Bitcasa bins $10-a-month Infinite storage offer

"Unlimited"

Definition: Until we decide not to let you any more.

lol

So a company which purposefully used phrases like "infinite" has decided that customers who take them at their word are "abusing" the system. That's almost funny.

I wish we (the US) had some sort of real truth in advertising. When companies use terms like "unlimited" and sign contracts to that effect then they should absolutely be held to it.

I'm grandfathered in an "unlimited" data plan with my phone provider. Of course, to them, unlimited means up to 5GB of data transfer and if I go over then they purposefully slow me down.

My internet provider says I have a 1Gb/s always on connection to the internet. However, I can only reach that for a short amount of time before they start rate limiting it.

Yeah, companies that use terms like "unlimited", "infinite" etc need to be sued into oblivion.

I used these guys when they first launched and foolishly paid for a year up front when it was on offer.

It would have been good had it actually worked, but their software was a joke and I could never get it to function reliably.

Business model?

Bitcasa's business model seems to be to offer terrific teaser deals then "change their minds" and make the alternative a pay for bonk deal. "Too good to be true" and "Greeks bearing gifts" come to mind!

"I wish we (the US) had some sort of real truth in advertising. When companies use terms like "unlimited" and sign contracts to that effect then they should absolutely be held to it."

In this case, they did hold to their terms; they are now saying they are ending providing service on these terms.

As for referring to heavy usage as "abuse", I seriously doubt it's abuse. I know a few people who have TB after TB of stuff.... why? I don't know, but they do. And if they got "infinite" storage for $10/month they'd probably stick every last bit of it online just in case. I'd say it's simply foolish to provide infinite storage at that price, at least without some caveats (one backup service had if not still has an unlimited plan, but they straight-up said the mbps speed in and out would be limited at some point.)

"I'm grandfathered in an "unlimited" data plan with my phone provider. Of course, to them, unlimited means up to 5GB of data transfer and if I go over then they purposefully slow me down."

I've got you beat -- here in the good ol' US of A, a few MVNOs falsely advertise "unlimited", but will TERMINATE YOUR DATA SERVICE at something like 1.5-2GB! The price one of them has is good IF they provided unlimited like they falsely advertise; for the 1.5-2GB of service they *actually* provide their monthly price is pretty poor. How other carriers or MVNOs have not sued for false advertising (since this directly hurts their sales) is a mystery to me.

This is not the story. Bitcasa are deleting *ALL* their user's mirrored data regardless of plan

Dropping unlimited storage isn't the story here, you can just pay your way round that.

Bitcasa are *DELETING* *ALL* *THE* *DATA* backed up to them via their mirrored storage method and expecting users to upload it all over again.

That does not sound like a trust worthy cloud based backup solution. I will be losing over 350GB of photos and documents that I backed up to Bitcasa 4 months ago before I started travelling. I am now expected to upload that data again on a hostel WiFi in Asia??

This is something you also can't pay your way out of, regardless of plan, everyone that's backed up their data using their mirrored storage method is going to lose all their data.

Change in plan pricing aside, how can you trust a storage company who will willingly just delete all their customers mirrored data, with a 3 week notice period, whilst their subscriptions are still valid?

how can you trust a storage company who will willingly just delete all their customers mirrored data, with a 3 week notice period, whilst their subscriptions are still valid?

Welcome to the cloud.