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The end is nigh.
Join Nigh sect and be free.
50-75% transaction fees are not unheard of on SMS, paymentwall, etc. Not PP though.
Probably not, but at the same time, I don't think that this should be the main issue here.
I checked the provider's ToS, and they have a paragraph (in Dutch) that says:
(From https://skb-enterprise.com/assets/legal/algemene-voorwaarden-skb-enterprise-bv.pdf )
This paragraph says that the provider is allowed to deduct transaction and administrative costs when making refunds.
We can argue all day and night about whether 2.50€ as the lowest transaction + administrative cost is appropriate or not, but the fact is that the OP committed fraud in using a fake name and was already on FraudRecord (one absolutely clear case), so my sympathies are with the provider.
If a person attempts to commit fraud, no one has ever promised that their attempt to commit fraud will be risk-free for them.
Care to elaborate what this customer did
And this host will cancel a few out of every dozen customers and keep pulling the same stunt again and again
Playing devils advocate,
I completely understand when chinese users signsup using "Fake name". Government of china is a pain in the ass. Similar reason for using VPN (GFW blocks half the world).
Ali pay transactions can't be charged backed. Thus offers minimal risk to the providers.
As long as user providers a semi decent address (most of us has no way of properly verifying billing addresses, even with ID check, as half of those are fake) and explains them self, politely over support ticket,
This is how I would have processed it, once again, the idea is being human and doing what is right for the customers and for my business.
If nothing else seems suspicious, I would activate the service. At the first sign of obvious and visible abuse, service would have been either suspended and or terminated (I strongly enforce AUP). In that event, 0 refund will be offered.
If things feels off, doesn't pass additional verifications, fails every single aspect of fraud detection and BS detection, I will refund minus the processing fees that I won't get back.
This is what I would do, being a human, without putting on a Corporate hat and in my honest opinion, would be the right thing to do.
However, with that said, OP seems to have a fuck you attitude. That kind of attitude kinda pisses everyone off and thus, I can easily see where the provider can respond with the same.
The threat "I will do this, I will call you mama, complain to your dad" type of response from get go will go no where, because end of the day, terms and polices are there and agreed upon, before completing any transaction. If one doesn't agree with the terms, they are free to signup with a different provider. But once agreed upon, it is a legal binding contract.
So apparently in your world this is perfectly acceptable:
If the user actually did something abusive with the VPS like port scanning or ddos, then it may make sense, but if not, it's 100% fraud and company can be sued and customer has an easy case. Unfortunately obviously no one will sue for $2.50.
Just imagine a lawyer trying to explain to the judge, "well, well, he was on our fraud list, see! and uhh yeah so that gives us the right to deny service and pocket the money."
(If avoiding shady illegal activities isn't sufficient motivation, the few cents in transaction fees still isn't worth the negative publicity and likely chargeback.)
That's fraud, you can't steal someone's money just because something "feels off".
There is a reason that actually legitimate companies like Google Cloud, AWS, DigitalOcean, etc. will reject your payment if things look fishy instead of stealing your money. Because the latter would be illegal fraud.
This is how it works in US/Canada anyway, if your company is based in Nigeria then I don't know.
If you are running a company then you should put your corporate hat on and worry about your legal liability.
Naturally, you can decide what you're ready to accept, and yes, of course, there are practical difficulties in performing address checks, etc. anyway.
I understand the need to use a VPN better than I understand the need to give fake names, etc. The Chinese government has a long reach, but they don't have access to (e.g.) the personal details of your customers, so Chinese customers shouldn't need to give fake names, etc.
Perhaps I would feel differently if I were in China -- I don't know -- but it seems odd to me to settle for a double standard according to which "western" customers are expected to give accurate personal details, whereas "eastern" customers are allowed some slack in this respect (because, well, their governments). It's not unreasonable to try to apply a universal standard of accuracy (but perhaps I'm naive).
So there is 3 level of fraud verification,
Checking against another database
A) Automated
C) Manual verification
A and B to certain extent can easily be bypassed (happens even with brick and mortar location with fake id and credit card and what not).
C) Manual verification is when we catch 85% of the fraudulent transaction. Judging customer based on their name and address alone would actually count as discrimination and we can't simply deny customer just because they have certain name or from certain country.
My refund policy clearly mentions the fees associated and it is just as legal as the payment vendor keeping the fees. I am extremely positive that they actually have a proper legal team, who went over every single aspect of the laws before they applied those policies.
I am legally under no obligation to refund fees, that I am not keeping to begin with. So no, not stealing.
I have, by canceling and terminating services, once abuse is detected. In usa, you are innocent till proven guilty.
I will do my due diligence by manually and automatically verifying as much as possible. After that, it is not my liability, as long as I am taking actions, when asked my the legal authorities and not knowing fully participating in illegal operation, which I have clearly mentioned, that I am not.
Oh please, the payment provider is not denying you service, comparing the two to justify your fraudulent scam operation isn't going to help convince a judge. I hope the authorities shut down your scam business.
You are stealing the client's money. The fees are a separate expense charged by your payment processor.
If the payment processor charges you $10 to sign-up a merchant account, and then denies you service and closes your account but pockets your $10, that would be fraud.
Ofcourse and thus, we ask them to provide correct details, that matches whatever they have with payment gateways. However, besides that, I can't tell much different between, John Chang and Yun Chang vs Jonny Smith and Jordan Smith.
I hope you see where I am going with this. Definitely not double standard. For example, in OP's case, I would ask for proper name/address before processing the order and might ask for other form of verification if needed. It is much easier to verify on this side of world vs other.
How you go from the statement of mine that you cite to your conclusion that I would find your example perfectly acceptable is a mystery to me. No, I wouldn't find your example acceptable, but nor does it follow from what I said.
You could try to argue that the provider's fee of 2.50€ is unlawful in this situation, but then you would need to take a closer look at Dutch/EU business laws.
I wasn't trying to defend the provider's fee of 2.50€ per se, but I don't see why/how a person should be able to go from one low-cost provider to another and give a fake name and be on FraudRecord and think that all is fine and well.
I'm not defending the client. They are probably committing fraud too, and equally shitty. But in these examples the provider is also committing fraud, albeit a different type of fraud.
I'll reiterate: if the provider has evidence that the client used the service in an abusive way, even if it's something like high CPU usage, as long as that's stated in the terms of service, they can likely terminate without refund. But a terms of service clause that says "we will pocket your money (even if it's just the transaction fees charged by the payment processor) if you are listed on our private fraud database" is obviously not going to keep you from losing the case.
It's not a grey area that requires a lawyer to figure out. It's quite simple: logically, if you go to mcdonald's and the owner denies you service because you did not shower, just because you are smelly doesn't mean it's legal or ethical for them to take your money (even if it's just the transaction fee charged by mcdonald's credit card processor).
When in doubt, sue.
Admittedly, if your definition of legality is strictly based on whether you actually get sued and lose a case, then this isn't illegal because no one is going to sue over a $0.30 transaction fee.
Ahh. Ok. Thanks ?
Non refundable application fees exists..... So does non refundable fees, that exist in almost every single industry, from food to service to travel. .
Anyways, you may be right from your perspective and local laws and I might be right from mine.
I will not argue with an well respected provider and a community member just for the sake of arguments. You have stated your point, I have stated mine and thus, we should end this conversation/disagreements here.
Fair enough.
Edit: I disagree about this but I don't mean what I said above (sorry), from LET it sounds like overall your business and service are quite good/reasonable.
All good sir. It is always morning at some part of the world
My perspective: signed up with blatantly false details = get what they deserve.
I sign up with semi-masked details (why the hell should an internet services provider know my full address?) but there are no lies there, just partial info. Note that my PayPal payment details also match the partial address.
How do you know my fake name? Please read it in detail. Whoever is defrauding anyone has given evidence for what I said.
According to your logic, when you have a gun in my hand, I can define that you killed someone, didn't you?
"It's not ok when someone else does it, but it's ok when I do it."
Got it.
Where's the timestamps? This argument comes down to whether you got provisioned the server and shut down some hours later (provider is right) for abuse, or if you never got the server provisioned in the first place, in which case it's slam dunk in your favour. Showing when you received payment confirmation, when provisioned server details were emailed and when suspension happened. If you can show you were suspended without ever getting the provisioned server details, you deserve a refund.
Also, you have reading comprehension issue, as they never said you'd get a refund of 2.49, they explained (without using appropriate language) that the refund fee is more than the refund amount. You should have been arguing that the fee doesn't apply.
Jesus Christ, "King James Bible".
Why? I'm from Western Canada with a very large Chinese population. I have yet to meet a Chinese person who uses their Chinese name in day to day use. And for names, they horribly match the person. I had a friend named "Oliver" , who you'd never say was an Oliver. His sister was a hot piece of ass, her name was Enid, a grandmother name from the 1930's. NCIX had a public relations hot chick named Esther. A lot of canadian Chinese names seem "old" to me.
The Chinese guy I buy chips from uses "Jackey", that's most certainly not his birth name. They try and appear as North Americans to fit in better.
It's rare that an English name doesn't fit the English person's character, but it's opposite rare when English name fits Chinese person's character, in my opinion.
Canadian East Indians usually just go by first two syllables (since they have like 4 names with 5 syllables each) rather than take on a new name, in my experience with friends and colleagues.
"Lowest Host Empire Technology LLC" what the actual fak :O
Look in the mirror. :-\ I didn't say that I used false information.
Should we all adopt a fictitious name, so as not to be racially stereotyped? "Hello, I'm John Smith". /s
(Admittedly, I noticed the Chinese characters and thought, "Here we go again".)
The Lowest End possible.
I will sell you a laptop for $1000. After taken in your money, you will hold your laptop for 5 minutes and I will "hey you have a funny face, I won't sell you" and took the laptop away. Even though you didn't even scratch the laptop, just hold it for 5 minutes, you won't get your money back. Sound fair to you? Because you touched the laptop, and I don't wanna sell anymore, then can I keep your money?
If you don't want to provide the service, and I did nothing wrong, then I deserve the right for full refund. Simple as that. And all is because "YOU" don't want the business, not "ME" abusive, why do "MY" money suffer the fee and not "YOUR"?
If your partial address can be figured out as the full address, then what you're doing is pointless and you're just being a dick for intentionally being difficult. If it can't, you are providing false information. You're not much different and shouldn't have a "holier than thou" attitude.
And it's not just to prevent racial stereo typing, I generally don't always understand how to pronounce names starting with X's and shit, so I imagine it's easier for English people to say.
I just want to point out that the OP's company name is on all the invoices. If he consistently uses that name and company, he's doing the same as every one else and less sketchy than others here.
I do have a dick; thanks for asking but you're not getting it - reserved for females.
Are the bailiffs gonna come a knockin' if I don't pay a $5 hosting fee? If not, then a full address is pointless and a partial address at least affords some anonymity, if/when a provider goes bust and sells on contact details.
Clarification for the comprehension challenged: I said "I", as in a private residential address, as opposed to a public company address.
Irrelevant unless you intend to 'phone someone.
Bye,
Xavier.