[echoangle]

Well one complaint is that the OP was told he would be able to get photos for $5 when they actually weren’t any there (which photobucket knew before obviously). That actually seems deceptive enough that I would try to get my money back.

[mbo]

Yes that's exactly why I mentioned that in the first line of my comment. I quote directly:

> (I do agree that it's bad that there were no images preserved and that component of the post is justifiable)

[echoangle]

So how is it a win-win then? OP only lost?

The rest of your comment kind of assumed that OP paid for the images and then got them.

[mbo]

It is a win-win for Photobucket users who have their images (which OP is NOT a cohort of) preserved long term and the startup who snapped up Photobucket's data and liabilities. It is fair to say that OP experienced a win-loss in this specific situation.

I did not assume that OP got the images. That's why I explicitly called it out. In my first sentence. And again in my second last sentence. Jesus.

[xp84]

Imagine you were building this reactivation flow. How likely would you have thought it to be that someone keeps the password to a completely unused account for 10-20 years, then suddenly misremembers it as an actually-used account and goes to reactivate it? This has probably happened on Photobucket maybe 5 times total. I don't even remember the names of any sites I signed up for and never used in 2006, let alone have interest in logging into them decades later. They could have added a check to make it clear the account is empty up front, but I can see how the person designing it thought it might be incredibly rare (and they were right).

[Dylan16807]

If it was that old you likely had a password you used for a bunch of things, and also you can reset the password.

The case of not having images is really obvious.