this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Too many users abused unlimited Dropbox plans, so they’re getting limits::Some people have taken "as much space as you need" too literally.

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[–] carl_dungeon 246 points 1 year ago (65 children)

You can’t abuse something that has no limit. Stop calling things unlimited and then blaming users when they are not.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I read somewhere about someone who took a zip file, copied it and zipped it with the copy over and over again until the file size ballooned to petabytes. I would consider that sort of pointless use of storage to be abuse.

[–] carl_dungeon 36 points 1 year ago

Then put an * and say that there are a couple well documented exceptions, like zip bombing or don’t call it unlimited and call it up to 100TB for x dollars.

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[–] [email protected] 196 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I just don't get it. If it's unlimited - in what universe is using it beyond 15TB considered abuse?

I get the reseller part, I get the stupid chia mining part. But if they can say that was the problem - then get rid of those users, as clearly you have already identified them. Don't shift the blame away from your dumbass marketing team onto your users and play an innocent company.

I can't believe how much support dropbox is getting. People seem to accept, without questioning, every bollocks pr statement these days.

[–] foggy 53 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I worked for a company that was offering unlimited storage to its too tier customers.

I brought it up in a meeting when we first started talking about it.

"Okay but you don't mean unlimited. That's bad PR waiting to happen."

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What did they say to your remark?

[–] foggy 42 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Roughly

"what do you mean?"

"You cannot offer something that doesn't exist. If Amazon decided to become a client, we'd be in a world of hurt."

"It's fine none of our clients use more than a few hundred gigs"

This was in 2018. They still offer unlimited storage. So I guess, what do I know?

[–] captainlezbian 16 points 1 year ago

Wow that’s low. If I’m paying for unlimited I expect to at least go over 2TB since I have the space

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[–] fluxion 13 points 1 year ago

Got thrown out of a window

[–] T156 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

Especially since 15TB isn't all that big. It's not tiny, but it's also not out of the reach of a reasonably high end computer, or for a video editor who might need a lot of space for raws/recordings.

It's not like they're looking at users eating up Petabytes of data, or something silly, where some restriction might be understandable.

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[–] [email protected] 146 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

How the fuck do you abuse unlimited access? This is just a company blaming an idea that was always going to be unsustainable on their customers and not their own damn lack of forethought.

[–] baronvonj 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was a business plan and they found hardly any of the plan subscribers were actually businesses, and I'm guessing reselling your unlimited data was against the ToS.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

It was a business plan and they found hardly any of the plan subscribers were actually businesses

And why the fuck would that matter? If they can't handle some random's porn and piracy collection, how the fuck would they handle a legit business? lol

Reselling an account would hurt their bottom line, but still have no effect on providing the storage. Imposing a limit doesn't stop that though, other than perhaps by making the product worthless and therefore unworthy of reselling.

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[–] alienanimals 110 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Corporate bootlickers: OMG they're actually using our unlimited service as if they were unlimited. THIS IS ABUSE!1!

[–] beebarfbadger 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't there a special term in court for entering a contract that you have no intention of fulfilling as you promised in the first place?

[–] surewhynotlem 15 points 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 91 points 1 year ago (6 children)

You can’t abuse unlimited. That’s why it’s called “UNlimited.” I hate this two faced, corporate back sludge that always, and I mean always, puts it on the consumer as if they did something wrong. When in reality, it’s the company that is redlining or needs to boost those unsustainable goal of doubling revenue every quarter, ad infinitum.

The real narrative is Dropbox needs money so they are scrambling to cut every expense. No matter what spin they put on it.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If they were just honest about it and say "this is expensive so we need to put the prices up", I would have a lot more respect for that.

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago

Then it was never unlimited to begin with, wtf?

[–] echo64 65 points 1 year ago

everything here is wrong, and blaming the users is wrong. Please try to read past the PR speak. and shame on ars for not doing that.

the unlimited plan is going away to force companies that were using it, to switch to their new unlimited plan which is now called Enterprise and will generate a lot more money for them. The plan still exists, they've changed the requirements so you can only get it if you spend a lot of money.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I remember in the 90s, my dial-up provider started offering an "unmetered" plan with no per minute charge (for younger people, believe it or not we were once charged by the minute for connecting to the internet). After a short while we were inundated with emails from the ISP complaining that people were "abusing the service" by going on the internet for "hours at a time". Just reminded me of this and how it's an old excuse.

No, you can't "abuse" an unlimited service by using too much, it's unlimited.

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[–] Rooty 61 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Users: Use the product as it was designed and advertised.

Corporations:

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago

Like when Microsoft took away unlimited OneDrive and wrote a passive aggressive blog post about how some dude used it to store like 75TB of movies

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago

Don't offer unlimited if you can't deliver unlimited. FFS

[–] kefka 32 points 1 year ago

Don't use the fucking word unlimited if it has limits? Something that has a limit, no matter how high, is not unlimited.

[–] jwagner7813 31 points 1 year ago

What they meant to say was "We didn't have the foresight to monetize these heavy users, so we will be doing that now. But first we'll create the problem..."

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

Calling it “abuse” is a weird PR move. If your service is good enough, this is bound to happen with an unlimited storage plan. This is basically a win on their part since they got people to sign up for their service. Why shame your user base?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

"Abused"? Is it unlimited or not? I don't see how as much as you need can be taken too literally. It's either true or it isn't.

[–] uis 14 points 1 year ago

"Abused" service they were advertised. Now it is misadvertisement.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

This reminds me of how Skype always had limits in the fine print of its unlimited calling plan back in the day when we paid for minutes on cellphones.

Or, y'know, how current cellphone data plans are only unlimited up until the point where you've used enough and then become "deprioritized."

Or how backblaze offers unlimited plans on Windows and Mac but not on Linux because Linux users tend to actually know how much storage they're using.

Companies have a number that is the profitable point for whatever unlimited plan they're offering. They just want to be able to advertise "unlimited" since that's what customers want and they hope people don't go over their "profitable usage" metric.

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