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Issue with $60 payment to Inception Hosting, now resolved
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I think that we all agree that Inception Hosting should have better anticipated the (probably relatively rare) scenario where a user's PayPal subscription issued a payment just before they (Inception Hosting) canceled every user's PayPal subscription
So you received $2.30 in December and $57.30 now, which makes a total $59.60 . How do you arrive at $2.30 as an amount still owed?
(It seems to me that you may still be owed $0.40 )
Does it help readers of LET to know that management of a soon to be vanished company did something bad? No.
Does it help to know that that same company did something bad because Clouvider bought them and got final say in its actions? Yes.
One is useless to readers, the other isn’t. I don’t really care for the legalities. Everyone can create a legal entity. Business is people.
the attentive observer will have noticed that it appears that clouvider has apparently activated prominent protectors here. another post was also quickly fenced in.
I just said that UK companies are effectively the same:
So a company only pays corporation tax on dividends it receives when it holds less than a controlling stake in that company.
Strategy wise, no doubt. After all, it's the same board of directors, so they can get the two companies to agree on anything they want.
My point was that other than Anthony being employed by Clouvider directly (and presumably no longer working 100% on IH activities), there doesn't seem to have been any interference in how IH was run and certainly no sharing of customer data.
I don't think they're "getting off easy" in any sense.
Certainly not huge, but big enough that IH is chump change.
From Clouvider's filed reports, they have assets worth over £5m and turnover of at least £2.5m per year. Inception represents around 0.2% of their business.
According to the filed reports, they have 5 employees, down from 6 in previous years.
One final thought: Given the relative size of the companies, I doubt they even would even notice if IH customers migrated or not and probably only offered the 50% deal because Anthony is likely to have lobbied hard for a good deal for existing customers (and it was a good deal IMHO). He probably put his personal reputation on the line by asking for such a generous deal, and you can see that the intent was to do the right thing by everyone - telling people months in advance about the closure, so that they could choose the good deal or shop around, and they went above and beyond with the refunds. Can you point to a single other hosting company that closed that did anything like this?
Yet the only outcome for all this goodwill (that was tarnished by a couple of incidents of bad support responses) is a massive outpouring of hate by the community that clearly Clouvider doesn't need (when was the last time they offered a lowend deal?) but was still trying to treat well. Apart from anything else, if you were in Anthony's shoes and had begged management to offer this kind of deal instead of just shutting IH, how would you be feeling about your situation now? If it was me, I would certainly think twice before sticking my neck out for the community again.
So the issue of this thread -- which was an instance of "Inception Hosting's doing something bad", I'm guessing that you would call it -- happened because Clouvider bought them and had a final say in their (Inception Hosting's) actions?
So if Clouvider hadn't bought Inception Hosting, then this instance of "Inception Hosting's doing something bad" (very probably) wouldn't have happened?
On the contrary, I could easily imagine that Inception Hosting would have made this misstep even if Clouvider hadn't bought Inception Hosting
Imagine that Inception Hosting had decided to close on January 15th but that Clouvider hadn't bought Inception Hosting: would this misstep, which involved a PayPal subscription and Inception Hosting's refund policy, (very probably) not have happened?
We could even add to this picture a deal between Inception Hosting and Clouvider that Clouvider accepts account credits from Inception Hosting (as a kind of refugee offer)
Your intuitions may differ, but I think that the causal connection needs some argument
well... here https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/201037/inception-hosting-review/p1 clouvider has also decidedly put itself in the limelight as being responsible for inception hosting.
in this context, it is also interesting that the title in the above-mentioned thread somehow (i think) used to read differently.
You seem to be missing the point several people are making, even yourself. IH is /was a tiny part of Clouvider. But it is a part, and Clouvider keeps making a point of answering in these threads before the IH account does. And he responds poorly, tarnishing his own company name.
All of this is self-inflicted.
First: $57.30 was a mistype, it was $57.70, so I received the full $60 back I paid in advance for the payment cycle from Nov 26 2024 until Nov 25 2025.
With their closing announcement on Nov 11 2024 InceptionHosting also stated they would not be billing customers for the time from the announcement until the end of their contract period. The payment I made in 2023 was towards the payment period from Nov 26 2023 until Nov 25 2024. So they calculated a refundable amount of $2.30 for the time period from Nov 11 2024 until Nov 25 2024 but due to the shenanigans above now payd those $2.30 out of the money for Nov 26 2024 to Nov 25 2025.
Clear yet?
I agree his responses have terrible - but that just shows that he shouldn't get personally involved in customer support, but leave that to the people he pays to do it.
This comment was specifically about how I would feel if I was in Anthony's shoes:
No, in Sweden, 51% is not required.
How so? This won't be found. Nobody will search up Inception Hosting.
I haven't seen at all the same arrogant replies from Inception before they got bought that I have seen by Clouvider, so personally, I doubt it.
My argument is simple though, you may not agree, but my only concern is value to LET readers:
You're probably right that that title was edited, though it wasn't me who edited it. For transparency, I try to publicly document any changes that I make to a thread's title, but this hasn't been the general practice
perhaps we can all agree on closing points:
in my opinion, this assessment also fits https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/4263844/#Comment_4263844
it is noticeable that clouvider and inception hosting are keeping a conspicuously low profile in this thread.
That surprises me.
If your company e.g. buys 10% of my company, you wouldn't pay any corporation tax on any dividends from my company to yours?
What if your company buys 1% of my company? Still no corporation tax on the dividends?
What if your company buys 0.1% of my company? Still no corporation tax on the dividends?
What if your company buys shares in an ETF? Still no corporation tax on the dividends?
If no for all those answers, then it sounds like Sweden is a pretty sweet place to set up an investment company.
The reason they are taxed that way in the UK is that unless your company has a controlling stake in another company, it's just considered an investment so the dividends are just the same as any other company income. If it owns a controlling stake, it's no longer just an investment, but the parent company
None of these discussions have any bearing on how Clouvider treats their customers. When was the last time, someone was in here complaining about how Clouvider had treated them.
I won't labour the point because some people here, and I presume you, consider that IH customers are automatically their customers. Let's just disagree on that.
Personally, I doubt that this in any way reflects the normal Clouvider customer support. Not least because the only 2 complaints so far have been relating to non-standard procedures while the company was shutting down, and from next week, aren't even going to be relevant.
Should IH have considered in advance how to handle credit balances? Should they have just decided that they'd automatically give a no questions asked full refund? Yes, they probably should have. But in the absence of that decision, a support team member pulled in from the parent company to answer that question who looked at the question, and looked at the T&Cs and said "looks like you can't get it refunded, but I can give you credit with us instead" seems like a reasonable first reply. Maybe if OP had pushed back on support and said "no, that's not OK - I want a refund" rather than immediately kicking up a fuss on LET, it would have been escalated to someone in a position to make the policy decision.
Should IH have responded to that other refund query in a timely way? Just they should. Was it understandable that it didn't happen? Given that Anthony was likely still solely responsible for IH support at that point, and likely he wasn't working 100% on IH either, is it understandable how that could happen? I'd say yes. And for that specific point, IH hadn't even done anything wrong apart from a slow reply to the ticket. They'd already promised a refund, even more than the guy thought he was due - the information was all in the original email, along with a warning that support time relating to queries about the billing would be delayed due to anticipated high volume. Is that acceptable? I don't know. Should Clouvider have pulled off their support team from dealing with their own customers to deal with supporting IH, a tiny much less than 1% fraction of their revenue, especially when they'd already agreed to a deal where they were giving IH customers a substantial discount they weren't obliged to? Personally, if I was in that position, I'd have just assumed that Anthony would have been able to deal with the workload as before and that it wasn't even something to worry about.
Maybe. But assuming yes, whether that's bad depends on whether you think this thread fairly represents Clouvider or just this specific one-off situation relating to closing down IH.
I think that I follow (maybe)
There's perhaps a question about how to interpret Inception Hosting's intention with respect to the period (in your case) from Nov 11 2024 to Nov 25 2024
Suppose that you hadn't paid $60 to renew: would they have refunded $2.30 for the period from Nov 11 2024 to Nov 25 2024?
In other words, Inception Hosting could have simply meant that they weren't going to send any new invoices for services for the final two months (from mid-November to mid-January), but not that they would refund any amount already paid for services that would end within this period
(But perhaps I'm mistaken about this and they still owe you $2.30 )
I can hardly blame them. (Would you want to jump into a pool with sharks?
)
This sounds vaguely akin to a conspiracy theory
That guy deserved a warning -- no need for any "activation"
Translated using DeepL from https://www.faronline.se/dokument/rattserien/ratt-skatt/n/rs_naringsbetingadandel/:
In order to avoid chain taxation, rules on business shares have been introduced. According to the principle of economic double taxation, income is taxed twice: once in the corporate sector and once when distributed to an individual as a dividend.
A business-related share shall be a share in a limited liability company or an economic association and it shall be owned by one of the following entities
In addition, the share must be a capital asset and meet one of the following conditions:
A dividend from a beneficial interest is tax-free.
Note: There's some exceptions that I didn't include.
In Sweden, we basically don't use ETFs, almost all funds are mutual fund.
There's two main ways to hold securities for companies:
1. Aktie- och fondkonto (AF)
2. Kapitalförsäkring (KF)
In a AF, dividends are taxed at a 30 % rate I believe.
Personally though, I use KF. A KF account is simply an insurance contract backed by securities of your choosing. You don't own the securities, the bank does, as security for your insurance. Hence, there's no taxation on profit nor on dividends. Instead, you're taxed on the value as a whole. No capital gain taxes when you withdraw either. Since the bank pays this tax and not you (since they're the owner), they usually just withdraw the taxes from the account right away. They do this a little differently, but in short:
You take the value of the account, meaning, the value of the account on the 1st of january and then you add all deposits throughout the year. Deposits during the first half of the year are counted to 100 %, deposits made during the second half is counted to 50 %.
You then take the above amount and multiply it by the government borrowing rate of the 30th of november the year before and add a percentage unit. Here, there's a lower limit of 1,25 %. Meaning, if the government borrowing rate is 0,10 %, that's 1,10 % after adding a percentage unit, less than 1,25 %, meaning it's rounded up to 1,25 %.
This sum is then taxed by 30 %.
Meaning:
If you had 200 000 SEK on the account by the start of the year.
And you deposit 50 000 SEK during the first half of the year.
And another 50 000 SEK during the second half of the year.
The value is: (200 000 + 50 000 + (50 % * 50 000)) = 275 000 SEK.
The government borrowing rate for 2025 (decided 2024) was 1,96 % I believe. Add the 1 percentage unit to this and you've got 2,96 %. This is MUCH higher than it usually is, but interest rates are up and therefore it's not as good as it usually is, but let's use this high interest rate as an example anyway:
275 000 * 2,96 % = 8 140 SEK
8 140 * 30 % = 2 442 SEK
So for a KF valued at 275 000 SEK, you'd pay 2 442 SEK in taxes for the year.
A natural person is since very recently excuded from this tax up to a certain amount, so in that case, it would likely be even lower.
In short, Sweden is very good tax-wise for investments IMO.
NOTE: I was lazy and used DeepL for stuff, I didn't include all of the text when translating and I did some calculations myself. Didn't read through it, could very well be filled with mistakes. Not financial advice!
It might not have, but that's up to readers to decide IMO. The information should be easily accessible.
Same response as above. I don't think the forum should decide for its readers if the information is relevant to Clouvider or not. It should just make it searchable and accessible.
someone give me a tldr please what are we talking about at this point?
Paying little tax.
I believe we are fighting over to see which country’s tax system sucks most.
@ralf I mentioned 1,96 %, add the 1 %, that's 2,96 %. The tax (30 %) of that is 0,888 %. This shows that rate over time, so it's usually way better:
oh ok $3.50
We would need to go back a few years, but Inception Hosting (Anthony) had a number of public clashes with users here, refunds being one of the main issues -- he could be tough. (We could argue about "arrogant replies")
I would rather say no, not terribly interesting information, no
For what it's worth, I didn't move this thread to Offtopic
That said, Clouvider posted a single comment in this thread ( https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/4262468/#Comment_4262468 ), a comment that doesn't strike me as arrogant
The comment tries to give off a feeling that they're so independent that he can't even ask Inception himself to reply, when in reality, they can even trade credits between them.
I don't buy it.
Ah, didn't know.
What does it feel like to swim in a pool with sharks?
Well, Clouvider did tag Inception Hosting's user account here, so that is a way of asking Inception Hosting to reply
And I could imagine that internally, he also prompted Inception Hosting to reply
I think the main reason why Clouvider is heavily associated is because they chose to be. In the last thread it was Clouvider who initially responded, multiple times, for multiple pages. That is not separate at that point. Additionally I also remember a post from them along the lines of "we will transfer the money to Inception Hosting for refunds". They took the lead in communication for that subject, got hit it the face because it was bad communication and just shove the blame onto the now defunct brand now.
It would be a fairer point if they responded to the last thread how they responded to this one "we're separate, contact them not us". But they didn't.