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Fines/Tickets and comercial invoices are a totally different ball game. At least here.
Fines/tickets issued on the private land are merely a result of the contract between the land owner and the visitor and as such an angrier looking commercial invoices. And yep, they can come and bite you same way as your unpaid hosting bills years after.
Are you referring to parking tickets?
Because that's the only ticket I'm aware a private company can issue, and that is only per negotiation with the local government in order to manage the public parking spaces.
I can't fine/ticket my clients, can you?
What I can do is to sue them for unpaid bills, but more often than not its just not worth it.
A $10 for sure wouldn't be worth it and the last time I had any contact with debt collectors they would only accept 5k+ debts.
To me, the way you say the UK works, is a dream to me. So much so that it's hard for me to believe e you are not exaggerating. No offense meant.
I can't believe this guy thinks his container should be automatically terminated at the end of the billing cycle. That's not how monthly terms work. Some of you here are trying to wriggle around how this works by saying 'well DO doesnt do it'. DO isn't my boss or leaseweb's boss. We've ran our businesses with monthly terms requiring cancellation in advance since before DO was even born. This is mostly to prevent abuse and due to the fact that hourly containers were unheard of pre DO and still have limited use cases.
Tell this to the millions of devs that are using those hourly billed containers on a daily basis. It's just more convenient and companies that do this should be commended because they're actually helping people not scamming them by forcing them to pay even if they're not using the services. Don't be scammers/beggars guys even if it's legal in your country/part of the world... We have enough of those already and they're "running" our countries :P
Dear, I can't cancel it before the end of the first term which they have defined as the first month plus the next full month. Which means I can't cancel it before end of May!
That's not true.
I'm not reproducing the entire email they have sent (explaining how the first month is not really the first month etc.) because I don't want to impinge on some 'confidentiality clause' in their agreement (which, by the way, I hope to finish reading in 2020).
They have made it clear that the first term ends at the end of May, and that I have already paid for May and therefore there's no point in canceling now. I might as well as use it for May. What I haven't paid for is April, and that I must pay, since I've already used it, and so on.
They should have included the full amount in the order page before you clicked order. This is clearly a scam. It seems that they did...Indeed, have you considered suing?
I'm afraid I signed up for a 1 month term, not a 30 month term. It says so clearly on their ordering page that you're buying it on a monthly term.
It's like taking a house on rent for one year in February of 2018, and then the landlord saying, you have to pay us for the whole of 2019 as well, because that's the first full year! And that too, when you're vacating the house next Feb after completing one year.
I have their email backing up my statement.
If you can read their terms of service (linked above) and assure me that pasting their email won't lead to 10 years in jail, I can post it here.
You're not getting it. You can't cancel after the first month. You can cancel only after paying for the first month (partial) and the next full month. That's the problem here.
Such a confusing billing procedure may not be illegal, but it's certainly weird to me. If it's not weird to you, lucky you!
You should seriously pay attention to details. They are saying I can't cancel May, because they collected for May at the beginning (when I signed up). And of course, I can't cancel April either, because I've 'used' April.
I can cancel only from June.
Got it?
What does this mean? "The minimum term of 1 month + cancellation effective at the end of the term" Does this mean that I have to pay for the first month and then for another full month? If so, where in their ToS do they say this? (read the ToS above).
And that such a practice is weird.
I have seen these types of providers so far:
1) hourly billers
2) monthly billers who charge partial month on sign up and give you a full invoice for the next month later.
3) monthly billers who charge full one-month payment on sign up and give you one full month of service.
Leaseweb is the first one that collects a full one-month payment on sign up, and later says, this payment was for the second month (first full month), and therefore you can cancel only at the end of the second month. I mean, I still would have considered this an innovative revenue maximization scheme if this was made clear at the time of payment. But it isn't.
This is how the sign-up/ordering page looks:
And my complaint wasn't even about the fact that I had to pay for 1 whole month to basically test their server set up. That I learned to live with. But then, sending me another bill using such innovating accounting is just too much.
Actually, this happens but not in the exorbitant way you are describing. If you sign up for a rental contract for a house and you move in January 5th 2018, you pay rent for January 5 through January 31 and the full month of February, with your contract ending at the end of February 2019, making the contract last for 12 months and 26 days. This is still a 12 month contract, and it is perfectly legal because it simply says so in the contract that you sign.
Now, stop putting your head in the sand, grow a set of balls, admit your mistake, pay the bill, and move on. This is getting ridiculous, it reminds me of gongzi or whatever this guy was called.
you can always cancel at any time with some simple clicks in their control panel.
of course that does not mean it'll end your service instantly, but on end of the billing period. you'll even get a mail stating that date clearly.
I just checked and so far I cancelled services with leaseweb three times, one after a few months and two that where on a half-year term within the last month of that (initial) billing period.
you know what? I just found out that I actually never got charged for the days of the month I ordered!
so if you would have cancelled early, you might have never seen a second invoice. may also be they just suddenly changed their billing, I don't know, last time I did that was nov 17...
I guess it's more likely that they get stubborn once they send out an invoice, because the buyer didn't cancel in the first place.
no it's not weird to me. and that's not because I am lucky, but because I am expecting providers from different countries to have different procedures in the first place.
if I am unsure or seek clarification, I usually just ask their sales and billing department before I order anything. but most time I am just lazy and if I get caught by surprise on something I wouldn't have expected, I usually simply pay my ten bucks and don't have a big lunch the next few days instead ;-)
How do you know I haven't paid?
That's not really what this is about. This is about a provider
1) not offering a test/trial service or hourly billing
2) expecting developers to pay for 1 month to test their server
and
3) expecting those developers to pay even more in the name of billing cycle.
I can put up with 1 and 2, because they are apparent from their ordering page. But point 3 is not mentioned anywhere, and comes out of the blue. It may only be 7 dollars (in this case), but I just don't like such 'smart' practices.
As a developer, I do believe I have the right to call point 3 'weird'.
you can call anything weird if it is for you. you just should try to accept that other people might find that weird too.
Hire a $10/hr lawyer.
You will win.
Do you find 'step 3' unreasonable or weird or surprising?
As a developer, I develop and don't complain about an agreement I voluntarily signed without reading.
Print it, memorize it, put it above your desk and bed. Anything to make you finally understand that you fucked up and not Leaseweb.
no I don't. it's what has been discussed before. a recurring billing cycle that you obviously failed to cancel in a timely manner.
from my pov it doesn't matter if you see yourself as a developer or whatever, why should leaseweb differentiate on whatever their clients background is?
learn from it, don't deal with international businesses unless you are willing to accept, that they might handle things differently from the way you expect.
and don't forget to proactively cancel services you don't want or need anymore.
a few seconds might have saved your lazy a*se all that time you now spent here creating and answering this topic ;-)
TL;DR; you might find it weird behaviour, a lot of others don't. nothing changes.
Don't defend Leaseweb too hard. The fact that they don't state this clearly during order is bad practice. But thats not suprising since Leaseweb doesn't give a rats ass about their customers. I still remember thouse thousand dollar bills cause, instead of deploying a simple system to detect and null route ddos victims, they charged their customers for the used traffic.
The market changed. Alternatives exist and nobody should feel forced to go with such a terrible provider.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treatment/unfair-commercial-practices/index_en.htm
https://putting.something.in.the.terms.of.service.that.you.agree.with.is.not.an.unfair.commercial.practice.in.the.eu
Can you point out one sentence in the contract that says that the initial payment is for the second month and that the first month will have to be paid later? If you do, I'll actually print it and put it under my pillow.
Why is it so hard for you to understand?
They don't have an option of canceling the product before the second month is out. (By cancel, I mean a situation where I am not being billed. Not like Leaseweb defines it -- where the item is canceled, but will continue to be billed because apparently, the first payment was for the month of May and not for April).
So, no, I didn't forget to cancel the product before the first billing cycle was through. The first billing cycle will end only on May 31, according to their warped policy. That is the problem.