Four years ago I signed up from this deal for a "lifetime" annual reseller hosting plan at $41/year.
Hightek Hosting were taken over by Smart Artist a few years ago, and recently I got an email from them to say that they are retiring the old plans.
The new annual charge is $152.
So here's a heads-up for anyone who is still on one of these plans. I will be cancelling mine.
Smart Artist are not Hightek Hosting — they just bought the clients. There's a Whirlpool thread about it. See from this post onwards.
Semantics, really.
Nothing to do with semantics. We did not make the offer.
Had we not purchased the Hightek clients, those who did take them up on their offers here would have found themselves high and dry when Hightek closed years ago. Hightek's "lifetime" was done.
In the end the deal lasted 6 years. Way beyond the life of a lot of businesses.
To clarify your subject - we are not "formerly Hightek Hosting". We were never Hightek hosting. We have been operating independently since 1998.
I'd understand that if it was communicated to your clients, but it never was.
The emails I got from you at the time repeatedly used the wording "acquisition".
"My name is Donna Lever, I am the managing director of Smart Artist Internet Pty Ltd. Today I am very pleased to officially announce our acquisition of Hightek Hosting, effective today."
March 15th, 2011
At no point was I ever asked to renew or agree to a new set of terms and conditions for the plan I was on.
When you bought the clients from Hightek you should have kicked off the unprofitable ones then, or at least made people agree to a new set of terms.
Nothing to do with semantics. We did not make the offer.
You did not make the original offer, but by buying the clients you bought into the offers and goodwill already established by Hightek.
In the end the deal lasted 6 years. Way beyond the life of a lot of businesses.
By not mentioning an expiry date and by so kindly letting the deals "exist" for 6 years you just perpetuated the idea that the previous terms were correct and the deals would last indefinitely.
At the end of the day, regardless of the original deal I probably wouldn't have cared if your prices needed to go up, as long as you communicated this from the outset. You did not, and now you are handling the situation poorly by being defensive and actively patrolling forums to "correct" your customers.
And that is the reason I won't be renewing my plan.
If it smells too good to be true, it probably is…
I'd rather keep my original "lifetime" deal that you are not honouring Donna.
$23/year.
You are losing easy money as I have never even hosted anything, so you were getting $23 for free.
BTW Thanks for "upgrading me" to the "cheaper" plan of $88/year. It should be opt-in not opt-out
Now you get zip.
Reminds me of a recent IceTV 'lifetime' membership deal they emailed me. The membership was limited to a maximum of 5 years.