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Comments
I do want to be fair and admit that for such low-priced products they are very stable and has improved my Internet experience tremendously. And it's likely I would have continued to employ their services. Regrettably that ship might have sailed.
In my defence, only after I was pushed, then with a rush of blood I jumped and made this thread.
Do I regret it? Now that I have time to collect my thoughts, I'd say I do to some extent. Because by putting myself out here I'm painting a target on my back for people who are looking for an excuse to be abusive. And there are certainly no shortage of abusive comments here. If only their staff had been a bit more patient.
Now I won't shirk responsibilities so shouldn't Virmach. We both contributed to the burning of this bridge.
Nevertheless Virmach, as a brand and a business, should start value their customers a bit more. Customers should be treated with respect regardless of how much money they spend on you. Don't you agree?
I hope Virmach will take the advice and make improvements on your end to prevent such incident by maybe warning immediate billing if PayPal account is linked.
To be honest, I was being penny-pinching and don't think international phone calls make sense financially.
you can just change or close your special plans,fix the prices of special plans,or only change or close them for Chinese if you think Chinese are untolerable or you can not make any profit from them.It's all on your depends.Actually i dont think you cant make profit from them,you just cant make enough profit from them.
I think many Chinese just want to buy your special plans to dig a tunnel to search on Google or watch some TV shows on Youtube,they choose your special plans just because they are cheap.They never expect a better quality because they know what a "SPECIAL" plan meaning for.I think you know it more clearly than me.If they want to build up an important website or have other high quality needs they will buy better and more expensive plans.But,if you give them an unuseful ip at the beginning,don't you think you shouldn't replace it for free?
I am a Chinese,I am using several plans of yours and i am also an affiliate of yours.I think your "special" plans are high cost performance,steady but mediocre.If i build up only a small wordpress blog on your 256KVM special plan vps,the system will notice me that i have used high amount of IO then suspend my vps.I understand your "special" plans so now i only build up a SSR session on it without any complaints.Also i recommend your special plans on my blog,and i think my readers will choose the right plans depend on their own needs. In my opinion,clients never be god,you make up your special plans yourself and fix a price yourself,then clients buy them on their own will and you make money.It's equal and free to every of us.but in your words, i just heard out a strange emotion.Maybe you think you are god,but Paypal successfully pretend you from being him.
forgive my poor english.
Who's actually been 'abusive'?
Invoices expire :O? I should tell it to Equinix, that would surely play out nicely.
I think he means the plan; SOP for low-end hosting providers.
It's interesting that dude from InceptionHost got all nipple hard when a typical Chinese dispute rises at LET.
If banning Chinese customer makes you sleep better and you wishes to have nothing to do with Chinese customer, why bother reply and taunt in almost every Chinese related dispute. I don't get it.
I don't think they will ban Chinese,oppositely,they have just open an ALIPAY tunnel to pay for their products which almost every Chinese use.And what his words sounds not like complainting at all,it's sounds like showing off.Actually,most Chinese buy their special plans just only because they have "connection issues"as he said and his plan is the cheapest.I think his words are not fair to Chinese,and not fair to other providers who offer more expensive but higher quality products.
@rustyhalo The question is who do not want to make money, everything in front of money is not important.
That’s highly debatable.
Don't be a dick all your life, I did not even know the OP was from China, how do you know he is?
Nobody cares about the "little" things in life anymore...
Come to think of it, there never were "little" significant things, i was being delusional.
I was never under an impression that OP was a Chinese. Maybe a little dumb but never took him for a Chinese.
Wow.
Because his Engrish is good? My Engrish good too!
Well it does with them, I find that it expires too quickly with them. They sent me emails before that it's expiring in 24 hours...
How should I know if invoices expire somewhere else? I was only talking about Virmach's practices.
LOL, is this thread serious ?
Unless virmach is hurting for money, just refund and get on with the day. Leaves good rapport with the customer.
The OP asked nicely about refunding the mistaken payment. If he/she was a fraud. This step isn't necessary.
smh
As serious as going to a shop for shoes, trying on some shoes, paying for some shoes, walking home in the shoes, sitting down, looking at your feet and yelling "I did not ever intend to buy these shoes" filing a chargeback then going back to the store and asking for a refund because you bought them by accident
Aside from that, no not serious at all
evil shoe stores selling people stuff they did not intend to buy.
Not a bad analogy. What had the world come to.
Pretty sure none of us will be here by 2025 anyway so its all good
We use the deposit system to process non-refundable payments for bulk orders. Some big customers also like to have balance available for when they require bulk services, especially if they are paying via Bitcoin.
Just to be clear, most of our Chinese customers do not have special packages. They are our standard packages, on the lower end, and with limited support. The issues that arise in terms of making a profit is the combination of lower-end packages, higher payment fees, higher refund rates, and more support time used (even if packages come with limited support.)
We are attempting to close the gap in payment fees by offering Alipay recently. This should assist us in cutting about 15-20% of the costs associated with fees on lower-end packages and make it cheaper to process refunds versus PayPal.
The quality of our specials and cheaper packages is pretty high, just like our other packages. Our support is also good, but it's not included with "limited support" packages. The problem is that the connection may not be good to China, and IP addresses may be blocked by the GFW. We do not have control over that.
I'm sorry, but we're not responsible for the government or ISPs blocking off our IP ranges. If a customer initially receives an unusable IP, they can (and do) request a refund. Otherwise we do offer them an IP change for a fee, and if it's within the first week of service we usually offer a courtesy refund for the IP change fee to store credit as a goodwill gesture.
Unfortunately, we cannot offer 100% free IP changes on a $1-2 package as the cost of changing the IP manually is more than the cost of the plan, and there's no guarantee that it won't be blocked in the future by the GFW.
We have constantly improved our automated abuse systems. A small Wordpress site would not have any issues. The general rule of thumb is that you get 1.5% of the average disk operations per 1% of the disk space that is allocated to you, which is pretty fair.
We're not complaining or showing off. I'm just being fully transparent. We added Alipay to reduce fees, and are considering making it the primary methof of payment for cheaper packages purchased from China.
Thank you again for the feedback.
I'm sorry if I offended you. My words were not meant to be unfair, and it contained almost no opinions. I just was stating the facts. Customers from China, on average, purchase packages totaling less then $10 per year, most of which happen to have limited support, and as a result of the low pricing (and foreign transaction fees) happen to have the highest fees.
Due to the language barrier, and due to the connection issues since our network is not optimized for China (and we have no control over the GFW) we also have a higher rate of refunds for China and more disputes as well as more support tickets created.
I personally use PayPal, and I can clearly tell the difference between a one-time payment, a subscription, and a billing agreement when I sign up for services with other websites. I apologize if you did not notice this, but there's not much we can do when PayPal takes over the checkout process.
Here's an image I found of what the page/message looks like when you initially checkout, and it happens to be from HostGator.
Again, I'm sorry, but as I stated above, I do not see why anyone would click "Add Funds" and change their mind after the button did exactly what it was meant to do.
Comparing it to any other "add funds" or "payment" feature for bills and deposits elsewhere, it works exactly as one would expect it. For example, when I make a payment for my car, there's a text field that asks me how much I want to pay, and a "Make Payment" button. Once the button is pressed, the payment immediately goes through. Now, I don't imagine anyone clicks the button and then contacts the bank and complains to them saying they changed their mind halfway through the loading screen.
You did not mention that you were already offered a refund, and the only reason you have not yet received the refund is PayPal holding the payment. This was explained fairly clearly by Syed A. In addition, you stated you were not warned that deposits are non-refundable but this is clearly stated on the deposit page.
You made 30+ responses over 2 weeks on a single ticket about a $5 payment. You have services ranging from $1 per year to $6 per year, all with limited support. You opened four other tickets in the past, These are the facts. I apologize if you expected more than just 5 years of total service with limited support for your $20.
The transactions should be visible on your end, and you can also contact PayPal support. The issue isn't that you need an update from us once we're able to refund you, the issue is that (1) you opened a dispute, (2) you're not respecting our policies, and (3) you're accusing us of lying and arguing with us, to which we cannot allocate further support time.
Your ticket has been escalated to the highest level. If I had to estimate how much time was spent dealing with your situation so far by multiple people, it would be more than the amount of money we've received from you.
The $10 per 15 minutes isn't unreasonable, when it reaches the point of a dispute/escalated to higher-level support. We are a US-based company and multiple agents are involved at this point, especially when the agents involved are getting paid more than our lower-tier support. Of course the logistics don't matter (there's plenty of customers who use more support time than the value of their package, and it's fine, as it averages out) and we rarely draw a line, but we did in this instance.
We do sometimes offer discounts where possible, but this was quoted straight out of our fee schedule and is the standard rate. We have to take into account all the factors, and add in profit margins as well as situations where we provide support but are not able to collect the payment.
We treat all customers fairly & do not cut corners if a cheaper package comes with support. The issue is that none of your packages come with full support, and the support does not include dealing with PayPal disputes for free. It also doesn't mean we are obligated to make exceptions to our policies (which we did; we already offered a refund) or obligated to explain our policies to you multiple times.
Before even creating this thread, instead of receiving no refund, and a $25 fee for opening a dispute, as well as a fee for using support time outside of our limited support (which only includes your product being inaccessible), you received a fee waiver, no mention that you have limited support (until we drew the line) and a courtesy refund offered for your non-refundable deposit.
I would say that's being treated with respect, regardless of how much you spent.
When you choose to purchase a product with limited support, please expect limited support in the future. Please do not open disputes, or argue our policies. Just as you expect to be respected, we expect our policies to be respected and false disputes not opened. We understand that you may have not understood that your PayPal account was linked, but you were definitely informed of this on PayPal and you were informed it's non-refundable. While our system did say an invoice would be generated, it also said (by default) that it needs to be paid, because even if you decide not to pay it, it will remain on your account as a required payment and you would still have to contact support to remove it. We also do not state that the invoices DO NOT get automatically paid, although we also did not mention that it does. If you change your mind a lot, please make up your mind before making any payments that might require manual billing intervention, and don't expect automatic policy exceptions.
We have already added these warnings as a result. Thanks for the feedback.
Customer was already offered a refund before this thread was created. There's just complications with the refund since Pa PayPal dispute was opened, which caused the money to get stuck in processing.
It's just a standard policy for various reasons described above in my previous responses, and lower-tier agents cannot make exceptions.
huh what? The OP didn't use his account's funds. That's why they are still there...
As far as I understand the issue, the OP is asking for the refund on the remaining balance. Not a refund for services already rendered. So what's the problem?
You are giving yourself pretty bad press by your non-sense statements
@Virmach No mental deals for BF this year then, right?
damn
This is what happens when one doesn't shut up when he should really have.
@VirMach As long as I can still get some of those IPv6 /128+ left that you don't offer- we're good forever.
I'm impressed by @Virmach's long, patient replies, but I too suspect that the good deals of old are over after this thread.
They were gone months ago.. after the Chinese found them and started sending gibberish reasons for their penis length honorship.
all the posters saying that @Virmach should just ante up a refund to keep the customer happy and to avoid the negative chat are both correct and ignoring the fact that doing this both costs more than what the service costs and encourages the behaviour.
@Virmach have a clearly stated policy and their best bet is to adhere to the policy. The customers that they lose through that policy are not a good fit for their business model. That doesnt mean they are bad customers, they are just not the right customers for this company. It doesnt mean @Virmach is a bad provider it just means that they are not the right provider for every customer or every need.