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CloudCone refund after closing an account
rbertoncelj
Member
in General
If anyone is using CloudCone and thinking of closing the account, make sure to request a refund of remaining credits BEFORE deleting the account as they are apparently unable to do it afterwards.
As it was a ridiculously small amount I did not pursue this matter further, but I've urged them to state this explicitly in the UI to avoid any problems in the future.
Thanked by 1niceboy
Comments
it's also common sense to request a refund before closing your account knowing you have credits
Shouldn't that be obvious?
That's common sense.
Congrats on your first post
Possibly, but I've never had such experience before, so it's just a friendly advice to hopefully help someone else avoid a similar situation.
Well, try asking to withdraw money from a bank account after you close.
You will get the same response although I wager they will warn you beforehand to withdraw any fund before doing that.
So, basically common sense.
When I call a bank to close they explicitly ask me where I want my remaining balance to go. Probably not the best example.
They do that now.
About 20 or so years ago, they just closed it without asking. So, in my tiny brain, my example still applies.
If it's always 5 o'clock somewhere then it's always the late 90's somewhere else.
The end is always nigh, just like your backup system.
Just sayin'
And I’ll just ask what did you agree in the T&Cs (genuine question)
@Slushy said:
I may not have put much thought into the process, because it was just a quick evaluation. I agree that the smartest thing to do would be the other way around, just in case.
What is obvious or common sense is subjective. In my experience, closing an account, not necessarily just in hosting business, will result in a refund of available credits - either on request or automatically. I've even developed solutions like that myself. For one of them the refunds were handled in their billing department "offline" and the system had to export a PDF of their customer's refund amount and banking account number upon closing an account.
Being able to get a refund afterwards was common sense for me I guess. It still is, but I know better not to assume it from now one and have learnt from this experience and from the feedback here.
When somene as clueless as me comes along, he/she can hopefully learn it from this discussion instead of the hard way.
They don't seem to mention credits on the account at all. Just a prorated refund of service, which probably doesn't apply in this case as it was an hourly billed VPS. It also doesn't mention order of doing things being important for a refund
Edit: https://cloudcone.com/policies/terms
Hi @rbertoncelj,
I do apologize for the inconvenience you had to go through.
However, when deleting an account, we mention (in multiple places) that personal data will be erased
Also, we always offer refunds for customers whenever possible; however, a refund request should come via a ticket, and we cannot proceed with a refund without a ticket.
I believe the problem you faced is, you forgot to raise a ticket before you deleted the account.
By any chance If you had opened a ticket, let me know the ticket ID, and we can process it for you.
We do mention this in our policies found at https://cloudcone.com/policies/terms/ section number 02
No. You are wrong!
@Cloudcone
No problem, it was a a really small amount. It's just that some alarms rang in my head that this might happen to someone else also.
I may be biased in a way because I've worked in industries where handling billing data and customers' money/accounts in such way to avoid these situation was really important and also highly regulated.
Regarding the policies - I don't understand which part of section 2 exactly are you pointing out?
It would appear so
Obviously.
Genuinely curious about this - since when is getting account credits refunded even an option?
I've honestly never heard of being able to "cash out" your account on close (unless we're talking about an affiliate account? but the wording says "credits"). Unless for some reason the provider failed to deliver the product in some way and the purchasing + refunding of said credits occurred within a very short time window, I don't see why one would expect the credit to be returned to them in fiat anyway. If I buy a gift card for any retail store, there's no chance in hell they'd give me cash for it in the future.
Not trying to shoot you down, @rbertoncelj. Just curious if "cashing out" is commonplace in the hosting world?
Nope, when you get a store credit, they never give you cash for it.
The guy's lacking common sense and is refusing to admit it is all this is about.
Or too young to have realized this which is rather common in lowend hosting shithole.
Hetzner? https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/3074361/#Comment_3074361
They mailed me a check, automatically. This wasn't 20 years ago, but 2001 or 2002.
But I agree with @MasonR about credit and cashback/refunds. I made this point months ago and people got all butthurt and thought I was crazy.
In most states, the bank is required to EITHER return the money to the individual, or the state they were last known to reside in. This is why many states have substantial "Unclaimed Property" departments.
https://sco.ca.gov/upd_msg.html
Close account is usually user do not want provider keep their finance information is not it? If they can refund you after account close, it means they still keep your nudes.
Not a comment on the merits of refund or not but 2001 was 19 years ago now... Technically not 20 years but for all intents basically the same.
In EU they would be required (and allowed under GDPR) to keep invoices due to accounting obligations (keeping records and taxation, etc...), so not everything will end up in a black hole immediately.
Then there are also payment gateways which will usually have a self-care portal for merchants with detailed transaction lists and non of the ones I've integrated with had an option to permanently delete the data there.
Ofcourse even if tying this scattered information together after deleting customer data in your own database was theoretically possible it will probably be too time-consuming.