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by Obie Fernandez.
Original Post: Expiring Paid Credits? UNACCEPTABLE
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Feed Description: Obie Fernandez talks about life as a technologist, mostly as ramblings about software development and consulting. Nowadays it's pretty much all about Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
This message is a friendly reminder to you that iStockphoto credits expire within 1 year of the date of purchase. You have credits in your account that will expire in the next 60 days if not used:
I paid actual money for those credits, and as a casual consumer of stock photography I'm not in a hurry to use them. I consider expiring those credits STEALING and remarkably sleazy, especially for a company like istockphoto which has otherwise remarkably high standards for itself.
This post is essentially an open letter to them and any modern business that operates on paid credits. EXPIRING PAID CREDITS IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE. Yes I'm shouting, because I'm angry. It doesn't cost anything to not expire my credits. It does cost A LOT to expire them. You've pissed off a happy customer! You've created bad publicity! In case you're thinking, "oh, you're not a good customer anyway, since you don't buy regularly," I say don't be so damn short-sighted. Do you realize how many people I've enthusiastically recommended check out your service? Not anymore! Stupid, stupid, stupid.