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Piohost have cropped my year long contract to 4 months and are charging way more.
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Drama ended too early
Still waiting for a full refund for my account that was deleted entirely.
With you there. My VPS was deleted before Piohost was sold (the ill fated Wigan location). After it was sold support told me they wouldn't recreate as it wasn't sustainable and offered a refund via the old owner. That was several weeks ago and zip.....
I have got refunded for my old contract that was paid to ex-owners of Piohost. Moving forward, my services will be billed under the new revised pricing.
Message me your email so I can look into this.
I think any host would be fine that is not selling a lifetime VPS or VPS for $10/year with 1 GB ram.
People sell, not thinking about future.
Sorry to hear this. It is the previous owner's responsibility to refund Wigan orders as the hardware failed prior to the sale and this was mutually agreed, however they have not processed many refunds.
Advice would be to contact the payment vendor and see if you can get the money back through them.
Thanks for the update. Glad to hear this was resolved to your satisfaction.
IMHO this is the only and somewhat acceptable reaction that has been possible here. stepping out into the storm and taking all that's thrown at you. but brace yourself there's always an @bsdguy incoming ^^
also it would be very much appreciated if you could clarify who is behind the @PioHost account, answering in the name of whatever brand/business.
otherwise one could easily assume you put in the first statements from @PioHost here by yourself on purpose only to be able to step in as @Ishaq afterwards taking responsibility and make you look better... nobody like sockpuppets ;-)
That's literally what was done.
Whoever it is behind that piohost account, it's either not ishaq - in which case he still lets "anyone" speak - or it is him, in which case he is playing games.
Uhum. And shortly after piohost is speaking again ... and we are once more left in confusion and inconvenience.
It might be worthwhile for ishaq to write a "we are honest, serious, and sorry, and I apologize" script. Seems like it might be needed.
So much for credibility.
NaCL
I've never done a charge back or dispute in my life and I don't intend to start for all of 6 pounds. Thanks for the update. I'll write it off for now. Best of luck.
You did not change prices. Changing prices means charging X for a while, then later charging Y for new instances of the same thing. Not retroactively charging the new amount for existing instances that you already sold and are in customer hands. Like if I sell cookies for $1 a bag, and you buy a bunch, and then I raise the price to $2 a bag, you have to pay the new price if you want to buy more cookies. But the ones you bought at $1 are still yours, since that transaction is over.
What you're doing is more like my coming to your house and taking back 2/3 of the cookies that I sold you for $1, and telling you to pay again if you still want them. And how many more times am I entitled to do that with the same bags of cookies?
You sold a 1 year service plan (or rather, you acquired a provider that had those plans on its books). The plans were already paid for like the $1 bags of cookies, and now you're trying to take them back from the customers. I can agree that it's not fraud since you're brazen enough to do it in broad daylight with everyone watching. It's more like theft or extortion.
Can you imagine what would happen to you if you sold lima bean contracts for future delivery on a commodity exchange, then decided not to deliver because you no longer liked the price that you accepted earlier? This is the same picture.
How many of those plans were there? If not too many, just eat the cost til they expire. If a lot, you either really did commit fraud, or you did a piss-poor job of due diligence before buying the provider. That's on you, not the customers.
@raindog308 I think closing the piohost account would go a long way towards settling some confusion.
After all, the 'assets' (customers) only were sold to AIG, they have no business using the piohost account linked with the old 'company' when they did not buy the 'company' and are making the old 'company' responsible for making refunds on pre-asset transfer payments.
Honestly to me, it sounds like this is just a brown trousered reversal because not being allowed to sell on LET made less financial sense than closing people's accounts a few months early.
The number of chances people get around here is comical.
I'm pretty sure you're required to refund the entire sum under those circumstances, including for 'used time', given that you're breaching contract and thereby reverting the sale.
You can't actually do that in (most of?) EU, even with such a clause in the contract. They're unenforceable clauses in B2C contracts. I doubt this is any different in the UK.
Was this arranged contractually, ie. were the liabilities transferred to the previous owner on personal title before the sale occurred?
If not, these are company liabilities, and then the corporate entity will be liable for carrying out the refunds to said affected customers. It's then the company's problem to recoup that money from the previous owner, not the customer's.
@joepie91 the company didn't change hands so I don't think that would apply here. If the sale was made by Piohost Ltd the new owners likely don't have any liability in regards to the past issues like Wigan meltdown mentioned. I say likely as I haven't seen the contract of sale, and naturally I'm not a lawyer.
As per Companies House, UK registry of companies, Piohost director is still Aaron, which implies the company as a legal entity did not change hands.
Then isn't that inconsistent with the claim of a sale and brands changing and whatnot? Somewhere along the line, this still doesn't add up.
Either:
Something's gotta give here. What are the exact terms of this arrangement, and how does that affect customers? This still doesn't seem to have been cleared up, apologies notwithstanding.
@joepie91 I don't have definitive answers for that. Judging by the recent Zare meltdown (servers disconnected by Zare on request of the previous owner despite service moved to Access Internet Ltd, ref. https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/117916/piohost-breached/p5), what Bopie and Jordan said I'd assume the legal entity did not change hands, hardware and Customers did and liabilities didn't change hands. But as I said, I'm no lawyer nor did I see the contract.
I guess it could be argued that.
AIG bought the contracts from PIO (fact, even if only pseudo contracts).
If they bought the contracts i.e. the customers and are fulfilling the contracts they then become responsible for the liabilities of those contracts, i.e. the liability for individual contracts bought by default pass to the company reaping the benefits from them.
Obviously, if an agreement was made pre-sale that pio would honor any refunds and it seems that it was and is not in dispute by the former owner of the contracts/assets or the current ones then pio remains responsible for any refunds.
Then however if AIG significantly changed the terms of the contract creating an imbalance it would be 100% understandable and probably even in law that pio no longer carry the burden of the liability for those contracts/assets ... again that is unless they knew of AIG's intent to do this when making an agreement to refund.
it's a tricky one, if the servers (assets) they bought had been somehow dangerously put together and they went up in flames causing damage to the DC's property or staff then I am sure pio would not be the ones held responsible and I appreciate that this is completely different in a lot of ways, I am just highlighting that at some point, responsibility/liability also shifts to the new owner if they are the ones also getting the benefit.
Would be very interesting to see it play out in the small claims court.
Good Game, Well Played !
@virmach sell 2GB of RAM for $10 / year
as standard?
That's the Ishaq I know in LET. it will take some time for that, but hope you gain your popularity and respect here.
As I wrote, it can be done only if there is a term in a contract that let the business to do that (not a generic term but something like ''we reserve the right to rise prices to an exist contract because of xxx reasons''). But I agree, even then, it could be questionable and fightable in a court.
Anyway, what is written in Piohost TOS is in no way that: They just reserve the right to rise prices to advertised products, that means, the clients cannot sue them because they wanted to buy a plan that is advertised (in their site or LET etc.) as xx$ and when they got to payment gate they saw it was more expensive. But in this case, they can simple not buy that, you "sign" a contract when you pay for a service.
No. This is the nature of a contract. When it is signed, it is signed. Only with the agreement of both parties, a contract and it terms can change. Refund pro rata, cancellation, change the terms, it cannot be done legally if both parties do not agree. This is something basic in the law in EU, US and, I suppose, in most western countries that has certain agreements via WTO.
it does not matter. I mean, yes, it could bring us some more drama, but after all, at this point is irrelevant. That does not erase what happened till now, but whatever are the internal problems in piohost and between Ishaq and his partners, they are not obligated to inform us or make their internal conflicts public. Of course, it is up to you if you will trust them in the future or not.
IMO, there is no any company change. AIG bought the company and continued to operate it as the same brand. Anyway, you have right here, when you buy a contract, this contract is stll valid as is. The company cannot change unilaterally the terms of those contracts, even if they are not the same company.
^^ This. if we can't see any written contract of the acquisition, all we can is speculate. But the fact is one: no one can change the terms of a contract, even if it is sold. Anyway, seem that Ishaq will honer those terms until the end of the contract period. So, no harm here.
Where is this plan located?
Just in case you didn't notice: the game goes on. piohost writes in parallel or has taken over again? And, of course, as befits a comedy, it is unknown who's behind piohost (currently, and benevolently assuming it's just 1 person, which may or may not be true).
The dishonesty continues! but lets celebrate Ishaq posting.
it does not matter. I mean, yes, it could bring us some more drama, but after all, at this point is irrelevant. That does not erase what happened till now, but whatever are the internal problems in piohost and between Ishaq and his partners, they are not obligated to inform us or make their internal conflicts public. Of course, it is up to you if you will trust them in the future or not.
Legally? Sure, they have no obligation to publish all the details about their internal conflicts. However:
Business generally requires mutual trust, that's no different for B2C business relationships. If they refuse to come clean about WTF is going on and how it'll impact their customers, then that's not a great way to build a loyal customerbase.
First they were done with LET, then suddenly a meaningless apology. The whole apology has just one fact in it: they will honour the contracts as they should. The rest is meaningless gibberish. Ishaq is talking like someone else made those decisions while his soul was possessed by the satan.
Nobody makes a decision like "being done with LET" without the consent of the managing director. LET is a good market for a company this size. So either Ishaq made the decision to be done with LET, or that Jordan guy gone rogue and out of his ass decided to be done with LET, in which case he should have been fired or warned, and the public informed about that.
Jordan has been reprimanded. As for the @piohost account it is manned by the PioHost manager.
I don't see how we're being dishonest / un-transparent. Clients were notified after sale and will be notified of price changes if applicable.