united-states contract-law
What can you legally do when merchant promises a perpetual service for a fixed fee, but doesn&#39;t deliver?
<p>There's a (legitimate) company called Cloud-at-Cost that sells virtual machines for an (extremely cheap) one-time payment.
However, users are encountering multiple problems:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>After a year or so they suddenly tacked on a yearly fee and made users accept new terms with this fee included in order to access their VMs, even though this wasn't in the original contract.</p></li>
<li><p>The machines are frequently down and impossible to use.</p></li>
<li><p>The company is notoriously hard to reach and frequently closes tickets without even responding, and apparently if you initiate a chargeback for a service that was not rendered, they shut down your account altogether.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>The question is, what can you legally do when dealing with such a merchant?</p>

<p>Given that they promised a perpetual service for a fixed cost, but don't deliver and don't respond, and that they also forced you to accept new terms (which you had to do in order to access your data), can they be held responsible legally speaking?  </p>

<p>Note that I'm not particularly asking about lawsuits here, I'm just wondering what the legal options options are in such as situation. For example, how would you initiate a chargeback for the one-time payments when the service is indefinite and you've already "partially" been rendered the service (but now you might be reasonably worried that they'll soon stop delivering on the other parts too)? Or maybe for the yearly fee you've "accepted" and paid, considering that you had no other choice and it was against your initial contract? Or if you <em>did</em> sue them, which portions of the fees can you reasonably be expected to claim as the damage, and which parts would already be services rendered? How would an arbitrator decide a case based on a fixed payment and indefinite contract?</p>

<p>This is a case of "Caveat emptor" (let the buyer beware) if someone offers you something that will "last forever" but don't ask for money "forever" and you can't take possession of it is very silly to think that business is "legitimate". </p>

<p>Legally you can probably sue them, but good luck recovering your "extremely cheap one time payment"  if the company is already struggling to do business. You might be able to do a class action, but same as above and you will have lawyers take a portions of your recovery. </p>

<p>You might be able to get a states attorney to charge them with fraud if it rises to that level, but that seems pretty unlikely considering the issue. </p>
