I promised a posting about "meldrum" and I will get to that, but this one (thanks to a tip from another shafted, loyal Earth Class Mail customer!) takes a priority.
Thanks to the wonders of the internet, there is a great little search engine at archive.org which attempts to catalog historic versions of websites called the Wayback Machine. This is a wonderful invention, almost as cool as Earth Class Mail itself. Using it, you can see historical versions of the Earth Class Mail site from March 2007 (when it was still parked at GoDaddy) to February 2008, including (surprise, surprise!).....their original prices!!
The prices from February 12, 2008 reflect the prices that most loyal customers were accustomed to paying, right up until July of 2009! You can see the Personal Pricing Plans page here on the Wayback Machine. But given that it takes some time to load, and that when it does it isn't formatted properly, I've made them easier to view in this image here (click on it to see the full image):
Now, imagine that you read those prices, signed up for the "Essential" plan, changed all your addresses, and then are greeted with an email announcing the prices listed here in July 2009. You would feel suckered, wouldn't you? No grandfather clause, nothing! Earth Class Mail lets you change your addresses and then raises prices over 100%! Is that loyalty towards customers? Is this a company we can trust? Clearly, no!
Ron Wiener should be ashamed that the company he founded is doing this to the loyal customers who helped get the company started.
When I signed up in the fall of 2007, the monthly rate was $3.50. So for me it has increased over 7 times the original rate I signed up for. Plus they had the gall to make it sound like they were adding new features and instead were just jacking the price. I'm canceling tomorrow (for real).
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