On 21 December 2011 13:46, Nathan Eisenberg <nathan@atlasnetworks.us> wrote:
I've always strongly felt that this was a rather foul business practice, wherever I've seen it. The justification for it is the utterly misguided belief that, if allowed to, customers will pay for a month then cancel their subscription and 'coast' on the 'current' version of the signature for a year. This approach suffers from (at least) two fundamental flaws:
1) The entire customer base are treated as hostile. It is no surprise that they resent this. (Assumption: having resentful customers is bad) 2) Spam is, perhaps moreso than ever, a rapidly evolving threat. The effectiveness of signatures declines dramatically with time, which means that August's signatures have little value by December. [By the way, it seems to me that if they're willing to charge for valueless signatures, that represents either A) doubt as to the value of the current signatures, or B) disbelief in the decreasing value of out of date signatures.]
While I realize that car insurance might not be the best analogy subject, imagine if you put your car on blocks, went off to college and allowed the insurance to lapse whilst you were there. When you return, the insurance company wants you to pay the last three years of insurance in order to reactivate your policy. That companies customers would react in the same way: they would find a new provider to do business with, rather than pay out for a valueless bit of smoke and mirrors.
Nathan Eisenberg
Exactly. And when you consider the fact that most anyone can roll their own solution with Postfix, Postgrey, a few RBLs, and Spamassassin that works just as well - if not better than a Barracuda, trying to justify back charging is even more unbelievable.