Maybe I'm some kind of capitalist pig, because I can't find much to be mad about here. To summarize:

1. Customer took the initiative to check out a long-dormant free photo hosting account

2. Found that it required payment with a message implying strongly that the count of photos in the account was >0

3. Customer didn't like the idea of a subscription of any kind, but eventually figured out that you can just download your crap and cancel

4. Customer found that the account was apparently unused and empty

5. Customer cared a lot about his $5 but apparently only after 2 days had past since this incident

Of all this, only #2 is annoying -- it would be best if they didn't use the call-to-action implying you have photos on the account when the count of photos is zero. I can see though how that wasn't built -- the question asked in a meeting about this upsell feature would have been, 'who are all these people who have Photobucket accounts with zero photos, who come back after a decade to log back into them?'

Most sites from the 2005 or 1999 eras of VC money funded "Free" services simply shut down and deleted everything, many without much warning. For the 99% of people who are logging into an old photobucket account in 2026, sure, nobody needs to actually start a recurring subscription, but if you expect that they should store your stuff for 20 years and should never ask for a cent is the same attitude I had as a teen Napster user. Clearly the amount of value the customer is getting is "greater than zero" so about $0.25 a year for long-term archiving of photos is just fine.