Are you sure this isn't a phishing attempt to get a CC#?

The links look pretty legit to me...
I'm just happy I never signed up with them.

@corthepirate: The links look legit but often phishing HTML emails are crafted so the link's HREF goes to a phishing site even if it looks like a legitimate link.

I had an account with them because I got free prints from them once. I never used it again and got a email like this one. Mine's probably deleted by now since I got the email a few months ago.

The email is from Snapfish and the links don't offer any surprises.

If this were an email to me and I didn't have an account with them...I would have trashed it without opening it. I don't open email from places or people I don't know. I would never have known I was being threatened.

@corthepirate: You have to hover over the text to see where the link leads. The text could say the correct link but you need to check where the HTML tag leads you...

I received a similar email from Kodak Gallery some time back, but they never followed through on the threat to delete my pictures.

I store my pictures on a hard drive that I own. I only have to worry about crackers pwning my computer and holding it for ransom. I guess crackers and Snapfish are cut from the same cloth.

Oh yeah I have my own website to share pics with friends if I become so possessed.

Just another reason why Smugmug rocks.

I got exactly the same letter a month ago. I didn't buy a thing. My photos are still there.

They did that to me a long time ago...I wonder if they ever deleted the account.

hmmm, i've haven't rec'd this email (yet).
I don't believe I have uploaded photos, but I, too, have an account to see others. and have for the last year or so.

@nrwfos: Right, but the OP *does* have an account with Snapfish, just no uploaded photos for them to delete. It's effectively an empty threat, but a customer-unfriendly threat, nonetheless.

They aren't a photo/file storage company, they are in the business of selling prints. So I can appreciate their policy in that sense. If nobody is buying the photos you've stored, why should they keep storing them?

However if I were running Snapfish, I would market the company as a print seller AND photo storage company, especially since hard drive space is cheap.

Bugmenot is very good. I use it all the time!
hehe

The email is legit. I've gotten several of these starting back in November, and if I go to their site now and login, I get the same warning. Earlier ones claimed my entire account would be deleted sometime in December, but it obviously never was, since that gives them no reason to try to get $$ out of me.

I am another one of those who has an account only on there because I wanted to view some photos a relative had uploaded there... never uploaded anything myself.

Well that sure makes me want to do business with them...

Every time I get an email from a friend to view their photos from a site where you have to log in to view, I tell them to use flickr, and then I'll look at them.

I have no love for snapfish. I hate it because every one of my friends with children take a ton of snaps, put them up on the site, and then I have to stupid register to view them.

I love flickr so much I just signed up for another TWO years of pro. Although I do not get my pictures developed there. I find it kind of expensive.

I get them developed at yorkphoto.com which Consumer Reports gave high ratings to YEARS ago. I don't know how they are now but I'm a creature of habit.

@Thorny: While I don't have any specific evidence about Snapfish, I have seen a lot of these companies market themselves exclusively as a picture sharing service. That is, to get you to sign up. Then it's all about sales. You get their stupid ads now with cameras, and the "free" bloatware picture viewers on new PCs. And it's all about "upload and share your pictures with your friends." So while I don't disagree with you, I question whether they are marketing themselves as such 100% of the time.

I had a ton of pictures stored at snapfish (probably around 2000) and I had not used the site in a while because I switched from analog to digital cameras. Well they sent me a couple of these notices and my email program felt they were a little spammy so I didn't see them until it was too late. I begged and pleaded with India to restore my account so I could access my images and they refused. I haven't been to their website since.

@Fujikopez: No, it isn't phishing, it's in the terms and conditions you agree to when you sign up for an account.

I use Snapfish for printing photos, not for sharing them. They're still voted and rated the best for that, and honestly it's about the same price and hassle as printing them at home. Every year or so (yes, it's that infrequent) I have to order one, single, 9 cent print.

This practice is their only downside. I've been using them for about five or six years. Only once have I received an email like this.

Snapfish is not a photo sharing site, or at least it shouldn't be viewed as one. They process and print photos. That's very, very different.

Do people actually print photos? We only ever print photos as gifts for our older relatives, with a Canon we bought 3 years ago. We store everything online so I can look at them at work, while traveling, anywhere I want.

My favorite thing about Smugmug is the option to make password-protected galleries. Friends & family don't need to sign up for an account to see the photos; they just need the password.

Wow, that's pretty ridiculous. They could of at least tried to word it a little better. Sounds like they have an IP lawyer handling the PR while watching The Soprano's.

I got a couple such e-mails a few months back, and behold Snapfish DID delete all my pictures a few weeks ago. Fortunately I had moved all my stuff to Flickr in anticipation. I agree with Meiran--Snapfish is a very good site for getting prints, photo books, that kind of stuff. For just sharing your photos digitally, you can do much better.

My pictures on snapfish should have been deleted in November, but I just logged in after reading this and they're still there.

I think people are over-reacting a little bit here honestly. The point is that snapfish isn't like some other sites, it exists to be an online photo printing site. If you're not buying anything, and storing photos online, then you are costing them money.

The guy in this case doesn't even have photos online, so what is he really losing if they deactivate his account and "delete all his photos?" Absolutely nothing.

Just look at it like this. They agreed to hold onto people's photo's online cause they had the impression that they were gonna make money off of them. If they aren't, what's the incentive to keep holding them?

@Thorny: Hard drive space is cheap. Running lots of servers to hold all those photos, not so cheap

3rding Smugmug. Especially since Flickr = Yahoo = (Evil Eavesdroppers for the Government) AT&T.

I got a snapfish email from them today but it was just a notice about a sale. I only have a few photos on there site. I signed up looking for the best quality photos as I am a photographer and I buy a lot of prints for my greeting cards and framed prints.
The free prints are what drew me to snapfish. Although I didn't think there color was very accurate. I use winkflash which is a not only cheaper for the prints but the shipping is a lot less. Shutterfly has great quality but the shipping will kill you.
Glad I chose not to go with snapfish if this is the way they treat there customers.

I have used Snapfish without incident (storing ~4GBs of photos, sharing with people, printing a couple here and there for framing around the house, etc) for 3+ years.

That letter is weirdly out of character IMO.

This happened to me. I've kind of used Snapfish as a storage place for photos from my digital camera, in part because I'm too damn lazy to get them developed and create an album out of them. I'd rather just show people my photos online. Last time I got one of these emails, I just elected to have one made into a postcard and sent it to the friend and her baby whose picture I'd taken. Cost me a little over a dollar with postage. Cheap price to pay for storage space.

@Imaginary_Friend: Seriously? Yahoo and AT&T happen to be partnering in broadband, so Flickr (which has been pretty much left alone after the login merge fiasco) is somehow complicit in wiretapping?

Hewlett-Packard is the devil. It's a shame too, because they do make some really decent products now and then. But their service sucks, their websites have always been awful, diffucult to navigate messes, and they seem more concerned with wringing every penny out of their customers that they can.

E.g., as recently as three or four years ago, I was looking for drivers for an HP scanner that was still not two years old at the time. Well, gee, what I actually found was a mealy-mouthed declaration that "due to storage limitations" they could not make drivers available for "obsolete" equipment, but they'd be happy to sell me the installation CD again.

This sort of behavior on the part of Snapfish, an HP site, is just an extension of that "suck-em-dry" corporate culture.

I've been a snapfish customer for quite a while. I used their film developing because it was inexpensive. I got the "buy stuff or we'll delete your pictures" too. I decided I'd go ahead and order the CD of my images so I'd have copies if anything did happen to my Snapfish account.
After several attempts to place the order, in which I was told I needed to re-upload some of my pictures (the ones I didn't have digital versions of) and customer service telling me it was browser problem (one that lasted more than a month and occurred with IE6, IE7, and Firefox on 3 different computers?) I finally was able to place an order for some of my images. 3 days later I got an e-mail saying I was receiving a credit (but no reason why). 3 days after that I got a message that said my order was canceled (but not a reason why). 10 days after that, the money was refunded to my card. Needless to say, I'm going to try to get my pictures, but I'm done with Snapfish.

Snapfish deleted all my photos...in 2004...and I'm still getting the above email.

Years ago Homestead.com used this same tactic with all of the websites they hosted - Sign up for $29.95/month hosting or we delete your site. Snapfish, Homestead and any other companies that rely on threats to make money will not be seeing any of mine.

@D-Bo:
In what way does this effect why you would or would not do business with them? It's one mistake.

I got the same email awhile back after I didn't make a purchase for well over a year. Thing is, I got the notice 6 months ago and my account and all my uploaded photos are still active. When I login there is a little warning that basically says what the email said. They'll probably kill my account eventually but I could really care less as I don't use the service much.

The best part? This won't cancel your account at all. I got that warning two years ago. My account still works fine when I periodically use it to print digital pictures.

Picasa's online service is nice, because:
a) it's an online backup of my photos in addition to the external drive backup.
b) anyone who wants to buy prints can from any vendor that they support
c) the picasa app crossloads directly to several print vendors.

The only thing I don't like is that they can't send to Adorama. You will get a better picture back from Adorama than just about any other online photo processor.

@spinachdip: Not to my knowledge, but I wouldn't be surprised if they "shared information to improve your user experience". AT&T has already proven that they don't give a rat's ass about privacy and that they have no qualms about breaking the law. They're the last company on earth I'd trust with a stockpile of my personal photos.

I use them to print pics all the time.
The only pics I leave there are the ones I want to print.

If anyone leaves the ONLY copies they have on a site like this, or sites like Flickr, they are really no thinking...
A DVD costs 30 cents, or less. How hard is it to back up the pics on a more stable medium then that?
No passwords to forget, no threats to worry about.

Use these sites ONLY to share pics.

I had a comparable episode with SnapFish a few years ago. They were running a "package promotion" that offered something like 50 prints for one price. I ordered 35 and all was good. Then I started receiving MASSIVE amounts of spam from SnapFish (they had a unique email address that I gave only to SnapFish so I know it was coming from them). I complained bitterly to them and demanded I be removed from their spam list. They did, eventually. A few weeks later I went to use the last 15 prints I had paid for and discovered that SnapFish deleted my credits from their system. It took about an hour on the phone with them (as well as a threat to file a fraud report with my credit card company) to make them put my paid-for credits back.

I will never ever patronize SnapFish ever again.

I also had a bad experience with Snapfish. I ordered prints about 3 weeks before Christmas, and hadn't received them by that date. After sending them 3 emails, I received my photos January 9th, without hearing back from them. No response, no acknowledgement of the delay, nothing. I have SnapFish credits that I will not be using.

I haven't received one of these from them yet, thankfully. However, I signed up with them using a one-off email address that I've only ever given to Snapfish. Recently, I've started getting a whole lot of pharmaceutical spam to that address, so it looks like they're looking at a few ways to get that revenue up.

@Thorny:

Precisely. I see no problem with them saying, "buy something, or we'll need to clear up our hard drive space."

Regardless of how cheap storage is, images can end up being very large.

@Swervo:
Not necessarily. If the email address is something common with a number after it, it'll get hit by spam bots just sending to all the numbers. My murph####@isp.com address gets hit by a ton of these. Fortunately, most spam-bots catch those that are sent to 'blanket numerics' like that.

I had a couple of friends who used Snapfish to share photos. After determining that I had to create an account in order to view the photos, I convinced the friends to take their photos elsewhere and they did. Any company that requires creating an account just to look at someone else's photos isn't to be trusted. Snapfish won't survive much longer.

I'd like to put in my $.02 for Shutterfly.com, while I don't like that they don't allow you to access the original photos, at least their service is INCREDIBLY FAST (actually their corporate offices are a mile from where I live, but still) I usually get my photos the next day if I order them early enough the previous day, and so far I haven't gotten any threats from them.