no response to refund request

@dkreaver:

I terminated service on 07/03/2006, and the account terminated immediately without problems. However, when I e-mailed billing@linode.com requesting status on my refund I received no reply.

I again e-mailed on 07/26/2006 and received no reply to date.

Please assist me in getting the credit for my unused service. I believe the invoice in question should be 46036. I can provide more account information upon request.

Thanks!

I'm pretty sure that you don't get a refund for unused service when you cancel your account.

This seems to be the policy which causes the most problems for Linode.com. It is pretty clearly documented in their terms of service and on their site, and yet it still causes problems because it's not what people are expecting.

It just seems like they should do away with this policy; if you cancel your account early, the account should be terminated at the end of whatever billing cycle you've paid for, rather than immediately. This would eliminate sooo many customer relations problems …

@bji:

I'm pretty sure that you don't get a refund for unused service when you cancel your account.

I see the section of the AUP you are referring to:

> Refund and Disputes: All payments to Linode.com are nonrefundable. This includes the one time setup fee and subsequent charges regardless of usage. All overcharges or billing disputes must be reported within 60 days of the time the dispute occurred. If you dispute a charge to your credit card issuer that, in Linode.com's sole discretion is a valid charge under the provisions of the TOS and /or AUP, you agree to pay Linode.com an "Administrative Fee" of not less than $50 and not more than $150.

This does not seem to be a justifiable policy, as when you terminate your account your access is immediately revoked. It seems like they want to have their cake and eat it too…

This means that you are unable to utilize the service for the term of the period paid and are therefore unable to realize any value from said service for the remainder of the period. This should entitle you to a refund of the amortized fee for the remainder of the service period.

I am also disappointed that Linode has not made an official reply to me as of this time. This lack of communication does not give a professional or trustworthy impression. Combined with the questionable AUP, this gives me a sour experience and makes recommending Linode very difficult for me.

I am soliciting a discussion with a Linode employee on this item and I am again politely asking for their response.

It seems the issue that causes the most problems is the cancellation of accounts.

It would go along way to solving these problems if there was an option to cancel at the end of your current billing period.

Then most of these issues would just go away.

Maybe it's hard, maybe they just don't want to, I don't know.

@dkreaver:

> This does not seem to be a justifiable policy, as when you terminate your account your access is immediately revoked. It seems like they want to have their cake and eat it too…

This means that you are unable to utilize the service for the term of the period paid and are therefore unable to realize any value from said service for the remainder of the period. This should entitle you to a refund of the amortized fee for the remainder of the service period.

Although I sympathize with you I am not sure I agree with your reasoning. The terms of your original contract with Linode stated that you will not be able to use the service after cancelling, and won't get your money back for the remainder of that period. I don't think that there's really any way around that, it's something that you agreed to up front (without realizing it).

> I am also disappointed that Linode has not made an official reply to me as of this time. This lack of communication does not give a professional or trustworthy impression. Combined with the questionable AUP, this gives me a sour experience and makes recommending Linode very difficult for me.

I am soliciting a discussion with a Linode employee on this item and I am again politely asking for their response.

I am a long-time Linode customer (almost 3 years now, soon to (possibly) renew for my 4th year) and I completely agree with everything you said here. This is just a dumb policy for Linode to have, it's just not worth the hassles that it is causing, and also the feeling of being "cheated" that customers must have when they cancel service and don't get to continue to use the service that they paid for, but also don't get any refund for the service that they can't use.

It's also disturbing that you haven't received any response on this, nor has there been any official reply.

I have a feeling that it isn't that Caker is trying to scam people or anything, I think it's more likely that he just doesn't want to be bothered with implementing the service logic to either issue pro-rated refunds automatically, or automatically cancel the service at the end of the paid term when someone has requested a cancellation.

If this is the case, then I have a hard time sympathizing with him; the service has been up for 3 years now and for the first year or two I cut Linode.com some slack because I figured that they were still busy getting the kinks worked out of their business, and there were occasional improvements in the service to indicate that some work was also being done on improvements.

But it's been three years now and to be honest, that excuse doesn't hold weight any more. Issues like the one that kangaby have should be addressed immediately. There are two full-time Linode staff, there is no excuse for a lack of immediate response to this problem and the other problems that pop up on these boards from time to time. Several days often go by without any significant new posts on these boards, I simply cannot believe that there isn't time to respond quickly to the problems that do show up here once in a while.

I just get the feeling that Linode.com is started to go more and more into auto-pilot mode now that things are working pretty smoothly. The remaining issues, such as this dumb cancellation policy, just don't seem to be receiving any attention anymore as the service has matured into something that probably mostly runs itself.

The good news is that if you don't run into any problems (and I have run into very few problems in the last two years or so), then the service is pretty much flawless.

I just wish that I had a better feeling about the responsiveness of the Linode.com staff on issues. I have been watching these boards very regularly for 3 years now and I can say that, to be honest, their response rate is not very good. Sorry to have to issue that criticism, but it's simply and undeniably true.

Here are the issues:

1.) Linode does not respond to customer inquiries in a timely manner, if at all. Obviously a problem.

2.) Although the AUP states they are not obligated to refund you fees charged for unearned services, this is not an equitable policy. It is promoting bad customer relations. There are easy ways to get around this like requiring the customer to give notice a defined number of days before termination. With this approach, you can let the customer off at the end of a period, and likely even look good doing so.

I am again asking that a Linode employee discuss this situation with me. I do not feel that it is unreasonable that I request this.

I love Linode and have been here since June 2003. They truly were a pioneer of virtual private hosting, and the web interface was and is extremely slick.

Since then, a number of other VPSes, most of which are cheaper by a significant amount, have popped up. I've asked on these forums if they're too good to be true, even assuming that they were, and heard nothing.

bji, your point about auto-pilot mode may be right on the money. I got to wondering when any of us last heard from Caker on these forums. Apart from simple "host panicked, rebooting now" messages, we last heard from Mike on June 28, and from Caker on July 19.

One of the things that really set Linode apart was easy access through these forums to the proprietor/techie. That seems to have gone away…

Have you tried IRC? The IRC logs show that caker has been seen talking on 9/5 and 9/4, so he's definitely still around.