so maybe someone might bite maybe but seems so so unlikely if they can't use the spectrum in any popular spaces!
Structurally this spectrum auction had these conditions, these requirements to deploy broadly, for very obvious reasons. T-Mobile shafting the American public super hard with this non-delivery is so insulting. They should lose the license & pay a fine, fuck this.
> They should lose the license & pay a fine, fuck this.
I've been saying this for years about DISH, they sat on nationwide mid-band AWS spectrum for something like a decade with only a single tower built in Colorado. They only started a network buildout after T-Mobile was forced to make concessions during Sprint merger. This is super useful/valuable spectrum in the 1.6/2.1ghz range, and it was just wasted. They also bid on 600mhz licenses they couldn't use and acted like the good guys when they leased it to other carriers during COVID.
The BRS/EBS (2.5ghz, band 41) spectrum was similarly a mess. The government gave tons of it to schools and nonprofits that would never use it, never had a need for it. They turned around and started their own market to license it out to companies that actually deployed it for LTE and 5G. In my area T-Mobile deployed more of this spectrum than the backhaul can even deliver. I can easily hit 1.4gbps between a few towers, 700mbps off a single tower (because that's the theoretical max after overhead on a 1gbps port). It's possible there's an argument to be made they were hoarding this, but they built it out, it's on-air and usable.
> T-Mobile shafting the American public super hard with this non-delivery is so insulting.
mmwave spectrum is just.... not that valuable? From a physics perspective it's blocked by too much and requires too much density to get effective deployment. They had a prior history of deploying tons of it, just not on the panels, they deployed it as radio backhaul between the towers in areas where fiber wasn't available. This spectrum should probably get light-licensed/flex-licensed because it's only really going to be needed/used in the most dense urban areas and for radio backhaul in challenging terrain.
I think the Trump people were pushing it to “beat China” or something.
In my area, Verizon used some pandemic emergency order to drop mmWave poles all over the place, including in the middle of sidewalks and within a few feet of existing poles. They did it at a frenzy pace, and to date haven’t turned any of them on.
Multiple ISPs bid purely to obstuct other parties from development. It's a chess move for a large business to maintain the status quo. I do agree that financial penalties are the only counter move.
Readit News
Many of us stuck it out with T-Mobile plans despite better options at the time because we're okay paying more now in return for a guarantee of not paying more later.
If T-Mobile is not honoring this once it no longer benefits them, a minimum penalty should be the price difference between T-Mobile and the cheapest similar option over the lifetime of the plan.
If I paid $50/month, and there was a $30/month option through Mint, MetroPCS, etc. for four years with the same data / talk limit, I should get back a minimum of 48 months * $20 ≈ $1000 (increased by a bit, assuming money was held in an index fund in the meantime).
Part of the reason this matters is many companies use similar lifetime tactics to get started. Nebula has $300 lifetime plans, which provided much of the early capital they needed. If this doesn't work anymore, it pisses in the pool for everyone wanting to do something similar.
It's perfectly fine to have early customers fund you with (eventually money-losing) lifetime plans, to buy marketshare this way, etc. There are a lot of business models which go away if this can't be relied on.
The FTC has been growing some teeth again, and needs to stay vigilant.
1. https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2023/01/are-you-for...
Deleted Comment
A "lifetime warranty" often refers to the "lifetime" of the product, not your lifetime or the expected lifetime of any person.
In that sense, T-Mobile has played this pretty straight. Customers got a price lock for the lifetime of the offer.
Just on a quick read, it looks like a "lifetime warranty" must actually define a length of time though. Which for a product you can, at least claim to, stress test or base on the weakest component.
The backstory is that the company was sold, but I don’t think that’s an excuse. If a buyer is allowed to purchase the business and keep the name and customers, they should take on the previous obligations. Otherwise, they should call it something else or make customers re-register.
I never paid so I'm not really that surprised but it was a quick about-face.
They offered it for over 6 years, beginning in May of 2015[0] and ending in June of 2021, with previously-uploaded photos remaining free still today, and they gave ~7 months of warning before changing things[1].
0: https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/google-photos-breaks-free-...
1: https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/11/21560810/google-photos-u...
Which is awesome because I have way more than my drive quota in there.
However it does make me wonder if california's consumer privacy act would cover the right to retrieve photographic data such as this.
Of course, most “unlimited” things are impractical from a business point of view. But I think the burden of dealing with this should fall on the companies making unrealistic promises rather than on the customers.
I've let my card lapse on it for a few months and they never deleted anything (I just hadn't been posting either).
If I have 100M users paying $10/mo on an estimated 3 year term, I have essentially $30B revenue spread over 100M not-quite-contracts and can largely ignore any simgle one of them. But over in B2B, if I sold a $30B contract to a customer, you can be very sure the lawyering would be top notch and airtight. This is why regulators like the FTC and concepts like class action are so useful..and so disliked by corporations. I already note the vitriol directed at Lina Khan at the FTC for example.
I'm fine with regulators punishing companies for misleading advertising or not fulfilling their obligations, buy as savvy consumers, we have to also realize forever deals are too good to be true.
They haven't fully replaced the product, but what is cool is that they have a repair shop that has been doing free repairs for me. I've sent a very lightweight, very heavily used puffy jacket in twice for repairs at no charge.
Realistically I know that jacket isn't going to last forever, but I respect they are at least trying to help me extract as much life out of it as I can from a sustainability perspective.
I don't get it. Shouldn't it be the seller's obligation to give a reasonable lifetime estimate? Like, give me a five year warranty, if you want to advertise your socks last for five years of regular use. Don't pretend it's unlimited when it isn't.
Eventually I try to update it and it says "oh no, do you want to buy a map!?". I mean. What? Doesn't even cost anything to the company to keep on giving me free maps - well I guess it's lost revenue if that they could earn by dishonoring the agreement, which is what they did. Clearly meant to extract more money from me in map purchase or to buy another "lifetime" map.
I have another TomTom on my other vehicle (despite the shitty practices, their kit doesn't randomly crash like Garmin in my experience) which about every 2 days nags me about an update. So here I am, newer model is way too aggressive with updates all the time, old "lifetime map" model is a disaster.
What it is here, is there needs to be legislation that if a company uses "lifetime" or equivalent word in marketing, they are on the hook for life to honor that, with some prescribed action to make customers whole if they should want to drop it.
Now a good guy legend in this field, craftsman tools, for many decades in america people would buy craftsman from their sears knowing they could always go back easily and get a replacement. Sears in the day was like if Wal mart and amazon was the same company. An institution.
I've taken multiple 10 year old T-Shirts with holes through 10% of them in to the Patagonia store and they've let me walk out with new product off the rack.
I think Leatherman have a similar warranty to Zippo, and they've been around a while, too.
Dead Comment
Seriously though, this is one of the things that we need strong consumer protections for.
People used social proof of Tmobile's lifetime pricing for years. Then new management comes in, and they can renege on existing contracts?
That should be illegal unless you think contracts are BS too.
It's one of those tiny costs that ultimately don't matter, "the principle" of it is sometimes not worth it to me to do anything about. VPN is a generally scummy business from what I can tell.
Scammers always have an out too... go out of business and setup shop under a different name. I remember hearing a local tire shop offering some type of "tires for life" deal. They went "out of business" and the owners started a new shop.
Ok so maybe someone might bite maybe but seems so so unlikely if they can't use the spectrum in any popular spaces!
Structurally this spectrum auction had these conditions, these requirements to deploy broadly, for very obvious reasons. T-Mobile shafting the American public super hard with this non-delivery is so insulting. They should lose the license & pay a fine, fuck this.
https://www.lightreading.com/5g/t-mobile-relinquishes-mmwave...
I've been saying this for years about DISH, they sat on nationwide mid-band AWS spectrum for something like a decade with only a single tower built in Colorado. They only started a network buildout after T-Mobile was forced to make concessions during Sprint merger. This is super useful/valuable spectrum in the 1.6/2.1ghz range, and it was just wasted. They also bid on 600mhz licenses they couldn't use and acted like the good guys when they leased it to other carriers during COVID.
The BRS/EBS (2.5ghz, band 41) spectrum was similarly a mess. The government gave tons of it to schools and nonprofits that would never use it, never had a need for it. They turned around and started their own market to license it out to companies that actually deployed it for LTE and 5G. In my area T-Mobile deployed more of this spectrum than the backhaul can even deliver. I can easily hit 1.4gbps between a few towers, 700mbps off a single tower (because that's the theoretical max after overhead on a 1gbps port). It's possible there's an argument to be made they were hoarding this, but they built it out, it's on-air and usable.
> T-Mobile shafting the American public super hard with this non-delivery is so insulting.
mmwave spectrum is just.... not that valuable? From a physics perspective it's blocked by too much and requires too much density to get effective deployment. They had a prior history of deploying tons of it, just not on the panels, they deployed it as radio backhaul between the towers in areas where fiber wasn't available. This spectrum should probably get light-licensed/flex-licensed because it's only really going to be needed/used in the most dense urban areas and for radio backhaul in challenging terrain.
In my area, Verizon used some pandemic emergency order to drop mmWave poles all over the place, including in the middle of sidewalks and within a few feet of existing poles. They did it at a frenzy pace, and to date haven’t turned any of them on.
It's not usable spectrum for mass deployment.
AT&T deployed in Baltimore. Verizon and TMobile in Manhattan, and I know Vz used Schenectady, NY as a pilot city.