[Copy of e-mail sent to Jeremy Howard, Rob Mueller, and FastMail Team]
Jeremy, Rob, and FastMail Team:
I am profoundly disappointed to learn that FastMail has decided to discontinue the lifetime Member level plans.*I first signed up for FastMail in October 2002 after being referred by a friend who was excited about your company. For the vast majority of my time as a FastMail member, I had a FastMail Enhanced subscription, but for financial reasons I decided not to renew my subscription and to take advantage of my membership and revert to a Member level plan. One of the reasons I signed up for FastMail over 14 years ago, paid for a membership, and paid for an Enhanced subscription for so many years, was the assurance that, as long as FastMail remained in business, I would be able to keep my e-mail address forever--even if I chose, at any point, to stop subscribing to the higher level plans. That Member level fallback benefit was something FastMail specifically designed and marketed, and it was a big selling point for me. When I paid for the Member account and when I subscribed to the Enhanced subscription, the FastMail website expressly stated that the Member account as a "lifetime 'Member' account" (see:*
https://web.archive.org/web/20021215....fm/mail/login).
FastMail continued to reassure those of us who had signed up to become lifetime "Members" that our paid membership would continue (see for example:
https://blog.fastmail.com/2003/02/25...criptions/*and https://blog.fastmail.com/2008/12/16...to-be-removed/). If you paid a fee to become a lifetime member of some other organization (such as:*
https://shop.nationalgeographic.com/...ife-membership) and then the organization decided to end your lifetime membership and require you to start paying annually to be a member, wouldn't you be justifiably upset? Many businesses that offer other kinds of services offer a lifetime service option (such as lifetime wheel alignment service:*
http://www.sears.com/lifetime-alignm...9016032000P*or lifetime service agreements for power tools:*
http://www.homedepot.com/c/SF_TH_PR_...Tools_Warranty).
It is clear that FastMail offered the Member level plan as a "lifetime" plan, and I expect many other people signed up for FastMail's Member plan for the same reason that I did. For example, see:
Rob Mueller's acknowledgement that FastMail had offered a lifetime Member plan:*
http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=42971
See media article re-posted by Jeremy Howard discussing the lifetime Member plan:*
http://jhoward.fastmail.fm/media/slicker_wheel.html
Jeremy Howard's statement that the Member plan was designed and intended to be a one-time, lifetime membership and that it was carefully designed to be sustainable:*
http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...8&postcount=33
I understand (as discussed here:*
https://blog.fastmail.com/2010/05/30...-all-accounts/) that the one-time membership fee associated with the Member level account means that FastMail cannot increase the storage and bandwidth quotas--and I would not expect you to do so.*I can't believe that it costs much of anything for FastMail to support Member level accounts with a 16MB storage quota and an 80MB monthly bandwidth quota.
When a company makes the business decision to offer a service for a one-time fee, it is responsible for taking into account the costs of that lifetime service. (And based on Jeremy's comments linked to above, it appears the FastMail did just that.) If the company later decides it made a bad business decision, it can stop offering the service for a one-time fee. It can also attempt to incentivize customers to voluntarily give up their lifetime service (as FastMail did in the past when it offered a voluntary incentive for members to trade in their memberships for a $14.95 credit toward the purchase of a Full or Enhanced subscription, which would mean that such users would fallback to a Guest level plans rather than Member level plans if they didn't renew (see:
https://blog.fastmail.com/2004/08/14...o-2gb-storage/). But the company is NOT free to unilaterally change the terms of the deal after customers already paid for the lifetime service. And if you continue with your plan to cancel the paid memberships of your customers, you will demonstrate that FastMail is untrustworthy as a company. Why would I trust a company that changes the terms of an agreement after I sign up?
Over the past 14 years that I have been a FastMail customer and member, I have respected your company and have referred others to your service. I joined FastMail back in its infancy, and after paying to become a member, I truly felt like part of the FastMail family. I remember back in the early days when Jeremy had periodic health problems and the outpouring of concern, prayers, and encouragement that the other members and I shared for him (for example:*
http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...ad.php?t=13597)
I respectfully ask that you re-consider and stand by your advertised offer of a paid lifetime membership and allow those of us who have Member plans to keep them. Please do not undermine the trust I put in you--and the trust I encouraged others to put in you.
But if you choose to continue with your plan to cancel my paid lifetime membership, rather than a service credit, I would ask that you refund the $14.95 membership fee I paid you when the Member plan is discontinued on July 31, 2017.
Respectfully,
************