When a service offers a lifetime level subscription, my first thought is who's lifetime are we going off of here? Many will have a clause or statement that tells you lifetime is actually a few years, while others will claim to provide the service in perpetuity. Regardless, with most such companies changing hands every few years, these deals are all just as temporary as the wind. This is a lesson customers of the VPN provider, VPNSecure, found out recently when the company dropped all its lifetime customers.
Techspot spotted an email disgruntled customers had shared to Reddit, explaining the discontinuation of the lifetime plan. In simple terms, it's claiming they straight up didn't know they had them. The new owners as of 2023 state they didn't realise the company had sold these lifetime plans, and furthermore that it didn't purchase any contracts as part of the buy out so, as far as VPNSecure is concerned, it doesn't.
"Unfortunately, the previous owner did not disclose that thousands of Lifetime Deals (LTDs) had been sold through platforms like StackSocial," the email explains.
"We discovered this only months later—when a large portion of our resources were strained by these LTD accounts and high support volume from users, who through part of the database, provided no sustaining income to help us improve and maintain the service."
Needless to say we wouldn't recommend signing up with them for your VPN needs. If you are after a solid VPN for gaming though, we have some recommendations. They're also probably a good bet for other internet use too, lookingat you, Florida folks.
Originally VPNSecure was only removing accounts that have gone for six months without use, but it has since deactivated all lifetime deals. It claimed that these deals all took place before 2017 but evidence of lifetime offers advertised as late as 2022 have been spotted online. Users who have been kicked from these deals have been offered what some are calling meagre discounts on new plans with set time lengths.
Subscription services in general are pretty problematic when it comes to ownership, but at least their terms are somewhat clear. Lifetime deals on the other hand often purposefully muddy the waters by promising something they just can't provide. Especially at the prices they pretend to offer. Sometimes these kinds of things are purposefully done before the sale of a business to make as much money as possible, then pass the buck just like VPNSecure has done here.
Once upon a time I was also the victim of a VPN service offering a similar plan. What felt like a reasonable price for a VPN for the rest of my foreseeable future ended up being a pretty bad price for a little over a two-years of service. It's something I've now seen happen over and over again in VPNs and cloud-offered online services, but at least I've kept my money away from any more since.
As horrible as these business practices are, let them serve as a fair warning against things like lifetime membership deals. Especially for a non-tangible service like VPNs. As usual, if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.
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