Friday, July 7, 2017

Special Edition: Photobucket Can Go Straight to Hell






To the folks that visit my blog, I would like to apologize for the fuckery of the moment. I've used Photobucket since 2008. Thousands of photos across three Photobucket accounts are now disabled, due to Photobucket's unsavory attempt to use extortion disguised as a business decision, to screw up millions of users' blogs, websites and every other site used to post their photos.


Photobucket started out as a free service and as expected moved to a paid service. No one had a problem with the progression Photobucket was making...it made perfect sense to want to start making additional revenue from services provided, rather than just from the onslaught of annoying pop up ads that overwhelmed the site. Therefore, I didn't mind paying their previous reasonable fee, but it was a fee for more storage not hosting.

But soon after, or rather several years ago, the service started to go down. Half the time photos wouldn't upload or a glitch would happen. In addition, there were so many ads on the site ...you simply couldn't enjoy the service. I literally had to switch to only using their mobile app to upload photos...which cancelled out the ridiculous amount of ads.

But this latest move by Photobucket is beyond fucked up. With basically zero warning, the "gangsta" like company chose to break the links of millions of photos and in its place put up atrocious self serving banners...warning users to upgrade to their $399.99 annual plan to continue to host photos on third party sites.


The problem is the way Photobucket went about the change. In addition, Photobucket's service isn't worth spending $399.99 a year. I'm moving my photos to be hosted with a more reliable and trustworthy site. This also means that thousands of photos will have to either be uploaded again via the new image hosting site or Photobucket's dull ass banners will be displayed all up and through my blog. I am beyond pissed. If Photobucket wanted to break the links... fine, but they do not have the right to leave their unsightly banners all over my damn blog. That's free advertising for them.

 I will also be looking into legal options as well. I want their banners OFF my blog. Hell leave it blank.

I am too damn busy to go through thousands of posts and fix the photos. So I do apologize in advance for the unpleasant look of the posts. But, it is what it is. Of course future posts are not an issue.

I will happily be giving my money to SmugMug or Flickr.


In addition, I will be filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Photobucket. Others should do the same.

Link to file complaint: Federal Trade Commission Complaint Link

Free advice to Photobucket's team: 

Business 101: Never screw over your loyal customers, you will drive them away...along with future prospects. 

It would have made more sense to allow previously uploaded photos that were being hosted to remain and make future photos implemented with the new plan.

If anyone with an ounce of business acumen was running Photobucket, you could have kept me and many others as customers if you knew your market and were transparent. You played yourself. 



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