Accidentally paid for six months of nothing

Ryan_Williams

Hi guys,

Made a bit of a blunder. I had a web hosting account around the beginning of year that I cancelled, and after using their contact system to cancel it the hosting was indeed cancelled and my plans removed from their system.

It turns out according to their TOS you also have to cancel the subscription to them in your PayPal control panel, otherwise it'll keep sending payments to them — to their defense this is also highlighted in their cancellation email which I just took to be a boilerplate message and didn't read thoroughly.

The web hosting company accounts keeps accounts open even when no service is being provided and so the payments are appearing in my web host's control panel as £120 of available credit, which I guess I could spend on web hosting services. The problem is I'm in the midst of moving home and need the money, not web hosting.

I assumed it'd be a case of simply asking for the money to be refunded. Nope:

Hi Ryan

The account credit is usually non-refundable as per our TOS, the cancellation email does have a red notice stating the subscription must be cancelled.

I'll escalate this to a manager to see if we can make an exception.

If you need any more help, please let me know.

Regards,

Emma

Note that a month has passed since then with no further communication and the help ticket was closed.

So, now what? Am I completely stuck or is there some right I can invoke here to get this money back? Will I have to just rely on their good faith and hope that by bringing this up again they'll relent?

fluffnutter

Ryan_Williams wrote: »

Hi guys,

Made a bit of a blunder. I had a web hosting account around the beginning of year that I cancelled, and after using their contact system to cancel it the hosting was indeed cancelled and my plans removed from their system.

It turns out according to their TOS you also have to cancel the subscription to them in your PayPal control panel, otherwise it'll keep sending payments to them — to their defense this is also highlighted in their cancellation email which I just took to be a boilerplate message and didn't read thoroughly.

The web hosting company accounts keeps accounts open even when no service is being provided and so the payments are appearing in my web host's control panel as £120 of available credit, which I guess I could spend on web hosting services. The problem is I'm in the midst of moving home and need the money, not web hosting.

I assumed it'd be a case of simply asking for the money to be refunded. Nope:



Note that a month has passed since then with no further communication and the help ticket was closed.

So, now what? Am I completely stuck or is there some right I can invoke here to get this money back? Will I have to just rely on their good faith and hope that by bringing this up again they'll relent?

I think the highlighted part is significant.

They're acting within their T&Cs. I guess your only redress is to try to argue, in court, that this is an unfair contract. How far you'd get with that I couldn't say but I suspect not very.

Could you not use the credit at some point in the future?

Ryan_Williams

Yeah I really can't put the blame on them, it's definitely my own fault for not being more on top of the process. Just one of those things you do without thinking about it too much (Though I'll make sure I do think about it in future!).

The good news is I decided to appeal to their goodwill and explained that there's a lot of money sat there doing nothing, neither mine nor theirs as it's credited to me but I have no intention of using it. I said they can by all means take off the transaction fees and they've decided to refund it.

I guess sometimes just being nice (but persistent) is definitely the way to go.

DVardysShadow

fluffnutter wrote: »

I think the highlighted part is significant.

They're acting within their T&Cs. I guess your only redress is to try to argue, in court, that this is an unfair contract. How far you'd get with that I couldn't say but I suspect not very.

Could you not use the credit at some point in the future?

What is happening is as described in the T&C's - but as we do not have those T&C's we cannot say what rights they have given themselves to retain the money. If it is just a warning that you need to cancel the Paypal, then i doubt they have many rights and it amy be worth taking to the small claims court if they refuse to refund.

texranger

Ryan_Williams wrote: »

Hi guys,

Made a bit of a blunder. I had a web hosting account around the beginning of year that I cancelled, and after using their contact system to cancel it the hosting was indeed cancelled and my plans removed from their system.

It turns out according to their TOS you also have to cancel the subscription to them in your PayPal control panel, otherwise it'll keep sending payments to them — to their defense this is also highlighted in their cancellation email which I just took to be a boilerplate message and didn't read thoroughly.

The web hosting company accounts keeps accounts open even when no service is being provided and so the payments are appearing in my web host's control panel as £120 of available credit, which I guess I could spend on web hosting services. The problem is I'm in the midst of moving home and need the money, not web hosting.

I assumed it'd be a case of simply asking for the money to be refunded. Nope:



Note that a month has passed since then with no further communication and the help ticket was closed.

So, now what? Am I completely stuck or is there some right I can invoke here to get this money back? Will I have to just rely on their good faith and hope that by bringing this up again they'll relent?

i run a hosting company and you will find that most hosting companies will have the same in their TOS about cancelling paypal subscriptions. yes when you cancel hosting it only cancels the hostign plan and not your account with the company, in this situation we place the account as inactive, this means the user if wanted can comeback at a later date using the same details and take out further services.


funds placed as a credit is a funny thing. I regularly ask trading standards to check my TOS if i change these before i publish them to make sure they comply with consumer laws etc. one thing come up was money placed in credit for further use. we can take money as a credit for further services or any excess funds to be added as a credit, but without a consumer credit act licence we are not allowed to refund any monies left in credit, so this is whay you may have to either lose this money or use it in the future on their services, but 100% cancel the subscription with paypal so no more money is paid to them.

arcon5

Surely as a webhost majority of your transactions will be B2B which doesn't necessarily need to comply with consumer protection laws? If a customer isn't a business then you simply stating this does not affect nor take precendance over your statutory rights should be effective.

Why would you need a consumer credit license also to refund money? You are not offering them credit, they are adding funds to their account. Why would the consumer credit act even come in here? :huh: