DeluxHost Fraud / terrible VPS? Ignored my refund request, attempted to charge me again

DeluxHost · July 26

@MaxTakeba said:
🙄

We aren’t humble either wow, I’m getting flashbacks to Dasabo.

It's clear you're looking for a discussion, we're always honest and we fly down, but that's different from saying nothing works.

DeluxHost · July 26

@zGato said:

@DeluxHost said:

@MaxTakeba said:

@DeluxHost said:

@MaxTakeba said:

@DeluxHost said:

To try to accommodate our customers, we've included a button that will work on every ticket that doesn't receive a response from us for 24 hours, then reusable every 12 hours.

This will notify an admin who will be with you as soon as possible.

This could be abused, if it does absolutely nothing if you don’t have the adequate resources because we’re still putting out fires from months ago.

It has limitations and those who abuse it will not be able to use it again in the future, I'm pretty sure it will help us a lot especially for tickets that have not been answered for a long time due to oversights or other various reasons.

Why not simply just work from the oldest to the newest?
Why not simply add more resources who are not only competent but have experience and can deal with escalation and resolution?
Why make a button that doesn’t solve anything when your growth, the issues, and the systems(both infra and process) clearly isn’t working.

What good is a button that sends a ticket to the top, if you still don’t have the resources to answer?

I don’t think it will help you at all.

Our infrastructure is working anyway, since when is it not working? i can see all up.

yeah sure

YMI-429363

over 1 week btw.

if you're even in talks with PletX, at least let me know. Easiest is to just let me disable the DDoS protection completely for my ranges like other PletX customers allow me to (e.g. zap-hosting)

let me check this

MaxTakeba · July 26

@DeluxHost said:

@MaxTakeba said:
🙄

We aren’t humble either wow, I’m getting flashbacks to Dasabo.

It's clear you're looking for a discussion, we're always honest and we fly down, but that's different from saying nothing works.

No? Congratulations on assuming my intent. It’s actually to give you feedback and constructive criticism. To talk human to human. There’s no hostility or discussion.

DeluxHost · July 26

@MaxTakeba said:

@DeluxHost said:

@MaxTakeba said:
🙄

We aren’t humble either wow, I’m getting flashbacks to Dasabo.

It's clear you're looking for a discussion, we're always honest and we fly down, but that's different from saying nothing works.

No? Congratulations on assuming my intent. It’s actually to give you feedback and constructive criticism. To talk human to human. There’s no hostility or discussion.

Accepting criticism is always a good thing, I just think this little thing we added can help, not work miracles, obviously that wasn't our intention, but we will work hard to improve the aspects you have certainly highlighted.

I'm sorry if we misunderstood each other.

rpqu · July 26

@NotFoundException said:

@rpqu said: I guess that's the problem.

How can this be the problem, when they use AI on a billing dashboard you didn't see and they didn't use in production yet? I don't expect anyone who values their time to code without AI anymore

Judging from the ticket OP supplied either it could be fully automated (regarding the freeze caused by DDoS) or they are not properly disclosing AI usage, unless it's a canned response (which could be automated too).
And I think there's room for improvement on how they use AI to develop, like using TDD or /code-review. Remember the "1 user 1 ticket limit"?

I noticed @zGato pending ticket. Hopefully @DeluxHost develops ticket tracker so no more customer's ticket falling through cracks without resolution.

NotFoundException · July 26

@rpqu said:

@NotFoundException said:

@rpqu said: I guess that's the problem.

How can this be the problem, when they use AI on a billing dashboard you didn't see and they didn't use in production yet? I don't expect anyone who values their time to code without AI anymore

Judging from the ticket OP supplied either it could be fully automated (regarding the freeze caused by DDoS) or they are not properly disclosing AI usage, unless it's a canned response (which could be automated too).
And I think there's room for improvement on how they use AI to develop, like using TDD or /code-review. Remember the "1 user 1 ticket limit"?

How do you know that they aren't using it and why are you talking about their old billing system? Like I said they are using AI to develop their own and new billing system from scratch, no WHMCS.

rpqu · July 26

@NotFoundException said:

@rpqu said:

@NotFoundException said:

@rpqu said: I guess that's the problem.

How can this be the problem, when they use AI on a billing dashboard you didn't see and they didn't use in production yet? I don't expect anyone who values their time to code without AI anymore

Judging from the ticket OP supplied either it could be fully automated (regarding the freeze caused by DDoS) or they are not properly disclosing AI usage, unless it's a canned response (which could be automated too).
And I think there's room for improvement on how they use AI to develop, like using TDD or /code-review. Remember the "1 user 1 ticket limit"?

How do you know that they aren't using it and why are you talking about their old billing system? Like I said they are using AI to develop their own and new billing system from scratch, no WHMCS.

So, you're implying it was legacy problem? Did the double-charge problem occurred on new or old system?
If they're not using AI, they should. If they're using AI, then there's no reason to not create the scenario, test.

Once An Accident, Twice A Coincidence, Three Times A Pattern

NotFoundException · July 26

@rpqu said: Did the double-charge problem occurred on new or old system?

TBH, do you even read my messages

when they use AI on a billing dashboard you didn't see and they didn't use in production yet?

Jokes aside, obviously it occured on their old/current billing system. They are trying to improve, but it still takes some time to even do this with the help of AI.

We all know that WHMCS is trash, well one will say it's not, but it is, most providers are just bound to it, because of the integrations, plugins and so on. I don't think that the people at @DeluxHost do know how master WHMCS and they did some mistakes by setting it up, but like I said, it will be gone anyway and they likely learned their lesson and try to build something good.

If you are a customer and you are interested in what it might look like, maybe @DeluxHost would let you have a look at it and you could help them improve where needed.

rpqu · July 26

@NotFoundException said:

@rpqu said: Did the double-charge problem occurred on new or old system?

TBH, do you even read my messages

when they use AI on a billing dashboard you didn't see and they didn't use in production yet?

Your sentence looks like this on parse tree

[When
  [they]
  [use
    [AI]
    [on
      [a billing dashboard
        [you didn't see]]
    ]
    [and
      [they didn't use [it] in production yet]
    ]
  ]
]

Honestly, it feels ambiguous and redundant. It's like you're telling me "When did you see AI on their (admin) billing dashboard?".

Jokes aside, obviously it occured on their old/current billing system. They are trying to improve, but it still takes some time to even do this with the help of AI.

We all know that WHMCS is trash, well one will say it's not, but it is, most providers are just bound to it, because of the integrations, plugins and so on. I don't think that the people at @DeluxHost do know how master WHMCS and they did some mistakes by setting it up, but like I said, it will be gone anyway and they likely learned their lesson and try to build something good.

If you are a customer and you are interested in what it might look like, maybe @DeluxHost would let you have a look at it and you could help them improve where needed.

Yes, WHMCS is incomplete.
And I hope they continue improving how they develop their new system and integrate more automation and AI-driven actions, e.g., ticketing duties, to reduce the FTE required to maintain their infrastructure.

s0n1c · July 26

cant lie @DeluxHost is one patient ass dude.
Veloxmedia would have crashed out before page 2

forest · July 26

@MaxTakeba said:

@DeluxHost said:

@MaxTakeba said:
🙄

We aren’t humble either wow, I’m getting flashbacks to Dasabo.

It's clear you're looking for a discussion, we're always honest and we fly down, but that's different from saying nothing works.

No? Congratulations on assuming my intent. It’s actually to give you feedback and constructive criticism. To talk human to human. There’s no hostility or discussion.

Given how many people are piling on top of him with so much criticism (some deserved, some deserved but excessive, and some undeserved), it's not unexpected that he'd make assumptions. That's the only reason I'm giving him slack right now.

@s0n1c said:
cant lie @DeluxHost is one patient ass dude.
Veloxmedia would have crashed out before page 2

Honestly that stands out to me too. DeluxHost obviously made the mistake of taking on as many customers as he could handle on a good day, but as soon as a number of things went wrong in short succession, he has absolutely no margin to fall back on and got completely overwhelmed. But he's not simply ignoring the problems (VirMach), fixing them slowly but barely interacting with the community at all (Chunkserve), or flipping his shit under pressure (VeloxMedia and countless others). Everything he's doing here is directly related to his attempts to fix the problems. I have to give props for that.

And I'm not just saying that because I have services with them and want them to stick around. In fact, I just got a notification that one of my services might be on a node that suffered corruption and I'll have to rebuild my VPS. But the guy is trying quite hard for a host that is clearly making peanuts on each purchase while simultaneously getting shat on.

DeluxHost is trying. More harsh criticism (of the kind he's already heard 10 times, even if it's true) is not going to help.

AlteredParadox · July 27

@forest said:

@MaxTakeba said:

@DeluxHost said:

@MaxTakeba said:
🙄

We aren’t humble either wow, I’m getting flashbacks to Dasabo.

It's clear you're looking for a discussion, we're always honest and we fly down, but that's different from saying nothing works.

No? Congratulations on assuming my intent. It’s actually to give you feedback and constructive criticism. To talk human to human. There’s no hostility or discussion.

Given how many people are piling on top of him with so much criticism (some deserved, some deserved but excessive, and some undeserved), it's not unexpected that he'd make assumptions. That's the only reason I'm giving him slack right now.

@s0n1c said:
cant lie @DeluxHost is one patient ass dude.
Veloxmedia would have crashed out before page 2

Honestly that stands out to me too. DeluxHost obviously made the mistake of taking on as many customers as he could handle on a good day, but as soon as a number of things went wrong in short succession, he has absolutely no margin to fall back on and got completely overwhelmed. But he's not simply ignoring the problems (VirMach), fixing them slowly but barely interacting with the community at all (Chunkserve), or flipping his shit under pressure (VeloxMedia and countless others). Everything he's doing here is directly related to his attempts to fix the problems. I have to give props for that.

And I'm not just saying that because I have services with them and want them to stick around. In fact, I just got a notification that one of my services might be on a node that suffered corruption and I'll have to rebuild my VPS. But the guy is trying quite hard for a host that is clearly making peanuts on each purchase while simultaneously getting shat on.

DeluxHost is trying. More harsh criticism (of the kind he's already heard 10 times, even if it's true) is not going to help.

I mostly agree with you. They're trying, they certainly appear to mean well, and the services are some of the cheapest around. I just find it a bit ironic to see multiple posts about how busy/backed up/underwater they are with support and issues, while at the same time still seeing multiple sale threads with new purchasers asking for freebies (and the suspended provider tag, tbh). Those two don't really seem like they mix. I'd love to see them step back a second, catch up, get a breather, THEN launch some new sales for people to be excited about, personally.

forest · July 27

@AlteredParadox said: Those two don't really seem like they mix. I'd love to see them step back a second, catch up, get a breather, THEN launch some new sales for people to be excited about, personally.

100% agreed. They may be hoping that more income will allow them to hire more support before the extra support load from all the new customers starts to bite them. Not a very sound business decision if true.

tipaxos · July 28

@DeluxHost said:

@tipaxos said:
I've been billed for a new year of vps 2 months in advance. But because of the bad uptime and not really needing the vps anymore, i've told them to refund me. This was on the 28th of june, i've asked twice more since then to get the refund, they keep saying "they'll do it soon". I won't probably see my money back again, right?

Hello, can you please send me the invoice ID? So i can check it

2606-7904-2026

Fingers · July 28

@rafat said:
I want to share my experience with DeluxHost so others can avoid them and decide for themselves.

I used to hosted all of my personal services (with local backup ofc) on DeluxHost. And as I access my services on web for my day to day work, so reliability was very important to me.

About 1–2 months after purchasing my Y-4 VPS, it started constantly getting stuck and becoming inaccessible every 2–3 days. I reported the issue to support and continued using the VPS, hoping they would fix it. I tolerated the repeated freezes for around 3–5 months before finally opening a ticket and asked for refund as the service had become unusable.

Instead of processing my refund, DeluxHost kept the ticket open for nearly one months. My refund requests were repeatedly ignored while I was asked to continue troubleshooting. As shown in the attached screenshots, I kept asking for a refund, but they largely avoided addressing it.

After a months on 14th July, DeluxHost terminated my Y-4 VPS and told me they issued a refund . However, instead of issuing the refund I had been requesting all along, they generated a new invoice and even attempted to charge my card again for the terminated VPS.

Over a week later, I then asked support why I was being billed again for a VPS that had already been terminated and Why the refund hasn't been received in my card. Rather than answering my questions, they terminated my running Storage-2 VPS and issued a refund for that VPS instead—even though I had never requested the Storage-2 VPS to be cancelled or refunded. My refund request was always for the Y-4 VPS, I even added screenshot for Y-4 VPS invoice that they tried to charge me.

In the end, I spent almost two months chasing a simple refund request while dealing with repeated downtime, ignored questions, confusing billing, and the unexpected termination of another VPS that was actively hosting my personal services. And They still haven't issued refund the VPS I requested for.

I cannot recommend DeluxHost based on my experience. If you rely on your VPS for important services, think twice before purchasing from them. My Y-4 VPS froze every 2–3 days for months, making it unreliable for hosting my services. Some friends of mine who also purchased VPSs from DeluxHost have told me they experienced similar freezing issues, although I can only speak from my own experience.

TL;DR:

1. My Y-4 VPS started freezing every 2–3 days after 1–2 months of use. I tolerated it for another 3–5 months while repeatedly asking support to fix it.
2. When the service became unusable, I requested a refund.
3. DeluxHost kept my refund request open for nearly a month, repeatedly ignoring my refund requests while asking me to continue troubleshooting.
4. They eventually terminated my Y-4 VPS, but instead of refunding it, they generated a new invoice and attempted to charge my card again for the terminated VPS.
5. When I asked why I was being billed again and why I had not received the refund, they ignored my questions, and deleted my other STORAGE-2 VPS.
6. In the end, they terminated/refunded my Storage-2 VPS, which I never asked to cancel or refund, causing me to lose all of my data and the personal services hosted on it.
7. I still have not received the refund for the Y-4 VPS that I originally requested after 2 months of troubles .
8. Based on my terrible experience, I don't recommend to buy from DeluxHost.

Screenshot of Ticket conversation

Email screenshots (they tried to charge me for terminated VPS)

Email screenshots (Terminated/Refunded a VPS which I never asked for)

⚠️ Beware of DeluxHost's shady business practices ⚠️