Service provider refusing refund... for services not rendered (when needed)

[ld13]

With the MTN DC (afrihost) outage I was forced to point my DNS to my failover host in the US. Unfortunately they came under a DDoS attack at that time. I did not have a failover for the failover so I attempted to at least get the MX records pointed to a 3rd party mailserver so that emails could start flowing. It was in the middle of exams so I looked at a few 'local' hosts and signed up with a host. While a successful authorization attempt was made on my credit card their platform informed me that my payment had unfortunately failed and I was forced to seek the services of another host.

Step in, elitehost! They accepted my payment without any quibbles, sent my login details within minutes and I had emails coming through in a matter of an hour (I set the TTL quite low at the first signs of problems) and they were quick to help me with any questions I had - I highly recommend them to anyone.

Two days later I saw an email in my inbox from the 'local' host I initially tried to sign up with... did not pay much attention to it at the time as it was exam time etc. Big exams finished yesterday so I went through my backlog of 12 days-worth of emails last night. Seems like they picked up the payment and decided to set up my account etc etc. They were late to the party and I requested a refund last night. Said refund was refused this morning.

Phoned them up. They do not understand the crux of my argument: I go to shoprite because I need milk NOW. My card payment "fails". I go to the 7/11 and try buying milk there, payment goes through and I walk out with my milk. Now 2 days later shoprite delivers my milk (that I do not need anymore) because they saw that my payment did go through?! That is now how things work. Shoprite should refund me, no?

Or am I living in a dream world?

 

[GoneWithTheWindows]

Name and shame.

 

[rorz0r]

If you used your credit card you can just contact your bank and do a chargeback.

 

[ToxicBunny]

Lodge a charge-back with your bank.

 

[Solitude]

I also say name and shame.

 

[envo]

CPA

*drops mic*

 

[ld13]

If you used your credit card you can just contact your bank and do a chargeback.

That was next on my list. Letter of demand was my first avenue - was busy typing that up but the webhost has come to their senses in the mean while and refunded me. ...

 

[mister]

If you used your credit card you can just contact your bank and do a chargeback.

First threaten them with a chargeback because it's less work than actually doing it

 

[ld13]

I confronted the host over the phone this morning to find out what is going for what and I found some of their comments quite concerning. They have yet to admit that their system was at fault. They got onto their horse and defended their system (that they supposedly coded themselves) and kept claiming that they did receive payment. Sure you did, I am not refuting that guys, I got a payment failed page + no immediate login details = time for me to seek out another service provider. The host claimed that eg. hosting services are not set-up/allocated automatically and that is why I only got the access details email 2 days after the fact. I called BS - if 100% of your competition send out immediate details why don't you conform to what is clearly an industry standard? I also do not recall any mention anywhere that mentioned anything regarding any type of a delay when ordering basic hosting services from them. Heck, if you coded the whole system yourself, would you not at least send a payment confirmation email etc etc? Host claimed that they are not their competition.

They then tried to get me to admit that once I have signed up for the hosting I would've had to wait for my DNS to propagate in any case ... could not fathom what they were trying to get at with me admitting that because firstly the 'slow' legacy co.za system is a thing of the past and secondly, ..,.,.,,., how could I change my DNS settings without the access (and dns details) that I received two days late?

First threaten them with a chargeback because it's less work than actually doing it

This. A chargeback might end up costing you a bit of money as well. But I was willing to go the whole nine yards with this, purely based on principle:

Letter of demand.
Small claims court.
Complaint at relevant governing body. ISPA.
Complaint via CPA.
Chargeback request via bank.
Hellopeter/facebook/mybroadband (they have a registered rep here).

 

[rorz0r]

I agree with mister about the "threat" of a chargeback being less work than actually doing one but it's far less work than letters and small claims court. Glad it's sorted now.