In any major magic show, the vanishing act is given a lot of importance. Most magicians pride themselves if they pull this one-off. Its the scenario where an object or person is made to disappear ( or they are shown to disappear ) at the command of the magician and the audience is left with shock and awe
In the world of computer and the Internet, this is a very common phenomenon. I had been using this app known as ‘Blogo’ for quite some time. I paid good money and bought it, way back in 2014, and back then I was promised a full version of the software with regular updates.
I guess in between, they changed to monthly paid model – just like many other apps. I chose not to opt for the monthly paid model. But I guess many might have chosen to go for either yearly or 3-year payment subscription.
Fast forward to 2019 and the app has been removed from the app store ( I checked this today) and even the site – http://getblogo.com, doesn’t work. Maybe they have a new domain or a new product. But clearly, the users who paid for their service initially ( like me ) or who take yearly subscriptions have been fooled. They just lost their money.
Recently I have also seen payment services, where you pay for 3 or even 5 years and when the company goes without a trace, who do you go to. Now think about apps which store your data like, cloud storage apps. You would have meticulously collected, and uploaded terabytes worth of data, including important info and photos and pay heavy amount for their services and later find that the company could vanish without a trail.
Where is the consumer redressal system? Whom should the common man complain to? Will the money be refunded? These days, anyone could come up with a nice ad campaign, post it on all major social media sites including facebook, get people on board and escape with the money. I regularly hear about companies shutting down and most of the times, they occupy only a few lines on major newspaper channels. But what about the troubles the users have to go through, because of that? Has anyone thought about this?