LIFTETIME Storage purchased cancelled 😕

born_again

Just what does lifetime mean?
TomTom say it is the time they support the product.
If they carried on and went bust where would you stand? No product, possibly No access to what you had stored online.

If you want cheap backup/storage then get a external hard drive and do it yourself. 

Tokmon

enginestar said:

I bought a LIFETIME storage with Zoolz.com through a promotion offered by another website called macworld.com 3 years ago.
I paid $69.99 for 2TB of storage.
They have cancelled. They said that it was impossible for them to sustain.
I haven't read the terms and conditions. They did send emails saying they wanted were going to cancel - I deleted these without reading in full detail - I have a LIFETIME service for which I paid, you can't have a slimy 1000th line in the terms and conditions squirming your way out? (Apart from the business going bankrupt and out business - this hasn't happened).

I paid using Paypal 3 years ago.
Where do I stand?
Whom should I go to to get my money back? Paypal I guess? They might turn around and say it was more than 12 months ago and want nothing to do with it.
Paypal are pathetic for protecting I have found.

Any advice would be much appreciate.

Why would you delete emails without reading them properly and why would you even delete emails at all?

I never delete emails that are correctly sent to me i just archive them all, i don't see why anyone would delete emails these days when they take up so little room and many online providers offer enough enough storage for free to keep them forever.

enginestar

Thanks for all the replies guys.
The offer, I got through a special offer given by a website called macworld.com.
For all intents and purposes, this looks like a good reputable website. It's not full of spammy ads or anything.
A few days ago... I got ANOTHER lifetime storage offer, from another company. 😕 
Shameful.
I guess they just commission from whoever wants to pay money to them.

mikb

born_again said:

Just what does lifetime mean?
TomTom say it is the time they support the product.

If the original terms and conditions had been read (even skimmed) ... somewhere after defining basic concepts like "US" and "YOU" and "THE SERVICE", and long before line 1,000, it would most likely describe what a "LIFETIME" is.

Hint, not yours.

It's the same mistake people fall into on "Lifetime guarantee" -- not yours. You don't get endless replacements until you die. It's a "Guarantee of life" for the product.

What is that? It's whatever they define it to be -- it's their game, their rules. If "LIFETIME" means "For as long as we are still providing this service", then that's what you got.

The big print giveth, the small print taketh away.

Sandtree

Similar to the above... you need to read both the terms of the original promotion and the explanation emails they have sent you that you deleted.

Lifetime in any contract worth its salt will be defined and whilst you may think its your lifetime its almost certainly not. That said, some small companies do fudge up on their T&Cs. 

Had you actually read the emails they sent you then it may well have already explained that you bought it for the lifetime of the server and now that server is being decommissioned or similar. Until you do both find the original terms and read what they have said has happened you are going to be in no position to really say if you have a legal issue or more a bit of gripe thats half aimed at them for using marketing slogans and half at yourself for not reading things.