[chrisan]

Whats the marketing term for "practically unlimited for normal usage patterns"? Because I think that's what they are after here in marketing.

The majority of the population will use these "unlimited" plans/products in a way that they never realize the limit. However there is always the outlier person that sees "unlimited" and is basically using the product at the max 24/7

Its much easier to say to the avg joe you have unlimited X instead of. Choose from the following 27 plans depending on how much a,b,c,x,y,z you need or even a you only pay per x of what you use! The avg person isn't going to even know those factors.

I think "Unlimited(asterisk)" marketing is here to stay for those reasons and if you are the minority power user then its up to you to read the asterisk

[noxToken]

Sometimes it seems that HN and HN-like users like to argue for the sake of arguing. Everyone knows what unlimited means in the dictionary definition and in the marketing definition. Google was doing users a solid with the quasi-unlimited storage, and people abused it. Now people here are arguing that if it's unlimited, then why does it matter what is stored there? Well it's not unlimited, we all know that it's not unlimited, and circumventing normal usage isn't going to work in the end for everyone. I can think of two examples where users didn't have to circumvent normal usage patterns but are severely limited by company policy.

The first is a lot of mobile US carriers. They have unlimited plans, but after n amount of data, your throughput is throttled. You don't even have to do something crazy like use your data plan as an ISP for you and your neighbors in your apartment. It's as plain as day when you sign up.

The other is Olive Garden's unlimited pasta offering. Some friends and I took this up as a way to kill time before a movie. We needed food, but we had two hours. Why not stuff our face til coma? Turns out that the first plate is a full portion. Every other portion thereafter is about ⅓ - ½ the size of the original (estimating), and judging by how long it took to get the 2nd and 3rd orders of pasta out, there's a soft time limit before they'll bring out your additional orders of pasta.

I understand why people want to be so skeptical about unlimited offerings, but are you really doing yourself any favors by intentionally spitting in the face of an offered service?

[TeMPOraL]

> Sometimes it seems that HN and HN-like users like to argue for the sake of arguing.

Sometimes. But sometimes, they actually disagree with the official/majority/whatever opinion, and this is this case. I disagree that the way "unlimited" is used in marketing is honest, or desirable, or should be allowed.

> Everyone knows what unlimited means in the dictionary definition and in the marketing definition.

Not everyone. That's literally the point of using this kind of language - some people will not know that marketers have their own dictionary that's different from the one normally used, and the way most of those people will use the service will not reveal the difference, so it's one of the cheapest lies the marketers can tell to pull in extra customers. It's a lie nonetheless.

> The first is a lot of mobile US carriers. They have unlimited plans, but after n amount of data, your throughput is throttled. You don't even have to do something crazy like use your data plan as an ISP for you and your neighbors in your apartment. It's as plain as day when you sign up.

It is, or it isn't. Where I came from, there are plans that offer you e.g. X GB of Internet, and then you're throttled. It's plain as day, says right so on the offer. Then there are other plans, that say "Unlimited", where what they really mean is ~5X GB of Internet and then you're throttled. It's dishonest, especially because those offers are created to make them look more competitive against real ISPs who do offer actual, unlimited Internet, usually by cable.

> I understand why people want to be so skeptical about unlimited offerings, but are you really doing yourself any favors by intentionally spitting in the face of an offered service?

It's called "voting with your wallet". Doesn't really work at scale, but still, it sends some market signal.

[anoncake]

That doesn't excuse false advertising. If a company wants to offer "enough foo for 99.9% of customers", they can say that. If a company offers unlimited foo, it ought to be able to provide unlimited foo (which it can't, of course, because it doesn't have unlimited money. Their problem.)

On a related note, I'd love to work for a company that offers unlimited vacation that's located in a country with decent protection against unfair dismissal. I wonder if I could get compensated for the (infinity-365) days of vacation a year I can't take?