donsullivan
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2009
Arrrrgh yeah. That was the former part of my week - relocating all photos uploaded to the 'net since 2004... that was no fun.
Oh well, hope Photobucket enjoys going out of business because everyone I know is deleting their account. Nobody I have encountered has said they paid PB's ransom.
And yes, I know that business has to evolve, but I really shake my head at this move. If they couldn't afford to run the site without advertising, then they should have never started the business model of "free image hosting" on the Internet. And GOOD GRAVY my biggest issue with this is that PB deliberately marketed to customers for over a decade, "This is what you need so you can post photos on message boards, internet forums and sales groups!" Now... they are ransoming people's account contents in a punitive way, after persuading customers to use their service.
I wouldn't pay a Disney restaurant to give me food poisoning on purpose; I won't use Photobucket if they are going to tell me for over ten years, "You're good, you're using our services the way we want you to," but suddenly, "We said free. we know we said free. But guess what? You owe us $400 dollars, you can't access your account, and definitely NEVER use the links we provide to you, to actually LINK to any of your pictures!"
It's kind of inaccurate to suggest that you cannot access your account. On their official statement it clearly says you can still Login to your account and download all of your photos if you desire. They just took away the ability to use the service for free if your use did not allow them to present the ads that paid for the service or you had a paid account at that subscription level.
Don't get me wrong, they handled the transition badly, there is no question about that. But people really do need to learn that the Internet is not FREE- everything has to be paid for in some form or fashion or you can expect something like this to happen again. Every service on the Internet has to have some sort of revenue model or it does not survive. If you are using it, and it truly is 'free' it probably will not be around for long and you should have an alternate plan.
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