New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Alpharacks keeps billing via PayPal!
StephanStanisic
Member
Hi everyone here on LET,
Just wanted to warn people here that the recurring billing agreements on PayPal weren't canceled (in my case anyway).
So I just woke up to an email "Thank you for your payment of $24 USD to AlphaRacks". I checked and all of my Alpharacks services where still active according to PayPal.
!! MAKE SURE TO CANCEL THIS IN YOUR PAYPAL ACCOUNT !!
I am new here and couldn't find a post mentioning this, so I thought I would post it since this forum is pretty involved in the whole Alpharacks fiasco
Thanked by 1teochristian
Comments
There are times when you don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Alpharacks, a great loss in the hosting world
Alpharacks, a great
lossscam in the hosting worldThey can't cancel your subscriptions, even if they wanted to. Just open a dispute and learn from your mistakes.
Master, you are asking too much.
Oh wow...
https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/How-do-I-cancel-a-Billing-Agreement-FAQ2254
https://www.paypal.com/si/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-cancel-an-automatic-payment-i-have-with-a-merchant-faq2058
I don't understand your reply? This is what OP should have done.
Yes, of course. These references are a complement to your statement, for the many more alpacars that will come here to complain.
You must continue making mistakes or else there is nothing to learn.
Do a chargeback. Paypal will refund you for this.
Of course, you need to secure your income even after a deadpool.
The backend of the billing server is mission critical, its usually prepaid for some years to pull money out your wallet infinite.
I don't even know how things like this are possible, I don't mean to offend the OP but things like this make me feel ridiculously intelligent, I might start researching black holes.
I don't get how these steps happen, please explain?
Buy something from a host with a TERRIBLE reputation for cheating, telling lies and being generally dodgy all around.
Choose to setup a PayPal subscription, i.e. you TELL PayPal to SEND money on a recurring basis.
Terrible dodgy scam host goes down, for weeks, they continue to lie and cheat every step of the way, weeks later they are still not back up and you do nothing!
Over a month later you still decide not to bother cancelling your own subscription that you voluntarily and knowingly set up.
How you even get to number 1 is beyond me, getting to number 4 is beyond about 90% of the population, getting past number 4 then complaining in public showing you still have no idea why the criminal stole from you despite leaving your door open and literally authorizing them to do so is so incredibly stupid I would seriously considering asking the government for a supported living allowance. you cannot be trusted to live your own life.
I mean did you think the agreement you made with PayPal was just for fun, did you think the email PayPal sent you notifying you of what you agreed too was also just as a bit of a laugh?
But anyway, file a dispute then immediately escalate it to a claim, you will get your money back in about 10 - 14 days.
First thing I did when I got the news, was go to Paypal and cancel.
Actually, in my case it was because I got a good deal from a company called RIJX. I was new to this at the time and 10 bucks with 2 IPs seemed OK. I didn't have any issues with them. But then RIJX got sold to some guy here by the name of Chris, and still things were fine for a low end service. Then Chris sold it to AlphaRacks, and my VPS still kept on ticking with no issues. Since there were no problems, I just let it run. However that's when the email storm started happening and I began to have second thoughts for that reason alone. In any case, my mind was made up for me with this latest (apparently not the last) step.
They can, and whmcs even makes it easy now. Though quite a reasonable expectation that they won't.
Indeed. Why refuse free dough?
I once bit and got one of their $7 a year plans. Within 10 mins i requested a refund (performance was garbage it was unusable). After 4 more tickets i got it refunded. I immediately went to PayPal and removed their pre authorization. In fact if you've never gone there you need to. You might be surprised how many companies have pre approval....
Of course non subscribed emails which i reported and they eventually stopped. But then 1 year later I get like 2 emails from different credit card processing companies trying to run my PayPal and failing then response to update my billing... I emailed them and complained and got zero response.
Anyway moral is to clean out your PayPal pre authorization regularly.
I always make a point of going into PP every few months and cancelling subscriptions or at least reviewing them. Takes 20 minutes every 3 months.
See how it is to scam others?
This is why kids set up summerhosts.
In fairness I have seen payments go through for PayPal subscriptions I forgot about, but here is my thought pattern when it happens: "ah bugger, my mistake, I suppose I have that for another month/year"
I remember them the 2 IP's VPS for $5 p/year right?
I do remember laughing at that one when it happened, that was probably them as well behind the scenes, I knew they were bullshitters when they took credit for a custom VPS panel that turned out to be an early version of virtualizors WHMCS module haha.
It's alpharacks, he doesn't "have" anything.
I always disable recurring payments because of such possible situations. You should open a dispute.
So just to clarify this a little bit:
I have none to little experience with PayPal. I live in the Netherlands and here each bank has their own system for paying online. All these systems are connected via a central API called iDeal.
When you create a recurring payment, it is in the hands of the iDeal API. When you cancel your order or when the business stops, the recurring payment is canceled by the iDeal API. This is why I thought that the recurring payment would have been stopped. The recurring thing looked like a thing that was mandatory to make the payment. Will look closer next time.
About ordering from AlphaRacks, I have had a couple of friends with good experience with them. For me AlphaRacks was just another VPS selling business, just with lower prices than the others.
About point 3, I noticed the going down of AlphaRacks within the first hour, as I had my calendar and contacts on that small VPS running. The recurring payment just came today.
So over all, lesson learned. Have filed a dispute with PayPal and am waiting for there reply.
In the time that AlphaRacks has been down I've went to creating my own little server since the stuff that I do don't really require a perfectly high uptime.
Thanks for everyone's insights.
I'm sorry, was that really necessary? Was just trying to help the (maybe) unknowing like me. I think that there are enough people that go trough this.
I wasn't trying to complain in public, just hoping I could help a few people who might not have canceled their subscription.
Could you maybe tell me how I could have changed this post so that it wouldn't have sounded like me complaining?
Sometimes it is mandatory to agree to recurring payments, however after the initial purchase goes through you can then cancel any automatic future payments.
Thanks, I'll do that the next time I make a payment with PayPal.
This is what I do, I've encountered some hosts that have a subscription setup (and I didn't see a way to just do 1 payment), and after paying I just simply canceled the subscription and paid manually every month.
Just ignore that person, they're being a dick to everyone not just you. Your post looks fine to me and i'm sorry you had to learn it this way, it happens tho, even with these "high horse riders".
This is on you to cancel the agreement, not on them.