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OVH Is forcing me to pay $2000 for a dedicated server
Back in 2019, I decided to purchase a RISE-3 Server for 1 year, paid approximately 1.6k EUR. Fast forward to 2020, I have been paying this server month to month ( I didn't renew the yearly contract and instead decided to pay month by month). All went smooth until this month when I decided that I no longer needed this machine.
For some reason, OVH is bringing up the contract from 2019 and demanding that I pay 1.6k EUR for the server until 2022, they didn't provide any resolution, only paying the bill.
What's up with OVH??? This is just messed up for a small company like ours, I simply can't afford to pay that right now and they are still telling me that I have to.
Support ticket:
"I do not want to be billed for this server as I no longer need it, for some reason there was an attempt to charge me 1.6k EUR which is not what I want, from now on we will only use the cloud features of OVH, I can't seem to cancel that dedicated server from my account and there seems to be a pending invoice of 1.6k? Please look it up, I can't afford to pay that much."
Response:
"Regarding your demand , we have chcecked that the server was in autorenew in yearly renew . This renew has been made and the server is renewed until 2022 . You have to pay the bill :
REDACTED
You should change the renewal type to manual before the expiring date .
Kind regards. "
Comments
Did you change the renewal type to manual before the expiry date? or did you just leave the bill unpaid and thought that the server would cancel on its own?
I have been paying this server month to month ever since 2020.
I'd expect it to renew as monthly or just to be cancelled, it's only been 1 week since renewal. I thought it would cancel on its own
"PAY OR WE'LL BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN LIKE WE DID SBG2"
something does not add up or you are missing something here. when you say cou 'paid month to month' this would mean, the autorenew was disabled - correct? so that you MUST manually pay each month. if that's the case how come that suddenly it's back to enabled? did you eventually globally enabled it (by using the function to align renewal dates or whatever fancy functions)?
call them and try to sort it. usually phone works better with OVH than tickets.
maybe offer to pay for another month instead and cancel only after. point out that they will lose all other business with you, if you go broke over it.
I have offered them exactly this, but I doubt that they will accept it.
Current scenario:
I do not want to be billed for this server as I no longer need it, for some reason there was an attempt to charge me 1.6k EUR which is not what I want, from now on we will only use the cloud features of OVH, I can't seem to cancel that dedicated server from my account and there seems to be a pending invoice of 1.6k? Please look it up, I can't afford to pay that much.
Regarding your demand , we have chcecked that the server was in autorenew in yearly renew . This renew has been made and the server is renewed until 2022 . You have to pay the bill :
You should change the renewal type to manual before the expiring date .
Kind regards.
I have been paying this server month to month. the yearly contract was a one-tine occasion from 2019.
Please cancel the invoice, I don't want to use the dedicated server.
Unfortunately we are not able to cancel an autorenew order already made. As I've told you in the previous email you should changed it to manual and monthly before the expiration date . Now the order has to be paid.
Kind regards.
Hello,
I had changed the order to month to month a year ago and that's the reason why we have been paying on a month to month payment routine, it doesn't make sense that 2 years after a contract it shows up out of nowhere.
I'm willing to pay for this month, but I simply can't pay for an entire year as our company is likely going bankrupt in the next months.
It really seems that you didn't disable auto renew. Is that correct?
The fact that you were paying monthly doesn't mean that you didn't have a contractual obligation for the year.
(Congrats on your first three posts)
I'm not sure that I follow, the moment in which I began to pay monthly and not yearly I'd expect it to be obvious that I no longer want to pay a full year upfront.
Schedule:
2019-2020
Paid year upfront.
2020-2021
Paid month to month.
2021-2022
Suddenly I have to pay a year upfront.
It's look like when you bought the server It's yearly contract.
But after a year you are manually paying monthly basis.
That mean you still using yearly contract as you didn't changed the contract terms
So you have to pay
Call them on weekdays and explain everything.
The point is that you still had a contractual obligation for the year in question.
The fact that you changed to monthly payments didn't change the fact that you still had a contractual obligation for the year in question.
For an analogy, suppose that you decide to rent an apartment for a year. You sign a contract that obliges you to rent the apartment for a year. Initially, you pay 3 months in advance, and after 3 months you pay another 3 months in advance. Then you switch to monthly payments. You can't argue after month 9 (after 3 months of monthly payments) that you'd like to cancel the apartment -- because you still have a contractual obligation to rent the apartment for a year. How frequently you make payments doesn't affect the length of the period for which you have a contractual obligation.
@joams
this is right. For many EU based companies there's a weird technical term called "contract" so IF you have annual contract, whether it is auto/manually renewed, until you click the button to cancel the contract - it remains into the force. I had very bad experience for one of the domain name I had with 1and1 Ionos with respect to this "contract cancellation" stuff.
So even If you have paid month to month later for the same product, it has created "new contract" and your "old contract" for annual payment is technically still ACTIVE.
You should cancel either one of the contract which is tied to your product.
It's not that easier like with the U.S. based hosts where we just switch to annual/monthly payment with one click.
As you can see from messages above LET is the worst place to ask about such advice.
After this I'm certain you dont want to stay with OVH either way, so just find a new host and ignore them. Send them last message that you wont be paying this because you never agreed to it.
They have no real claim for your money. You might get empty bailiff threats and thats about it.
Right? Explaining to him why all this happened is definitely the worst reply he could have gotten.
/s
But the point is that he did agree to it.
Of course, they do have a valid claim (if @joams doesn't fulfill his contractual obligation).
What the practical consequences would be depends in part on where @joams lives.
(But aren't you full of sound advice.)
Seems like a legal question. So did you purchase this server as a private citizen or as a business? OVH has to obey to EU laws which means that they are not allowed to auto-renew services after their first period for more than one month with consumers if you don't want to.
Did you sign an actual contract? Does it have your signature? Please give some more information on what you agreed with them exactly.
it would still be of interest, why it was possible to pay monthly last year and now they are asking for the full amount at once. seems weird.
also the concept of yearly contracts seems not very common with OVH (apart from first year special offer pricing)
that's why I still suggest it would be something about the autorenewal being switch on/off/on or the likes.
Telling him to literally do a scam act and burn a bridge to OVH isn't probably a good idea.
If he doesn't learn a lesson here, chances are that he will burn more bridges with other hosts.
That ain't a good way to live the long life.
Of course, it's possible that OVH have made an error here, but I was simply taking their response at face value (namely: "Regarding your demand, we have checked that the server was in autorenew in yearly renew. This renew has been made and the server is renewed until 2022.").
Seems like I will have to pay it (from the looks of the replies).
Honestly, what a shame. There is no need to do those contracts other than to tying and prosecuting people that trusted your money.
I will attempt to have the cash returned as account balance and hopefully order another machine.
I imagine you should be able to get them as far as to credit you. As you said, that way you can at least spend the money on something you need.
You cant be serious in defending a host for trying to literally scam the guy for 2000$, for next 12 months that he does not want to use the service. Its not that he used any of the service or that they lost anything on him.
And as he was even paying monthly fee as he said, so how does that even work with your "contract" theories?
But to solve issues like this its usually better to phone support than to do tickets/emails.
In the end their claim would not hold in court, but im certain they wouldnt even go there, I had similar case with online.net myself, idk if its a french thing.
If you manage that, that would be a win.
Ultimately, it's important to understand what you sign up for. Threads like this one are a frequent occurrence here, and they're almost always due to a faulty understanding of what one has signed up for.
At least the dude seems a sensible sort.
99%, we see dudes in heat (or PMS) burning down bridges with hosts.
By default it looks monthly, however if you wanna get discunts.
You can prepay for 12 months or even sign a contract as it looks like on their page.
Which results in more discunt.
But no idea if it does auto renew by default.
I am a bit confused by how this switched from paying month-to-month to paying the (whole) yearly amount in advance. Now, I know how Netcup does it with their yearly contracts with monthly billing but even if it's yearly contract with OVH why should billing month-to-month suddenly switch to paying a year in advance if month-to-month is what was (clearly) used before? Many question marks here. I would probably also try calling them and see what can be done.
What scam? He signed a contract.
A contract is both sides promising something. OVH is fulfilling their side of the deal - the server is available.
He's trying to get out of his side of the promise.
And yes, OVH is losing something - they've reserved the server for him.
You're confusing contract and payment.
@angstrom's analogy of a lease is spot on. Reread it.
For billing related things, OVH is very inflexible, I had few servers for very long with them, all good . But then I had some billing issue and it was resolved only when they took away 3 months advances. They operate on large scale but if for things like billing, you can't apply flexibility (ofcourse when its logical) then its better to stay away.
From what he said, he did not sign any contracts especially not for prepaying whole year.
[sigh] Obviously, it wasn't a paper contract signed with a physical pen, but rather an acceptance button for a certain product with certain conditions that he clicked on. Even the OP doesn't appear to dispute this now ...
(But you seem to think that you know better.)
Well you don't necessarily have to be physically signing on a printed paper to be legally bounded to a contract you know, especially for online-related matters/services.
Sue your mouse and your arm