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VirMach uses PayPal subscriptions.
You'd be amazed how many spammers sign up with legit identities and aren't concerned about any billing practices. They're precisely the ones who should be concerned about it, and they're the ones I don't feel bad for lol
As always the disclaimer: I know the difference between an accident, a compromised password, and intentional spam. Anyone concerned they may be at risk without intentionally spamming is concerned about a purely theoretical event that isn't compatible with how the determinations are made.
I don't think they are using the subscription to trick people into sending them free money. They have customers from all over the world, some people from certain backgrounds might find it very handy to use the subscription thing. You can't argue it's a bad thing simply because people like you and me didn't know how it works and lost some money because of it.
There are 2 types of subscriptions. One where you push funds and one where they pull funds. The first is like a money transfer where the second is like a credit card.
VirMach uses the later. If you don't have services or invoices, you aren't charged.
Inception uses the former. Whatever you pay the first time repeats automatically until you tell it to stop.
There is only one type of paypal sub. On Paypal's terms, you are supposed to cancel the sub when you cancel a service with someone.
But there are different plugins where some can automatically cancel the sub on your behalf.
Either way, Paypal sub is far more safer than paypal payment agreement.
I use neither.
If you think this, you clearly didn't read the ToS and AUP for Inception Hosting as I am pretty sure they outline exactly what will happen if you open a dispute with them. Past that, as has been said over and over to you now in this thread, this is the same ANY host with two brain cells would do. Why would I let you possibly impact my livelihood with a dispute that could cause my account to be locked or under restrictions and then continue to treat you like a customer? You basically walked up and pointed a gun at his head, demanded money and then expected him to just want to hash it out like a normal person with the gun to his head. No normal person would do that in real life, not sure why you would expect them to online.
my 2 cents.
Cheers!
I'm not sure if both of them can be called subscriptions. In any case didn't you get the email from PayPal notifying you of recurring payments?
Edit: deank beat me to the subscription defs
I refer to them as agreements as well, but PayPal labels both as Subscriptions. One just has an added interval.
I have PayPal agreements with:
Only the last one is a shady business.
I canceled PayPal agreements with:
These would first send an invoice asking me to pay, so I would naturally pay manually. On due date, they would charge again (pull funds), so that the same invoice is charged twice but service end date is extended by only one year.
If I ask, they will refund. Now I canceled agreements and only pay manually.
I used Inception Hosting in 2016 and there were neither subscription nor agreement.
It's fine to have a billing agreement with a company like Target. They wouldn't screw you over.
I specifically mentioned "host". Especially be careful with hosts found on LET or Hackforums. Never have a paypal payment agreement with hosts found there and here.
There are exceptions. For an example, I would trust FranTech empire with a paypal agreement, yes.
But those hosts that have appeared outta nowhere, be extra careful.
In my opinion, this is completely unfriendly approach. Glad I am not IH's customer. Good luck resolving it.
Thank you OP for making me check my pp-subscriptions. I foud I had three of them and honestly I do not remember when I agreed to it. All cancelled. I prefer loosing some vps due to late payment over loosing my money...
@OP I had the exact same deal (US2048) and just cancelled it a week ago. The cancellation email clearly states that if you have a PayPal agreement, you (as the user) should go and remove it.
I didn't know if I had a subscription, so I went and checked. I didn't, but atleast the email warned me that I should check if I am not sure. I think you should have checked.
On the other hand, I also cancelled an AlphaVPS server (both cancellations are because they were OVZ and didn't work for me). Payment for AlphaVPS was Paypal subscription. The minute, my cancellation was completed, I got an email from Paypal saying that AlphaVPS has cancelled my automatic payments.
While I believe providers can cancel subscriptions, I also think you should have taken a minute to check your subscription settings, especially when the email clearly asks you to do it.
As for the Paypal dispute, even when disputing something with an eBay seller, Paypal advises you NOT to directly contact the seller. This is because they can be in the loop and make a decision if the case is escalated. Therefore getting locked out of your account is kind of expected.
You don't even need a plugin. WHMCS has had automatic subscription cancellation built-in for almost five years.
https://docs.whmcs.com/PayPal_Basic#Automatic_Subscription_Management
https://blog.whmcs.com/110602/feature-spotlight-paypal-subscriptions
What exactly was your grounds you provided in the dispute? Most likely, you're committing fraud. They didn't steal or withdraw your funds without notice. I really don't know what you could have said that wasn't outright fraud.
Why providers don't use it? It's weird.
It's built in and used by default but some providers report mixed results when it's supposed to occur.
Hey, you're back.
Also @chaoszero112 , take this as a lesson. Lesson is pricey, I once forget to pay my netcup bill, got a letter from a debt collector, I paid up about 200 eur.
Because there will be more dick unsual provider I faced in the future. Use this opportunity to create a habit to check your paypal subscription and agreement regularly.
Experience is costly. Be a Man and deal with it, instead of bitching about it. It's the same case with backup.
What if OP is not a man?
Scaleway has my credit card number now. Should I worry?
Contact seller: you may get a refund without having to send things back.
Contact PayPal: PayPal will decide in your favor, but you have to pay return shipping.
Thus, always contact seller first.
PayPal claim has time limit of 3 months. Thus, if you buy annual plan and provider disappears after 3 months, you are screwed.
So far AlphaRacks was the only one disappeared on me, but I had 2 months left so not much loss.
I tried one of their backup servers a few months ago. The iowait was consistently high even when the VM was idle and the service was unusably slow. I would have expected they'd monitor their servers and do something about the performance before it got that bad.
That seems really low to me. I can understand them wanting to keep a few euros to cover the transaction charge and 5 minutes of their time to refund the payment and clean up their billing (it's a low end service after all - margins are razor thin) but it sounds like they didn't even try to do the right thing
Contact PayPal: PayPal will decide in your favor, but you have to pay return shipping.
Thus, always contact seller first.
I would also advise to contact the seller first. I was explaining to the OP that getting his account locked out was expected as Paypal recommends that the buyer & seller don't connect outside of their messaging channels.
Speaking of automatic payments, glad someone made this thread because I just realized I have one when I don’t have active service with Inception Hosting, time for me to go cancel that.
I didn't see such recommendation in PayPal.
PayPal claim process can accept screenshots of messages elsewhere as evidence.
However, if you open a ticket in the hosting provider's system but the email notification does not contain the content, you should take a screenshot early, so that you still have access to them even if the provider disables your account.
eBay has this recommendation, but anything you send through eBay messaging would be available to PayPal if you open a claim.
That part is actually pretty simple, nothing fraudulent. They sent a receipt for the payment but they also list the item. It clearly states the payment is for a VPS, not a credit to your account.
And that's really what my concern is. They have a prepared paragraph stating why it's your fault for sending the payment and they aren't obligated to give it back.
But is it really so hard to reply with:
"We've seen this happen a lot, despite our warnings. Unfortunately, PayPal charges us a fee for reversing the payment. If it's okay with you, we can return the payment minus the fee. Let us know if you'd like to proceed."
In the end, they aren't losing anything.
Sure, post the receipt. If it says for "VPS service" in a memo line or something, that's just supposed to be a reminder for the payment and it still applies for credit. If the receipt says its for a specific product for a given length of time, that might be different. But keep in mind, YOU sent them money.
Thanks for the input, but I'll deal with this through PayPal and Inception.
Fun anecdote : I forgot to disable the PayPal subscription and an auto payment for 6.25 EUR happened the day after I did a manual PayPal checkout for this quarterly amount.
Cool. I'M now set for 6months for my US BORGBACKUP target #2. The excess payment gets automatically converted to account credit. I learned that if I click the notifications icon (top-right) in IH's WHMCS, I am shown my credit balance.
I regularly do a PayPal sweep in Sept/October, but I somehow missed just this one. 😄
Worst of it is you won't use the credit unless you buy another service or cancel the sub a month before the service. That's why I don't like holding credit for that event, ends up effectively being me keeping it and the customer never seeing anything for it.
LOL, fraud
