Boo to You!

Just taking a moment here to register a complaint that Ofoto -- whoops, I mean the Kodak EasyShare Gallery, which is a much better name, NOT -- as well as Snapfish, and Shutterfly, are practicing, lemming-like, a cluelessly poor customer service practice.

I recently got emails saying that these services were going to delete my pictures if I didn't hurry up and come buy something.  So, I hurried up and went to buy something, in advance of their deadline, and discovered that it had apparently been over a year already since I visited Ofoto and Shutterfly, since MY PICTURES WERE GONE.

This after all over the sites it says in huge letters that you get unlimited photo storage for free.  Let me tell you, you really have to look hard to find the part that tells you you have to buy something to keep your photos up there.  On Snapfish, I finally found it at the bottom of this page in the help section.

Anyway, so that deletion-unless-you're-a-customer policy is fine with me, if they had just been honest about it when I first signed up with all of them, which they weren't, because they likely didn't have the policy yet.  And probably they did try to tell me earlier, and my email had changed (most likely) or their messages got spam filtered (also happened but I check my spam filters) or possibly I just missed them, so you could even say that it's my fault that my pictures were deleted.  It's a stretch, but you could say it.

Here's what I have a problem with.  In a time where storing stuff is so cheap that companies are giving storage away for free all over the web, why did you lose all access to my photos  - even your access?  Don't you dingbats think that it's a better policy to simply hold them hostage if I miss the purchasing deadline, and charge me $50 if I want them back?  Did you have to actually delete them, as opposed to just making them inaccessible, if you hadn't heard from me in awhile?  I just think this is stupid.  It's a missed opportunity for innovative customer service and a missed opportunity for revenues. 

If you're in the business of storing people's photos for them, you should be in that business.  Period.  Photos do not have a 355-day shelf life.  So figure out a way to store them profitably, and if that means it's not free anymore if the user neglects to buy something, then that's what it means.  Which do you think makes me angrier: the fact that you have to make a living somehow, or lost pictures?