Just yesterday we were asking what the heck was going on at Limewave, given that customers were clamoring on LowEndTalk about their services disappearing with now explanation.
Well, now we know.
@Dvo posted a profanity-laced response to the thread. At nearly 1,300 words, it rambles over many topics. You’d expect a provider to say something like “something went wrong, we’re exiting, our apologies” but instead, @Dvo just assumes the community knows what’s happening and he’s more interested in venting his spleen.
Here are the highlights.
Fun Facts About Accounting
When dealing with annual accounts, it not wise to put services not rendered on the books i.e. the prepayment, as it’s actually classified as a liability. Who knew?!
Um…everyone?!? That line astonished me because it’s bookkeeping 101. It’s not like this is a bad thing. After all, that $12 liability is balanced by $12 in cash sitting in your assets, right? This statement really made little sense to me.
About Those Chargebacks
I’m not going to be proactive in refunding, simply because of all the drama with the refunds themselves. If people think paying $12/yr for a service, using the service for 6 months, then charging back the full $12 when they’re only lawfully entitled to a $6 refund, I’m not going to sit there and fuck around with arguing with people. Let them get their $12 refund, I’ll tack on a $200 administrative fee, a $50 charge back fee, the balance due and the interest, then fire the account off to collections. Problem solved.
So rather than just refunding $6, which is the honorable and right thing, his intent to is to ruin customers’ credit.
Of course, this will not happen because no collection agency is going to deal in this shady nonsense. They’re going to ask for a copy of the agreement the client signed agreed to be subject to these fees. Businesses can’t just invent fees and demand them. I mean, why stop at a $200 administrative fee – why not charge $1 million? It’s absurd.
Reasons for Failure
Limewave was serving the hobbyist/VPN market, with a lot of customers wanting Asian routing. Hurricane Electic evidently lost their Seattle-Tokyo route, and Limewave had a lot of customers who depending on that route. That alone caused a lot of cancellations. There was also an issue with a datacenter tech screwing something up (no details given).
But fundamentally, @Dvo claims he sunk $53K into the business and the returns/profits simply weren’t there.
How SHOULD This Have Been Handled?
Simple.
Hey gang, we’ve been struggling to get Limewave to a point where it’s worth the investment, and after careful consideration, we’ve realized it’s never going to happen. This is a huge disappointment to all of us. It’s been an awesome journey and we appreciate all of you who’ve been along for the ride.
Effectively immediately, we are no longer accepting new customers. 30 days from now, Limewave will cease operations. We urge everyone to immediately backup their data and migrate to new hosting. You’ll be able to use service to the last day but after that day, service will be switched off with no return.
If you are waiting for provisioning of services, your order will be canceled and the transaction reversed. If you’ve prepaid for annual hosting, you will receive a prorated refund, processed on the last day we’re in operation.
We’re sorry things ended this way. If you have any questions, feel free to open a ticket and we’ll get you sorted. <3
That sounds a lot better to me than silence followed by threatening to screw customers’ credit.
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I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.
I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308
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It’s frustrating and disgusting. Fortunately, I didn’t invest a penny.
I just browsed the entire thread and felt very uncomfortable.
This seriously damages the trust between people.
After purchasing any hosting product,
the first thing to keep in mind is: always remember to back up your data.
I was paying $2.80/month, no prepayment… obviously I only used this for something where I had sufficient redundancy to not notice it was even down!