Reporting Flamedog

User: Flamedog
Followup on this: Violation of Contract Report

Hey,

I wanted to let you know my autobumper is going to change its service soon.

What this means, is that payments are going to be based on bumps now. Each bump deducts one credit from your pool of credits. Prices will range from $0.025 (2.5 cents) to $0.05 (5 cents) per bump. The pricing is based on the amount of credits you buy (buy more credits in one go = cheaper price per credit).

Since you're one of the customers that have originally paid $50 for full access, I am offering you the following options:

Either:
- Receive a refund of $50 (your original payment). Your autobumper access will be revoked unless you obtain credits.

OR

- Receive credits for the new autobumper system, with a value of $80. This currently equates to 1800 credits, where each credit equals to 1 bump. You have to calculate for yourself how long you can do with this amount (for instance, a thread with 8 hour bump interval equates to 3 bumps a day, roughly 90 a month). When your credit runs out, you'll have to purchase new ones.

I hope to have informed you enough with this message.

Regards,

Flame
Flame's AutoBumper

Upon purchase I was expecting to buy a lifetime product, I have also bought @GOAT his autobumper before but since it was more complicated to use in my opinion I was extremely satisfied with this product. Now I'm aware of the refund option, but I'd rather keep using this one instead.

 

[Panda]

@ staff friends https://www.sythe.org/threads/lifetime-license/

 

[Cas]

I’m also using this bumper on a lifetime license. Let me add on that it’s ridiculous to create an auto bumper, sell lifetime licenses and then say ‘oopsie I need more money from you all, pay more or get refunded lol’ .
I don’t see the need to open a report myself so I’m just hijacking wortel here. Besides, I haven’t even gotten a pm about this from Flamedog. Every autobumper out there was either a program on a single payment and more payments for updates or new features.

 

[Flamedog]

I’m also using this bumper on a lifetime license. Let me add on that it’s ridiculous to create an auto bumper, sell lifetime licenses and then say ‘oopsie I need more money from you all, pay more or get refunded lol’ .
I don’t see the need to open a report myself so I’m just hijacking wortel here. Besides, I haven’t even gotten a pm about this from Flamedog. Every autobumper out there was either a program on a single payment and more payments for updates or new features.

My bad, It was late yesterday and couldnt get around PMing all users. Its not easy to sort it out with many diverse Sythe accounts. Nobody will have their autobumper revoked without prior notice.

As the original post shows, customers receive an option of either the $50 refund or $80 in credits. Is it fair? I personally think it is.

Let's start off by saying that I probably shouldn't have sold lifetime copies for a product which is basically Software as a Service. The reason for this is that "lifetime" is pretty unambiguous, but if for some reason I have to stop the autobumper service, then what happens with the customers? Some say a refund would be fair, others would say a scam report is probably the best thing since I couldnt uphold my lifetime license. Either way, I dont live forever.

So please consider it like this: the old product is retiring, and for those that paid the lifetime license, it is no longer an option. I am refunding the original purchase amount for those that accept it. This basically boils down to the fact that with this refund, you got a 100% free autobumping service for several months (or even years for some customers). I'm taking away the product and in the process you get your money back.

 

[John Devola]

This is very similar to the Adobe problem circa a few years ago.

Adobe had sold lifetime licenses to its products, but wanted to change to their "creative cloud" licence. This was also a problem in the mid/late 90s when Oracle wanted to change from selling their lifetime database license to a SaaS service.

You can't revoke lifetime licenses, that is a breach of contract unless otherwise stated. However a lifetime license gives you the right to use that product at its current version for the lifetime of the company, and makes no stipulation on updates, fixes, or support unless otherwise stated.

@Flamedog you cannot force people to refund or switch from their lifetime license. You can, however, have them pay a monthly fee if they would like updates / changes to your product (such as needed software updates). If they decide not to pay, they are entitled to use the current version of the product for its lifetime - whether it works for only 1 forum or 3.

Left this public so that the people on this report can read it, as well as other customers who may be looking to this report for a decision.

 

I took the refund and have been paid.

However if as John Devola says, a lifetime version of the current version is a possibility (and especially if offered to other users), then I'd rather repay the $50 and have that.

Just to note as everything was hosted by flame. If a lifetime version of the current version is possible, I would be willing to host it myself for Flame's convenience.

I took the refund as I;m likely going to have some temporary downtime with my move to China in just under 2 months from now. However after sleeping on it I wish I could have the bumper as from looking at what else is out there, it seems to be much better quality and very easy to use.

I know I'm bouncing around some thoughts here, and I am only commenting here as I was one of the first lifetime customers. I'm pretty sure I signed up during the beta/test stage.

I am happy with my refund and feel I have closed on positive terms with Flamedog, however if others are offered the current version for lifetime, then I would also like that opportunity. If not, then I am happy with my refund.

 

[Flamedog]

This is very similar to the Adobe problem circa a few years ago.

Adobe had sold lifetime licenses to its products, but wanted to change to their "creative cloud" licence. This was also a problem in the mid/late 90s when Oracle wanted to change from selling their lifetime database license to a SaaS service.

1. I am repaying customers their original license fee. I am not forcing them with a new system. Their net loss is 0%. I dont know the specifics of Adobe/Oracle and cant really seem to find good sources on those events though.
2. I've been providing free updates throughout the years and when a forum was not bumping correctly I repaired it free of charge. The product evolved with it. The version of 2 months ago would not be working today (because of a Cloudflare update for instance). I therefore cant provide a "current version" because it's a matter of time before it stops working. My software is dependent on other webservices.

 

[Pain]

1. I am repaying customers their original license fee. I am not forcing them with a new system. Their net loss is 0%. I dont know the specifics of Adobe/Oracle and cant really seem to find good sources on those events though.
2. I've been providing free updates throughout the years and when a forum was not bumping correctly I repaired it free of charge. The product evolved with it. The version of 2 months ago would not be working today (because of a Cloudflare update for instance). I therefore cant provide a "current version" because it's a matter of time before it stops working. My software is dependent on other webservices.

Your required to provide a working product for the lifetime of the service or shut it down.

That's what the term "Lifetime" means - Its for life.

Meaning your required to provide us a working product for the lifetime of this bumper.

You are NOT required to give us free updates, if you add another forum you are NOT required to give us it, but you ARE required to provide us a working, functional bumper on what we currently have access to, you have a responsibility to provide a functional product for the lifetime of this service but not beyond that.

That is in essence, how "grandfathering" as @Pendulum would say works. You essentially grandfather all of us into the bumpers current form and must MANTAIN that and keep it functional at its current level, but you are free to sell new versions of the bumper with more updates,maybe additional forums like ownedcore,etc etc at your will.

The example I gave in my private report is bitcoin exchanges - If users purchased or signed up for an account that has a "legacy" rank(grandfather), they are entitled to special fees and other conditions because they are an older consumer on that exchange, so a legacy account might have 0.01% trading fees, but then the bitcoin exchange wanted more money so they moved everyone before X date to "legacy" and anyone that joined after that change is now a "standard" account with 0.02% fees(double), what that bitcoin exchange CANNOT do is renege on their promises to their legacy users on the promised fees they were told about upon purchasing/signup.

This is the exact same, you are free to add more forums, add more updates, sell a newer version of the bumper, your free to do that. What you cant do is force everyone with a previous agreement to come over and pay your ridiculous fees.

What you cannot awell however is force users who bought a lifetime license into a refund than charge them an insane $9200 a year. That is not going to fly with any of us, and looking around it looks like every big name on sythe is pissed off at the moment.

I can guarantee if somehow this and my report failed - R2pleasent and MANY other gold sites are prepared to file their own reports with their own arguments - The only reason there isn't 30 reports on you RN is because I told them to let me handle it and Wortel made a report public w/o my knowledge(which is fine).

 

[Pain]

A better way to do this is to say, add a couple more forums or features and sell a new version of the bumper, than offer these new forums/features to us grandfathered/legacy users at a reasonable rate if we want to purchase them.

I personally offered you $100 just to avoid any problems and you got greedy and are trying to charge me an astronomical so out there price of $9200 a year that everyone I've even spoke to about it (staff and not) has laughed outright.

There are plenty of pricing models which could work to your advantage without trying to screw over your entire consumer base(which you are, even 25 threads a year is $2000 a year to bump, I did the math for staff on my private report).

You could offer new forums for a subscription fee of like $10 a month or a credits system for new forums of like $10-$20 a month or something, we all bought lifetime licenses, we have the RIGHT to choose whether we want to just stay with our current version with the 6 or 7 forums or upgrade and buy additional stuff and additional forums, you sold us that right when promising us a lifetime license.

You have gone about this completely wrong, with your ridiculous pricing, violating the agreement you had with all of us, trying to defend it. All this has done has pissed off everyone using your bumper.

I mean its ridiculous to even suggest Sythe staff should consider allowing you to rip us all off, you made an agreement with us to provide a lifetime bumper - To say you can violate that agreement because you want more money is not how business works. You cant just want more money and than force your customer base to pay astronomical amounts or to fuck off. That's not going to fly. Not to mention you keep equating refunding us our purchase price does jack shit - Across 40 users all using this(as an example) TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars of sales are generated every day using this bumper - To suddenly apply MASSIVE fees and ruin the bumper for your entire customer base would cost business's on sythe a fortune, none of us are getting rich off your bumper, average gold margins @ 20% lets say is $10,000 in sales/ 40 people is $250 in sales a head x 0.20 = $50 a day and that's not calculating in expenses and more. You cant charge us $10-$30 a day to bump our threads, it doesn't even mathematically make sense let alone if we discounted every other argument.

Your free to price a new bumper/service however you wish, if you want to rip your new customers off, you can. Sythes a free market. What you cant do is just go back and rip off your previous customers who all bought the lifetime license, we are entitled to a functional, bug free product for the 6-7 forums that currently are available, what you add beyond that is your choice how you want to offer it to us.

Make two versions if a forum updates or something :shrug: a legacy and a new version, both have to be functional but that's what you entitled us to when selling a lifetime license.

Personally the argument could be made that you promised updates on your thread aswell but I've consistently attempted to be generous with you both $ wise and here, this is the last time I will do so with you, others may not be so generous if you keep pissing everyone off.


Your argument that "I wont live forever" is a stupid one - Business's don't live forever. You sold us a lifetime license for the lifetime of the bumper/product/business. In my opinion if you cant provide what you promised your customers -

SHUT IT DOWN & REFUND US ALL.

 

[Flamedog]

I obviously cant respond to all of these multiple walls of text (though I have read it), but i'd like to address some of the things in this provocative post because I think they can't go unnoticed:

Your required to provide a working product for the lifetime of the service or shut it down.

I guess there is another way to provide a lifetime service which is restricting the bump interval to once every week per thread. This way the agreement still holds because the lifetime unlimited threads still applies. Terms of service can be changed. If you do not agree, you can no longer use the service. This is where the refund pops in.

What you cannot awell however is force users who bought a lifetime license into a refund than charge them an insane $9200 a year.

With the new system you can bump a thread for as low as $0.075=7.5c/day (15c/day if you buy the credits at $0.05) which equates to $2.25-$4.50 per thread per month which is great. If you're bumping an RS3 firecape service you'll probably want to consider if its worth the investment.

I can guarantee if somehow this and my report failed - R2pleasent and MANY other gold sites are prepared to file their own reports with their own arguments - The only reason there isn't 30 reports on you RN is because I told them to let me handle it and Wortel made a report public w/o my knowledge(which is fine).

I urge you to point them all to this thread and have them speak for themselves. This is provocating.

I personally offered you $100 just to avoid any problems

Yes you did. You also offered me $50/forum for 2 new forums not previously on the bumper, that you wanted monopoly on. I added the forums for you as a gesture and didnt charge you the money because I was obviously not going to make such deal.

You also offered me an X amount past week for the whole application itself, to which I did not respond.

I can think of only one instance that was the case and the developer had to refund + pay damages, considering gold sites and tons of business is done through this bumper, damages done while everyone looks for a new one would be so astronomical as to be laughable that a single person could pay them.

Dont even mention damages because it's ridiculous to even suggest that I am liable for that. You paid $50 for a service and then expect me to backup any damages because your thread with Ferrari sales missed 24h of bumping and therefore didnt reach its $100k revenue goal. Come on man. I am not an insurance company.

I seem to have a monopoly on this type of software. This is a free market. Feel free to hire a developer and compete with me if you think you can offer this service at 1/10th of the price.

 

[Pain]

I obviously cant respond to all of these multiple walls of text (though I have read it), but i'd like to address some of the things in this provocative post because I think they can't go unnoticed:


I guess there is another way to provide a lifetime service which is restricting the bump interval to once every week per thread. This way the agreement still holds because the lifetime unlimited threads still applies. Terms of service can be changed. If you do not agree, you can no longer use the service. This is where the refund pops in.


With the new system you can bump a thread for as low as $0.075=7.5c/day (15c/day if you buy the credits at $0.05) which equates to $2.25-$4.50 per thread per month which is great. If you're bumping an RS3 firecape service you'll probably want to consider if its worth the investment.


I urge you to point them all to this thread and have them speak for themselves. This is provocating.


Yes you did. You also offered me $50/forum for 2 new forums not previously on the bumper, that you wanted monopoly on. I added the forums for you as a gesture and didnt charge you the money because I was obviously not going to make such deal.

You also offered me an X amount past week for the whole application itself, to which I did not respond.


Dont even mention damages because it's ridiculous to even suggest that I am liable for that. You paid $50 for a service and then expect me to backup any damages because your thread with Ferrari sales missed 24h of bumping and therefore didnt reach its $100k revenue goal. Come on man. I am not an insurance company.

I seem to have a monopoly on this type of software. This is a free market. Feel free to hire a developer and compete with me if you think you can offer this service at 1/10th of the price.

Everything you stated is irrelevant, if you think anybody on this forum is going to support you trying to screw us over by attempting to manipulate an agreement that's been held for a long period of time think again.

What is it with you? Are you just stupid or this dense? You apparently have no grasp of how selling licenses to a product works. You sell a lifetime license promising X, Y, Z.

You must ALWAYS uphold X, Y , Z for the lifetime of that service/license, you CANNOT CHANGE IT. You sold us the right to use this service for LIFE in its current form that was offered to us and has been offered for ages now.

First you want to change the price, now you want to attempt to make the argument "oh I can limit it to 1 bump per week" - No you cant. That was not stipulated in the license promised in the lifetime agreement, I'd love to see where at any time anybody who bought this agreement signed a contract or made a formal acknowledge to you that you could modify the license.

Staff checked the edit history - There are no terms allowing you to modify the license on your site or your thread, and even if there were, it would be irrelevant.

Flame's Autobumper - No Download Required! + 2FA

You sold a lifetime license, meaning that license is for life, and since you were to stupid to even give yourself the right to modify the license - You've given all of us a literal arsenal of arguments as to why this pricing change should not be allowed, I couldn't of setup a case to support everyone's arguments against you better -Literally EVERYTHING you did screwed yourself, and frankly that's on you.

The worst part here is your greed - That's what this is all about the people liking your posts are jokes.

They don't understand apparently that you are attempting to screw over long-term customers of your product for nothing more than pure greed. We don't want your shitty ass $80 credit or $50 refund, we want the lifetime license that was promised to us and has been consistently established what that license entails which is unlimited thread bumping's on the forums currently on the bumper and basic maintience.

THATS what you sold us, THAT is what were entitled to. If you don't like it... Than fuck off and close the bumper...? You shouldn't of sold lifetime licenses if you didn't plan to uphold your part.

I told you months ago that would bite you in the ass - I even warned you one day you would lose a sythe report(Word for Word) because you had absolutely no protection and sold a product with big promises.

Don't get mad at the people who bought the lifetime license, that was YOUR choice as a business to offer that, if its not sustainable than you do what every other business does you greedy fuck and you grandfather your old clients into a current version and keep it working and release a new better version at a different price.

 

[Panda]

Come on guys this isnt a debate thread, obey the stickies and do not post here unless you are directly involved in this report please.

 

[Pendulum]

This was discussed further and since @Flamedog offered a full refund he has not broken any rules. The lifetime users will have received use of his service completely free as a result of the changes.