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Provider taking PayPal payment for cancelled service?
I had a VPS which I no longer needed so I cancelled it, however the provider still took the payment.
I opened a ticket but they said "Oh well when you signed up you agreed to this. You were supposed to cancel the payment on PayPal yourself"
So the money is there as credit with the host, but is this normal? I've cancelled plenty of services before and I've never been charged or had to cancel the payment on PayPal
Comments
If you signed up to a paypal subscription, a lot of hosts and resellers don't take responsibility for cancelling the subscription for you in case you are cancelling the service with them. I personally think it is scummy when hosts don't refund in cases like your's because I have worked with a lot of resellers, who actually do refund erroneous payments sent through paypal or CC subscriptions.
In your case, I would suggest calling paypal and discussing your options before opening a dispute. If you lose the dispute, you will most likely lose the credit as well.
If you set up a PayPal subscription rather than a one-off payment, then it is normal. It pushes the money to them periodically (e.g. yearly) regardless of whether there is an invoice or not. You need to cancel such subscriptions yourself with PayPal.
See - here I will disagree - they can, but they are not obligate too. Especially if this is like 5$ payment that processing this manually will take 30 minutes of admin time and other 4$ in PayPal fees. It's "user" fault (more like paypal, but that thing is a different beast/story and we can't do anything about them except stop using) and they shouldn't put extra work/costs on the provider. This probably depends on how much money it was - 5$ - totally not worth it. 200$ - we can do it, but with a small administrative fee.
User being happy is totally different story - will user be back? Maybe - "I have credits, it was good, let's run a month extra" or he will be "FUCKING PROVIDER STEALING MY MONEY!111!1111!111!11" and they will be never back.
@hostnoob
If provider is decent and has some deals then maybe you can buy some service and do Service Transfer - some work needed, but maybe you can get most of your money back ;')
need to add something here
does it says in any offer (ads outside their web) or (home)page of their (web/billing when you pay) or in term of use page any mention about paypal & it's cancelation ?
some will try to suggest you use your remaining credit with no available way to get it back.
first, try to ask them to send you back the remaining if possible, then try @sunnyg suggestion above.
Who setup the automatic subscription in PayPal? Was it done manually by @hostnoob, the OP? Was it done by the provider without authorization?
I ordered a one-year magazine subscription and paid with PayPal. I expected a one-year subscription. The seller somehow created a PayPal subscription for automatic renewal of the magazine in my PayPal account. I discovered it later while deleting another subscription that I had created myself, so I was able to delete it before harm was done.
If the OP's hosting provider was the one who created the PayPal subscription, then the hosting provider should refund the money immediately, no matter how little money is involved or the business cost to do it.
In my opinion, the provider should refund the money anyway as a goodwill gesture. Keeping the customer's money for a service that had been cancelled is never a good look for any provider. It is not ethical, and the "optics" (public perception) is not good. Even if there is a business cost to do it, I would consider it a "cost of doing business." I imagine that such events are relatively rare.
If I were the OP, I would name and shame the provider here, now. That might provide a little incentive to maintain customer goodwill.
If I learned that a provider had refused to refund an erroneous payment, I would not want to use that provider myself.
you can still use the credits in the future.
Yeah... no. You did it, yourself, but because both screens (single payment & subscriptions) are almost the same you just clicked Next, next, next, next. Providers have no power to create automatic subscription in your PayPal, be serious.
I am serious. I did not erroneously authorize it during purchase. PayPal customer service confirmed that part for me. Of course I asked them if I could have made a mistake during purchase. That was my first question to them.
Yeah the provider was fine. It was only a small amount and it's not like I lost the money so I'll probably just use it at some point.
I was just curious as I've never had it happen before, I figured it would be something done by their billing software
They mentioned in the ticket that when you sign up it does mention it. It was a long time again so I don't really remember
Nah it was only like $5 and I'll probably just the credit at some point so I don't really care, I was just curious since I don't recall this ever happening before.
I thought it worked more like Direct Debits, where the provider has the ability to take payments, but once the service is cancelled they don't or they can cancel it themselves (automatically)
Oh, no.
Having PayPal subscriptions is more of you scheduling/automating payments with a company - not for them to take money from you.
You should review your PayPal Subscriptions once in a while to see what else you might have subscribed to that you've probably forgotten about.
It depends on the law in the provider's country and the terms you have agreed on, but in general, providers can't legally keep money that has been transferred by mistake.
1) Your mistake -> You should have cancelled PayPal subscription. Host is not resposible.
2) Refund -> Depends on the host policy. They can refund or give you credit.
3) What you can do now??
3.1 - Keep the credit for other / future services.
3.2 - Request host for refund.
3.3 - Open a PayPal dispute.
Yeah they're not, but they can be, if they're using WHMCS.
No they didn't. You pushed wrong button
if a customer makes a mistake he gets mostly punished by the host... if the host does.. oh well... it happens....sad but true
Said twice now in this thread. I respectfully disagree. My initial assumption was that it was my mistake, too. I thought that the seller could have disguised it or mislabeled it or found another way to trick me. That does not match what I learned upon investigation. PayPal customer service confirmed that the merchant did it. I asked PayPal if I could have made a mistake and clicked the wrong button, and they said no, it was the merchant. I do not know how they could tell, but PayPal customer support was clear and unambiguous about that. PayPal may have closed down the option since then, but I know nothing about that.
I stand by my statements but will not repeat myself again. Right or wrong, it is a distraction anyway. Let us agree to disagree and move on.
There's not even an API that allows a provider to create one on your behalf, from a single authorization. I think their support had an off day. The tech literally isn't there to do that. If they said the provider created a subscription from a one time auth, they're confessing to being compromised. Or I suppose confessing to a bug in their system.
I do remember once that I had a sub made with zero recollection of anything that mentioned subscription, I just convinced myself I didn't see what I should have though.
This.
As a provider we have absolutely zero control over customer's finances, none, zero nada.
Paypal makes it almost impossible to find the subscription from their website. Having to go through manually like 50k different subscriptions, new and old? currently active and cancelled? Uhm no thanks.
At best we have a single option: Cancel it manually from WHMCS interface, that's only when we actually have the subscription ID and it is still retained by WHMCS. Many don't. Don't ask me how WHMCS connects the payments without subscription ID, it just does it. Many times we don't even have that.
Our stance is always simple; Customers' own finances are their own finances, not ours, not their neighbours and not our neighbour's dogs. Just theirs, no one elses.
On the flipside, imagine how terribly insecure it would be if anyone could just make paypal subscription on your behalf to your account? Paypal would not exist if they gave 3rd parties unfettered access to create subscriptions nilly willy however they like.
This. So many times this.
Subscription is misleading name, it should state "Scheduled Payment", it's exactly the same.
Uhm maybe, at best we've seen that WHMCS may have erased the subscription ID so that we cannot ourselves even cancel it manually.
Some sort of bug, maybe they have patched this by now. It being WHMCS, i would not guarantee that tho.
Yeap there is no way to do that, as it would compromise all their users certainly and defeat the purpose of Paypal. Paypal would go bankrupt very fast.
That mistakenly making subscriptions is very common. Everyone sometimes just goes through all that stuff through way too fast. We all do that stuff.
Let me look at my notes. I promise nothing, but will see what I can dig up on that interaction with PayPal. Based on the input here, I am willing to concede, but first I want to see what I can find.
OP being on LET since 2014. Comes here complaining about a Paypal subscription he set up himself. Go figure...
>
I refuse to create PayPal Subscriptions or PayPal Billing Agreements. I want control of when I send funds to someone.
Recently, I went to make a payment to someone (nobody from here) and the process seemed almost normal, but not quite. When I got the email from PayPal (that mostly nobody ever reads) it indicated that I had agreed to a subscription.
What am I saying? That it is possible to sign up for a subscription no matter how careful you are not to.
I searched but came up empty. My only option would be to call PayPal customer service to see if they have a record of the call. I am not going to do that. I reserve the right to "necro" this post if I stumble on anything relevant in the future.
-> I concede that I made a mistake somehow without noticing, and that mistake somehow created the payment subscription in PayPal.
I talked about this more than a year ago when some providers in the payment settings do not allow you to make a one-time payment in order to provoke the set up auto payment so that the provider himself can charge the fee even if the client forgot or did not manage to cancel the service in time.
Always set a one-time payment
The money, no, the fees, yes. Handling such issues could be costly and for a couple of Eur or so the refund makes no sense and demanding that the provider allocates someone to deal with it is kind of a stretch.
Of course, for bigger amounts, everything is okay, refund is done, fees taken.
If it's gonna cost you administratively $15 or $30 or $45 to process the refund, go ahead and pass it on to the customer and let them decide whether they want to proceed.
Forfeiting money that isn't yours or ignoring the customer is going to reflect differently reputation-wise or legally. Some mistaken payments are in the hundreds or more.
scammerhost.com
Many data centers require subscriptions. That's because they didn't need a one-time customer. So sometimes you have no choice but to sign up for a subscription. And if it's PayPal - you need to manually cancel such a subscription from your PayPal account when you cancel service under host. Otherwise, the host is not responsible.
As for the refund. This is not a rare case when hosters do not provide refunds at all. You can check for yourself - many even reputable companies have such a policy. Therefore, when ordering a service from a new hoster, the client must carefully study all the conditions.
@hostnoob
The issue of PayPal subscriptions has been raised many times here over the years, and the only thing that is surprising is that you appear to have missed the message, despite having been here for a number of years
The best advice is to check your PayPal account from time to time and to cancel any subscriptions that you may have inadvertently agreed to. (Most of us have inadvertently agreed to PayPal subscriptions from time to time)
Let the client decide what to do with their money. Pawning your finances is not the best idea, since naturally the other side will always try to take them at any opportunity under the pretext that he himself left them to the seller.