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What do you use for documenting hosting deal promises for disputes?

Deals & Offers by YuriDavid 87 replies 11.7K views
YuriDavid

Member OP

#1

---
- current workflow:
- screenshot at time of purchase
- NOTE: include timestamp, price, term length
- archive.today capture of sales page
- WARNING: some JS-heavy pages break in archive
- save confirmation email as .eml
- weaknesses:
- screenshots: easy to dispute ("out of context")
- archives: lag between purchase and capture
- no proof of page state AT moment of transaction
---
- seeking:
- better chain of custody
- video? Automated?
- template others can reuse
---

Who has solved this properly

indentation is not optional
wilmaethqn44

Member

#2

How do you even prove a video is real? Couldnt they say you edited it

I got burned by RackNerd last year. Promised 99.9% uptime. Had 3 days downtime. They said my monitoring was wrong

I just want something simple that works

frames, tables, still valid HTML
cleardmitri

Moderator

Moderator

#3

What monitoring tool did you use for the 99.9% check?

No logs, no proof. I have logs.
MA

Member

#4

I got burned by RackNerd too. Same "your monitoring is wrong" excuse.

cleardmitri

Moderator

Moderator

#5
wilmaethqn44 said:
How do you even prove a video is real?

You don't need to. What you need is contemporaneous evidence from multiple independent sources. A video + archive + screenshot + email creates a chain that is harder to dismiss than any single item.

For monitoring specifically: UptimeRobot, Pingdom, or StatusCake with public status pages. The provider can argue with your script. Harder to argue with a third party's logs.

No logs, no proof. I have logs.
larryjeong

Member

#6
cleardmitri said:
What monitoring tool did you use

I use UptimeRobot on my cheap VPS collection. Free tier checks every 5 minutes. Had a Hostinger box down for 6 hours last month, their log showed "scheduled maintenance" they never announced. My UptimeRobot log saved me from paying the "unplanned downtime" excuse.

The real problem is proving the *promise*, not the failure. Anyone can show a server is down. Proving they promised it wouldn't be is the hard part.

$3/year. 128MB RAM. Pure happiness.
wilmaethqn44

Member

#7
cleardmitri said:
What monitoring tool did you use for the 99.9% check?

Just a basic uptime checker I found online — https://uptimerobot.com. Not even sure which one now. Didn't help anyway, RackNerd just said it was my connection.

I'm a baker, not a sysadmin. I need something I can set up in 10 minutes and forget about.

frames, tables, still valid HTML
Berlin1

Member

#8

The whole "your monitoring is wrong" playbook is standard. I've seen it with Hetzner too, though at least their status page is honest most of the time.

For documenting promises: I started using Witness (the browser extension, not the blockchain thing). It captures page state with a cryptographic timestamp. Not court-admissible probably, but better than a screenshot.

Still doesn't solve the "at moment of transaction" problem.

JA

Member

#9
YuriDavid said:
No proof of page state AT moment of transaction

This is the actual problem. Everything else is theater. I've started doing this:

  • Open checkout in one browser window
  • Open archive.today in another
  • Complete purchase
  • Immediately archive the post-purchase confirmation page
  • Screenshot the browser with both tabs visible, showing system clock

It's clunky. But the temporal link helps. I've done this for three BuyVM purchases now.

PU

Member

#10

I just use PayPal for everything hosting-related. Their dispute process is buyer-friendly and the transaction record includes what you paid for. Had two disputes with Namecheap over "unlimited" bandwidth that wasn't. Won both.

Downside: PayPal fees. And some providers charge extra for PayPal or don't take it.

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