Recently, over on LowEndTalk, a user named @spoit_sun posted a thread titled “hostragons.com is a thief who stole over $13,000 from my credit card“.
By the title of the thread, you could imagine how the thread went.
Here’s the proof they provided of $13,000 in charges:
$13,000 Gone
Just like that; allegedly billed for various random services.
@spoit_sun had this to say about the situation:
I haven’t used the mailbox all the time. Today I accidentally saw some bills. Oh my god, the total is more than 10,000 US dollars. Because this credit card is used by our company, and I am the owner of the company, our financial staff always thought that I was paying these fees and purchasing more services. Also my fault for not checking. gave hostragons.com a chance to be a thief, omg they stole a whole $13000 from me
In case you’re curious about what a “ragon” is like @emgh was, let @MannDude explain it:
Continuing on, after @spoit_sun made his case about being allegedly scammed of $13,000…
Almost everyone who commented on the thread pointed out the frequent protections debit and credit cards give you. Particularly credit cards.
@spoit_sun then updated the thread stating he had contacted his payment provider, plus the police, and as all threads do; it died.
That was, of course, until Hostragons for some reason entered the picture and stirred up what was a dead thread and probably in their best interest to remain dead.
The LowEndLawsuit
As of this morning, 8/25/23, more than a month since the thread was originally opened, Hostragons replied to the thread stating the following:
Hello.
Hostragons Global Limited is an international hosting and domain name service provider and does not accept these accusations.
With the relevant membership, shopping has been done and illegal works have been done and penal sanctions have been made in accordance with our service contract.
A support request was opened with the membership, and the purchased services were requested to be transferred to a different membership, and the services were transferred to a different membership after obtaining approval on the ticket.
All evidence and proofs were sent to “Stripe” firm, which is a payment agent. Hostragons does not withdraw or use any customer’s money without permission.
The customer has already initiated an existing chargeback and if they are justified they will already be refunded.
For bad comments of people who have no knowledge about the subject, an international court will be prosecuted for loss of reputation.
We gave the necessary information to the customer because I thought his password was stolen. We have suspended your account for security reasons, and we have sent all necessary information during the appeal process.
Lawyer İlhan KESKİN
Hostragons Corporate Attorney
Best Regards.
So, they denied the allegations, are disputing the chargebacks, and threatened a lawsuit.
You can’t really interpret:
“For bad comments of people who have no knowledge about the subject, an international court will be prosecuted for loss of reputation.”
Any other way than assuming they’re implying anyone who said anything bad about them on that thread is going to be sued…
Perhaps even sued in The Peace Palace, home of the International Court of Justice at The Hague on behalf of the United Nations?
(The Hague is pictured above.)
Anyways, pretty much everyone instantly latched onto that statement, because it was clear it didn’t make any sense why a Turkish company was going to sue people over forum posts.
The only person there’s even remotely a case for is the original poster of the thread and that’s if he was just blatantly fabricating things.
In the United States at least, you have to show a real demonstratable loss to your business directly from a specific individual/party to successfully sue for defamation. Someone saying something bad about you online isn’t enough.
We’ll Have To Wait for the LowEndVerdict
As of right now, it’s still up in the air to see who will win this $13,000 Stripe dispute.
Having been unfortunately familiar with the pain that is payment processing, I can tell you about 80% of the time a chargeback or dispute is opened, regardless if the business is in the right or the wrong…
The consumer nearly always wins. Especially for digital products.
If you sell physical products and the consumer opens a chargeback with their bank saying they never received it, it’s simple to reply “Look, here’s the tracking number, what are you talking about?” – you can’t exactly do that with digital products, at least it’s harder.
The consumer can very easily argue the company randomly added these services to his account without Hostragons being able to prove otherwise.
If you ask me…
I’d suspect @spoit_sun wins this Stripe dispute, and Hostragons doesn’t waste thousands and thousands of dollars trying to sue foreigners (to them) that they’ll never be able to collect on.
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