That school of thought is very much like the oversubscribed phone lines of yore, which made the phone companies highly intolerant of long modem sessions.
(Clarification: I'm specifically addressing the idea that there can be no "abusive" use of a lifetime offer. Obviously the TextDrive customers are not in this category.)
If I buy a lifetime, fly anytime ticket, and use it all the time, you don't get to call that abuse. If I use the maximum physical quantity of something, for which I have purchased an unlimited supply, that is not abuse. If I am in breach of contract, then I am in breach of contract, but that's not abuse. Abuse implies that you don;t like what I'm doing but I'm not in breach of contract.
Calling something abuse generally means that I've found a use of the service that you didn't forecast for and despite being contractually acceptable, it means you aren't getting the advantage you thought you would from the contract. Expecting me to not use the service to my full advantage is naive at best.
It goes both ways!
That is exactly what contracts are meant to do, and have always been meant to do. And in order to use them successfully, they don't need to be "absurdly lengthy" or anything. The boilerplate you're referring to generally has nothing to do with "abuse" or "being reasonable", and most of it doesn't even need to be there, because if you'd leave it out, it'd be implied.
What you do have to do, however, is stick to the unique terms that you did write in your contract. And if you cannot, don't put them there, or don't offer the contract.
Simple as that. If you offer people unlimited phonecalls, you should be prepared for them to be on the phone 24/7. If you're not, you really shouldn't be offering them unlimited phonecalls, instead maybe offer them 20,000 minutes per month (that's about half of 24/7).
And if "twenty thousand minutes per month" doesn't sound as snazzy as "unlimited minutes", that's too bad because the reality of the matter is that you apparently cannot afford to actually offer "unlimited minutes".
The article I read said they were annoyed that some of these guys would actually use the tickets to, you know, fly places, all the time. As if they had unlimited access.
Did they really expect to sell a $400k item so somebody and for the buyer to fly three times a year?
Sounds like he was not actually using the ticket to, you know, fly places.
Are we really saying that the handful of wealthy people who bought unlimited tickets are to blame for AA's problems, and not the fact that AA appears to have been bad math?
That's an awful lot of strangers to make transatlantic flights with at 200 bucks a pop, and it would take quite a long time to recoup the multi-hundred-thousand dollar investment in the companion ticket. Hardly seems worth the time for somebody who can afford half a million for a couple of lifetime passes.
When bond broker Willard May of Round Rock, Texas, was forced into retirement after a run-in with federal securities regulators in the early 1990s, he turned to his trusty AAirpass to generate income. Using his companion ticket, he began shuttling a Dallas couple back and forth to Europe for $2,000 a month.
"For years, that was all the flying I did," said May, 81. "It's how I got the bills paid."
If you read the Times article you'll see some pass holders sell tickets, book the same route on different flights (in case they get delayed in traffic) and book two seats in order to have more space. It's not just a case of flying too much.