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Disputing a charge without getting your account nuked

General Discussion by Hel 34 replies 8.4K views
Hel

Member OP

Bare Metal Purist

#1

Had billing error with RackNerd. Double-charged for June. Opened ticket first. Waited 72 hours. No response. Then disputed. Account suspended within four hours. Perkele.

Learned hard way. Now: screenshot everything. Backup data. THEN dispute. Provider can delete faster than bank processes claim.

Tips:
- Download invoices before anything
- Export DNS records
- Have alternative host ready
- Mention prior ticket number in dispute

Some providers more reasonable. Contabo refunded without drama once. OVHcloud nuked friend over €8. Luck of draw. Document everything. Perkele.

kimdle

Member

#2

Screenshot is love screenshot is life
Fighting!
Before dispute = data gone kk
Learned from GreenCloudVPS incident
Never again

pavel_train

Member

#3

Hel has the right pipeline | ticket first | wait | document | then dispute | cat /var/log/patience | grep null
Provider reaction varies | Contabo | sort -u | generous | OVHcloud | sort -u | hostile | wc -l | two types
Personal pipeline | rsync data | tar cvzf proof | chargeback | sed 's/account/ashes/g'

HeadRich

Member

128GB or nothing

4 #4

32GB box, got 16GB billed. Disputed. Survived. Because had 2TB NVMe, screenshots were instant. Slower disks = slower proof = dead account. Hardware matters. Budget users with rust spinners? RIP. My threadripper box at home does 4K screen recording. Documented the whole thing in 60fps. Overkill? Maybe. Worked? Yes.

quinnbizz

Member

#5
Hel said:
Provider can delete faster than bank processes claim

IMO the 72-hour wait is the critical part. YMMV with smaller hosts, but most ToS require good-faith resolution attempt. Take it with a grain of salt, but I've seen disputes succeed when ticket trail exists, fail when it doesn't. The documentation is for your bank as much as survival.

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zoekyo

Member

Less Is More

3 #6

You don't avoid complexity. You tax you pay for not thinking dispute is destruction
Choose which loss you can carry

rm -rf / --no-preserve-root ☯
LichunLars

Member

#7
Hel said:
Account suspended within four hours

Route via RackNerd support: 45ms
Route via RackNerd "fraud team": 12ms
They optimize what they care about.

--- racknerd.com ping ---
64 bytes: ttl=55 time=45.2 ms
--- racknerd.com ping ---
64 bytes: ttl=55 time=12.1 ms

Route via X adds 12ms. Route via "we're investigating" adds infinity. https://www.racknerd.com

1ms or I don't want it
VU

Member

#8

Screenshot before ticket, ticket before dispute. I learned that the hard way too

kat_fold

Moderator

Moderator

#9

RackNerd nuked you in four hours? That's hostile even by low-end standards

~be kind or be gone~
quinnbizz

Member

#10

Four hours is rough. I had a billing mix-up with Hetzner last year, ticket sat for a week before anyone looked at it. Disputed on day eight, they just corrected the invoice and sent an apology. No suspension, no drama.

Hel said:
Mention prior ticket number in dispute

This is the part I always forget. Did you get the June money back eventually, or did the suspension kill the dispute too?

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