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The new owners of VPNSecure have canceled the lifetime deals of all eligible customers, citing a lack of disclosure from the service's previous owners.
Per an April 28 email to customers posted on Reddit, the new owners acquired the "technology, domain, and customer database - but not the liabilities" in 2023, which included thousands of Lifetime Deals (LTDs) purchased through platforms like StackSocial, Ars Technica reports.
"We discovered this only months later," the email says. LTDs were deactivated on April 28 as they "provided no sustaining income to help us improve and maintain the service."
VPNSecure's support team sent the message after receiving backlash for deactivating accounts that had been dormant for over six months. As compensation, the platform is offering affected customers exclusive deals until May 31: a 3-year plan for $55, a 1-year plan for $19, and a monthly plan for $1.87.
StackSocial lists a now-expired VPNSecure lifetime subscription for $40, though the fine print notes that "lifetime" actually means 20 years.
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In a lengthier follow-up email sent to customers on May 11, the VPN service offered more details on how things went down, and even attached a PDF copy of the sale listing.
"We did our due diligence - including reviewing the past 6-12 months of financials. But nowhere in the listing, profit and loss statements, or communication was there any mention of Lifetime Deals," the email reads, adding that "we kept those accounts running for 2 extra years, entirely at our own cost - even though we never received a single cent from those subscriptions."
So, if the new owners were right all along, why didn't they sue the previous owners? Well, "a corporate lawsuit would've cost more than the entire purchase price of the business," they say.
The email further states that after what transpired with the deal, they could have walked away from the business, but chose to "take the hit, face the backlash, and try to rebuild the right way."
In the future, VPNSecure will stay away from lifetime deals. "We never offered them, and we never will," the email adds.