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Since the case has not been brought up to court, a lawyer should be able to help you waiver the debt or even a part of it. Important is that you have made proper attempts to contact LeaseWeb and can provide evidence of your attempts, this will increase your chance in leniency. The case in still in your favour, but don't wait and don't ignore it, this will only put you in a disadvantage.
Where have you been to court exactly? The Netherlands has a complex system and does not have the 8% max. rate. The interest rates are based on the debt, which means both the debt and the interest rate will increase over time. The court fees charged upfront are fixed indeed, however those are just the fees to start the lawsuit. There are other additional costs you have to take into account, like the costs of service of the initiating document on the defendant, court reporters' fees, etc.
Please understand that CONSUMER protection laws do not apply to BUSINESS contracts. And hosting will always be a business matter.
bro i live in Germany we have something called rights insurance, i'm guessing you have the same sort of companies, just sign a contract with such company and your first legal issue would be free and will cost you like 20 to 30 euro a month. no need to get a personal lawyer.
Good luck
(a) do we know that OP acted as a company?
(b) consumer protection laws usually reflect (to a degree) the general guiding principles
yes, because he mentioned it multiple times.
My point was a factual question. Did he (as a person) or did a registered company have a contract with LW?
He also bragged about being a fine businessman for 22 years.
22 years in and still doesn't know that you don't break a contract by just walking away from it.
^ The cause and the solution.
If it had been done correctly, OP wouldn't be here today, to seek LowEndConsultation from LowEndLawyers.
You're a funny guy who blames us for just walking away from the contract.
We had a contract with leaseweb where we paid in advance 12 months in exchange for receiving a service that met the contract terms.
Leaseweb fails to deliver a service that met the terms of the contract even though we had given them many attempts and much of our time.
We announce in harsh words that we give up and wish to end all cooperation, that they are free to terminate services that we have prepaid for another 11 months ahead.
I would say that when leaseweb did not choose to contact us here in a last attempt to solve the problems, it was rather they who just walked away from the contract.
That they then a year later demand that we pay in advance for another 12 months, because we used the wrong communication method to terminate the contract, can not be considered anything other than fraud.
On Monday, after a few phone calls with Leaseweb, I got in touch with a person I had the opportunity to go through the case with. After a few hours and with the help of the ticket id, he found the e-mail / ticket that we sent in August 2019 where we described how dissatisfied we were and that we wish to cancel / disconnect the server immediately, just 1-month into the prepaid 12-month contract.
I have been in contact with him every day since then but they are still investigating the case and if they can accept that we do not have to pay for a new 12-month period that covers 2020/2021
He could see that no one at their customer service had responded to the email/ticket, and the ticket had been closed.
My opinion is that if we canceled / terminated the service incorrectly, customer support should have informed us of this, instead of ignoring the email.
In our case, we wrote it as an e-mail reply in an existing and active ticket.
The correct way is to create a new ticket, and manually write in a textbox that you want to cancel the server.
I'll be back..
Said it.
https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/3196843/#Comment_3196843
I do not see that your answer is relevant when you say that we can't cancel by threaten not to pay. The 12-month contract was prepaid for 12-months.
Yes, we did threaten to not pay three bogus invoices which was created by their new administration/billing when they split our account into three separate accounts, one for each server. And I said they could use our prepayment to pay for these bogus invoices that did not specify which equipment they referred to, as in, "we do not want any money back, do what you want with them".
If they were invalid invoices, no threats were needed, but instead just simple communications between you as a customer and your provider to clarify their existence and then work towards an agreement for the next course of action(s).
Now with regards to cancellations, the standard process for that would always be via tickets. Even if you mailed, any provider will tell you to submit a ticket for the cancellation request so it can be processed accordingly.
I believe if the above was done right, you wouldn’t have to deal with this, like this, today.
My 2 cents.
Yes, that's how it usually works. A company usually solves this relatively quickly, most within a few minutes. Leaseweb had two weeks, where I constantly reminded them to give an answer about these invoices. Both via phone calls and tickets, while the invoice-due date came closer. I got enough when I called around a whole day and got in contact with a person who would put this as his highest priority and come back, only to wait three days and when I call back I hear from the switchboard that he no longer works for Leaseweb.
There was a reason I formulated myself as I did. I was damn pissed off about having to constantly start over in the same super simple case. And this only one of all the problems that arose during their migration of us to their new user/portal/account/business system
The servers would have been suspended if they were not paid before due-date, and their customer support was not mandated to extend due dates. That's when we decided to switch provider, and I wrote that e-mail as a reponse in a ticket.
In practice: are you in west EU? No? Ignore. Barely every anything happens.
Are you outside EU? Ignore, absolutely nothing will ever happen.
Hetzner hunted my ex down in Austria for debt, as did another DE ISP, but i never seen it further east happen.
On the other hand, we wanted the server to be disconnected, as in terminated, immediately. According to Leaseweb's terms, this must be done via e-mail or regular mail.
If you want the cancel the server, and use it for the rest of the contract period, this must be done via a ticket in the portal.
I'm in EU. Just ignoring is not my style... it can affect creditworthiness.
I love the Leaseweb legal dapartment now has requested me to document all issues we had with them prior to our e-mail cancellation/termination in August 2019 in order to evaluate if they can cancel the August 2020 renewal.
As the case is, Leaseweb still demands € 600 for a new 12-month period, stating that we cancelled/terminated it incorrectly.
Now I found a ticket from September 2018 where I specifically asked a question regarding cancellation. And we got the answer that you can cancel via e-mail.
September 28 2018, 19:01:29
Hi,
How many days in advance before the next contract period (1 month) do we have to cancel a server if we wish to cancel it?
Regards
--- --
Replied byLEASEWEB
October 1 2018, 11:20:07
Dear Mr. -----,
Thank you for your email.
In order to request the cancellation of the server that has 1 month contract, the cancellation via email should be submitted at least 5 days prior the new start date of the contract or 1 hour before it, if the ticket is submitted via your customer portal.
Damn, I'm about to explode out of anger.
And no, please do not provoke me and say I should have read the terms again to see if the cancellation terms had changed.
FWIW if you are consumer a cancellation via E-Mail might have even been valid even though they offer and prefer cancellation to be done via their Control Panel.
A cancellation, in German law, and as such probably applying to LeaseWeb Germany, is a "Einseite empfangsbedürftige Willenserklärung". The Service Provider does not have to send a confirmation of the cancellation request to the customer for the cancellation to be effective. The customer is not entitled to receive such confirmation either. However, the cancellation will be considered valid when it enters the "Empfangsbereich" of the Service Provider. This means there must be proof the cancellation request reached the provider. A support ticket (even if not replied to in the end) would be what I'd consider a valid proof of the cancellation request having reached the provider. As such one could argue your cancellation was valid from day 1 (not sure how it is for non-consumers, but your cancellation request certainly would have reached them from what I can tell). Read more at: https://www.dahag.de/c/ratgeber/arbeitsrecht/kuendigung/kuendigungsbestaetigung
It talks about "Arbeitsrecht" but this applies to "Kündigungen" in general afaik. More sources that confirm this:
https://www.lichtenberg-rechtsanwalt.de/Urteile/Legenden/Bestaetigung.html
https://www.t-online.de/region/id_86679980/olg-kuendigung-der-versicherung-ohne-bestaetigung-wirksam.html
This is no legal consultation. Consult a lawyer.
Ultimately, it comes down to your exact wording when requesting to cancel. If I remember correctly not only did you not use their suggested way to cancel, but also did not outright state your
Bending over backwards to blame the consumer is the way of things here
Is this actually from Leaseweb's legal department? the document makes it look like they sold the debt, in which case you should know a few things.
If you do something business-like, you are a business. It doesnt matter if you are a registered company etc.
Offering services commercially (eg repeatedly) is ALWAYS a business, no matter who does it.
Eg if you buy a microwave oven as a private person, but then use it to prepare and sell hot meals, consumer protection doesnt apply anymore if it breaks.
An update.
Leaseweb cancels the renewal retroactively, as goodwill, due to their understanding of the confusion that may have arisen due to the response I received from their customer service 2018 regarding email cancellations.
The entire amount is credited.
A story without a winner, but which at least is now over.
I want to say thank you to everyone who participated in this thread.
Oh so actually talking to the company you had a dispute with works
Yeah. It only took about 30 hours of my time. Piece of cake.
tl;tr
Bottom line: Cancel your contracts properly.
Bottom line: Deank is a provocateur.
The man literally has title "Troll" at his name. It is his job to annoy, provocate, drain your energy and waste your time. Welcome to LET, have a nice day.
Yeah, OP's lack of perception annoys me.
lol
TIL - Stick to providers on LET