> Like, what do you expect?

Fewer empty threats. A lot fewer.

Who is complaining that their storage provider kept a promise to not delete customer data?

I expect that if they want to delete that data then they should own up and publicly declare so. Back off from the promise publicly.

Or say that “yeah, we say that from time to time, but we don’t really mean that lol”.

Because converting a customer into a paying customer with the promise of “won’t delete even if you stop paying” is a service promise.

This is a classic lesson that everyone learns called Sync Is Not Backup. Everyone learns it eventually and then writes a blog post on it. It used to be a classic HN meme:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4704086

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27157427

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33008837

And every storage company tells a tale of backup vs sync:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cloud-backup-vs-cloud-sync/

Something similar happened to me once. I still don't know what exactly happened, but in Dropbox some files were deleted, I still had my local copy, but then Dropbox synced the file deletions and I didn't notice. Only when it was too late did I notice that files were gone and their support was unable to help. I think I managed to recover some files with one of the NTFS "undelete" tools, but that was probably the day I started to treat "the cloud" differently. Nowadays I don't even know what's still in my Dropbox ...

I also had exactly the same experience. I ended up losing lots of documents.

Pfff... I think you can easily replicate that UX with an ftp server and CVS. :D

Just curious — ever tried reaching out to the customer care? :-)

I mean I can’t imagine them not being happy about not having to pay for the hosting, unless they have a clear way of monetising that data (AI/etc and all that).

I think the author may not be entirely serious, and may even have been attempting to achieve some level of humor or personal catharsis with their writing.

Perhaps Dropbox shouldn't have promised to keep the files forever then?

It doesn’t seem like the author is upset about this, just interested in seeing what the eventual outcome is. It is interesting to see the tension in their emails between wanting to get the user back as a subscriber and not wanting to continue to host their files for free.

That’s literally what they said they would do.

Companies that offer things for free, I fully expect for them to keep them free forever. If the pay solution is worth it I'll pay.

When they start changing the contract, I find an alternative and use the service as much as I can. My Dropbox is fully backed up but has been full for years and it doesn't matter to me any more.

Why not?

Many of us host terabytes of opaque data on platforms like GitHub without ever paying or facing deletion threats.

My question is whether the cost of creating and sending all these emails outweigh the Dropbox recidivism they induce.

Do these emails actually create value or is it a just way to make the company feel better about losing customers?

I think he expects them to follow through with the threat.

Should the company not be expected to uphold their promise that they sold him and charged him for?

Make good on the threat I suppose.

I have the impression that their sales/renewal side is kind of nasty.

I have a vanity domain for myself, and someone from their sales started cold-emailing me to sell me some crazy enterprise plan. After several being ignored they sent a real angry one demanding to be forwarded to someone else at my org (which, to be clear, did not exist).

Can't imagine what real companies get from them if just having a domain name was enough to get that.

These are just people that cancelled, no shenanigans. Dropbox doesn't let you add huge amounts, if there's 1TB there is was almost always legitimate data.

Surprisingly, them keeping your (and the author's, and other abandoners') files probably makes more business sense than deleting them: the files probably don't cost that much to store (my hunch is most abandoners don't have TB's of data), and since they all still have an account, DropBox can spam them with these threats and maybe some percentage of them do return, allowing DB to make money off them.

If the files get deleted, both sides know it'll be the end of their user-provider relationship.

I will note that Dropbox has changed so much from when I first learned of their service. They seem very focused on providing solutions to businesses now compared to back then when it seemed more like a product for individual users.

I'm willing to bet they make $100K+ every round they send these out. Everyone has to consider at least what to do with the email (ignore? accept if it's useful again? maybe just to stop getting bugged)

Are they still demanding "accessibility" permission on macOS computers, giving them broad powers to run roughshod over your system? That's the thing I most remember about trying Dropbox, their belligerent installer.

> I doubt they will host your content graveyard for free

Given he says "I migrated away from Dropbox" and "I had no desire to reactivate my account" suggests that his data is doing just fine elsewhere and he doesn't mind if Dropbox deletes it or not, he's just laughing at the desperation of the begging spam he doesn't want.

I mean, breathing does too so watch your workouts. Being more serious, I don't think micromanaging your own cloud storage would help that much. The cloud provider is going to have that storage deployed and available regardless.