[patio11]

At the very least, the founders should care enough about their users to make sure the service runs for a reasonable amount of time.

A business using a B2B service who wishes to have the service around N months from now has an option to achieve this. It is called "a contract." You can call up your local sales team and ask for prices. It is absolutely a thing you can buy.

If you do not get contracts which guarantee that a vendor will provide you with the services you require, anticipate that business will frequently work out in a fairly rough fashion for you.

[tjmc]

I'm less familiar with US law than that of commonwealth countries, but in Australia/UK/NZ at least a contract is automatically formed when there's been an offer, acceptance and payment for a service in advance. ie. If you've paid for a year's service and that service goes away after a month you're entitled to compensation for the rest.

[patio11]

If you pre-pay $29 * 11 for a SaaS app in the US, and the service closes a month later, you've got a claim against the merchant for ~$290. You almost certainly don't have a breach of contract remedy, because they are not failing to perform under your contractual relationship, and your contractual relationship almost certainly limits damages to the amount you've paid.

You can also probably get your bank to do a chargeback, and they might give you all $319, because it isn't worth their time to do math.

[sheetjs]

I think you miss the thrust of the original argument. No one, especially not the author of the blog, argued that there was a legal requirement. The point here is that the founders arguably got to their position because people entrusted them with services. To defend the blatant disregard for users is to attack the very thing that enabled the exit in the first place.