All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
The Nightmare of using online.net
Hosterlabs
Member
Hi,
I want to tell my experience while using the hosting provider online.net.
So starting off. I go to online.net for their cheap prices (bad idea) around the 25th of the month. I wanted to setup a solusvm master for my hosting company. Small catch, if you buy from the 20th onwards you are FORCED to pay 1 month extra. You need to notify them the 20th of each month that you will be cancelling your service.
Anyways, I decided to cancel my service around the 29th due to poor performance. This is not the first time I have issues with their performance, in my opinion their servers are terrible. I had created some dedicated servers back in 2017. I had used Proxmox with them and the connections were bad. Servers on a 4-cpu dedicated server running windows were laggy and slow. Same thing happened here with my master node for solusvm. Very laggy and slow. So I decided to cancel and go for OVH. Not before I make a payment by mistake and order an additional failover. I go quickly to them (2-4 minutes at most) and notify them of the issue. They tell me they can not give any refunds that they will check with the supervisor. [FYI That is illegal for an European company as with consumer rights you have the ability to ask for a refund within 14 days of purchasing a product and this is covered by European law] Now I am stuck paying again an extra fee for another month. I have enough with this and decide not to do so.
I call my credit card company and they tell me the only way to stop the charges is to completely deactivate my credit card. I do so. Suddenly, with my credit card deactivated and a request from me so they stop charging me further, they manage to still charge me. How? Absolutely no clue. At this point I make them aware of the European regulations they are breaking. They answer that they will only accept the law if I live in Europe. I do not, I live in Mexico. Nevertheless, Mexico has the exact same consumer protection. They don't care, they said they would only refund if I had an European address. The struggle continues, I ask them to cancel all my charges and delete my credit card information. They obviously refuse. They keep charging me. After I asked them repeatedly to stop charging me and cancel al charges they did not. They did not want to delete my credit card info neither my personal information [Which they should do by Law as I have the right to do so].
So, I was stuck paying two months worth of services, an IP for two months that I did not use. The story did not stop there, I call the credit card company again. I complain that I have deactivated my credit card and still they could charge me. They kindly put me with security specialists, etc... At this point I flag all the charges they made and place a dispute on all of them. I am done with them. Now the credit card company stops all charges from this business to my account. 1 Month later, I get a notification from them [After two months of explicitly telling them to cancel all my services and having no more dedicated servers] They had attempted to charge me for something, not substantial, around 5€. I have no clue what. But I was so happy when I saw that they could not do it because my credit card company had protected me finally! They threatened to use some payment collection agency for those 5€...
In conclusion, I disputed all charges with the credit card company which I got back. Be very careful with online.net. They do have quick support responses but it is a terrible customer experience. I had experienced something similar in 2017, I do not know why on earth I came back to them. They are cheap, but they will steal from you if you are not careful enough. Use PayPal and cancel subscriptions in any case.
I mean, don't trust my word, check the overwhelmingly negative reviews at host advice. Just horrible. NEVER NEVER NEVER use online.net, for your own good.
A similar thing happened to me at ovh where a dedicated server order was duplicated. No issue at all, they refunded me the price into my account. Would never have happened at online.net
Once you put in your credit card, you are done.
Comments
Can you please, for the love of god, make the big block of text more readable? (make paragraphs and separate them)
My bad, I just write with a lot of emotion because it has been an incredibly frustrating experience. I called my credit card company around 4 times or more and finally I am getting refunds! (After 3 months)
Who's gonna read that shit?
Make it bloody readable for WSS' sake.
Waiting for short version.
That online sucks and kept charging him for over three months.
Couldnt sleep, it was a good read at 3:30AM.
I'm just sitting here thinking what type of trash credit card OP has that somehow manages to "deactivate" the card and continue to charge them. While Online.net was kinda meh in this situation, I'd say his card company screwed him more.
I mean, I used an amex card and called before they made any charge. They told me to deactivate the card from my app which I did. 2 Days later I get a notification of a charge while mi card was still deactivated so...It was a complicated issue.
Always use credit card while paying.
Credit card money is paid by bank (first, from their account) so they've more liability for the amount paid. They'll certainly block the card and even chargeback (as its their money) once you tell them you haven't authorized the transaction. Banks are quick in reversing charges on CC than on debit card/pre-paid/ATM cards. Don't waste time on PayPal.
I'm not aware of any restriction of the term 'customer' based on residency or citizenship.
"A majority of current EU directives defines the consumer as a natural person who, in transactions covered by the directive, is acting for purposes which are outside his trade, business or profession. " - in our EU member country it's exactly the same, I'd expect that whatever country online.com is incorporated in, its also very similar. I'd bet they bluffed you thinking you won't have access to the usual legal remedies locals have.
This sounds like a GDPR violation (the law here is less clear on whether it applies only to persons residing in the EU) - you could try to report them, most countries have rather simple online forms (that don't ask your address) to do so.
They are giving you run-around because even though EU Consumer Rights Directive applies to all purchases from EU, the online complaint process only accepts submissions from EU residents, outsiders who made purchase in EU and want to dispute it, need to find their own representation. So Online.net abuses these transactions, fully knowing they are in the wrong.
I had service with Online.net few years ago, they discontinued it and replaced with another much more expensive service with different specs and started charging my credit card on file. When I pointed out these charges were not authorized because I did not order the new service and correct course of action would be to let the EOL service expire, Online.net argued that I have been notified and did not opt-out of the replacement. However, any contract requires active consent, so my CC issuer slapped them with several charge-backs, one for each charge.
Wrong. This is billing information, they HAVE to keep it.
I reserve the chance that I was too tired when I said this.
GDPR doesn't matter to people outside the EU as far it's ability to "protect"
Exactly my point, if you canceled it prior to online charging you, while they are still in the wrong... Amex screwed you or you didn't do it correctly. As if a card is blocked or canceled. It will decline charges.
Same thing happens if I literally go into my capital one app and "lock" my card.
hate to break it for you, but that's hearsay and not as simple as that. first of all that 14 day 'protection period' apllies to end/private customers.
at that point you're already outside that scope. and even if that would not be enough, there are more strings attached like the protection might be forfeited the moment you start using the service and so on...
don't get me wrong, I am really no fan of online.net. but seems like you have been a client before and especially knew about the cancellation period and all that shit. still you cancelled on a 29th and on top ordered a failover IP after that. fair enough...
but then feeling remorse and start whining about them charging the next month? come one. man up.
it's sad to see that even companies obviously still enter contracts thinking the obligations coming with that suddenly do not count because something is not to their liking anymore.
you either claim to be a business, then start acting like one. or be a private person and whine for protection. what should it be? I am already sorry for your clients either way...
btw: have you read the terms of your credit card? you do know that depending on the type of cc there are things like authorisation requests which happen immediately, while the charge might come a day ot two later?
does not matter if you 'deactive' it after a successful authorisation request. because that already is an agreement about the later charge up to a certain amount.
so of course that might arrive on your card later even if it is deactivated only then.
same misunderstanding of the concept. this might work only with certain cards, like prepaid ones, where there is no authorisation within credit limit rather then only direct charge.
I was giving OP the benefit of the doubt that it didn't authorize at this point. But you're right, if its already authorized, technically its already passed the stage of no return.
i hope you realize that transactions don’t appear instantly
edit: there’s usually a 1-3 day delay before transactions appear on the app with my AMEX card. your ‘total available credit’ decreases instantly but you will not see the charge.
No idea why are you arguing this card thing. Online still has to refund in 14 days. End of story.
I was buying as an end/private customer.
This is exactly what happened unfortunately.
I do agree I have a certain degree of blame. I am also responsible for paying a part and I was willing to do so. What bothered me was the attitude from the staff of not wanting to remove neither my data or card even two months afterwards. Also that feeling that they don't care about me as a customer, they just want my credit card. That is what really bothered me. I agreed with them on the failover charge, I said well it's fine just keep it. It was my mistake. But just having that attitude from their support is something unfair.
And even if I entered a contract, my guess, as a consumer and end user in this case, I do have consumer rights. It is not that they can do whatever they want or overstep on consumer rights here in Mexico or in Europe. Rights are above contracts. I might be wrong here, but that is my opinion.
no you didn't. you said yourself you intended to use it for your company, it's simply bullshit wanting to claim consumer protection rights on a product you use for your business. you really should grow up if you want to be taken serious as a company/provider/business whatsoever.
no they don't. end of story.
Wanna bet? But it's clear you're not too smart in this to begin with.
If the invoice is into his own name the 14 day no questions asked refund is in order. No matter what you think or no matter how the product will be used after.
This forum really needs a block function.
I have not been able to exercise 14-day cooling off period/right of withdrawal on B2B in multiple cases.
But it's not B2B...that's the thing.
OP already said he took it to his own name. Not to his businesses name.
@serv_ee said: Online still has to refund in 14 days. End of story.
I agree with that. At the moment I did not sign any contract or accept any terms of service as a business. Even business to business transactions have rights similar to consumer rights. It is not about growing up or not, being mature or serious or not. It is about the abuse of a company. I don't intend to accept a company abusing me or my rights either as a consumer or business. This is about what is fair or not.
On B2B transactions, depending on the contract, you can "give up" some of those rights.
The end is nigh.
B2B you give up not some but a lot of the rights unless you got an actual written contract stating every nuance.
I had a terrible experience with purchasing a server using credit cards. You basically give them all your info and take note there is a possibility they will keep those card info forever.
That is why I use paypal easy to manage I can block/unblock autopayments anytime less hassle.
"[FYI That is illegal for an European company as with consumer rights you have the ability to ask for a refund within 14 days of purchasing a product”
Is a product and service considered the same? When dealing with things with start/end, one might think of it as a subscription to a service, and different than physical product. Just curious, not making an argument about anything.
Nope, not necessarily. Differs per country though. In The Netherlands services are excluded, in Germany they are usually included from this right. No idea what’s the deal in France, but I’m sure someone here knows.
how about you state and quote the legal paragraphs then? seems you claim to be knowledgable in how european law is working, so go ahead and let us know, where this right to a general 14 day refund is based on - I am obiously not too smart in this.