When I asked Virmach for refund, they threatened to charge me more.
I mistakenly deposited some money in my Virmach account. They refused to give me a refund. So I tell them I'll go to paypal for help since I used it to pay. That's when they threatened me with suspension of my services and also a "chargeback fee" of 25 dollars if I do that. Could they not have explained to me in more an agreeable manner instead of in the form of this robotic ultimatum which reads"If any paypal disputes are submitted all of your products become suspended as well as a $25 charge-back fee ill be applied to your account ."
This is the conversation.
)
What happened next is no less frustrating.
I thought we had an agreement when I closed the dispute after they've agreed to the refund. Since then I have been very patient with them. Now the situation is they've taken away my deposited money, and it's been a week but I haven't received the refund. When I asked about it, virmach staff told me that they will start billing my account If I reply to them one more time. That makes private communication with them unfavorable. Having already cancelled the dispute on PayPal, there's nothing I can do. So I want to share my experience here. I did make a mistake by clicking the damn button, although in my defense, I did expect another process in which I can confirm the payment. But it seems in the end I'm the only party that suffered financial loss.
LowEndBox & LowEndTalk.
Comments
So, you willingly put money in, decided to ask for it back (which are against their terms of service), and are annoyed that they'll charge you for the fee they're charged for when you reverse it?
Just get a VPS to idle. It's not like it's very easy to 'accidentally' load your account with funds.
If you sent the money your self you are responsible for the terms of it.
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You might want to black out that IP address in the second screenshot. You either just keep the funds in the account or mind as well dispute all your transactions with them because they're going to close your account anyway... But it's still your fault.. The fee's clearly outlined in the fee schedule here (at the bottom): https://virmach.com/terms-conditions/#tab2
Fixed that for you.
OP mistakenly added funds to this account. Virmach won't refund because it is against their terms of service. How would Virmach feel if they mistakenly done the same to one of their own upstream providers and asked for a refund?
Pretty slimy for Virmach to handle it this way and not worth the bad publicity just because they fall back to their terms of service wording to refuse a refund.
Well if they already want China customers, they already have a lot of people committing fraud anyway..
But his
phone callIP is coming from inside VirMach!SPOOPY!
In case you aren't aware of the censorship in CHina, I actually use their server to bypass stupid censor so I can gain access to google.
Fraud? Why is it fraud? What do they have to lose?
Probably wouldn't matter since they have to pay them regardless.
But yeah... we get the point.
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......... nvm shouldn't noticed that similar IP address......
I was talking about the dispute button that people use as the refund button.
Fraud because your opening a Paypal dispute even if you paid them yourself and you got what you brought. Now if someone hacked your paypal account and did it or they didn't credit your account it wouldn't be fraud, but you are going to open one anyway.
People think "oo button on the paypal! Must be refund thing! click"
A chargeback costs them money, and submitting a chargeback to save face because of personal poor judgement is not something we do on this side of the planet. You lose much more face, and people will refuse to do business with you.
I admit I wasn't aware of that. If they had explained to me instead of threatening to suspend my products I would have no problem with it.
You're probably 1 of 50 of these they get a day since they sell their products so cheaply- and also why they charge $3 for trivial changes/etc. I don't think they were intending to be rude, but rather telling you that if you do so, they will seek to recover the difference.
Leave the money in the account- there will hopefully be some damn nice black friday deals in a few weeks.
Don't believe everything you read on the internet. A chargeback here is not about losing face. I work closely with the Credit Card industry and hundreds of thousands of chargebacks are done on a daily basis...
"I gave you money but I want it back."
'Sorry.'
Yeah, totally not about saving face- sometimes it's outright fraud.
Nice of you to edit the PCI Compliance snide remark out of your post before I responded. If you want to go toe to about PCI, bring it on. I deal with this on a daily basis,
I truly feel unfairly treated with their response: "If any paypal disputes are submitted all of your products become suspended as well as a $25 charge-back fee ill be applied to your account ." that's why I started this post. I expect them to try to communicate with customers not give them ultimatums.
They're terrible. I suggest finding a better provider and then go through the paypal chargeback.
@Jameswxx to all others
@virmach enables paypal agreement when you checkout first order.
So when ever you place new order or pay for pending invoice or even adding fund their wont be any confirmation page shown in paypal.com. virmach process it without asking paypal login or paypal checkout page
This is why OP have issue i hope
So i agree @Jameswxx made the amount without knowing the endpoint.
@Jameswxx Dispute or chargeback is wrong.. just explain whats wrong with their system and get the refund
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lt is your own fault! But when are you going to be a MAN and own up to your own mistakes? So grab your nuts and say I made a mistake! Move on with the consequences of your actions. Fucking millennials
@vpsGOD hmm... now that you say that, they usually make paypal subscriptions on their services, so it might have just processed itself without the end user knowing, which is a bit wrong, but then he shouldn't have clicked on it in the first place..
@Edmond who knows as a first time user to such agreement process.
Subscription is different scenario if that done separately to each products. Virmach wont use subscription for individual products.
Virmach make paypal agreement with user to process all payments invoiced automatically. But most of us think it may be subscription to particular service and fed wrong in end like Jameswxx.
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The message is clear: "This will generate an invoice that needs to be paid".
There isn't any information about the payment being automatic, and provider really isn't helpful, refunding it wouldn't have any cost and would keep the customer happy with them, probably signing up for new services in any future date.
You’re the reason (
along with the majority of Chinese customers) that we can’t have nice things.Oh.... okay, didn't know it was different. They need to tell us customers that... It wasn't clear enough... well to anyone who was just clicking around in the panel and expect that nothing bad will happen since they'll be asked to confirm it first.
This is probably Virmach's fault now, since it's not clear on it's methods for payment collection. Invoice is generated right? I can have it canceled by them or let it expire three days later. It's payment collection method is wrong. You can automatically charge for only the service I agree to, not everything I ever order with you...
They're billing panel said the complete opposite of what they're doing...
I have a 4 gb kvm with them... Just installed windows and it idled until they shut it down for cpu abuse... Maybe windows did an update or something... Dropping it this month...
This is on the op. But i will say i had considered virmach till i did a bit more research. I have no problem working with smaller companies but they gotta be professional in all regards. Sometimes when your working too hard to pick up customers you lose sight of what it takes to keep them.
For example one company let me get credit on 1 year term services when i wanted to move down a tier. As a result i picked up several more services worth much more from them. Definitely was in their terms to not allow that by they honored my request (i also ask very respectfully)
Another during initial questions wouldn't let me move up a tier under a 36 month prepaid agreement and couldn't assure me prices would renew after 36 months for the same price. "A lot can happen in 3 years" was their exact response. well that doesn't make me really want to work with them does it. I don't want a refund just ability to move up a tier and lock in a rate, seems reasonable
This industry is very competitive but customers will remain with good hosts for many years. Its worth while to try and bend the terms sometimes for simple requests
I had a similar experience with them but I didn't cancel my dispute.
I got charged then opened a ticket in less than 15 minutes after the funds were taken. I totally forgot VirMach relies on Paypal subscription similar to blow-and-go's like ComBoZo did. I guess it saves on the billing side of their operation rather than handling invoices.
My issue was I didn't get any notice that I was about to be charged and the service was meh so I was planning on leaving.
How to clean up a questionable reputation: throw the kids some BF/CM offers.
Agreed. Virmach is shady as shit, focuses on picking up customers more than it does on leaving them.
You shouldn't have cancelled the dispute, mate.
Shady? That’s not shady. Had you
Disputed / charged back a payment with us, you’d have debt collectors after you the next day, at your cost.
To do a PayPal Dispute or Chargeback you need to commit fraud - as no bank nor PayPal will open any such thing when you tell them that you willingly paid or entered any subscription agreement. Fraud this side of the world is illegal. There’s no compassion for fraudsters, so yeah, own up to your mistake and learn from it.
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I accidentally gave someone £25 once.. oh wait, no I didn't, that would be ridiculous.
I am no longer active here, find me at https://talk.lowendspirit.com (Just like LET without the scams)
Never ever cancel a dispute. Once you've started a dispute you go through with it and accept all bridges between you and the provider are burned.
End of line.
So paying something you didn’t want to pay is dumb, whichever way you cut it.
Providers not refunding overpayments is bullshit though; by all means, they’re entitled to charge a handling fee for the work involved, but to refuse it outright is really the stuff of amateurs and shows a real lack of vision; you could easily loose plenty of good customers over something that equates to a couple of minutes work.
Here lies Nekki. He loved massive amounts of storage, K-Pop and calling people cunts.
I have recently paid my annual subscription fees for a VPS on RamNode when invoiced. Completely forgetting that I already have a billing agreement in place with them (it was a year ago!). I asked for a refund and got it. Happy with the way I was treated. Perhaps this is something you could learn from that @virmach
Will shill for carrots.
Generally speaking, I will process reasonable refund requests, but the number of people signing up for $7 services and then requesting a refund after a few days is just ridiculous, and for those I don't normally refund. The effort alone is just not worth it. And for any 'mistaken' payments that are then requested for a refund, a small handling fee may apply (<$20) depending on payment method and refund requested.
@Jameswxx If I was virmach, I would charge you the 25$ just for opening this thread. it is a clear try of you to bash them as a revenge, because you want a refund for something that is your and only your mistake.
Chargeback and blackmail (opening threads like this) from you don't make you seem better. Apologize them and GTFO from here.
I think this thread just goes to show you...
If you have any trivial issues with @Clouvider 's Clouvider, @AnthonySmith 's InceptionHost or @virmach 's Virmach, expect attitude and hostility.
If you want great service and good customer support, go with Ramnode or @Francisco 's BuyVM.
Keep up the great customer bashing, @Clouvider and @AnthonySmith !
I think it's a little bit dishonest leaving out the rest of the ticket where you were clearly explained that we would go ahead and process your refund, but it was stuck in a pending state due to you opening the dispute.
We have no intentions of keeping your $5.
Due to the way our billing system (WHMCS) works, we have certain policies in place. When customers add funds to their account, it goes to the credit balance. From the balance, funds can be auto-applied to some invoices, used, and sometimes, customers get SLA credits and other credits added there as well. If the credit is moved to an invoice, it has to be deleted from the credit balance and the invoice cancelled. This all takes additional support time to handle properly, and not all agents have access to client credits. We also use the credit system to bill some customers for non-refundable custom bulk orders.
To save time & money on our end, as well as any complications, that's our standard policy.
We do make exceptions from time to time. In this instance, the customer dealt with a lower-level agent who was just following our policies. He then began arguing that we do not warn people (we do) and continued making a large number of responses/arguments after opening a PayPal dispute.
This takes up more staff time, and we have to deal with the dispute, etc.
The ticket was escalated up to a higher agent, who instructed Matthew to process a courtesy refund, if the dispute is closed. The dispute was closed but PayPal has not released the funds for us to be able to provide the refund.
The customer was informed of all this before this thread was created. The customer continued to make demands, even though we're just waiting for PayPal to release the funds.
You were not threatened. Matthew only brought up the fact that we do charge a returned payment fee if you file a dispute/chargeback as we have to spend time dealing with the situation. This was only brought up after you mentioned responding to you on PayPal.
We also cannot continue providing you support when you send 38 messages arguing against our policies. This takes up significant staff time. All your products come with limited support and this was one of the rare cases where we also reminded you that you have limited support and we can no longer continue to provide support for free in regards to this issue. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is when you have $1-6 per year special offer services with limited support, you open a dispute, and you continuously argue with our support for multiple weeks.
Again, out of courtesy, we're already refunding your money, but we can no longer continue to respond to your daily messages. Please just message us when PayPal is done properly closing the dispute you opened.
To re-iterate, if anyone opens a dispute and owes us money, we're not obligated to continue providing services to them. That's not an ultimatum. That's a pretty common-sense policy.
This is just how our system operates. We do not code all the systems we use. In any case, customers are warned deposits are non-refundable, and I don't understand why anyone would click "Add funds" and except not to have the funds added to their account.
Most customers are fine with the added convenience. We do not try to trick anyone into adding funds or making payments without knowing what they're doing. We include warnings in the e-mails a few days ahead of time that most payments methods recur automatically. People can contact us to remove recurring billing. People can cancel their own services. On our terms of service page, we have a quick summary on the side. Recently we also added this summary page on the final page of cart. For PayPal specifically, you are taken to a page where the account linkage is confirmed. For Credit/Debit, we have a warning on the page where you add your card. On the deposit page, there's a warning that it's non-refundable.
I'll see if we can possibly code an additional warning that tells people they will be charged immediately.
We used to have a subscription system, but that caused even more problems. If users upgraded, PayPal would still automatically send us the wrong total. If customers did not cancel their subscriptions, PayPal would auto-send funds even if we did not request it. Then there was also the problem of customers manually paying their bill, and then PayPal would still auto-send the monthly amount creating an over-payment.
This used to be another reason we used to not provide refunds for deposits, as overpayments would be handled by our system as deposits and due to the reasons mentioned above, it would take a lot of support time dealing with all the requests for anyone that did not correctly use the system.
We have since ditched the system to provide an overall better experience, but some customers will always prefer one thing over another.
That is the default system message. I do understand why this could be confusing. Usually an invoice is generated. For some payment methods, when customers set up billing agreements, it may process automatically.
We will have the language changed to be more clear.
Sometimes (in rare cases) when clients "idle" on Windows, it gets stuck in a state where Windows ends up using maximum CPU for prolonged periods of time. To keep plans affordable, by default they come with a shared CPU. We do explain this the best we can in a tooltip next to the CPU amounts on Windows packages.
You can always upgrade to a dedicated CPU if you're found to be using max CPU for prolonged periods of time, or you can reduce your usage.
We provide multiple warnings in most cases. Our system is extremely generous in how in automatically handles these cases.
We try our best to work with customers, where possible. Unfortunately, support is not free and with lower margin products (that specifically come with limited support) we cannot afford to continuously communicate with customers about our specific policies and make immediate exceptions.
I believe your situation occurred in the past, when we used PayPal's old subscription system. For a period of time we did not send out warnings/notices because it confused customers into manually paying their services, and then PayPal sent another payment automatically afterward resulting in a double payment.
I think it's unfair to call us shady or terrible, unless you have some other experiences to share. I also do not believe you burn bridges when you open disputes, as long as it's de-escalated before it takes up support time to deal with the disputes. With chargebacks, it's a little more different as there's a fee involved as well.
We have actually had a customer file a chargeback and then contact us about resolving it afterward as they wanted to de-escalate the situation.
I understand it's frustrating, but in most cases when we outright reject making an exception, it's when dealing with the situation costs more than the refund. We could make our policy a fee to handle overpayments/deposits but then it creates a weird situation where we have to tell customers we are charging them a processing fee, which usually makes them more upset. If we do a partial refund, we still have the risk of getting a dispute/chargeback on an even smaller payment especially when the customer is more upset. Then there's the fact that most customers undervalue the cost of support. If their product is $6 per year, and we tell them there's a $3 processing fee, they will think we're taking away half a year of the product rather than recouping support & PayPal fee costs. Then we have to also spend time explaining our policies to the customer, especially if they disagree (after agreeing to the terms) which takes up even more support time.
We do have a portion of our terms, where there's a $25 fee in some situations where a customer is not eligible for a refund but they want to close their account and withdraw funds. At our discretion, we have handled some cases like this where a large customer withdrew several thousand dollars of store credits.
Your idea works better if the payments are larger, but for the low-end market it would probably be worse in the customer's eye.
I actually personally used Ramnode once. I cancelled my service with them, but I forgot to cancel the PayPal subscription. This meant that my PayPal account sent them payments monthly, and this continued for about a year. Ramnode did not offer a refund, and it was understandable.
We are never hostile to customers. Sometimes we may enforce policies where necessary, and defend our actions as I have done so today.
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Well there is no need to be passive aggressive is there, I refund customers all the time, I just don't tolerate stupid.
Call a spade a spade, I appreciate being a host you become an easy to target those that lack the ability to express themselves properly will always resort to the use of reductio ad absurdum or the one-liners that usually involve saying "unprofessional".
I am a human, a person, a member of this forum before I am a 'host' and I am saying outright, accidentally paying someone £25 is ridiculous, especially without the context of how, sorry if you feel that makes me a bad aggressive person, if you do I think that makes you fairly petty, to be honest.
I am no longer active here, find me at https://talk.lowendspirit.com (Just like LET without the scams)
I believe if a customer only uses the deposit feature, their PayPal account is not linked permanently for recurring payments. However, in this case, the customer most likely first used the subscription, and then later deposited. Once this happens, the account linked to their VirMach account is used.
However, as I stated above, I can see how the default WHMCS message could be confusing. This has been modified.
If anyone made a mistake as a result of this default message, please contact us and request your ticket be escalated to management. We will honor refunds in these instances.
For anyone wondering what happened, here's a summary:
Some other notes:
Please let me know if you guys have any other suggestions or feedback.
Virtual Machine Solutions LLC | Contact
If we do a partial refund, we still have the risk of getting a dispute/chargeback on an even smaller payment especially when the customer is more upset.
Surely in those cases, the value is so little that it's not worth the aggravation that not refunding brings? I bet very people walk away from a 'no' for such low amounts, so I'm not sure where the economy is in arguing the toss.
You can't blame customers for undervaluing support when you do exactly that with some of your insane pricing. If you think a plan (which you do not mark out as 'zero support') is worth $6 which has got to be barely covering your costs, what value would you expect them to apportion to the support element? Got to be next to nothing. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Gotta be honest mate, sounds like these all things you should have thought of before burying yourself so deep in the low-end.
Here lies Nekki. He loved massive amounts of storage, K-Pop and calling people cunts.
Because people don't take responsibility for anything anymore, and they do not want any accountability, too many online professional cry bullies or others that are professionally offended at anything they don't agree with are the problem of the modern age, the loud minority.
It was not confusing because clearly they did not read it or did not understand it, but now it is your problem apparently.
You have done nothing wrong, I can say that with 100% confidence because the power and ability to prevent any of this from ever happening was with the OP, there is absolutely nothing you could have done to prevent the catalyst.
Somehow people think it is ok to join the mob and get the pitchforks and call you slimy, shady, dishonest, etc etc.
LET seems to be turning so extream left wing its almost palpable now.
I am no longer active here, find me at https://talk.lowendspirit.com (Just like LET without the scams)
A very large quantity (but small portion of revenue) of orders are these low-cost services. A large portion of our customer-base (especially from China) have services with a value of a few dollars per year. This means we also get a lot of these requests (not exactly like this situation, but where support time is used), especially (again, from China) where customers may have connectivity issues.
So yes, the value is so little it's not worth the aggravation, but it's also not worth encouraging.
It's not a huge problem. Our policies allow us to do what we do, and sometimes we just have to enforce them. In this case, the policy wasn't even enforced in the end. You have to remember that these packages are an extremely small part of our normal operation. We just love the community and want to provide the best prices possible.
If a plan doesn't come with "limited support" then we will of course provide the same level of support as any product, even if it's insanely low pricing. But when customers begin abusing the support by continuously arguing our policies, and they have limited support, we have to draw the line somewhere. We provided limited support packages as a means of providing extremely cheap pricing. We don't force anyone into accepting limited support, and we do advertise it clearly on the packages that do not have full support.
(edit) We have also gone ahead and added another warning on the checkout page as well.
Virtual Machine Solutions LLC | Contact
Customer service is a concept that puts empathy with the customer first - no matter what your human instincts are.
@VirMach actually gave a solid response, though I don't know if she is actually going to refund the OP as she should. She's looking at how WHMCS is confusing and taking feedback on how to fix it. Much improved.
Blame can be thrown either way, but I think the potential customers reading this thread for as long as it shows up in Google results can tell who they want to do business with.
I agree to some degree, it is for sure up there as highly important, but not at the detriment of other customers, company morals, and ethics or just because it is a common belief that the customer is always right even when they are being ridiculous.
However, he is not my customer and I am not talking to him or about him as one, this is what I mean by being a person, human, forum member before a host, its all to easy when someone does not agree just to play the 'host' card rather than make a real counterpoint or have a conversation about why they disagree.
Anyhoo, its Sunday, I am not 'at work' I might go for another walk with my dog
I am no longer active here, find me at https://talk.lowendspirit.com (Just like LET without the scams)
I also find that @VirMach's response is very thorough.
(I still don't understand how the OP "accidentally" added funds to his account, but I don't think that I'm going to succeed in understanding this.)
"Linux will run happily with only 4 MB of RAM, including all of the bells and whistles such as the X Window System, Emacs, and so on." (M. Welsh & L. Kaufman, Running Linux, 2e, 1996, p. 32)
I would like to point out that all of your posts are signed off as a representative of the business you're running, right down to the provider tag. That would put you, in the forum's context, a provider's representative before a person, that's how it is.
When things start getting personal..... it just doesn't sound professional, that's all.
Purveyor of high quality potassium
So do you think I should register another account with just a 'member' tag?
I am no longer active here, find me at https://talk.lowendspirit.com (Just like LET without the scams)
No god please no again...