I was reading recently where there were people who were extremely upset with a security camera manufacturer where it would appear the initial pitch was that people who buy the hardware would get free cloud services that could temporarily store video files and alerting owners if the camera detects motion. That is a big selling point as with most security systems you would expect to pay a monthly fee of some sort.
That isn’t realistic I would imagine either as I can’t see how may business can sustain that kind of loss if considering people don’t have to purchase anything afterwards that would help the company recoup the monthly costs. Not surprisingly, the company afterwards apparently announced that it would move towards a monthly premium plan option. As you can imagine, many people weren’t happy. At the same time, many were understanding.
There is no doubt any company would lose a lot of customers this way. But I would imagine many people do it as a business strategy in an effort to establish themselves in a tough marketplace. That’s why whenever I hear these kinds of free for life type of offers I always have the mindset that it won’t always be free. So with that you just have to make a decision on what’s the best way to go financially and all for yourself currently and that the company isn’t doing it out of the goodness of their heart. Ultimately, they are a business and are looking to make money.
There are usually other routes to this such as still offering a free service still that pales in comparison to how it was originally unless you now get the paid service. But ultimately, always prepare for it to go away at any time.