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This is both fair, and unfair. One of the first things I remember @Falzo saying is "Make sure to read the contract terms." in a NetCup thread. That's why it's #1 less/mo or #24/yr- because you're agreeing to keep the contract for a 3, 6 or 12 month period, rather than a "by the month" system many of us are used to with cheap VPS.
Now their "Hourly" system where you have to prepay for the month and request a refund for unused time, I consider borderline-scammy.
Highly effective means of keeping away the bottom-feeding scum though.
From what I've understood in this thread, I at least don't see that netcup has done anything wrong here.
To me at least, it's unclear to what extent netcup really wants international business. They no doubt got a lot of international business from their recent pre-BF/BF/Advent exposure here on LET, but don't forget that netcup has never posted an offer on LET, nor do they have an official representative here. It seems to me that their main market is Germany, and they flirt a bit with the non-German EU market via netcup.eu. But I don't see that they're trying hard to get non-EU customers. Has anyone ever seen an offer that they've posted on a forum or site outside of Germany?
Received their email several hours ago while I was asleep,they cancel the bill.
I think I should be really anonying.
@angstorm
Yes, they have not done anything wrong, it is just me too careless not follow their procedure.And they surely did not target to the non-europe area. Hope their bussiness would expand to outside of Germany.
Let's just hope it doesn't. I don't want to buy a cheap VPS on the internet, forget to click something in German, then get sued here in my own country.
Just pay for your opt-in services, and you'll be fine.
With you this reads as meaning something dirty.
This is exactly what happened me. I no longer needed a VPS so didn't pay when they invoiced me, expecting it to be cancelled automatically.
Ended up sending me to debt collectors and cost me a small fortune.
Obviously my own fault for not reading their cancellation policies, but I see this as a massive asshole move. Be careful when doing business with these guys.
Not necessarily. There is a concept of "reasonable expectation" on the part of the customer, and if you'd get a good lawyer, you'd just might be able to demonstrate in court that you did nothing wrong while expecting that the VPS cancels automatically from non-payment -- because that's the accepted practice you came to expect from great majority of other providers in the same field.
Especially if you're yourself not in Germany where their practice originates (and is more "normal"), e.g. the OP is in China.
But of course getting a lawyer and participating in a court process can be expensive.
Most importantly, stop jumping to blaming yourself only (that's relating to you and also to the OP). It is not your fault that they have these crazy policies which they failed to sufficiently explain to you and warn you about.
Thus why I didn't bother and just decided to pay up... didn't want my credit rating getting a hit considering I was in the process of buying a house!
Exactly. I have been with loads of providers, and usually just let my servers automatically cancel. What Netcup did was not expected at all. It was my first time with a German provider. Out of interest, does Hetzner have a similar policy?
@Steve
They follow the same rules but hetzner act much clear and simple with my experience.
Completely agreed. This is a provider I will never signup for.
The 14 days cooling-off period as outlined in the EU directive is implemented in a harmonious way across all Europe. The fact that the customer is in China, if anything, lessens his "reasonable expectations" from an online contract (despite the protection being applicable to himself too) unless you want to argue that it's common practice for any provider to grant a right to cancel a valid contract according to buyer's remorse; moreover, no special conditions nor trial periods were agreed upon signing.
I'd rather attempt to argue that if he hadn't been offered a model like the home linked here by Ympker or one as detailed in the directive or similar utility, the withdrawal aka the "cancellation of the order" aka the revocation aka die widerruf could still be possible. Why?
Art. 10(1) of the directive states
and said Article 6(1), point (h) states
since only Annex I(A) (the "notice") but not Annex I(B) (the "form") has been offered, either his withdrawal intention should be freely argued by the context of his reply to the "cancellation of the renewal" confirmation mail, or he's still in time to send a withdrawal notice.
I'd send a new widerruf, stating that it's simply reiterating the "pls cancel imediaterly" OP sent on 13-11-2017 and, even if that old mail had to be interpreted as an invalid widerruf (because it's vague, because it's equivocal, because it's not clearly expressed, whatever), the new widerruf is valid since the trader omitted to provide a withdrawal form sample (or similar utility like a "cancel the order" button)
A Chinese court would pretty probably be required to judge according to substantive German law (and this includes EU law) to interpret the contract, as long as it's procedurally possible according to the Chinese conflict of laws rules; a Chinese court couldn't obviously judge Germany's implementation of the directive but they could interpret the regulatory framework with the aid of the directive.
TL;DR and not in legalese
The trader must provide you with a model withdrawal form which you can use to tell them about your decision, but you don't have to use it.
and here goes my lunch time
TOS: https://hetzner.com/rechtliches/agb
Section 9 and 11 - could not be much clearer as far as I see.
Then there is the additional "Cancel Order" button next to cancel server in their web panel
Netcup could learn something here !
One german provider with wierd terms is EUServ. For example their yearly contracts must be termininated 3months before or it will be one more year automaticly. So heads up if you got some promo with them
Can't speak for other countries here but here in Germany it's pretty common to do that.
Here in China we can cancel at any time most of the case.
From what I know that's not somehow a netcup specific (nor a germany specific) but a rather global understanding: One cancels/terminates the contract and doesn't simply stop honouring it (e.g. by not paying).
Bullshit. The concept of "reasonable expectation" is directly related to a context, typically the very contract.
Where you can argue like that is that you can, indeed, reasonably expect a contract to have reasonable (and not too burdensome or cumbersome) provisions for cancellation/termination. That, however, is the case anyway in basically all civilized countries; The usual rule is that clauses outside of what is taken to be common, reasonable, and feasible are legally invalid and are replaced by conditions that are legal, reasonable, ...
The "reasonable expectation" you paint is untenable in that it stipulates the a consequence of not fulfilling the contract can somehow be construed as being a "reasonable" means to terminate it. Nonsense.
The only lever I see wrt netcup is that even germans can easily (and seem to not rarely) misunderstand the cancellation/termination mechanism implemented by netcup.
Therefore OP could reasonably argue in court that he was under the clear impression that pushing the "cancel" button" was the adequate and necessary declaration of his will to cancel the contract (and not merely a future prolongation).
It should be understood, btw, that (not only in germany but pretty much throughout europe and possible in other regions, too) a customer is not supposed or required to have a legal understanding similar to a lawyer. In fact, many countries/laws expressly stipulate that a "common citizen" must be able to understand the legal interactions like. for instance, how termination/cancellation works. THAT is the reason why @cece would quite probably win in the end: netcups mechanism seems to be bewildering and confusing. In particular, a common citizen is not required to understand the subtleties of canceling a server vs. canceling the contract; he can reasonably assume that those are the same and it is upon the provider to lay out things clearly and to provide clear mechanisms.
@bsdguy did @cociu start working for NetCup or something?
And this is why I wanted to point out this termination issue. Maybe we can avoid threads like this in the future
Pardon me, but I'm surprised to see such idiocy coming from you. I went so far as to say that I perceive netcup as somewhat shady - and you come up with that BS?
@all
To have something useful and constructive to take home:
From the legal perspective the "expression of will" is decisive and a contract, btw. is but an "expression of will" from two or more legal entities (plus, typically some details).
On the other hand companies with many clients need a somewhat streamlined form of "expression of will" to allow for mass processing, so they, for instance, provide "cancel" buttons. It's important to understand that these are just diverse means for one act, namely the expression of will. Plus: That is just the usual and common means; you are not limited to it or forced to use it. The decisive point is that you express your will in an adequate way (the other side can notice and understand it).
Hence, to make sure one doesn't get fucked, one can simply fall back to the simple method of writing a ticket and/or an email (or even better a fax) simply saying "I wish to make use of the 14-days cancellation period and to cancel the contract with you I went into on [date]".
That is no less legally binding than pressing a button and requires less fine print reading and finding out about "smart trickery" like "Oh, sir, you cancelled but we took that to mean that you don't want to prolong for yet another year".
Plus it has a nice side effect: it's less convenient for the provider companies and might make them think about providing a less tricky user interface.
lol
@all
Netcup. Have canceled my invoice yesterday in case you miss my post.
Well in some part of Chinese life, we still suffer from the unexpected or confusing things especially when dealing things with government. They always tell you the rules is for safety.But just ignore the facts that quite a few province. have clear and simple policy. You may run into trouble when you move from one province to another. You need different paperwork with the same affairs.
This is very similar with Netcup. They do nothing wrong. They follow their laws strictly.And their main customer from Germany get used to it. But this will make outsiders feel bad.It did not work as expected.
Just like in China,we would love to live in much more open areas such as BEIJING Shanghai,but not some rural area where the policy are vague .
Glad you eventually managed to solve it
Some providers are offering contract which is valid until the end of the payment term. OVH for example will give notification when the contract is almost expired and the users need to pay for renewing / extending the contract.
In case there are no payment, contract is simply terminated.
Netcup is different in this regards, because users are required to do something in order to terminate the contract.
So Treudler (which is another German provider, right?) sent me an invoice yesterday, asking me to pay for the next billing cycle starting from Sep 30 2018 to Sep 29 2019. That definitely scared the shit out of me, because last I checked there should be eight (count them, eight) month to go before the current term ends. For fear of expecting a debt collector in my country any time soon, I scrambled to login to the WHMCS panel and cancelled the product. Fortunately the invoice went from "UNPAID" to Cancelled and I got a cancellation confirmation email.
Sorry, I know this is off-topic and Treudler is broke. Just found it hilarious...
For fear of expecting a debt collector in my country any time soon
Treudler is run by a kid, don't expect anything to happen here
I knew. It was just a joke...
It is actually very nice to see this thread finally arrive at a more amicable understanding for Netcup as well. Hopefully their marketing and billing department will see benefit to making communication for cancellation more straightforward for the broader market beyond Germany.
And thanks to the sincere "thinking out loud" by @cece to understand Netcup's current business practice, perhaps even just a few more buyers can now see better possibility of reasonable outcome from thoughtful communication. (Maybe this represents a rare occasion to celebrate something good.)