So you think that Fastmail's cancelling of "free" accounts is excessive?
 

At least the Basic account is only $30 (about £20) a year, which is quite reasonable; I spend over twice that a week on groceries alone.

A sharp contrast to Photobucket, which (to my mind) owes its very purpose of existence to posting pictures on forums (unless there are people out there who are narcissistic enough to want to expose their entire photo collection to the public, or daft enough to trust someone else to archive their files; I for one do not fall into either category). Along with many others, I have for several years had a free Photobucket account which I opened specifically for this purpose.

However, Photobucket have now pulled a classic bait-and-switch operation; they have sent me an email claiming that my account usage is "excessive" because third-party image hosting is not available at my account level (then what's the point of that account level?), and if I want to restore this option I have to pay a ransom -- sorry, "upgrade my account" -- to the tune of $400; per year (over £300 where I come from). :eek:

So, my advice is:

• If you want image hosting, look elsewhere.
  
• If you really need the 500Gb of image storage which that account level also provides, get yourself an NAS and populate it with a pair of 1Tb drives. It should only cost at most as much as three years' Photobucket Plus 500 membership, will give you twice as much storage with no internet connection involved, and after the three years you will be saving huge amounts of money.

It just shows how bad things continue to get...... More intrusive . Less open to the end user..... Its sad really.....

Posteo.de, Mailbox.org and Tutanota.com €1 a month / €12 a year, that's reasonable

Or, if you don't feel like creating a network-based computer data storage system at home, get a 1TB Google Drive account for $9.99 a month.

Just to remind everyone, the only reason I brought up FM in this thread was as a reference point, to compare-and-contrast them with Photobucket's (to my mind unreasonable) bait-and-switch tactic. :)

In the equivalent thread on the World of Spectrum forums, people agree with me that this is totally unreasonable; not only suddenly demanding a small fortune (and annually to boot) to continue using the account for the purpose (sole purpose in many cases) for which it was opened, but the rude and aggressive way in which they worded it. Posters on the other thread are predicting that this move will prove to be as suicidal as Gerald Ratner's notorious speech in which he denounced the qualiity of his company's products, not realizing that the speech would be reported and that the public would take it seriously.

For those unfamiliar with the speech, here is the relevant quote (courtesy of Auntie Wikipedia)

And for those who want an in-depth explanation of the incident:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSV6fTstaD4

I cringe, whenever I witness anyone using photobucket or imageshack. Horrible websites, horrible prices.

At least nobody will be using Photosodit for much longer...

Nope...alot of ppl are upset!!