Is Kodak Missing The Point?

Blink (or skip over what seems like a piece of junk e-mail), and you might be losing all of your photos on KodakGallery (formerly Ofoto).

Kodak just updated it's Terms of Service with the following:

Storage Policy Kodak Imaging Network provides free online storage of images to its members for an initial period of 90 days from the date you first upload an image to your account. To maintain free storage, you need to meet the following minimum purchase requirement within 90 days of first uploading images, and then every 12 months thereafter:

For members with images totaling 2 GB or less uploaded on member’s “My Photos”, the minimum annual purchase requirement is $4.99.

For members with images totaling more than 2 GB uploaded on member’s “My Photos”, the minimum annual purchase requirement is $19.99.

edit And if you don't cough up the dough, your photos will be deleted.

With so many other options on the web, and with those options not even coming close to a policy like this, why would Kodak take on such a policy? Isn't the point of uploading photos to the service to 'share' them easily, not simply buy photos on a semi-regular basis? Doesn't Kodak earn goodwill and branding impressions by constantly driving people back to their website to view photos? Isn't disk space cheaper now than it has ever been?

There's an uproar brewing -- and will be even louder once photos start getting deleted from the site, and people lose their memories forever.

Victor Cho, Kodak Gallery's GM posted an open letter here. But for those of us with photos that have been there since the site was Ofoto (nearly 10 years ago, in some cases), not providing people with an easy way to remove those photos all at once is a horrible choice. If you're in the memories business, deleting those of your customers will come back to haunt you.

edit: Shouldn't they also be counting the photos that other people (like my mom) have bought from the site as a result of me sharing my photos with them? Or does that not count?

Discuss away. Twitter hashtag is #kodakfail.

**update** WSJ weighs in here.

Comments

[mcluhead]

Wow, good catch and great points.

[Alan Wolk]

My reaction, almost to a tee.

Almost identical experience from having almost deleted email as "more junk" without opening to extreme annoyance at prospect of having to remove all the pictures I've saved there since Ofoto days.

Even calling the $19.95 a storage fee and tying it to a certain amount of bandwidth (though I'd have come in at a much lower price point) would have made more sense, along with giving me a large discount on holiday cards and reprints for doing so.

Some day they'll listen to us ;)

[@davehonig]

I have mixed thoughts on this. I have over 186 albums spanning 6-7 years. Over 17 gig of Photos. I have been saying for a while now how easy it would be for ofoto to charge me, and I would have no choice if they decided to go this route but to pay ( thats unless they offered me a service to upload all my photos back into disc, which i agree they should ) It was only a matter of time for this to happen, I cannot even imagine how much it costs to house photos and the fact is their storage only gets larger, do you ever delete photos? I am not saying you are wrong by any means, but I dont buy your argument that Branding $$ pays the bills for those using this service. Do you see no value to the ofoto service at all? I see tremendous value in this free service. Its still free, just need to buy something, not much.. just something.

Fact is people do not buy photos like they did in the past, they share. People are not running to buy a Kodak Camera, they are not known for real good cameras, but i hear they are trying to change that. I would pay 1.95 a month just to keep this service. They are requesting for me to purchase 19.99 of goods to keep it going. Good timing since its mothers day, Decided to make my wife a book. ( cost me $100.00 )

You can choose to leave for another service, but dont you think they will follow and charge one day?

[Ian Schafer]

Dave -

Shutterfly has already come out and said that they WILL NOT follow suit: http://www.thekmiecs.com/misc/shutterfly-understands-the-value-of-customer-service/

[Craig]

I'm with Dave on this one. The request to make one purchase every 12 months of $19.95 for unlimited photo archival and hi-res retrieval is completely reasonable. I know I've spent hundreds of dollars on extra hard drives and DVD data disks. In my opinion, the KodakGallery terms are very generous, particularly when considering that I am working with a well known brand and company with a strong reputation.

I see this as a little "quid pro quo" in that Kodak is saying... "we do this for you.. please spend a few bucks with us."

Granted, if you are more into sharing than some of the more meatier aspects of archival.. .then something like a Photobucket may be more appropriate.

[Ian Schafer]

But Craig, is this not a very very delayed bait-and-switch? Had we known this in the beginning, might we have made another decision? And isn't the threatening of the deletion of photos onerous? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to restrict usage of the service? Regardless, as can be seen in my added remarks, shouldn't I be getting credit for the purchases made of photos that I've shared with relatives? Isn't that how most of their money is likely made -- by people buying the prints of photos that people have shared with them?

The whole thing sounds like it was an idea hatched in a boardroom about a formula to dramatically increase revenue during a current quarter (ie. if we got everyone to purchase a minimum amount of photos by a certain date, think of what we could add to the bottom line).

It's not so much the charging policy I have a problem with. It's the deletion of photos -- a threat that officially makes Kodak appear irrelevant with the amount of competition that they have in their space.

[Gerard Babitts]

They should grandfather in everyone prior to this new policy and only have it apply to any new photos added after the new policy effective date. Problem solved, no?

[Chris]

A change in business model (after 10 years) is hardly a "bait & switch"... They've realized the business model is broke and they're fixing it.

Another alternative is shutting the site down completely. If they're not making money, seems they'd be right to do so. $19.95 seems like a reasonable fee for a valuable service.

[@davehonig]

One would imagine Snapfish would come out and say they are not following suit. Great opportunity for them to gain subscribers. But make no mistake this is not a guarantee, and if their costs outweigh revenue, they will have to make these tough decisions. Corporate America consistently says one thing and does another. But again, Kodak is really doing nothing wrong here. How would you feel if you had 10 years of photos,and company calling it quits. I trust a brand like kodak would never do such a thing. I also would trust Snapfish on the same. I wouldnt trust others.
this was 10 years in the making, hardly a bait and switch. Just a good business decision that will allow for them to see which of their customers truly value their service, and who doesnt. Perhaps this is one big Stunt, like all those NYC stores that say going out of business and never do. I dont think they will delete photos, they will house it somewhere, you just wont have access until you purchase something.

As a consumer, I have no problem with this at all. It actually reminded me that I have no real pictures of my family printed and Its time.

[Ian Schafer]

I totally understand why they might charge. But again, threatening to delete photos is just the wrong way to do it.

[C.C. Chapman]

Thanks for sending me this link. I've been using the site since it first went live. It was the perfect way for me to post pictures of my kids and my parents could order them since I lived hundreds of miles away.

This is the first I've heard about this. I'm now thinking their e-mails might have gotten flagged as Spam or something else.

Today when I got a letter announcing their new "pro" services I went in to order a print of the picture we used as our holiday card this past year. Only thing was I could see all my albums (dating back to 2000) and they were all empty.

I can't begin to express how pissed I am right now. I've been a faithful customer of theirs for years. Thankfully I have backups of everything.

I wouldn't even have been that upset for paying if I had only known about it. I wonder if there is any way to get them back. Not overly happy at the moment.

[Mallory Dash]

Hi everyone,

Some great discussion here- I know a lot of people were really thrown off by this announcement and there are definitely a lot of people who are annoyed about losing their photos without being notified (case in point: CC Chapman).

Full disclosure- I work for Swiss Picture Bank, an online photo storage site that guarantees the storage and permanence of your photos for 30+ years. Just wanted to add our two cents- we wrote a blog post a few weeks ago on the Kodak fiasco and wanted to share. The onus appears to be on the consumer these days to make sure they know the Terms of Service of whatever services they select.

Feel free to check it out: http://bit.ly/13E9Xx

Here's hoping no one else gets a surprise like CC...

Mallory
Swiss Picture Bank

[jay@jaykubassek.com]

Thank you for this article. I was unaware of this policy and like some of your other readers was stunned to find my albums missing. I am now moved over to shutterfly as well as having everything backed up on my iphoto account.
best,
Jay Kubassek
CEO CarbonCopyPro

[danielle]

i'm sure they're going to lose a lot of users. i logged in a couple months ago to share an album only to find that it was gone. i hadn't updated my contact email and am not sure if they even sent out anything to let me know, but having to cull through 2k photos again and upload 300 is not worth it to me to use their service again.

since then i've received this email 2 or 3 times to my new address and have ignored it. you make the main point that there's no way to transfer these photos.

epic fail.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=19603692]

Hi Ian -

I lost 3000 of my photos on Sunday - I'd love to echo my story here as well - http://unhub.com/7YMC - I think I may have inadvertently started #kodakfail as well. I'm in conversations with a Kodak PR rep now giving them feedback about this. My story's also been featured in Consumerist as well - http://consumerist.com/5274928/kodak-gallery-holds-photos-hostage-then-deletes-them

Feel free to reach out at matthew[dot]knell[at]gmail.com.