Photobucket notification

Brad F

Active member
Sponsor
Just for information ..... Photobucket sent me notification at 3:50AM that my third party hosting was being terminated if I didn't upgrade.

They must be working their way down to the users with small numbers of pictures as I only have about 20 or 25 pictures stored there.
 
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Good hypothesis, I received my notification on the 25th, with roughly similar number of pics still on file with them...
 
I had two accounts with them and deleted both after the notice. They want $399/year for me to be able to share my photos to the world. All of the forums where we post are going to have to figure out a way to start storing and hosting their post images now. I went back and looked at some of my posts going back after Photobucket's announcement and all showed a blank image that said I had to upgrade my account to see the images...delete account. I had all the Bald Pete the Traveling Decoy images over on The Refuge going back to 2006 and they are all gone now along with anyone else's photos that uses Photobucket. Luckily I did save every shot as they were posted so I have all of those on Bald Pete's Facebook page but the stories and journal entries are still there at the Refuge.
 
I got to try and remember the password to my account so I can delete all the pictures and account....and of course the email account I had linked to it I long since abandoned.

Chuck

PS no it's not written on a sticky note under my keyboard...I already checked...
 
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I didn't find a way to delete a free account. If I missed that could someone point me to that function. I deleted my pictures and logged off and deleted my link to the site.
 
Brad et al~

I believe my images will be OK until the end of 2018 - I have been a Plus 20 paying customer since about 2013. Nevertheless, I have signed a petition representing "hobbyists" like us - and also mailed a letter to Photobucket's CEO.

https://www.change.org/p/photobucket-reverse-the-photobucket-third-party-rule



Here's the body of my letter:


Tom Munro
Chief Executive Officer
Photobucket
2399 Blake Street
Denver, Colorado 80205


re: Reversal of third part posting

Dear Mr.Munro

I have recently learned of your company's decision to reverse your practice of allowing customers to post their Photobucket-hosted images on others' websites - so-called "third-party posting". In my case, the only reason I use - and pay for - my Photobucket account has been to post images on a single website. I do so to share information, primarily to teach others all around the world and have been doing so for several years. While most likely viewed as "small potatoes" from Photobucket's perspective, I get great satisfaction when I see my "tutorials" get hundreds of thousands of views. It is a service I provide for free to the users - and am glad to donate both my time and my annual Photobucket fees. Now - rather suddenly - I need to decide whether to increase my annual out-of-pocket expense five-fold - to $399. More distressing is your plan to delete my longstanding work sometime in the future.

It is difficult for me to understand why Photobucket would actively garner so much ill will; I have read the term "extort" used frequently. The only response I have seen others take is to bail - to delete their Photobucket accounts and go elsewhere. Instead, I am hoping that you will reconsider this decision. Some middle ground that prevented the retroactive deletion of important and widely-used images would be most valuable. I would pay a fractional increase but cannot justify the new multiplied rate.

Thank you for your consideration.
Hope this helps!

SJS





 
There have been some pretty informative articles (http://www.technewsworld.com/story/84688.html) in the past week about Photobucket. I didn't know it but they are a small company, like less than 50 employees. Their ad revenues have dried up and because a large base of their users are ebay, amazon, and etsy sellers they feel justified in charging for their service. I don't really blame them to be honest, but don't like the way they've gone about it. Their PR departments did a lousy job rolling the changes out. Seems like there should be a range of accounts based on storage size and views but instead they are looking for a big kill with less than 1% of their members. From what I've read they expect a large drop off in membership but would rather have smaller operations with a higher profit margin. I've seen this kind of thing happen before, i.e. a free service becomes a pay service. The public never warms up to it and in most cases the business dies as folks find alternatives. To me the unintended(?) consequences are forums take another hit. The losers are internet forums, the winners Facebook and Instagram.

But having said the above, and based on everyone's generosity, we are going to serve our own. I hope the image upload upgrades will be in the next couple of weeks, if not sooner.

Eric
 
Good morning, Eric~

Interesting article. And I see that I was one CEO behind. Current CEO is evidently John Corpus (no longer Tom Munro).

All the best,

SJS

 
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