Midjourney will expire your purchased tokens after 60 days.

[OllieJT]

Summary

Midjourney purchased fast hours will expire after 60 days starting October 1, 2024. Hours bought before September 30, 2024, will expire on November 30, 2024.

 

Quotes

Quote

We wanted to let you know that we're changing the way we handle purchased fast hours. Starting October 1, 2024, fast hours that you purchase will expire after 60 days. Any fast hours purchased on or before September 30, 2024 PDT will expire at the end of the day on November 30, 2024 PDT.

 

My thoughts

Midjourney offers ways to earn fast hours through development tools, but these tokens were purchased outright and are now being effectively revoked. The main issue is that tokens bought before this policy change had no expiration expectation, making this new rule seem problematic.

 

Sources

Email sent to customers, image attached.

[manikyath]

i have a problem with this retroactively affecting purchased tokens. i'm fine with the idea that any new tokens have an expiry, but what if one would have the habit of buying a year's worth of tokens at a time? they are essentially just losing those tokens now?

 

i could presume this is a shameless cashgrab, but let's assume they are not that evil.. so i guess this could be a method to not have to keep track of tokens in otherwise dormant accounts.. but even then there's better methods to achieve this.

[Salted Spinach]

As long as I dont know what Midjourney is, I should have nothing to worry about

[thechinchinsong]

3 hours ago, manikyath said:

i could presume this is a shameless cashgrab, but let's assume they are not that evil..

Well that's where you're wrong. It is definitely a shameless cashgrab.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, OllieJT said:

Summary

Midjourney purchased fast hours will expire after 60 days starting October 1, 2024. Hours bought before September 30, 2024, will expire on November 30, 2024.

 

 

Nothing says "scam" like expiring digital assets, money, and time.

 

If I paid 20 dollars and I didn't use it for 15 years, you still owe me 20 dollars plus interest before you go bankrupt.

[leadeater]

55 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Nothing says "scam" like expiring digital assets, money, and time.

 

If I paid 20 dollars and I didn't use it for 15 years, you still owe me 20 dollars plus interest before you go bankrupt.

They don't owe you interest, credits and loyalty points etc are a purchase and a choice for you to purchase and spend at will. However they shouldn't expire that is true.

 

Did you know one of the largest "banks" in America in terms of cash assets on hand is Starbucks? They have 1.7 billion dollars in Starbucks credit through their App and gift cards and since it's credit due to customers it's a financial liability so it can be used to offset tax all while they have the freedom to do whatever they want with that 1.7 billion like invest it in high yield return stocks, bonds etc making profit off of interest earned. Since Starbucks is not actually a "bank" they are also not subject to banking regulation.

 

Store credit and gift credits are really popular for a reason, they are a money black hole with a given percentage of money never being spent making it free money and also all the benefit of being a liability. Everyone should try to avoid these schemes and if they have to use them make sure your balance is as near zero as possible.

[Mark Kaine]

On 9/17/2024 at 1:46 AM, thechinchinsong said:

Well that's where you're wrong. It is definitely a shameless cashgrab.

exactly, if something looks like a shameless cashgrab, it usually is lol...

 

On 9/17/2024 at 4:41 AM, leadeater said:

However they shouldn't expire that is true.

i think the problem is, we're still living in wild wild west regarding "digital" transactions... this stuff needs to be regulated much stricter, for example companies shouldn't be allowed to hold items bought behind an "account system"... as long you can physically (eh, like an invoice or something) prove that you actually bought something you should have access to it.

and "currency" or similar "expiring" should just never be a thing. its anti-consumer as hell.

 

btw "rootkit style anti-cheat" also not allowed... 

 

i know i know wishful thinking but regulations in this vein needs to happen imho. 

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

They don't owe you interest, credits and loyalty points etc are a purchase and a choice for you to purchase and spend at will. However they shouldn't expire that is true.

 

Did you know one of the largest "banks" in America in terms of cash assets on hand is Starbucks? They have 1.7 billion dollars in Starbucks credit through their App and gift cards and since it's credit due to customers it's a financial liability so it can be used to offset tax all while they have the freedom to do whatever they want with that 1.7 billion like invest it in high yield return stocks, bonds etc making profit off of interest earned. Since Starbucks is not actually a "bank" they are also not subject to banking regulation.

 

Store credit and gift credits are really popular for a reason, they are a money black hole with a given percentage of money never being spent making it free money and also all the benefit of being a liability. Everyone should try to avoid these schemes and if they have to use them make sure your balance is as near zero as possible.

That is the point. It should be illegal to just take "credit" that is not redeemed. That's theft. They owe you interest because THEY are making interest on your unspent credit.

 

[jagdtigger]

Sounds about right.......

[Monkey Dust]

I guess with AI companies haemorrhaging money from every orifice, we're going to see more of terms changing for the worse. AI really has speedran new and exciting to enshitified.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

That is the point. It should be illegal to just take "credit" that is not redeemed. That's theft. They owe you interest because THEY are making interest on your unspent credit.

Well yes and no. They don't owe you interest because you purchased a good/service, it's not a currency and nor is it a bank and there was no offer at all of any interest as part of the transaction. You willingly exchanged your currency for a good/service. The key is to never do this unless you have to and if you have to spend it all immediately.

 

You can't just demand interest because credit only has a value the company attributes to it just the same as a good/service and you can't demand interest on a purchased product you didn't like and got a refund for, you only ever get back at most exactly what you paid for it.

 

Credit is not currency, the first mistake is ever thinking it is. Once your currency is transacted in to credit it's gone, forever. Deal has been done.

[TetraSky]

I hate whenever a company does this.

"Oh remember the tokens/points you bought with no expiration date ? Yeah we changed our terms and now they expire if you don't use them".

Just so they can scrape the bottom of the barrel for more money. Even though it cost them next to nothing to have these bytes of data sleeping in the database until you decide to use them.

2 months is way too short of a time frame. A year or two might pass, but 60 days ? Get out of here.

[Beskamir]

Retroactively Amended Purchasing Experience.

[wanderingfool2]

On 9/17/2024 at 12:24 AM, Kisai said:

That is the point. It should be illegal to just take "credit" that is not redeemed. That's theft. They owe you interest because THEY are making interest on your unspent credit.

 

Consider it this way, if you put your money in the bank in a chequing account you are very likely getting virtually zero interest [at one point on one of my bank accounts I effectively get 0.1% interest].

 

You are purchasing a token, with the understanding that you are only going to be using that token to purchase a service.  It doesn't matter IF they are making interest on your unspent credit [which btw given what Midjourney does I doubt they are keeping a large cash reserve].  Ultimately you agreed to it, just like me complaining if I only got 0.1% interest when the bank is getting 6% from lending it out.  It's not theft, it's a contractual agreement.

 

Now retroactively having tokens expires will in effect violate that contract which means they will either have to issue refunds for the purchase price OR change the policy and allow the tokens to not expire for the given tokens you purchased.  When things like that happen, unless it's written into the contract of what the damages etc should be usually it's just making everyone "whole" and that doesn't include lost interest rates.

 

 

 

 

What I think is going to be interesting about things like this is whether or not laws in BC will apply.  We have a law in place which effectively prevents the expiration of prepaid items.  By buying the tokens which can be used for currency to purchase other products I imagine it might actually fall into the category.  [Although I do disagree with said law in that I believe balances should be able to be reduced if it's had a long inactivity...like 5 years].

 

The issue I see with this is that it might become similar to offering certificates for specific products....eventually inflation hits so that $5 movie ticket voucher from 15 years ago now allows you to enter into a movie where the theatre has to pay $7 to the studios per seat sold.  I think having expiry dates on items, even digital ones, can be good and should maybe be considered.  The thing to remember as well with AI as well, most companies are dumping their money into hardware/overhead to keep training and generation going...so overtime the cost to generate an image I imagine will go up [eventually it will hit an equilibrium but at the moment many are essentially subsidized by venture capital speculators]

[Holmes108]

7 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

What I think is going to be interesting about things like this is whether or not laws in BC will apply.  We have a law in place which effectively prevents the expiration of prepaid items.  By buying the tokens which can be used for currency to purchase other products I imagine it might actually fall into the category.  [Although I do disagree with said law in that I believe balances should be able to be reduced if it's had a long inactivity...like 5 years].

 

 

Yeah, this is what I wonder. I think across Canada (but at the very least in Ontario), gift certificates can't expire (unlike say, a promotional credit). So they'd no doubt argue this isn't the same thing. But I don't know how you draw the line. 

 

I do agree with you though, there has to be reasonable limits on a timeframe. I remember some prepaid visa's having a couple dollar service fee that applies every month, whittling away the balance after a certain amount of time. I think that's okay, as long as the terms are clearly stated. Not sure if that's still in practice.

[wanderingfool2]

13 hours ago, Holmes108 said:

Yeah, this is what I wonder. I think across Canada (but at the very least in Ontario), gift certificates can't expire (unlike say, a promotional credit). So they'd no doubt argue this isn't the same thing. But I don't know how you draw the line. 

Yea I was really thinking about this and was genuinely thinking if they would be allowed to do it in Canada.  I think they would be able to skirt around it maybe, but I could see there being a ruling saying they can't.

 

13 hours ago, Holmes108 said:

I do agree with you though, there has to be reasonable limits on a timeframe. I remember some prepaid visa's having a couple dollar service fee that applies every month, whittling away the balance after a certain amount of time. I think that's okay, as long as the terms are clearly stated. Not sure if that's still in practice.

Honestly, I wonder if the effects of the forever laws are the ones that sort of killed the gift certificates for "one free burger" etc...instead it's now all cash valued stuff.  If you can't have things expire, it can seriously cost you money in the long run. [A few kb here and there, while storage it cheap means it still has to sit around in the data and get duplicated and made sure it never gets obsoleted]