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A business can always change its terms, but they have to inform their customers in advance so they have time to act. BTC is two months.
If Gigahost has done this, it's the terms on their website that count.
But I have my doubts that they have changed their terms in the correct and legal way.
See: https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/4496505/#Comment_4496505
Yeah no shit then....the 800$ charge is valid...how can you expect to use 800TB+ on a 1g 95th plan?
Gigahost has changed their terms within the last month and added this:
How can you call that a valid charge, if OP hasn't been informed about the change?
Yeah, Gigahost isn't managing well the TOS after the merge but OP is also doing something shady:
If you use 800TB on 1Gbps plan then you must know about it and he's lying in the ticket. What kind of service can you run that you don't notice 800TB?
It's not calculated in this way. 95th means bandwidth is recorded in a regular interval, all sample data points are sorted from highest to lowest; top 5% of the data point will be discard, and the highest remaining data point is the bandwidth you use.
30 days * 5% = 36 hrs,
$800 -> 8139.16 NOK -> 1627.83 Mbps (5 NOK per Mbps)
1627.83 + 800 = 2427.83 Mbps
2427.83 Mbps * 36 hrs = 39.32 TB (minimum)
yeah but gigahost should have throttled the bandwidth.
I am pretty sure no one would not like to wake up to a $800 charge on a random idler that got hacker by some random northkorean hacker.
well.. my bad.
i and chatgpt would like to apologize. (updated the original post)
It's the same case like when some unlimited scaling cloud service can leave you $10k in debt overnight just because you app exploded in use for any reason. There should be spending limits at least.
Such low speed sucks but I do prefer to have access to my machine than wait till the counter resets at some point in the future. I can redirect the traffic elsewhere and still use it for some basic task or back up some essential data from it.
We admit this has not been handled entirely as it should have been. We take full responsibility in that, and we are also preparing newsletters now to inform of the update to our Terms of Service. This has however always been the practice, which have been communicated in email notifications, but was regretfully omitted from Gigahost Terms of Service.
If it was not for the chargeback we would have invited into discussion to solve this, but as stated we cannot accept a chargeback in any way or form. It can potentially cause issues with our payment processors, higher fees or worse.
So your customer created a ticket about the issue and demanded a refund, you denied it, and now you blame him for initiating a chargeback.
Have you considered that the chargeback would never have happened if you had taken responsibility from the start?
You should be banned and given a bait-and-switch scammer tag.
Just received an email from Gigahost, clarification of terms.
That’s some way to loot the customers. No throttling or suspension? Avoid like the plague. I usually turn off online transactions for the card used for LET hosts. At first I was like what if it gets stolen or leaked or something? But after reading this, all the more reason to leave it disabled.
The OP opened a chargeback first and then the Ticket, apparently.
You admitting you handled this wrong, partially justifies the users chargeback... and yet you're saying you can't do anything now. Not a great look IMO.
@gigahost since your terms didn’t allow you to charge this money, he deserves his money back. That’s it really.
If it helps, he could probably cancel the dispute and take your word for refunding the money manually. But that’s a service he’s doing you.
Can’t imagine he’ll lose the chargeback since the charge is based on non-existing terms. If he makes his argument clear, he should definitely win.
They don’t give a two-month notice and admit they have been making up charges that aren’t written anywhere when you order the service.
So you can ignore it or use it as evidence in a chargeback and/or complaint to https://www.forbrukertilsynet.no/.
To OP, in the chargeback, make sure to explain the full situation and if possible include the above email as further proof they themselves admitted it wasn’t part of the binding ToS.
OP gone maybe.
I can't help thinking that OP is a student and now, after school is out, selling his ass to get money for food and idlers, because some Norwegian egotripper* has ripped him off.
But it is Friday, so it is most likely just @Nekki who has created an alt account to stir up some drama.
*egomaniac.
Not for your legacy plans
The OP (= @anon505 ) is probably hiding behind an alt account (signed up, first post)
In addition, this may be a "hit and run" thread. At the moment, it's not clear whether the OP will return
I just did some calculations for my unmetered VPS with 1000 mbps at €18.5 per year (assuming max bandwidth).
I guess I must be calculating something wrong here. Please correct me. It can't possibly be 63 million dollars.
Norway is not part of EU but is part of EEA so I'll assume the relevant laws apply here as they most likely do.
Yes, clearly your change in TOS after the fact is irrelevant, so is communicating it in the email notifications. But not just that, hiding additional charges in the TOS can easy be seen as not being transparent. I know plenty of hosts do it but it should be clearly mentioned on the page or at least during checkout.
Even your current changed TOS is unclear. How is the 95th% calculated? Is the sampling interval 1 minute, 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day? Generally, longer the interval lower the charge.
Where is it stated as I don't see it stated in your TOS. And things do now work that way. You can not forbid chargebacks as the law would override your TOS. You can put a chargeback policy in the TOS and that's it.
Even if you had a chargeback policy in your TOS it's irrelevant as your charge attempt is illegal anyway. Also, it's not the wild west and you can't suspend customers' accounts because they make a chargeback request, it will be seen as retaliatory, unfair and excessive.
A little advice for anyone buying a server or vps. Just stay away from providers who charge overages especially on 10 gbps ports as overnight you can get a nasty surprise bill. And I have seen stupidity such as $50 000 per TB overage hidden in the TOS. Yes, that's 50 thousand bucks per TB.
This is a sample of an email that you would get for almost reaching your monthly quota:
These notifications are not clear, at all. Where are overages specified at? Nowhere.
The funny part is that I ticketed and asked them. Used to be 1 TB @ 10 NOK, now it's 20 NOK
, so you don't even get notified about such changes, and then suddenly from one day to another it's double the price.
Either suspend or throttle (or let the customer choose), overages are dumb af.
Mass email from 1h ago:
Clarification of Terms – Bandwidth Overusage Charges
Dear client,
We have updated our Terms of Service to clarify how charges for any potential bandwidth overusage are calculated. This is not a new charge, but a clarification of an existing term that has always been practiced.
What has been added:
Unless agreed otherwise we will charge for bandwidth overages at the following rates. 20 NOK per TB for dedicated and virtual servers with a metered bandwidth limit, and 5 NOK per Mbps over the 95th% limit for servers with an unmetered plan. Pricing are excl VAT.
The update takes effect immediately and will not affect you as long as you remain within your agreed bandwidth limits. Read the updated terms here: https://gigahost.no/avtalebetingelser
Do you have any questions or need help? Please get in touch with us on [email protected] or by phone +47 33 80 88 00.
Sincerely,
Gigahost AS
This is such a retarded thing to say as a provider, it made me come back from my LET break.
You failed to meet your legal obligation to notify customers of any changes to your Terms of Service in time, giving them the opportunity to review, accept, or reject the changes. You then charged them based on terms they were never informed of, then want us to pity you that they initiated a chargeback?
This is exactly what chargeback is for and it is completely justified. Have fun fighting the paypal case.
gigascam
So how much overuse did OP had to cause 800 USD invoice?
Everything of that could be avoided if provider had TOS.
Everything of that could be avoided if customer did ticket before going nuclear chargeback.
Can we just discuss things before going nuclear way? Give both provider and customer a chance to talk things out? You can chargeback within 120 days (or more if paid by creditcard). Don't be a MJJ.