In reply to Nick Comstock :
Cant tell if you mean that in a good way or not lol
In reply to Nick Comstock :
Cant tell if you mean that in a good way or not lol
yupididit said:My fav thread ever has most of its pics back. Yay!
Om nom nom. Well I've got the rest of my day planned out.
Perhaps you internet tough guys that want to see PB crash and burn should instead be thanking them.
First for all that free hosting you got over the years and then for the fact that they're really no longer needed. I think every forum I'm on now allows you to upload pics directly - some (like here) thanks to the PB nonsense.
No they deserve to die. I'm ashamed that some of you are giving them money.
Photobucket is owned by Facebook. I am willing to give them the 20 bucks for the year, afterall nothing is free. I shared a album the other day and everyone was pissed about the ads and popups, If those dont go away I will change my mind.
After the PB extortion I switched over to Postimg and that site went down a couple months ago without notice.
I am a creature of habit and willing to pay a little to keep things the same. All of this change is really annoying!
My photobucket has still worked with no issue since they went to non-free and is still is to the best of my knowledge... not sure if i just got lucky but i've never paid them a penny.
unless this picture below doesnt work for anyone else and i've just been making a fool up myself posting broken pictures?
EastCoastMojo said:Are they going to refund the poor chumps who paid the extortionist fees?
So we're chumps? I did it so all of the informative "How to" threads and posts I've made using pics hosted by Pbucket the past 15 years would remain useful and perhaps save someone from injury or frustration, time, money, etc.
My story
I started using Pbucket back when they started it and it took like 5 minutes to upload a single pic from a floppy disc on a dial up modum. Everyone acted like it was the greatest thing since toilet paper and it was FREE !!! I knew eventually they'd need to make money off it to pay the bills, the question was how would they do it.
Time went by and I eventually received notice that I'd need to go on one of their paid plans because I'd exceeded the storage limits and bandwidth usage (or some such thing caused by having lots of pics in threads on forums) and as a businessman I understand there's no such thing as a free lunch. So I paid, and did for years. At roughly 40 bucks a year I felt it was a reasonable fee and while others complained about ads and what not slowing down use on their free accounts I always found it quick and easy to use (without ads because I was paying) although I favored the earlier format before the upgrade a few years ago. So anyway, I realized it was pay (heavy users) or view ads (free accounts) they could make revenue on as their business model.
Then they shot themselves in the foot with one of the worst business moves I've ever seen. You don't turn 10's of millions of people into addicts and then shut them off instantly without any warning and expect they will just roll over and pay whatever you want. It's just not a good business move. Meanwhile those of us with paid accounts were allowed to just be grandfathered in while our paid subscriptions ran out. I'd only paid my yearly fee a month or so before the blackout.
When the blackout occurred I went scurrying about the web looking at the user agreements and researching the other hosting companies thinking "Screw them, wanna raise my price by 10X? What kinda business move is that?" "I'll switch when my subscription runs out." Meanwhile, the vast majority of the free account users just started jumping to other free services. Guess what, those other hosting services (except photoberkit) all have a line in their user agreements that would allow them to do the same thing Pbucket did. AND, there's still no such thing as a free lunch. Someone has to pay somehow to make the other services work. Whether it's selling ad space, selling the pics themselves, selling storage/hosting services or maybe selling information about the users. The rent,
Well I didn't do anything, then eventually my paid subscription ran out. 15 years worth of pics posted in threads on many forums went to the stock speedometer pic one day. So I thought about it and decided I'd buck up for a year and give myself more time to decide what I might be able to do to keep all the pics on forums (there are literally thousands). So I paid the 400 and it's been the same service with no ads or other slow downs. Yes, I thought it was a lot to pay, but really that's less than a take out cup of coffee a day. I'd hoped some software guru would come up with a new hosting company where if pics were transferred from Pbucket to the new host they'd remain linked to the new host across the web, and I expected to pay. Just hoped it would be a more reasonable fee than the over a dollar a day fee Pbucket was charging.
So now what happens to people like me? No mention of that in the news blips so far. I just paid last month. Refund? Use my payment for the top tier of their new plan? Lifetime service plan? Perpetual plan till the web's no longer used so hosting/storage isn't needed and we become part of the Borg collective anyway so we don't need it?
In reply to edizzle89 :
Looks like you somehow slipped through. I think you're the only one I've heard of that happening to.
There is a lot of this sort of thing going on, and much more likely to continue. Example; my bank of thirty ish years just announced free checking was going up to $10.00 a month. I ankled them. quickly.
I would forgive Photobucket, and pay their much more reasonable fee, except for one thing. GRM came through with more than I need for my lowly build threads. I am not saying never. Maybe someday, it will make sense to go back, but for now, I've got a new honey, and shame on you, Photobucket for not treating me (us) better.
Still, kudos for trying to fix a colossal mistake.
Hmmm. It's working again
In reply to NOT A TA :
No offense intended, but if I had paid the $400 and a few months later photobucker decided to change the fee to $20, I would sure as E36 M3 feel like a chump.
Nick Comstock said:No they deserve to die. I'm ashamed that some of you are giving them money.
I would do it to benefit others who read my tech threads over the last 17 years. It's not for selfish reasons. I don't benefit from it.
You go on and be ashamed. I won't lose any sleep.
EastCoastMojo said:Are they going to refund the poor chumps who paid the extortionist fees?
Yea.....I want to know about that too. I paid it to keep things alive.
In reply to Cousin_Eddie :
I understand your and Not A TA's side of things. But I feel the way they went about it was so wrong that I can never see giving them any money. My little puny photos didn't really matter but if I had massive builds or tutorials like you guys I would have went through and repopulated the threads from another provider. I'm not attacking you or any other user. But I do hope that they go away forever. As I said earlier screw them, let em bleed out. They deserve every bit of the hate they are getting.
That's just my opinion.
I went and got the photos I wanted to save off of mine just in case it changed again. Looking back I'm ashamed of some of the cars I've owned but the best was the troll car ricescort.
Erm... They just tried to autodraft me for $39.99 with zero communication. I got caught in a weird grandfather clause while they were face-humping the rest of the internet.
We'll see where this goes, but I see the threads of mine that miraculously survived biting the dust in the near future. This is life.
edizzle89 said:My photobucket has still worked with no issue since they went to non-free and is still is to the best of my knowledge... not sure if i just got lucky but i've never paid them a penny.
unless this picture below doesnt work for anyone else and i've just been making a fool up myself posting broken pictures?
Is that your wagon?
Nick Comstock said:In reply to Cousin_Eddie :
but if I had massive builds or tutorials like you guys I would have went through and repopulated the threads from another provider.
Hundreds of threads, thousands of photos over 17 years and you'd just go back and re-edit every post? It'd TAKE another 17 years to DO that. It's not reasonable.
Some sites, like bimmerforums, don't even let you edit the posts after a certain amount of time, so those informative DIY threads would be just lost forever. THIS is why it's a problem. A generation of institutional knowledge could have been lost. And almost was. Just switching to another host won't solve it, as they could do the same thing or just up and vanish. PB is the granddaddy of the photo hosting universe and unfortunately it needs to stick around in some form for the benefit of a LOT of users who are checking DIY threads for how to do things to keep their cars alive or learn how to DIY around the house, or whatever.
In reply to Chris_V :
Exactly. There was NO way I was going back to repopulate my LS 951 swap threads. The one on 944 Hybrids is close to 60 pages long, the one on Rennlist is 80 pages long. Let alone all the DIY threads I did, most of which I don't even remember where they are...
Some of you guys are like an abused spouse who refuses to leave a relationship because they feel like they need their partner.
I'd let the threads die with the same amount of guilt as the Russian from Rocky. If they die, they die.
Nick Comstock said:Some of you guys are like an abused spouse who refuses to leave a relationship because they feel like they need their partner.
I'd let the threads die with the same amount of guilt as the Russian from Rocky. If they die, they die.
Some of us actually, you know, LIKE our cars and like the service that a community provides to keep some of these older cars alive. I don't want to see a lot of E38 owners give up because the DIY threads that solve their problems are broken by PB going down. The relationship isn't with PB but with the cars that we love and want to preserve. On bimmerforums, in the E38 section, there is a whole section on how to repair pretty much every part of the car, with about a hundred threads, many are 20 pages long and the person who MADE them no longer around. They were invaluable resources to getting these cars fixed. And they were GONE with PB being idiots. Now they are back. Same with E38.org. Thousands of threads collected from around the web, over half of which were no longer valid without the pictures. Now they are back. on my Midatlatnic7s site, I pointed to many threads that were sudenly gone. I'm trying to help the community here. if that's an example of being a battered spouse, then you can berkeley right the hell off.
If you want PB to go away YOU berkeleying replace them with valuable content so that the new owners of these cars can keep them on the road.
Too bad I removed all my pictures and closed my account.....
Not much of a contribution so far as the board, but PB's bulk download function is still screwed up. Only being able to downloading images one at a time is just silly.
Since I used to be able to download many images at a time and can't now, FB broke the feature intentionally and have apparently decided to leave it broken.
In reply to Chris_V :
Easy killer. They're back so that's good for you. I'm not worried about it either way. I just like to argue on the internet.
Cotton said:edizzle89 said:My photobucket has still worked with no issue since they went to non-free and is still is to the best of my knowledge... not sure if i just got lucky but i've never paid them a penny.
unless this picture below doesnt work for anyone else and i've just been making a fool up myself posting broken pictures?
Is that your wagon?
Unfortunately not my wagon. It's a buddy of mine who owns it, turbo 5.3 swapped
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