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Prepaid hosting and deposits that can't be refunded
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Wrong. Validity of added credit to the account is determined by the accounting year. If customer has older then 1 year credit in his account - how this would reflect in accounting? Provider basically transforms into a bank. This should be challenged in court and precedent created. I bet 100% that credit system would disapear instantly as soon as litigation start.
@24fire reputation credits spent. Now you are running dry. Be sure to get ready for black friday to top up those credits…
Hi,
unfortunately that is not the case.
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__195.html
In general in b2b or b2c your right will in general outdate after 3 years ( that includes vouchers/coupons/what ever "right" you could claim but did not claim ).
Aside of this, i do not really understand why a company should refuse paying back unused money to the original source. If this is connected with fee's the customer would have to pay them.
@vitobotta already agreed to take over reasonable fee's so this:
Should not be an issue.
Just like already outlined, there are reasons why refunds might not be possible. But it seems this reasons are not valid in this specific case.
So whats the issue actually? Things are just not looking good this way... i think thats not of benefit for the provider... to remain here like "customer agreed to the TOS -- end of story"...
I assume we are talking about end customer transactions here. In B2B, the legal situation may be different. Under EU law, prepaid credit is generally considered an advance payment by the customer.
This means that the provider may only retain the corresponding portion of the credit if they have actually provided a service. Anything that has not yet been used up by the service remains the property of the customer. Providers can exclude this in their terms and conditions, as the credit would still be usable, but I very much doubt that this is permissible in individual cases. Otherwise, one option under the GDPR would be to request complete data deletion, in which case the provider must delete all data, thereby terminating the contractual relationship and making any further retention of the credit balance an inadmissible enrichment of the company at the expense of the customer. Submit a request for deletion in accordance with Article 17 of the GDPR (there are plenty of templates available on the internet). And having credit in your account does not prevent you from requesting deletion under Article 17 of the GDPR.
Your terms are not legal when the client is a consumer.
See https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/4567629/#Comment_4567629
(@angstrom, this provider is making up funny terms to steal money. LET should reward him with Super Legit Patron Provider tag for free.)
The funniest part is they’re publicly scamming a pentester right in front of other pentesters ... and they have vulnerabilities that most likely could be exploited to achieve RCE.
@vitobotta i guess you are an european citizen?
layer7 is a very good guy.
Yep, Finland.
vinland is still europe my friend! eh finland.
Yes please. But please be patient, thank you.
So, purely theoretically, there could be several transactions which, when added together, do not equal the credit balance. Theoretically, there would still be credit “left over” because we offer customers the option of deleting servers immediately and getting their credit back.
Invoices and transactions are also posted promptly by our system (usually within a week). Once the invoice has been finalized, it takes a considerable amount of manual effort to reverse it. I am sure that if this is to be done properly by the appropriate personnel, it will ultimately cost more than the transaction is actually worth.
But if you like, we can talk about how you solved this for yourself—you're German, right? In any case, I would like to thank you for your respectful manner
Be that as it may, I would like to thank all the “lawyers” here for their advice. We continue to trust our law firm, which advised us on the drafting of our terms and conditions.
I opened a new ticket, # 7620.
low end lawyers are brutal. beware!
If the contract is still valid, cancel it. Then send a letter to 24fire.
I would then request GDPR-compliant disclosure of the data in order to have proof of the credit balance. This would be followed by a request under Article 17 of the GDPR for the deletion of all data if the first letter regarding reimbursement does not result in 24fire complying. After that, 24fire would no longer have any legal basis for retaining the credit balance and would have to refund it immediately.
Thank you for your respectful manner
Then he just describe anyone talk in a "community" as lawyer
It's very "LoL
I'll keep this in mind, thanks! I hope we can reach a simpler solution.
hi mate you just get lawyer certificate By 24fire because you just talk and help
low end support appreciate your hard working
The wording of your terms and conditions may have been legally acceptable at the time, but it is no longer so. There are also relevant court rulings on this matter, including some from Germany. It would take too much time to list the rulings and cite German laws and EU regulations, but you have your law firm, which will surely be happy to do so. This was intended as a tip for you as a company and @vitobotta What you do with this information is your decision. As a data protection officer and consumer advocate, I am certainly not replacing legal advice; I can only give you my assessment based on my many years of practice and experience, which I believe is also quite “valuable.”
good boy!
Probably has the same value as my “Certified by Microsoft Support GOLD” certification :P
THIS EYES CANT LIE:

❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍💕💓💗💖💘💝
are you calling from microsoft security department or technical support?
Hi,
ok so the issues you see here are the side line cost for proper bookkeeping.
I can more than fully understand this. In fact the organization costs are what make things truly ugly and i fully agree with this. Its not only about someone of the company has to handle this back and forth of money, the accountant has also to handle such cases individually and check if things went correctly. Even worst if its an EU customer as the OSS might kick in ( thats the VAT distributing system inside of EU that if we as german company will charge a spanish customer, the spanish government will receive the VAT ( and not the german one )). So that would have to be rewind too. Tons of manual, ugly work at least for small providers from whom its not worth to automate this too.
And thats exactly the point where i want to answer your question. Yes, this whole is total f*** up for the provider. But at least with us, it does not happen often. Luckily quiet rarely.
And for this seldom events, we just take the bullet for the team. Which means at the very end that we accept a "virtual" money loss in rare situations for the benefit of doing the morally "right" thing and remain with a good standing with the customers.
That said, we talk here about situation where things happen "accidently" or "unwillingly" by the customer. ( Automate payment kicked in while the customer forgot to cancel it, customer prepaid without order but changed his mind paid accidently and similar stuff ).
Other situation, where the customer ordered and got a service and then changed his mind ( realize that he actually needs knowledge to administrate self managed servers is classic here ) wont receive refunds. They can have credits, change the product or just take the opportunity learn howto use what they just bought.
I dont know how big / small / young / old the business is and whats the situation of the business you run there, but please allow me a little advice:
Either you have so many refunds that its somehow worth automating it ( booking software will usually be able to handle .csv imports of booking data -- we just did that last week after the manual work just got too heavy to book every country manually )
OR its just a small amount of it and you can go this "extra" mile for your reputation.
Having this kind of posts here, the manual handling of them and the tickets and bla bla ( also organizational work actually ) , the loss of reputation and what so ever is usually not worth saving "virtual" loss in handling the cases.
I dont know how much profit you calculated and did not check your pricings, but i assume that even if you are on tour in the low end pricing range.... already 5 customers who did not become customer with you because of this thread are enough to make the whole story not worth it for you.
So aside of the question if you would get through with this at a court or not, morally and from the perspective of reputation you are loosing more than you gain/saved on the other hand, i am pretty sure.
Because right now, some people might think that you are doing this all because you need to (cross) finance your business like this with some "donations" that you force your customers to accept. And this do much more harm to your business success than accepting some loss in organizational work.
Yes
OR its just a small amount of it and you can go this "extra" mile for your reputation.
Actually, we didn't want to comment on anything anymore.
We actually only have one case every 5-6 weeks where a customer wants a refund. I also find your way of thinking remarkable, for example, when you issue a refund and when you don't. But as you said, it's not worth automating this process because it's so rare.
In any case, thank you for your thoughts, @layer7 — I will bring this up in our meeting.
sic!
wait they won't give you the existing balance back and now blocked you from using it?
I am not sure of what "restricted" account means to be honest.
This is identified problem and no solution? Charge 10% "refund fee". This would avoid bad publicity (at the moment you are already on "shit list" providers to avoid due to questionable billing practices) and customer satisfaction would be guaranteed. Also you would receive 10% of refund amount. You know, for "processing fees".
It's a two year old company with six /24 and one upstream (Tube-Hosting) run by two students.
Their business address is a Hookah-bar. (Google Maps)
Their business meeting:
https://24fire.de/impressum/
https://friends-schwetzingen.de/kontakt-anfahrt
Did i see wrong in google maps? Shisha?
No.