Blackmail & Auto Charges – Why You Should Avoid Photobucket

Over the ten years+ that I’ve been running this website, I’ve had hundreds of opportunities to work with all sorts of vendors and products in support of mybeerbuzz.com.  And while most every one of these experiences have been positive, every so often I come across an encounter that is so problematic that I feel compelled to warn my readers.  I should also mention that my day-job is in IT and with 35-years under my belt, I have a pretty good idea how a IT-related vendor should (and should not) do business.

A few years ago I started using Photobucket.  I began with their free service and I used it to host some of the photos and graphics I used for the website and for advertising.  I also used Photobucket to host many of the photos my wife and I used for our eBay businesses.  Their interface was clunky and the performance was a bit sketchy, but the price was right, and for free I told myself I was getting my money’s worth.

After using Photobucket for several months, I received notices that essentially my website (specifically the images posted on Photobucket) had become too popular and I was surpassing the limits for a free account.  With my advertising on the line and our eBay businesses built out, I reluctantly upgraded to a Plus account and approved the yearly $24.95 payment on my PayPal.

I rationalized it by telling myself that to make the move now would have required me to update hundreds of posts, dozens of ads and hundreds of auctions with links to new image hosting links.

My usage of the Plus account continued and I paid the $24.95 for several years.  Things were fine but in late June 2017 I received a complaint from a reader, a really angry complaint from an advertiser and we noticed our eBay sales suddenly going flat.  I did a bit of digging and the message above was displaying instead of my actual images.  Imagine an advertiser seeing this instead of their PAID advertisement.

To my surprise, Photobucket decided to quietly update their terms of service and followed that change shortly thereafter with blackmail messages.  Here’s the one I received:

Hello ,
We would like to offer a tailored plan for users just like you – our Commerce plan at $399 per year.
The Commerce plan will provide 3rd party hosting for use on eBay, Amazon, personal websites, forums etc. Additionally, you will be able to store up to 1,000,000 photos.
Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns.
– Sebastian

Naturally going from FREE or $24.95 this price seemed like a joke. (A really bad joke).  We contacted Photobucket, but with so many people complaining about their sudden blackmail messages, it took days to get a response.  These were days we couldn’t afford, so rather than paying their $399 ransom, we decided to manually edit literally hundreds of posts, dozens of advertisements and hundreds of eBay auctions and DROP Photobucket.

It took us weeks to fix everything and drop Photobucket.  In the mean time we lost sales on eBay, advertisers on mybeerbuzz and traffic on both sites….not to mention the exhausting work to replace them.

In early Dec 2017, we noticed a charge of $24.95 again showed up on our PayPal account from Photobucket.  At this point we had dropped all usage of Photobucket and were no longer even using their free service.  I contacted Photobucket and cancelled our Plus account, and while they refused to refund my $24.95, they did confirm my Plus account was cancelled.  This took over 45-mins on hold with their terrible phone support.

Jump forward to Dec 2018 (over a year after cancelling their Plus service and 18-months after stopping ALL usage of Photobucket) and once again they charged us $24.95 for Plus “service on PayPal.”  Now I’ll admit it’s my bad that I didn’t disable their approval on my PayPal account and that has since been done, but this is simply criminal.  I once again contacted Photobucket “support” and after going around and around with Moss (their support person) I was told they would not refund my $24.95, they have no record of my previous cancellation and they never offered phone support.  When I gave them the name and e-mail address of the person I worked with bcampbell @ photobucket, Moss again denied that they ever had phone service or that anyone from Photobucket ever had that name.
My last response to Moss was not 48-hours ago and after providing several e-mail messages sent to me by Photobucket from bcampbell, they are still denying that employee and my cancellation from a year ago.  As is stands Photobucket has now withdrawn $24.95 in 2017 AND 2018 for services they no longer provide.

I can only guess that Photobucket continues to have financial issues that not only cause them to blackmail users for $399 but also continue to pull PayPal money for services they are no longer providing.

In the end I wanted to warn everyone before they invest any time or money in Photobucket.  I can only imagine how awful this would be if they were holding all of my family photos for ransom!

When you choose an image hosting service, be sure to pick one you can trust with your images.  In my opinion, Photobucket can’t be trusted and shouldn’t be a company you choose to trust with your family photos or anything else.
I will follow up with any progress toward resolution, however at this point Photobucket is saying their terms of service won’t allow a refund to be processed and they haven’t replied to my last e-Mail in 48-hours.

As of Jan 18, I’ve received no additional response from PhotoBucket and Pay Pal will not intervene.  I guess I’m left with trying to fin a useful way to use my Plus account.  OK readers….any ideas for how I can use my Plus service for the next year that would be useful and fun