Then you may consider to use STORJ tokens as a pre-paid option, you would get 10% on top and will be exempt of the minimum fee.
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Yes, Storj business model is likely unsustainable with customers who store less that 10TB of data.
Just like if I want a dedicated server in a datacenter, nobody would rent me a raspberry pi (even thoguh I may only need the capabilities of said raspberry pi), it’s all normal servers for a lot of money. Even VMs have some kind of minimums. I have a VM in one company and their smallest offering is a VM with 1 core, 2GB RAM, 20GB HDD for 7.5EUR/month. I don’t need that much, I only need 256MB RAM and about 3GB HDD, but they wont give such a VM to me. I guess it would not be profitable for them.
I don’t blame Storj for getting rid of accunts that pay $0.1/month or even $1/month. I am sure it is possible to make profit from such accounts, but not with Storj system. Instead you should probably have a single server with a bunch of hard drives (backed up of course) as those accounts are not going to demand the speed and availability of the real Storj network.
Different companies offer different services, there is no need for a single company to cater to everyone. You have services aimed at customers with small amounts of data and you have services aimed at custmers with lots of data. Those services do not need to be the same or offered by the same company.
Two problems -
- how much time and effort should Storj spend to only slightly reduce their loss? I am sure those with high-cost behaviors will leave instead of paying the actual cost.
- Maybe it is not profitable for Storj to store 100GB of data, even if the customer does not do any “high-cost behaviors”. 10GB would mean $0.4/month and it may just be too costly to even send such customer an invoice, much less answer any support ticket. For those low amounts the system has to be completely automatic, with zero human involvement, maybe then it can make money somewhat.
You know how smetimes companies have minimum purchasing amounts on some things? I can go to my local electronics store, but I cannot buy a single 0.25W resistor, I have to buy them in increments of 10 for about 0.38EUR. O guess it is really unprofitable for the store to sell a single resistor for 0.04EUR, maybe not worth the time for the employee to go and pick it up.
So, maybe for Storj the minimum storage amount is 1.5TB. If you need less, you still have t pay for it.
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There will always be some people out there… unhappy that the grocery store won’t sell them half-a-banana… when they’re certain they only want to eat half-a-banana. 
. So they proclaim loudly to all within earshot that they’re “taking their half-a-banana business elsewhere!”
Companies understand that not every monkey will be their customer 
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ouch. Please do not make such statements, many may consider it an insult, even if according to theories monkeys are our ancestors..
A company with such an attitude will likely go out of business sooner rather than later.
We know that one of Amazons keys to success was customer satisfaction over everything else. Some call it even a customer obsession. Think about that.
Also we know from studies that for every customer who is complaining there are up to 95 who don’t and silently leave with their fist clenched in their pocket. And every unsatisfied customer will share their “atrocious” experience with 10-15 people.
This is what Storj needs to consider when they announce half-baked ideas on a Friday night at the end of a month. There was absolutely no reason to introduce such a change that way.
Customers who share their disappointment are a source of knowledge and truth compared to the 95 that leave silently without saying a thing. The ones who spend their time to file a complaint are the ones who have not given up their hope yet.
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No. Companies that don’t know who their ideal customers are: and approach everyone: are doomed to failure. Just owning a computer doesn’t make you a potential Storj customer.
Those in sales know: one of the most important things you can learn: and hopefully quickly: is how to qualify-out those who won’t be good customers. You have to spend your efforts chasing accounts that are worth your time.
Storj has made it clear what accounts are worth their time.
Amazon goes to great lengths to retain customers that make them money. Storj was quite clear about accounts that don’t make them money. Avoiding those who cause you to lose money is important as a business.
Perhaps some may even call it an obsession?
Here we can agree: the announcement details and timing were poorly thought-out.
But the reason for the announcement was a great one. Ideally it would have been a decision made a year ago.
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A company that has a mindset of comparing their customers to monkeys will have a hard time to find the ideal customer.
Not on the backs of their customers. At least when Amazon started they did literally anything to please their customers. Why? Because Bezos knew that an unsatisfied customer costs more than a book that he had sent to him and a satisfied customer is worth more than hundred books. If my brain serves me right then Amazon offered 30 days full refund return without a question asked before online retailers were legally obliged in Germany to offer 14 days. Order a flat screen tv for the soccer world championship and return it afterwards at no cost but full refund? Only with Amazon. Those were the days…
And this is the problem. Because even customers that are big enough to not to care about the minimum fee might care about the way customers are treated. Because at the end they happen to be a customer as well. As mentioned earlier in this thread, (larger) enterprises are often willing to pay a premium for services, but they tend to be averse to frequent changes that require adaptations on their part.
And Storj has shown once again a bad pattern of announcing something and giving initially questionable reasons, added bad timing and partially reversing course in response to public backlash. This is a step-by-step instruction how to destroy confidence and trust in the company and how it is run.
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Please note that the community member who posted that statement is not a Storj employee. So please do not suggest Storj would ever make such a comparison. Diversity and Inclusion are an important part of Storj company culture.
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I wonder, maybe that’s a venue for additional trade. A website where SNOs and small-scale Storj users would pair up, SNOs would set their wallet address to the user’s Storj account, and the user would pay SNO in fiat by data posted on the cost basis webpage. All without the crypto fees while benefitting from L2 bonuses and token payments. Some sort of an escrow service to release fiat on transaction and off we go!
I don’t see anything in T&C that would forbid this action 
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IMO operating an escrow service would categorize the company differently from its primary business of cloud storage. I bet SEC would have something to say about it too which obviously T&C won’t cover.
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Small-scale Storj users can buy their tokens from a CEX/DEX like everyone else. Why build something new to avoid a L1 tx fee… but end up paying an escrow fee instead?
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Not as part of Storj. A separate company, maybe operating in some place with lots of sun and oceans 
Why build? To earn the escrow fee, obviously 
All perfectly fine and reasonable. AWS doesn’t have a minimum, I simply pay for what I use, so S3 works fine for me.
Thanks, I’ve been considering it. So it converts the STORJ deposit into the USD equivalent at deposit time, right? Does the prepaid account balance show as USD or as STORJ tokens with a USD equivalent value that adjusts with the market? My apologies if answered elsewhere. Thanks.
I think that if you tried that you’ll find out why Storj is trying to get rid of the small accounts, though in this case it would likely be even worse as you would have to find a node operator and a small user that match pretty exactly (the user will not pay more and the node operator won’t want to lose parts of his earnings).
That makes perfect sense. AWS is probably more efficient at least in terms of the small users or Amazon makes enough from the large users to subsidize the small ones (it looks like S3 even has a free tier). If it is profitable for Amazon, great. It’s not profitable for Storj.
That can work with physical items as most people will be too lazy to do this, even if they were planning to do it initially. But I’m sure that such policies only last as long as not too many people take advantage of them. Once they do, those policies go away and the company will only do what it needs to comply with the law and even then it may look for any legal reason to deny the return.
Yes, that’s right.
Just the regular USD balance, it would be used first to cover your bills. It would be shown as Storj account balance on the Billing page:
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This is also something that should have made clearer, because probably most user believe paying by token means that their prepaid balance is subject to the volatile market and changes frequently. Which might add to the resentments to use the token for payment.
These are all informations that that the users should have received together with the information that there is a 10% discount on top when paying with tokens.
Looking at the token website none of that is getting mentioned there either, so it is quite useless for information purposes on how the token is actually used.
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It’s shown as USD balance:
10% bonus mentioned when you click the copy button for the address or click Add STORJ Tokens
And of course it’s explained in the documentation:
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Yes, maybe a user can find it there when he clicks certain buttons. But this is not the kind of user information I had in mind. When Storj sends out an email announcing to waive the minimum fee if you pay with token, then that would be the right place to add this as well. There are 3 benefits to pay with token: 1. Instant conversion to fiat, so no volatility of value, 2. 10% discount, 3. Waiver of minimum fee. Users who initially did not plan to pay with token need to be made aware of these benefits. This might prevent some from leaving if the know all the details.
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They also submitted a support requests and we answered with this information, so many decided to do not leave.
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This confirms what I was thinking. But why waiting for users to write support tickets (which again comes with costs for Storj)? Did you write these information in the email you have sent out to the users? Will users find this information on Storj social channels? Why is this information not on the token website? At least I cannot see it on any of these places.
Is there a concise strategy especially given the recent uproar on the minimum fee to inform all users about how payment with the token works and what benefits they have?
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