There is a cost for storage, a price for service

I went to my inbox and what did I see? A message from Kodak. Kewl. "What's new at Kodak?" I thought. Now, I use Flickr for my photo preservation needs, but I have a Kodak account for one reason - I signed up to view other Kodak members' photos. But I still have good feelings associated with the Kodak brand. With that background, let's take a look at what they had to say:

We wanted to make you aware that we have modified our Terms of Service *: To more effectively serve our Gallery members, we have adjusted our photo-storage policy to align with storage usage.

How this affects you. Once you begin storing photos at the Gallery, you must make the following purchases to continue such storage: • Members with photo storage of 2 gigabytes (GB) or less must make annual minimum purchases totaling at least $4.99. • Members with photo storage exceeding 2GB must make annual minimum purchases totaling at least $19.99. Failure to meet this requirement may result in your photos being deleted from the Gallery. You are currently compliant with our new policy, so no immediate action is required on your part. Once you've uploaded photos, please refer to your Storage Status within the My Account page of the Gallery website to see the time frame within which you are required to make your next qualifying purchase to meet our Storage Policy requirements.** We look forward to continuing our relationship with you. The KODAK Gallery

Thank goodness I'm compliant with the new requirement! The paragraph prior to that, about failure, was making me uncomfortable. The wording reminds me of certain contractual language I sometimes see in my dreams. To me, "failure to meet this requirement" is a loaded phrase. I'd argue that the word "failure" as it especially refers to my actions or lack thereof, should never be uttered by a salesperson or a company selling a service. Kodak is selling me their service. I have an account. I can fail to meet their minimum requirements and move on, or could Kodak make me feel good about meeting the "requirement" so I become a customer? Here's a mock up I whipped up while watching Emeril on Planet Green (for the first time!)