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Ryan at Oplink has no idea what a fraudster is
Some backgrounds: Working at a top tier IT company and often buy servers for massive “homelab” experiment. I have 2 EPYC gen4 hosted at Equinix purely for hobby.
Saw some good reviews with Oplink.net but turns out to be a clown show. It looks like a one man business and the sales (actually the owner himself) is extremely terrible.
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I ordered a server via their website in the late night because it is the last availability for a good pricing on 8TB SSD, and I need some storage place for testing file transfer protocol as well as adding a node to reduce latency in the US, next morning this “Ryan” told me the order was cancelled because:
- Your Paypal payment name or email does not match the name you signed up with.
- Your paypal account is not verified.
- You did not put a last name in your client profile. This is not acceptable
The situation is:
- There is not even a single line of mention during the registration that I need to do that
- Something wrong with PayPal, eventually corrected by the support (let’s be fair: not Ryan’s fault!)
- Their system has no enforcement of how many characters to be allowed as the minimum, so I just entered “M”. It is the first letter of my last name.
So I placed another order after Paypal corrected the account status, Ryan now became irritated and told me:
There is also a huge red flag that you order came in under “XXX M” but your name is “YYY ZZZ”? (name redacted)
We have closed this account so no further orders can be placed on it. If you going to pay with create an account with so that your email can be re-verified by our system.>
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The email is actually an old email that I haven’t used for quite a while. I have a lot of random emails and heavily use iCloud private addresses. Now it becomes interesting: what is the difference between I change my email in PayPal vs in Oplink’s system? I don’t see any.
So I changed my email at Paypal to align with the registration at Oplink, corrected my name and waited for his reply. Eventually he said:
We will need to see a photo ID as well since your name changed
At this moment it is just hilarious, based on their terms (https://oplink.net/privacy/) there is no way my ID is needed because of a name change in their system, so I told him it is not going to happen, I’m even ok with KYC at a reputable provider, but not when I pay via PayPal, if PayPal account status is now verified, then you need to trust a customer. If I pay you via credit card (without PayPal), I can also provide.
What is a bit unfortunate, is that I only use debit card. I don’t even have a credit card, but I have tons of cash.
Then the guy became silent, and I even offered him an option: I can even fly to your office and present my ID to you face to face (I really don’t care about the travel expense).
Then my account is closed. After then, the availability was dropped to 0, it looks like Ryan just does not wanna new customer anymore.
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Few hours later I placed two orders at different providers, with a total of 700 dollars a month. I couldn’t be happier staying away from Oplink, it is a hassle even in the sales, why bothering further and who can promise it will be fine when the server is in production?
Appreciate if you finish reading my review here, good luck finding providers, and stay away with hassles.
Comments
This is normally and i am pretty sure 99% of providers will do this due to fraud and or chargebacks.
Each order form around the globe and to legit companies its stated: Name and Lastname and not first character of your name and lastname!
Due to significatnt fraud orders, i believe he did it right.
Only issue is see here, since you offered this way and in my opinion he should accept it. But every company has the right to make their own decision to which customer accept and which not.
They're a good company, if he/they didnt wanted you as a customer due to all mentioned above, doesnt mean they are bad! Plenty of companies around just move on.
You are correct. I don’t try to be like “please, please accept me as your customer”.
I just moved on, and now fine with everything. Still wish to share my experience online and thanks for the reading!
Feels a bit weird for them to reject verified PayPal accounts. I can see why they'd want to verify credit cards, but PayPal?
show us a selfie with id and a ton of cash so we can make sure you're not a fraudster, don't blur out the address, it might interest someone
I mean, if you just entered your full and real details, you would have had your server
You choosed not to, and so now you don’t
Not sure how trying to make then look bad is going to help
I was in a similar situation with Green Cloud. I just said ”This isn’t worth it, may I please just have a refund?” or something along those lines, and all good
No need to shame them, they have their standards and they do whatever works for them, if you can’t or won’t follow along, don’t
GreenCloud is not the best example though. I've filled everything, paid with PayPal with same billing address (never had any issue with any provider) and they still needed "Extra verification" (AKA: ID)
To OP: You're getting a server, and they ask to fill out some details. I feel that name & last name are bare minimums.
When ordering a service from a company, always use legitimate billing information unless you use a company who explicitly allows not using full, legitimate information.
We are 100% authentic.
In this case, I think it was actually Ryan that stayed away from the hassle.
Nobody is spending $7k a month on personal home usage. Flexing your employers money and compute is meaningless
Hosting is a high risk business with LOTS of fraud. That's why doing what you could get away with elsewhere will not fly here.
You also need to consider providers advertising here have low or inexistent margins and they simply can not afford fraud, they prefer to lose legit customers.
Oh, and details about your employer are irrelevant and we don't care as long as you are not naming/representing them here.
Saved.
Waiting to hear @oplink version of the story
The OP is an idiot.
Businesses (particularly small) work hard to combat fraud and in many cases MUST take measures in cases where they suspect fraud to validate the customer information is true, valid and accurate (KYC regs).
You deliberately obfuscated your last name, you had a PayPal account which aroused suspicsion by your own admission; and your payment method seemed off off-kilter so warranted further enquiry.
You've then taken to a public forum to castigate business who's operating entirely responsibly with the ultra-ironic subject of "has no idea what a fraudster is".
Oh how very thoughtful of you.
OP at top tier IT company has no idea what small businesses have to go through when it comes to fraud.
Oh boi, never try BuyVM/Frantech then.
Clearly OP has never "met" Karen
🤣🤣
Yup, they wanted a bank statement or electricity bill from me
A "bank statement" isn't really a thing here, we have "Registerutdrag" and the bank can take up to 3 months to provide it
As for electricity bills, I live in a "housing cooperative" where everyone in the cooperative have the same energy contract and they bill the cooperative directly (to leverage better energy pricing), so I really can't provide that either
And so I figured I'd spend like a few hundred bucks worth of my time to get my 15 a year VPS lol
Can I use this for ID verifications?
ID has been reverse engineered.
This is something I've been wondering for a while so I will just take the opportunity and ask here since it's kind of related.
Why do people not use their correct information when registering? OK, I get it if it's a really shady site or you are buying pirated software or drugs or whatever, but in cases like these. I assume OP does not plan to use the servers for something illegal, because then he would most likely not be here openly complaining about it and drawing attention to himself.
OP claims he is willing to spend $700 a month with this company so I assume he thinks it's a legit business, but he is still not willing to give them his last name. Why?
Also, you must be a special kind of stupid to register with false information and then pay $700 a month for something. If the company just says "screw you" and takes your money, what are you going to do? Sue them under your false name?
Someone please explain the logic here because it eludes me.
If you don’t trust me with your personal data as your web hosting service provider, why should Itrust you and provide you with access?
I don’t want to be on the other side of the stick and take on legal repercussions for not doing my due dilligence when onboarding you.
Kudos to the provider
We do not accept orders if you change your identity (name/email) or pay with an unverified paypal account. You must understand this looks very shady from our view.
Server sold out status because someone else purchased the server while you kept having an identity crisis.
I am pretty sure most other LET providers here do the same not accept an unverified paypal payments when order name/email do not match.
Its common sense that you when the order form asks for your First/Last Name you fill that box out fully. You put just a single letter for your last name.
I'm glad you found provider to solve your needs at the end of the day. Maybe future orders for you will be better now that you got your paypal account verified! Glad I could help w/ that.
-Ryan
Maybe report him on fraudrecord, so others don’t have to deal with him
Ps. All this back and forth costs businesses time and money, if he used legitimate details, everything would have worked out perfectly.
Agreed, @AlbaHost . Oplink is a good company, Ryan is a good guy. The OP's sequence of events and changing his contact info raised a red flag for Ryan and he decided to not do business with @cdn99. That happens, life goes on, and @cdn99 moved on to someone else. Ryan lost a potential customer, and they were obviously not a good fit for each other.
Again, @cdn99, you guys are not meant to work together, it's a common event that happens in business when two people just don't connect in the right way, you both just move on in life and the world will keep on spinning through space.
But that's a ludicrous statement that they're a "clown show." Just because you switched your name and your contact information and you didn't initially have a verified PayPal account, and he didn't like that sequence of events, HE is a clown show? Not the brightest logic, there, @cdn99, with all due respect. Many good hosting providers would have done the same. Again, it's unfortunate, because maybe you are a great customer and he missed out on having you as a customer, but YOUR info was incorrect and unverified at the beginning, so he chose to cancel the order. When presented with an option to verify your identity in a way he found to be acceptable, you declined, so that's the end of it.
There are plenty of other providers out there as @AlbaHost mentioned, just move on, and I'm sure you'll get all the servers you need. Cheers!
EDIT: clarity!
TIL my hair and eyes are both brown.
Fraudster is a demanding client means bad. A best client is one who, after payment, shuts up and doesn't demand anything.
Just move on instead of ordering again and again, batter to find other provider.