Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Photobucket

Hopefully the linked images of photobucket will not disappear soon.

They have for some people already Heinz ..

Look at your avatar, this is how our previous images are displayed using the bucket.

What a pity! I was underway and not looking frequently at TM and I just see what you mean, Richard. So it may be only a question of relatively short time until a lot of more nice shots will be gone.

Yes I think that is so - I first noticed it 2 days ago on some peoples avatar and then yesterday it took all of mine off. They send you an email saying in effect if you use it to share pictures as we do it will cost you $399.99 per year.

So I changed to Flickr which is not as easy as their site but not bad and it's free at the moment.

This is all very puzzling as my Avatar disappeared but that was hosted on The TM Photobucket account a few years ago so that account has obviously been affected by the new T&C's but my (what was free up to Friday) account has been totally unafffected and I didn't receive any emails

I have the Free Photobucket App on my iPhone - all my photos are still there and the links on this forum are still intact

However I was going to upgrade anyway as I wanted to use it to back up all my photos so on Friday I upgraded to a Plus 20 account and paid £22.99 for the year through Apples Ap store

No new T&C's came through and all I've got is much more storage so I can't understand exactly why or what's changed

+1. My free account for now seems to work

They are rolling out the new terms, I suspect your upgrade has bought you a little extra time.

I can understand that they need to make money and I'm surprised it has been free for so long. If they had given me warning and asked for a reasonable amount I would probably have paid, but shutting down the service without notice and demanding $399.99 to restore it doesn't seem to me a good strategy for retaining customers.

I wonder if some of the photobucket.com servers have been attacked or if there has been a major issue within the company?

If I log on to www.photobucket.com I get the message everyone has described, but using my normal my log: www.s978.photobucket.com functions as normal.

There is a vast amount of noise on the web about the $399 raid, but Nothing in the way of a formal announcement from Photobucket, other than the "we have noticed" statement received by many.

Normal business practice, even in the wild west of the web, is for the sort of changes Photobucket has made to be associated with a formal statement. If Photobucket Inc is a us public company then any action by the company that is likely to have a significant impact on shareholder value.

Photobucket is a private company, so such announcements are not mandatory, but normally there is some sort of formal public statement.

It is all very odd.

The notice you get is an email saying this:

Some features on your account have been disabled.

Your account has been restricted for 3rd party hosting.
Don't worry, your photos are safe.
In order to restore 3rd Party Hosting,
please upgrade to our Plus 500 Membership.

And a link to this website: http://photobucket.com/p500/

which says:

WE NOTICED THAT YOU HAVE BEEN USING
PHOTOBUCKET FOR 3RD PARTY HOSTING*

TO RESTORE YOUR 3RD PARTY HOSTED IMAGES,
PLEASE UPGRADE TO A PLUS 500 PLAN.

The whole thing is couched in terms that make it seem you have breached their terms of conditions. It's difficult to imagine a more effective way of alienating your customer base.

I certainly wouldn't want to use any of their services now, how can you trust them not to change the conditions of their photo hosting and hold your pictures to ransom at some future date?

~iw

Ian,
strange I have a free account & no email
It still for now works
John