New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
RACKNERD - Bad experience
I bought 1 year of VPS on Friday (3 days ago), paid in full by credit card. The charge showed up on my credit card account, which means it was a successful transaction. 2 days later after the payment, Racknerd sent me KYC verification link through Stripe. I uploaded my US passport and a photo to Stripe for verification. Next day (i.e. today) Racknerd suspends my VPS. What a scam this company is!!!
Why take my money, charge for 1 year of service and then send me links to verify myself. Then disregard my verification after I submit my PII to Stripe and still suspend my VPS? Racknerd will not get away with this theft, already contacted credit card company to seek refund. BAD EXPERIENCE!!!
Thanked by 1WyvernCo
Comments
@dustinc
And did the details on the passport match the address you provided, the payment method and the IP location? Or did you use fake details for any of them / a VPN such that it might have looked fraudulent?
Yes. They want me to pay by AliPay or Bitcoin to avoid verification. (see the email snippet below). Is Capital One credit card not enough? And no I will not submit my DNA for a damn slow VPS.
Note: If you wish to bypass the verification process, we can allow you to bypass the verification process if you are able to pay using another payment method (Cryptocurrency, or Alipay). If you wish to pay using this alternative payment method instead, please let us know so that we can refund your original payment, and issue a new invoice for you to re-pay.
how do you know the VPS is slow if you never got it? fascinating ...
sounds like your real problem is with Stripe tho... you sent the PII to them, not Racknerd... and Stripe, in turn, told Racknerd you're bad ... I don't know if you are, but sounds like Stripe doesn't like you for whatever reason ...
I'm sure there's more to the story, but you should definitely include the ticket # you opened with Racknerd to straighten this out - cuz you did that, right?
Also -
Not really, no - credit cards come with chargebacks... crypto doesn't, so that's why they do KYC when CC info doesn't match up enough...
Address match? Have you ever seen a US passport?
An excellent point: your CC billing address is 100% NOT on your US Passport.
Why does Racknerd engage in KYC sheningans 3 days AFTER a successful payment? And suggest that I pay by AliPay to avoid verification? Ain't nothing more to story.
curious what's the reason, i doubt dustin would scam a random dude for 12 bucks
i doubt he would for 12k
sounds like stripe problems.... show us the tickets with RN and dustin will say his side to this story
so far i see 0 evidence that anything happened, just A BUNCH OF CAPSLOCK!!!!! no screenshots, no ticket numbers, no mail... nothing
Hi @ASHPAT -- I saw your post and wanted to clear some things up here.
First off, the verification flow you ran into is rare, only a very small percentage of orders ever trigger it (I think I mentioned this before, but I'd say roughly 1 order out of every 500 new signups we receive). This is driven by our payment processor's risk engine (in this case Stripe), not something we selectively or randomly choose. When Stripe flags a transaction as high-risk, we do send the Stripe Identity link before we can continue, which is fairly standard in this industry, for high-risk flagged credit card transactions.
Regarding the comment that we “took your money" etc, that’s not how we operate. We’ve never refused a refund to someone who was asked to verify and didn’t want to proceed, as afterall that's a payment that was triggered for specific reasons. Did you reach out to us in the ticket, and request a refund? I'd like to review, so please let me know the ticket ID.
By the way, we don’t store your ID. Stripe Identity automatically handles the screening, and all we look at is whether it passed or failed verification. After all, we are in the hosting business, not in the business of collecting documents
We always show up and do right by our customers, that’s not changing, so I look forward to getting this squared out for you
No, actually. Well only the outside of them.
But my point is that if anything about your order didn't match, e.g. using a VPN that made you look like you were in some other country and your passport didn't match, or your address wasn't close to your IP location, or whatever, then you'd probably get flagged as a potential fraud risk anywhere.
i can't say much to this case, but
from uh 10 to 20 people that signed up with me to racknerd, not a single one ever had to do any verification... (myself included... twice...)
As much as coolaid drinkers and defenders of Racknerd want to dissect & defend the Racknerd dude Dustin or whatever his name is, these are facts. I paid by Capital One credit card on Wednesday 24th. The charge shows up on credit card on Nov 26th. Then I get email on Nov 30 to submit photo and US passport picture, which I do. Then Racknerd suspends my account on Dec. 1. Already moved on to other VPS, so yo'all can keep discussing and defending Dustin.
Hi @ASHPAT - We'd love to help, please do share your ticket number and I'll personally take a look at the communication and see where we can improve too.
BC34857 & BE95702
Hi @ASHPAT -- thanks for sharing the ticket IDs, I was able to pull everything up and review what happened from start to finish.
It looks like the original verification ticket (#BE95702) was never replied to. Instead, a new separate ticket was opened (only this morning, shortly before you made this thread). In that new ticket, our customer service staff asked you multiple times to please reply on the original verification ticket that our billing team was handling, so we could proceed. The order only went into suspension, due to no response/communication on the verification ticket.
FYI - suspension is not equal to termination. A suspension can always be reinstated and is reversible. Termination only happens after long periods of no response, despite numerous follow-ups.
It also appears you completed the Stripe Identity verification only a few hours ago, shortly before creating this LET thread, based on the timestamp on Stripe. Unfortunately, Stripe’s algorithm ultimately did not pass the verification, which means they did not clear the transaction from a risk perspective.
As a business, we do have to mitigate processor-flagged payments. I fully understand that this can be frustrating, especially for a new customer, but we do have alternative options available too in the rare event you're flagged for verification and do not wish to proceed (i.e. refund, or alternative payment methods).
I also went ahead and fully refunded your payment at this time, so you’re not out any money (this is something that our billing team would have also been happy to do too, if you requested it in the verification ticket). If you still need access to pull data from the VPS, let me know, I can reinstate the service for a temporary window so you can grab whatever you need. If we don’t hear anything within 24 hours, we’ll assume you’re good to go and terminate the instance.
We genuinely try to be pro-business and pro-customer, but when a payment processor (i.e. Stripe) is telling us a payment is high risk, we have to step back and protect the long-term integrity of our operations. I’m sorry we couldn’t move forward this time, and I fully understand if you’ve already moved on. Hopefully we get another opportunity in the future.
If you have any remaining questions or want me to review anything further, I’m here to help.
Yes, refund received. Thank You for the offer to retreive data, but it won't be necessary. In the spirit of providing a genuine feedback, from my perspective the issue still remains unaddressed for the community at large. A successful payment through Capital One credit card was not enough to establish identity. Stripe validation was not timely enough, even though carried out within 24 hours. Sugggestions to pay by Alipay to bypass verification after a successful credit card payment has been made, tantmounts to extortion (even if that is not the intention), because the server was shutdown.
I do not know what else I could have done differently. I paid in time, I did not abuse the system and submitted the verificaiton within 24 hours. Yet the server was shutdown. If that is not a bad experience, I do not know what is.
It behoovs to examine internal processes to ensure this does not happen again to anyone. Best Wishes to you & Happy Holidays.
Hi @ASHPAT -- thank you, I'm glad to hear we were able to get you taken care of.
As an FYI, and anyone who uses Stripe (even outside of the hosting industry, since Stripe is used by nearly every online business nowadays) can confirm this -- their “suspected fraudulent payment” notifications sometimes come days after a payment has already gone through. I know I mentioned this before, but I do want to reiterate that this is not something we randomly or selectively do.
I also fully understand that as a new customer, the goal is to get up and running, stable, and production-ready with a company you’re entrusting your business with. When a processor flags a transaction, especially one that appears to have gone through successfully, it naturally creates some imbalance and isn’t the smooth first-experience anyone hopes for.
We’re strong on communication, we always look for solutions first, and we want to make things work. At the same time, we absolutely respect when someone decides to shop around or opt for a different provider in rare situations like this.
Anyone who has worked with RackNerd can likely vouch that we are very much a solution-oriented type of company, that is on purpose, and it’s a mindset I continuously reinforce with my team, to always remain solution-oriented. We also look at every situation and ask ourselves how we can improve wherever possible, so thank you for your feedback as well.
Happy Holidays to you as well -- wishing you a great holiday season ahead.
This year really did fly by!
Or in other words it's ok to accept stolen money as long as the payment method is not refundable.
Hi @maxxxxx - I wouldn’t assume the OP is using stolen money. That’s a pretty big jump, and not really something anyone here can determine from a single failed verification.
What I can say is that when a payment processor as well known as Stripe flags or rejects a transaction, it simply means the payment didn’t pass their internal risk checks. There are many possible reasons for this. Stripe outlines several of those reasons here: https://support.stripe.com/questions/why-is-my-customers-payment-failing
When situations like this come up, we work directly with the user to go through Stripe’s verification process if they want to continue. If not, we offer alternative payment options or a refund. The goal is always to make things as straightforward as possible while still following the requirements set by our processor.
Nothing he said even comes close to implying that. You conveniently omitted the very next paragraph where he expressly states that he already processed the refund for this particular customer and the company is generally happy to do so for any customer who corresponds with them correctly and promptly.
He's also absolutely right. Any legitimate business that's using Stripe as a payment processor is essentially required to avoid accepting payments from customers that are flagged as potentially fraudulent by Stripe's system because chargebacks harm Stripe's reputation with the credit card company, which in turn harms your reputation with Stripe.
This seems like the case of failed identity verification. If the identity is not in question you shouldn't be asking for identity verification in first place. Trying to arbitrary restrict payment methods will also be problematic if the customer is from eu for example. I know you're not the only one here doing this kind of stuff, but I fail to see the logic in such process as either way you can get yourself in trouble.
You have no idea what you're talking about. RackNerd is not collecting any identity verification documents and they don't care. Stripe is doing that on their behalf as part of the standard fraud prevention that all merchants using Stripe are subject to.
If you are a business using Stripe Identity. True, Stripe will do the check on your bahalf. But it is your responosibility as a business to comply with stripe terms and the relavant laws like for example gdpr and consumer rights laws.
It's weird that you didn't return the money immediately after rejection and only after he started whining like little bitch here
Hi @johndeo983 -- To be fair, and as mentioned earlier, the client only requested a refund in a new, separate ticket this morning, which was submitted before our billing department’s regular working hours. He did not wait very long before opening this thread.
As mentioned earlier, once Stripe’s verification fails, the transaction is not something we want to keep or sit on. Even if this thread had never been created and the client had not contacted us again, the money still would have gone back to the OP once billing reviewed the failed verification. Either way, that would have been today give or take a few hours.
There is no logical reason for us to keep funds on a payment that did not pass verification. Doing so would only put us at higher risk for disputes or chargebacks, which is exactly what we try to avoid by following Stripe’s risk and verification flags in the first place.
All I managed to gather from this entire thread is that OP is really proud that his credit card is from CapitalOne. His fragile lil' ego needed some attention I guess, as the only one who didn't know he was gonna get his money back was him 🤷🏻♂️
No. You still don't know what you're talking about. Stripe is not collecting that information for all of RackNerd's customers. They are only verifying that the information submitted to RackNerd matches the customer's actual records, and only for well under 1% of the total transactions that Stripe's system detects as having a high fraud risk. This is not part of Stripe Identity, it is part of the basic standard fraud prevention that is included with all Stripe services.
I didn't say it's collecting information for all customers. So what are they using, Stripe Radar as it may be used by default? Even that can be turned off. Makes no difference what is used, it's the responsibility of the business itself on how, if, when or what is used to check identity and to comply with the laws. And I doubt it's Stripe who sent that email on how to avoid verification.
What are you even talking about? Obviously, RackNerd sent that email suggesting an alternate payment method if the customer didn't want to be subjected to Stripe's expectations and requirements for processing payments.
Hey! I love Coolaid, alright? My happily Kool-Aid-chugging self is sitting on 13 servers with Dustin and has been rocking with them for years.
So do us all a favor—take your little salt-shaker beef with Stripe, pack it up nicely, and let the rest of us happy Kool-Aid drinkers enjoy our servers in peace.
Now shhh — some of us are trying to enjoy our uptime.