The World According to Mitch

I can’t believe it has been two years since I signed up for my password vault, but there it was in my mailbox… the reminder that it is time to renew my ‘premium’ service with my password vault service.  I did it gladly, giving over my credit card information.

Why premium, you ask?  Well, for one, I appreciate the ability to use my Yubikey to authenticate.  Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is extremely important in this day and age, especially when it comes to password safety.  As I wrote in this article, it took me a very long time to start trusting password management tools, and I did not want to trust my passwords to a simple… well, password.

With that said, there is something psychological to my decision as well.  I know it is wrong, but there is something in my mind that makes me distrust – or at least, not completely trust – any company that is giving me a service completely for free.  Maybe I am wrong, but I feel that if it is free, I have no right to complain.  Paying that yearly fee – even though it is only $1 per month – makes me feel that the company is accountable to me, and that if something goes wrong, I can pick up the phone and complain.

Am I right about this? I do know that when I had a problem with my Microsoft Account a few months ago (See article), it took me 107 days to get the problem resolved.  In fact, it took me the better part of a month to find anyone at Microsoft who would even take me seriously.  And really, what could I do?  Their reputation may be damaged in some small way for those people who read the article, but I cannot sue them.  I can yell and scream and curse and jump up and down, but because it is a free service, I can’t do anything else.

I don’t think I have had a single problem with my password vault, other than, for some reason, it thinks all of my computers are called Windows Chrome.  Other than that, all is good.  So I’ll keep using it, and for the extremely nominal fee, I will, for the next year, once more feel the false sense of security that, should something go wrong, I have the right to complain.

…and if you didn’t pay, you might not!