Guest and Member subscriptions being discontinued

[brownb2]

Originally Posted by wakaba

Ah, good. So you can see that terminating a legacy service is not a sign of financial problems. I'm glad the google example was helpful.

Not sure where you got 1+1=3 from here. In simpler terms FM's core business, what drives its revenue, is being affected by this change. Google's was not. It's therefore no leap to suggest FM's reasoning is to shore up its money or consolidate its user base for profit (see my last paragraph below). Google's example was indeed helpful to correct your misunderstanding.

Originally Posted by wakaba

Actually, google used to provide free google apps features such as custom domains, but withdrew some of these features from legacy users and started charging for them. Again, another example of Google being in dire financial straits, in your mind?

I never once said Google was "in dire financial straits" "in my mind", you're putting words in my mouth.

Originally Posted by wakaba

But here is an example where, in fact, another company did upset the apple cart, and in fact received orders of magnitude worse PR, for negligible gain.

I think stopping an audience of millions hitting your server costs is substantial gain. This is apples and oranges again - FM has stated it's a small number of users.

Originally Posted by wakaba

The isomorphism holds regardless of the size or structure of the company involved. So, if you're going to argue that the two companies are drastically different, then you'll have to explain why the differences affect your original argument. Otherwise, you're just swinging and missing.

I'm sorry that comment is just plain b*ll*cks lol. I've clarified the position above to help your understanding. If you honestly can't see how large Google who offers free services and small Fastmail, who doesn't, differ, mainly because one can afford the other can't, well I'm afraid to say I think you're being delusional.

Originally Posted by wakaba

(A quick hint: FM, and google, have many reasons to terminate legacy services other than financial distress. Many of them have already been discussed in this thread.)

If it was to consolidate users onto new products/simplify the tech stack these users could have been given basic for free with no argument from users. Instead they have not, so regardless of the motives it will affect FM's profits positively. Whether you see a financial problem there is a matter of your own perspective, but I'm under no illusion a small paid for email service doesn't have much potential for growth. Again YMMV, its all about perspective.

[jhollington]

Originally Posted by wakaba

Actually, google used to provide free google apps features such as custom domains, but withdrew some of these features from legacy users and started charging for them.

At risk of stirring the pot here, to be fair, Google never actually withdrew its free custom domain offering from users who already had them prior to the service being officially discontinued (in Dec 2012).

I have an domain from my old business parked on the old legacy Google Apps for Domains Standard Edition that still works exactly as it did back when the service was available — a number of my friends and former business partners still use those addresses, so it seemed the best place to park the domain at no cost when I shut down the business and finally decommissioned the in-house servers years ago.

In fact, Google even continued to grandfather in the same maximum number of users based on when you first signed up for the old free Google Apps Standard Edition — I still have 50 user slots available for my old domain, even though it was later lowered to a maximum of 10 (and I know somebody else who still has 200, from when they signed up at the very beginning). So I can not only maintain those existing accounts that were there in the beginning, but I can actually create as many new ones as I have room for.

That said, the difference between Google and FastMail is still a valid point here.... Google is a huge multi-billion dollar company that clearly has no problem allocating resources to maintain these old legacy free Google Apps domains. FastMail obviously has more limited resources than Google does.

[neoforum]

Originally Posted by wakaba

Again - services for legacy users are terminated all the time in tech.

Google terminated the free service Google reader. Loyal Google reader users made a huge fuss.

Totally different situation. I was a regular user of Google Reader and wasn't happy when they discontinued it, but I simply wasn't entitled to have my Reader account maintained because they had never claimed they would maintain them forever.

In fastmail's case, they did claim it would be a lifetime account, and I paid for that (more than one, in fact).

I can't think of a single case of a well-known company selling a service, promising it would be supported for a specific period of time (whether that's the customer's lifetime or any other period), and then unilaterally withdrawing the service from the customers who bought it before that time period was up (for any reason other than the company going out of business). And this is true even though virtually every company has terms of service that would make it technically legal for them do so if they chose. Can anyone else think of an example of this?

Probably the reason for this is that most companies realize it's not only immoral but also bad business to renege on promises to their customers. After all, most people wouldn't feel comfortable paying a company for a service knowing that in the past the company sometimes chose not to deliver the service it sold.

[placebo]

Originally Posted by brownb2

I never once said Google was "in dire financial straits" "in my mind", you're putting words in my mouth.

You originally said:

it's quite clear if such a small number of low usage legacy users is bothering FM to the degree that they have to migrate them then they must be having some financial trouble because you wouldn't upset the apple cart for something that would otherwise add negligible gain.

Financial difficulties is only one of many possible reasons FastMail may want to get rid of the legacy accounts. The thing is, none of us here really knows the full picture, so ascribing motives to FastMail is only speculation.

[samhu]

Originally Posted by placebo

The thing is, none of us here really knows the full picture, so ascribing motives to FastMail is only speculation.

Speculative reasons why Fastmail chose to upset the apple cart -

1)This forum got boring
2) Powers that be at Fastmail are having a mid-life crisis
3) They need the money
4) Potential new owners of service don't want baggage

[David]

Originally Posted by samhu

Speculative reasons why Fastmail chose to upset the apple cart -

4) Potential new owners of service don't want baggage

The most likely reason, imho.

[Steven Avery]

Originally Posted by brownb2

...
Would I pay a subscription to Fastmail?
Yes absolutely.
Would I pay the amount they ask for Basic?
No (although I am still a little fence sitting because a second email provider is always useful)

I have already queried whether FM would provide a new lower than basic account for legacy users for around $5 a year but received no reply. If you think about it, my suggestion was actually quite a sensible policy (if low balling) since next year they could have doubled the cost of the account/made it un-competitive with basic (say $25), but hey what do I know?

In the mean time I would have purchased a price locked three year plan for $15.

This type of solution is what I suggested in post #128. You would no longer have all the problems of a special account that needs its own code base support. The only real difference would be support priority, which probably affects nothing.

It seems like a natural solution. The accounts would then be putting in money. Perhaps 1/2 of the current users would go to that solution. Yes, there would be a little leg-kicking that some people have an account cheaper, but those less expensive accounts are not numerous and are people who have been users for 10 years and more. A loyal contingent. And, the critical point, they would be paying $, no longer simply keeping an account because it is free.

Would Fastmail be losing $ on the accounts? Probably not in direct, incremental costs. No harm, no foul.

I missed the "price locked three year plan for $15". Can you explain that plan?

Steven

[fentonb]

There's a serious lack of empathy from some of the commenters here toward those of us affected by this move. We're not all professional domain holders who enjoy the labour of managing our own email. My own situation is a case in point. I bought the lifetime Fastmail member account as I assumed it would provide me with a lifetime contact point without having to deal with the hassle of registering and managing a personal domain. I have given that email address out 1000s of times over the years - there is no chance that I can just go and change all those points of contact now. So I'm being forced to pay this $30 a year for an email address that I was told was for life. The part that's particularly galling is that I only use my Fastmail address for forwarding on to whatever other email address I'm using at the time (currently Gmail), so I'm barely even using Fastmail's infrastructure - all they do is forward my mail on to me.

Comments telling me that I'm "entitled" will be ignored.

[brownb2]

Originally Posted by Steven Avery

I missed the "price locked three year plan for $15". Can you explain that plan?

Steven

FM allow you to buy up to 3 years subscription when you go to purchase so this is just the $5 for 3 years.

[Bamb0]

Originally Posted by fentonb

There's a serious lack of empathy from some of the commenters here toward those of us affected by this move.

Yes... Most people DO NOT CARE about something if it doesnt affect them and thats a crummy/crappy attitude....

These people are the reason these companies think they can get away with this!!!!! (Any company) as there isnt enough people on the other side and they end up losing whats better and its sad.......

[brownb2]

Originally Posted by fentonb

We're not all professional domain holders who enjoy the labour of managing our own email.

There isn't much labour to the domain stuff - usually this is quite simple and just requires you fill the address (fastmail/gmail/hotmail etc) you want the email sent to your domain to go to. This is all done on the admin panel of the company you buy your domain with.

Then you just give your domain address to contacts, e.g fenton@mydomain.com, instead of <something>@fastmail.fm.

This is how I started migrating away a few years ago (I just pointed my domain at Gmail instead of Fastmail), it's not any more complicated than setting up mail forwarding.

[fentonb]

Originally Posted by brownb2

There isn't much labour to the domain stuff - usually this is quite simple and just requires you fill the address (fastmail/gmail/hotmail etc) you want the email sent to your domain to go to.
<Snipped techy stuff>.

You just don't get it, do you? It's TOO LATE now to do that - 1000s of people have my Fastmail address. And 15 years ago, it certainly wasn't straight-forward. So now, I'm obliged to spend unknown hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars going forward to maintain a forwarding address.

Just sent a snarky message to Fastmail support - got a boilerplate response. So disappointed in Fastmail - why should we believe them in future once they've lost our trust like this?

[walesrob]

Originally Posted by fentonb

There's a serious lack of empathy from some of the commenters here toward those of us affected by this move.

At the same time we are all entitled to our own opinion, whether you agree with it or not. Is that too difficult to understand? Why do we have to show empathy just because you say so?

[communicant]

Originally Posted by walesrob

Why do we have to show empathy just because you say so?

You are not obliged to show empathy (a much-misused term, often confused with sympathy), but you are not entitled (!) to belittle the legitimate distress of others either, often based upon a flawed or outright misunderstanding of the basis of the distress that you are belittling. Many posters have dismissed those who are distressed by this development in smug and condescending terms, often assuming or attributing either technological naiveté or personal failings to those whose distress just as often has quite simple and easily understandable practical explanations (such as fentonb's post #147).

There is yet another aspect to this matter that has not yet been mentioned, but which will no doubt elicit predictable snorts of derision and other reflexively negative kneejerk reactions. There are quite a number of perfectly rational and not necessarily benighted or technophobic people who, for various reasons both personal and practical, do not conduct financial transactions on line. Even FastMail recognized this in the old days and accepted postal payments. With that in mind, there may well be some legacy account holders whose reluctance to upgrade is based as much on a disinclination to expose personal financial information to what they see as unacceptable risk as for any other reason.

In any case, it seems to me that those who are distressed about the upcoming loss of their legacy accounts often have entirely understandable and rational reasons for their distress, whereas those who have posted critically in response have frequently (with a few honorable exceptions) been condescending, unjustifiably exasperated, dismissive, belittling, and often quite simply boneheaded in their inability and/or unwillingness to grasp clearly the motives and concerns of those whose posts and distress they so glibly dismiss, even drawing parallels with a 'tantrum thrown by a three year old', not to mention the tedious and increasingly meaningless harping on that nonsense about a 'sense of entitlement'.

I believe that FastMail has been commercially shortsighted and tone-deaf in this matter, but it must also be said that this has not been the forum's finest hour either.

[sflorack]

However, "those who are distressed" do have some degree of naiveté if they sincerely felt that they could buy an email address that would be available for their lifetime. What if FM wasn't changing their policies and simply went out of business and sold their domain?

As FM is refunding the entire purchase price of the account (something they arguably didn't have to do based upon the Terms of Service), to me "those who are distressed" aren't acting entitled -- they're just not making reasonable arguments.

I purchased a lifetime subscription to Sky.FM (now RadioTunes) a few years ago. If they decided to end my subscription (for whatever reason), I'd be upset and would cry foul. But if they refunded the entire amount I paid for the subscription -- providing me with free access for the years I've had it -- I'd still be upset about losing the service, but would be content that it was handled appropriately. I personally feel that in the same way, FM is handling this appropriately as they are essentially buying their way out of the contract with the users by providing a refund.