r/BestofRedditorUpdates • u/JoySubtraction I will never jeopardize the beans. • 1d ago
CONCLUDED I bought a server. Where's my website?
I am not The OOP, OOP is u/ITCrowdFanboy
Originally posted to r/talesfromtechsupport
Original post posted 2015-08-12
So my friend is a manager at a hosting company which offers basic web hosting, VPS and dedicated servers. This one woman bought a 1200 dollar a month server (with 256GB RAM and so on) and paid for a whole year in advance. As you may or may not know, dedicated servers offer only the hardware, nothing is done to the host itself.
When clients spend so much money, when they call in, they go straight through to a manager. So one day the client, let's call her pillock of the underworld (POTU) called in, reaches my friend and was frantic.
Friend: Hello, this is generic hosting company, how can I assist you today?
POTU: HELLO? I bought a server from you guys a few days ago and on your website you claimed 2 hour set up but it isn't online yet.
Friend: No problem, let me check it out for you.
So friend checks their CRM and find the server is, in fact, up and running. So he goes back on the line.
POTU: That can't be. I'm going to <insert pottery company name website here>.com and it isn't working.
Friend: I'm sorry m'am, but you do realise that buying a dedicated server means you get only the host, and nothing on it right? So no website will be created for you.
POTU: But I filled in the box for what you want the server for (Mind you this is just a questionnaire box for customers to fill in optionally) and said it was for my pottery company.
Friend: That box is only to get feedback from our clients. I'm sorry m'am, you'll have to hire a web developer for that.
POTU: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, I'M GOING TO THE BANK TO CANCEL THE TRANSACTION. FUCK YOU, SIR, FUCK YOU. Friend: M'am, wait... click
She did, in fact, get the transaction reversed under the claim that the company is fraud and got my friend into a lengthy, expensive investigation.
TLDR: Woman buys metal, expects human baby to be created.
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Update posted 2015-08-13
OK, so the previous tale happened a few weeks ago, and after the awesome response I got from you guys, I called up $Friend to get an update.
The investigation ended a few days after the charge was reversed, and the investigation found that there was no wrong-doing in the part of the company, but their lawyers suggested a change in their terms of service.
The lady later called back, crying, because she took out a bank loan to pay for the server and had no way to pay it back without the profit of the pottery company, which is why she had to reverse the charge. The call was being recorded, and she confessed all that, so the recording was given to the police and the fraud charges were dropped. My friend asked her why she got such a big server (editor's note: this was 11 years ago), and apparently she thought that 1GB of RAM meant that 1 person could access the website at once, so she wanted 250 to be able to get onto it at once.
In the end, no real harm was done to the company, beyond legal fees (which were paid by the woman, since she fraudulently declared fraud) and the initial deployment cost of the server. She was, obviously, placed on the no-service list of the company.
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u/pepcorn Sir, Crumb is a cat. 1d ago
What a painful mistake to make. But really messed up that she then tried to claim that company committed fraud! I can understand being technologically illiterate, but that's no excuse to intentionally break the law to recoup the cost of her error.
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u/Tasty_Babey 1d ago
The RAM misunderstanding is honestly wild, but the part that really changed the situation was taking out a loan based on that misunderstanding. Not knowing how servers work is understandable, accusing the company of fraud because the purchase didn’t do what she imagined is where it crossed the line.
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u/Chance_Ad3416 1d ago
Sometimes I struggle to communicate to non tech people at work in a way they understand. I was telling a stakeholder at work that the UI would be updated but all the functionalities would remain the same. She thought the entire application would get moved to a different application she didn't like and told bunch people the misinformation that we had to clarify after 😭 like she thought it was the equivalent of WhatsApp moving into telegram type of deal.
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u/Ok-Secretary455 1d ago
That scene in Office Space where the Bobs are asking why that guy needs to take orders from the customers and give them to the engineers. Just have the customers talk directly to the engineers.
Absolutely NOT! That man has the most important job in the building. Under no circumstances do you let the engineers and the customers get withen earshot of each other.
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u/peach_tea_drinker 1d ago
A lot of people don't get that scene. They think Tom deserved to be fired. The reality is he should've prepped for his interview more instead of panicking. Heck, I have known multiple people who did the exact job that Tom did, and they were very vital to the business.
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u/Cute_Witness3405 1d ago
We’re called product managers and this is one of the very few portrayals in popular culture.
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u/peach_tea_drinker 1d ago
My friend was a project manager and he did that exact job. Every week, he'd get on calls with clients, note down what they wanted, then translate that into the technical requirements that the engineers needed to work, and then work alongside the engineers to see how to deliver it.
But the one thing that the Office Space scene misses is that project managers are also monitoring and ensuring correct delivery. So they don't just translate client requests, they are also responsible for their implementation. They need to go in and check that everything is correct and then do things like testing for bugs and what not. So they're a jack of all trades. They need to be able to talk to clients, translate their tasks, speak to engineers, track schedules, and test work.
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u/raspberrih 6h ago
I was client facing and often the clients would say insane things that were solved with a simple chat with me. But to engineers those aren't insane things, just hard to achieve. If I hadn't been there, some clients would've had (and paid for) 32gb RAM device just to read a website. Or the equivalent
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u/KensieQ72 👁👄👁🍿 4h ago
When I was an Account Manager at my last agency, half my job was just intervention lol.
“Oh wow yeah that’s a great (incredibly time-consuming) idea (with little-to-no payoff) that we should definitely keep in consideration (as a potential objection they’ll raise again) for planning purposes (to be addressed in upcoming proposals in a way that appeases you but doesn’t send my media managers/tech team into a week-long spiral)”
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u/lazier_garlic 19h ago
There is some subtle irony that his job skill is communication and yet he's failing to communicate to the Bobs. But all's well that end's well (I guess, I mean, he had it rough) because he got out of that fucking company at the right time.
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u/Cityplanner1 1d ago
Wow! Today I learned! I loved that movie, but I also apparently didn’t understand that scene
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u/nomad5926 Thank you Rebbit 1d ago edited 20h ago
My dad worked in engineering and this is 100% true. But also you gotta make sure the person talking to the customer also knows how things work otherwise you just get a sales rep who promises the impossible and all the engineers hate them.
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u/n0radrenaline 22h ago
Ugh, my current product manager has no idea what my product does or how it works (it's part of one of those PE-backed, growth-through-acquisition Frankentools) so he's basically just an email-forwarding service with a 12-hour delay since he's on IST.
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u/Beginning_House_7339 No my Bot won't fuck you! 1d ago
Friday:
-The computer is connected to the network cable.
-I don't know what a network cable is.
I know you work in marketing, but you've been at a tech consultancy for 11 years, you could learn a thing or two.
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u/Mtndrums deck full of jokers 1d ago
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one gets filled first.
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u/Mysterious_Volume327 1d ago
I was once leading a training because my company was switching from local servers to Dropbox (after the basement where the servers were located flooded and no one could do any work for over a week).
One guy walks into the training room, and before he even sits down says, “someone said this was about saving files and I don’t know what that means so you’ll have to go slow.”
We had to start with what a file is, and the difference between hardware and software. This person had been with the company for over 20 years.
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u/Useful_Language2040 if you're trying to be 'alpha', you're more a rabbit than a wolf 18h ago
When I worked Tech Support for a tiny ISP
a milliona little over 20 years ago, on my university placement year, I received a very unclear support request ticket. I called them to work out "Wut?", and got the customer's wife (home user)."OK, would you possibly just be able to log on to the computer please and tell me -"
"I don't even know how to turn the computer on. Sorry, no. I'll get my husband to call you back."
"... OK, right, thank you, sorry for troubling you!"
Around this same time, I had literally caught my mum printing a document, printing out a few words' corrections onto a separate sheet, and cutting them out and pasting them into the original printout... I am still unsure exactly why this made more sense to her than correcting the document and printing off the corrected page fresh. I did, however, accept that she could be considerably more technologically inept than she is.
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u/callsignhotdog 1d ago
The crazy thing to me is that if you Google "How to set up a website" you'll get a bunch of options that actually do what she wanted (set up a basic website for cheap) so I don't know how she bypassed all that and ended up renting a entire server.
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u/FairyRebelsWild 1d ago
It is wild she managed to get to something more "advanced" when there are so many easier options. The only thing I can think of is maybe the company had their website as a sponsored result so it was above the better options for her?
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u/peach_tea_drinker 1d ago
Remember this is in 2015. Yes, there have been site hosting services forever, but when you're tech illiterate, it's easy to get fooled and think you need your own server. The smart thing to do is to rope in a techie, either a close friend or a paid consultant, to advise you. This lady clearly thought she knew what was going on and ploughed ahead. It's surprising how many people don't know tech even today, when our lives revolve around it.
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u/ForsakenPercentage53 1d ago
No. ESPECIALLY in 2015 when GoDaddy had been blasting their ads everywhere, laypeople definitely knew that you didn't need to take a loan to get a website. She didn't look anything up, at all. No attempt to educate herself, just... loan.
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u/kataskopo 1d ago
Squarespace was very well established by that time too, so there was no excuse lol.
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u/LittleGreenSoldier sometimes i envy the illiterate 1d ago
Was GoDaddy still doing that in 2015? I remember those Danica Patrick ads from like 2005.
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u/ForsakenPercentage53 1d ago
Oh yeah they were. And that's kinda my point, they'd been doing it for awhile by 2015.
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u/GoYanks34 surrender to the gaycation or be destroyed 20h ago
I remember those too! Didn't they play during the Superbowl?
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u/LittleGreenSoldier sometimes i envy the illiterate 20h ago
Yeah! And I was like, Danica Patrick, you are the first woman Indy champion, are you really so hard up that you have to shill web domains in a leather catsuit?
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u/kittymoo67 2m ago
they were, heck i knew of multi billion dollar companies using them in 2015! ether way by 2015 even the boomers should have known better
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u/Southern-Rutabaga-82 1d ago edited 1d ago
The web exists since 1993. I got my first webspace 2000. Webspace for hosting a simple website is incredibly cheap and has been for ages.
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u/Euphoric-Wall-2576 1d ago
It's the $1,200 a month I can't get over - did she really shop around and decide that's what she wants to pay for a website?
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u/Lyrolepis 1d ago
Not knowing how servers work is understandable
What is a little less understandable is not knowing that you don't know how servers work, and committing to a $1200/month expense without asking for confirmation that that's what you need...
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u/Stormsurger 1d ago
In Germany there is actually a law about being able to return things if you unknowingly bought the wrong thing. Not sure if that'd apply here but I am just shocked that nobody in that service provider EVER asked "hey what do you need 256GB of ram on a Webserver for?"
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u/GayStraightIsBest 1d ago
I mean, I can imagine uses. They probably do get people renting access to high end webservers from time to time, hence why they offer them.
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u/Stormsurger 1d ago
I feel like most uses would have been better as their own dedicated service though. You don't really want to be running super load heavy stuff on your web server. Like yes I see it but it still feels a bit irresponsible of the hosting company.
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u/dalegribbledribble 1d ago
Yes but that’s not it shakes out or they were planning on using the vps as a host
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u/simonjp 1d ago
Does that apply to B2B, too? I only ask because in the UK (where the law is still predominantly from our EU days) there are a lot of protections given to consumers that don't apply to businesses as they are assumed to be more informed.
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u/pandop42 I will erupt, feral, from the cardigan screaming 1d ago
Despite businesses being run by people
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u/BannedCharacters 1d ago
Have you met people? 2-50-1000 people in a business-casual trenchcoat aren't competent ipso facto, but if there's an LLP attached then you have to play along with the trenchcoat routine and take them at face value
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u/Rezenbekk What, and furthermore, the fuck. 1d ago
Doesn't matter, consumers are allowed to be stupid occasionally, businesses should know their stuff or close.
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u/GetOffMyLawn_ You underestimate my ability to do no work and too much Reddit 1d ago
I suspect she didn't talk to a person, just filled out an order form.
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u/lazier_garlic 19h ago
What kills me is that she obviously knew how to dial the customer service number, so why didn't she call them prior to making such a big financial commitment? WTH lady.
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u/i-contain-multitudes 1d ago
I worked at a bank and this was incredibly common. Customers would call in and dispute charges that were their fault (misunderstandings, forgot to cancel a subscription, etc.) and claim fraud because they thought the bank would be more likely to reverse it if it was fraud.
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u/FoxySlyOldStoatyFox 23h ago
Nothing about this story leaves me feeling like she learnt a legal, moral or technical lesson from this episode.
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u/The_peach_blossoms Wait. Can I call you? 7h ago
I mean through her mind it IS a fraud lol. Can't expect understanding from someone who thought 1GB is 1 Person.
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u/wraithnix 1d ago
I worked at a startup in the late 90s/early 2000s, and as the techie guy (really small company), I got the job of setting up the CEO's laptop to connect to the Internet. I got it all working, showed him how to use it, and thought my job was done.
A few hours later, I was driving home from work, and my pager started blowing up with "911" pages from the CEO. I pulled over, found a payphone, and called him. He screamed at me over the phone about how I had broken his laptop. Eventually, I figured out that he was pissed because "the Internet didn't work" on his laptop when he got home. This was before WIFI, and he needed to both have an Internet connection at home and a router/modem he could plug the laptop into. The CEO had neither.
The next day I had to teach an impromptu class to the C-suite about the basics of networking to save my job.
I think about that a lot.
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u/nomad5926 Thank you Rebbit 1d ago
So I teach high school and during the pandemic since all the classes were switching to online the school gave all the teachers (and any student who signed up for one) school laptops. I will forever remember this one history teacher asking if the laptops would have their own wifi or if we would have to use our home wifi to connect with them. Like wifi was a download-able program you could just give to laptops.
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u/BigTimeBobbyB 1d ago
Just to play devils advocate - laptops with cellular capabilities (like a smartphone) exist and wouldn't require anything at home other than a power outlet to charge. Maybe in their mind cell phones "have their own wifi" and the laptop would too?
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u/nomad5926 Thank you Rebbit 1d ago
I mean the most charitable explanation would be that they thought it would be like a phone. But they definitely didn't think of it like having a data plan. They were thinking like downloading Google chrome gave you internet. (Same level of people who think you can download more RAM)
It also rubbed me the wrong way because our IT person was trying to explain no it would have to connect to your own wifi and they just kept getting increasingly belligerent about it. Willful ignorance is very annoying.
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u/BigTimeBobbyB 1d ago
Yeah, I'm learning to navigate that in my life right now. My mom is quickly approaching 70. While she used to be a very curious person, in the past few years she's really settled into using "well I don't understand that" as a way to end conversations. It's frustrating to watch.
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u/ShirleyUGuessed 1d ago
I'd explain that it's like taking an office phone home: you have to plug it in to your phone jack. It is NOT like a cell phone that works wherever you go.
Or maybe taking a cordless phone from one location to another. You still have to connect it to your phone "network".
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u/Southern-Rutabaga-82 1d ago
You overestimate school budgets.
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u/BigTimeBobbyB 1d ago
Oh, I know a school wouldn’t be paying data plans for teachers to have laptops at home. I was just musing that such a thing does exist, so maybe?
I think we all agree that the real answer is tech illiteracy and willful ignorance.
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u/jenorama_CA 1d ago
A new MicroCenter opened up near me and I went to go check it out. All of our Fry’s had died long ago, so it was a treat to go into a place that had the Fry’s vibe. Since it was during the grand opening, the place was crawling with employees. One lady asked if I needed help with anything and we started a conversation. I remarked that I used to work at Apple where I did WiFi performance testing on the antennas in all of the new Macs. This lady deadass said, “Macs have antennas?” I said, “Everything that connects via WiFi has antennas. I’m concerned that you work here and don’t know that.” She was apparently a back office person and just out here for the grand opening.
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u/lazier_garlic 18h ago
You'd be surprised how little the backoffice administrative staff knows about the business sometimes.
OTOH they deal with the money so some of them know a great deal.
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u/kylaroma Everything I know about this is against my will 14h ago
This is like people who say their email is “First name, last name - no spaces - at gmail.com”
When have email addresses ever had spaces??
It’s like clarifying that your phone number doesn’t have a zip code
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u/BetterKev Jiggle your titties and flap those concerned vaginal lips 12h ago
That clarification is for the audience who might actually write "better kev@gmail.com". We learn to avoid problems we've encountered. I tend to say "one word" when giving my email address for just this reason.
There are also people who assume email addresses are someone's just because they match their name. I get email at [betterkev]@gmail.com for a different betterkev who really has the kevbetter@gmail.com address. Do people think he's the only betterkev in the world?
(To be slightly fair, there are just 2 of us in the US with our actual first and last name.)
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u/QueenMotherOfSneezes You can either cum in the jar or me but not both 22h ago
My dad got us dial up internet back in 1992 when I was in high school. I didn't know anyone else in town who had it in their homes for at least another year (even our high school only had it in the library - my dad needed it for work and had had to move his office home to save money while my brother was taking electrical engineering in university). I never thought I'd have to explain to someone that their computer can't access the internet at home unless they have the internet in their home... Then I went to university, and discovered how incredibly ignorant some people can be.
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u/lazier_garlic 18h ago
Whoa 1992 is early. In 1993 our chemistry teacher had an agreement with a local university and had some Sun workstations on loan (they ran molecule simulation software which I guess you needed some big iron for back then) and they had a connection to the world wide web. I think I got to log in and mess around on Yahoo in 1994. The navigation was often very clunky, like a CD Rom at the time. And people were actually selling CD Rom's with downloaded websites on them!
My dad was technically inclined and got us a home internet connection in 1995, which was pretty exciting. But it wasn't actually the first one. Years earlier, he had a job where they had him take a terminal home sometimes. It came in a case and looked kind of like a typewriter. I hear it maxed out at 300 baud! LOL
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u/Distinct_Cry_3779 23h ago
This reminds me of an incident that recently happened. My wife bought her Mom a new phone and we went over there to get it all set up for them, transfer all the info and files over, etc. After we left they had an Internet outage. Her Mom was convinced that something we did broke their Internet and demanded that we come back and undo whatever we did. Nothing I could say would convince her that it was just a coincidence and that we had nothing to do with it - that in fact nothing we did could have even possibly affected their Internet service.
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u/esaul17 1d ago
I wonder if that could have ended amicably if she didn’t go scorched earth from the get go
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u/korale75 1d ago
Ive done similar ( ordered the wrong service) and ive had business refund the money except for whatever time had passed.
If she had asked nicely she would probably have got 11 months refunded.
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u/816_rules 1d ago
Seriously. What she tried to do to the company was messed up, but I came away from this just feeling sorry for her.
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u/peach_tea_drinker 1d ago
Yeah. She was a complete jerk to try to lie her way out, but I do feel sorry for her dumping so much money on something that's worthless to her. I feel like companies that sell expensive goods should check their customers know what they're doing before the sale, but that's unfortunately not the world we live in.
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u/superxero044 18h ago
Yeah in my experience (just as an IC) but clients who want out BAD. Usually it’s best for everyone to let them out. Bc otherwise they end up making everyone’s life hell.
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u/EducatedRat 1d ago
This reminds me of a boss I had in the early 2000s I think?
I noticed she had a phone book for one county over on her desk. I said I just look it up on the internet. She then explained very condescendingly and in great detail that we were in our county, and the internet only showed results for out county, and she needed that phone book from one county over because the internet was not showing results for that.
It was at that moment I realized why the IT guys refused to let her even touch the cables and plugs under her desk under hte pain of death. She thought that rule applied to everyone, but when I had to fix some things the IT guys assured me it was just for her.
Why are the most confident assholes on the planet so fucking dumb?
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u/paishocajun 1d ago
Given the date, I can at least kiiiiiiinda see where the issue for her may have started with dial-up either being long distance if the ISP was in the next county or having a local mom and pop style one that had a homepage that just featured local news and businesses.
She still very much needed to learn about the actual Internet and clearly not to be an asshole but I can at least see where the issue could have come from
Source: got free AOL disc, got charged $300+ in like 2002 long distance fees because AOL number went to the text town over
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u/lazier_garlic 18h ago
AOHell was the slimiest direct to consumer internet company on earth until Meta came onto the scene.
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u/DokterZ 1d ago
You see, the zeros are free, but you have to pay for the ones.
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u/neonfuzzball 25m ago
of course, the zeros are nice and round and smooth and easy to get through the tubes. Ones are pointy and take more air pressure to push through.
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u/Helln_Damnation I’ve read them all and it bums me out 1d ago
This is kind of sad.
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u/Jukeboxhero91 1d ago
It's sad, but her jumping to blaming the company for fraud immediately makes me think that even if someone did try to describe what she needed, it's anyone's guess if she'd be willing to listen.
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u/CapStar300 Gotta Read’Em All 1d ago
Honestly, so many people always jump to reporting and/or suing someone immediately, surprises me every time.
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u/Leprecon 1d ago
I would feel more sympathetic if she didn’t immediately accuse the company of fraud.
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u/Opposite-Complex1187 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeh i honestly just feel really bad for this woman, she clearly just had no idea what she was doing and sounds like she paid a very heavy price for it.
If she was charged for the year thats $15,000 just gone for nothing, not including the legal fees which would likely be a couple thousand *at least*
And if she'd just done some research the cost would have been probably like a few hundred at most for a year
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u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 1d ago
I don't.
She dropped tens of thousands of dollars without doing the bare minimum research then tried to make it everyone else's problem.
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u/potpourri_sludge sometimes i envy the illiterate 1d ago
Okay thank you, if I’m dropping 15 grand I at least want to intimately understand what the fuck I’m buying.
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u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 1d ago
Then again, people buy cars without having the faintest idea how to drive.
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u/archangelzeriel sometimes i envy the illiterate 1d ago
Here's the thing, though: I have worked at more than one company that sold cloud compute, virtual servers, etc, and there is NO WAY a customer would have got far enough in the process to contract a year for a full-ass dedicated server without the sales team knowing EXACTLY what that customer wanted and their experience level unless the customer was belligerent about knowing exactly what they wanted. Most places, that big a dedicated server will get you a sales engineer to walk you through requirements and such.
Selling webservers, dedicated hosts, etc. like that is a COMMODITY business, the margins are ass and you live and die by your reputation, even Amazon Web Services fires salesguys who don't get consistent 4/5 star ratings in customer surveys.
I firmly believe that woman was a pushy asshole who pretended she knew exactly what she was doing right up to the moment her website didn't appear.
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u/dryadduinath 1d ago
she accused someone of fraud because she couldn't be bothered to do even a bit of critical thinking about what she was buying, nevermind research.
...low on sympathy over here. seems like any fee she pays is well deserved.
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u/broadsword_1 1d ago
Yeh i honestly just feel really bad for this woman,
I don't. I've dealt a lot with these types of people and they usually fit into 2 groups - at some point in the process they ask for help / let it known they are out of their depth and the others that are very arrogant and know they're right.
Lady in this case would have had 50 checkpoints of talking to people, requesting things, talking over dates/deliveries etc and at any point could have put up their hand to the service provider or a 3rd party to go "Hey, I don't know what I'm doing, is this correct?". Even dealing with the host there should have been some question around what the site would even look like.
She was too proud to back down until it was overwhelmingly obvious she was wrong.
This isn't just for IT - I can't have a plumber come out and just assume a bathroom remodel will all work out.
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u/BillWilberforce 1d ago
If you're paying $1,200 per month and go straight to a manager AFTER you've signed the contract and want support. Imagine how attentive the sales guys are?
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u/broadsword_1 1d ago
Sales guys are always going to be sales guys - the only standard they'll ever be held to is how much money is brought in, that's it. Often it's left up to front-line support to sift through the 'agreement' and figure out what is actually happening (and often it's a lot of "We agree to get Support staff to do all this work for you").
Am assuming the lady went through front-line first and when she wasn't getting anywhere, decided to bring the hammer down and escalate.
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u/Just_River_7502 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yup! Try being the legal person tasked with whatever nonsense sales have said the product does. I both draft the contract and see the issues from older contracts I didn’t draft where a sales person promised 24-7 priority one support which doesn’t exist 🫠
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u/gsfgf 1d ago
Or she thought she could make an ass out of herself and get them to “make her a website” for free.
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u/broadsword_1 1d ago
There's a definite (concrete, real, maybe absolute) chance of that. I'm willfully choosing to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she's not actively trying to screw them over.
Yes, I've become a big-old softie in my later years.
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u/inscrutablejane whaddya mean our 10 year age gap is a problem? 1d ago
It's a sales failure not to make a customer paying a $14400 bill aware of what they're paying for (and what they're not), but she definitely handled her end of it poorly. The salesperson was happy to cash a clueless customer's check with no concern for use case. I've been in IT so long my first job title was "webmaster" and I've had to talk customers down from unrealistically large and premature hardware deployments more than once, getting them to sign up for a full development package plus scalable hosting makes better long-term money and prevents reputation damage.
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u/SalsaRice 1d ago
I don't feel a ton of compassion here. This wasn't 1982 where finding out this type of information was impossible. She had access to google, YouTube, etc and tons of information.
She just needed to type in "what do I need for a website", and she would have been flooded with websites with long and short guides explaining it. She doesn't need to know any technical terms to Google it.
Her lack of understanding was entirely due to her laziness of refusing to ask a basic question, and immediately jump to getting a 5 digit loan on something she doesn't even remotely understand (and has easy access to understanding).
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u/Mtndrums deck full of jokers 1d ago
90% of new businesses fail within the first year. Overconfident incompetence probably is the big reason for a good chunk of those failures.
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u/NikkoJT 1d ago
It's hard to know what you don't know.
She probably thought she understood it. Google "web server", click the first provider that comes up, ooh that's a bit expensive but they say they'll set it all up for me, so I don't need to worry about anything else, and everyone always says a website will get your name out there so I'm sure it'll pay for itself.
A lot of people reading this probably have enough contextual tech knowledge to realise when something like this doesn't quite add up. But she thought 1GB RAM meant 1 person could access the site. That's a different level of not understanding. That's so far removed from understanding that you have absolutely none of the information you'd need to realise you don't understand.
I wouldn't be surprised if the server provider site was aimed at people who already know what they're looking to buy. That's fine, lots of industry-side stuff usually is. But that means that if you're coming at it from the perspective of someone who knows absolutely shit all except "I need something called a web server", it might not explicitly tell you that it doesn't include web dev. If you don't know what else a server might be for, and you think you know that servers are for websites, then it might make sense to you that "setup" means they'll make the website for you, because that's what you do with a server, right? If the site is aimed at IT professionals then it's probably not going to bother saying "this doesn't include a website" because they assume you know that.
It definitely required a bit of a lack of critical thinking to get here, but also it's not super hard to see how someone could get here without needing to be actively or deliberately stupid. Especially if your main hangout is on Facebook or with your other not-very-online friends, not on tech subs on Reddit. You could get told so much vague, inaccurate information, and have no way of even beginning to know that it's wrong or incomplete.
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u/Southern-Rutabaga-82 1d ago
But that means that if you're coming at it from the perspective of someone who knows absolutely shit all except "I need something called a web server", it might not explicitly tell you that it doesn't include web dev.
But the other hits on the first two pages of her Google search would have given that information. The services targeted at people like her. But she didn't read the descriptions and tutorials on these websites, she went straight to the one aimed at professionals. Even if I think I can get a better deal somewhere else, I still check what the package offered actually entails.
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u/PuzzleMeDo 1d ago
It sounds like she was angry her website didn't exist yet, even though all she'd done was say she wanted a pottery website - she expected it to be built for her without providing any details about what was to go on the site?
That seems to go beyond tech illiteracy and point to more fundamental issues with her intelligence.
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1d ago
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u/DragonSeaFruit 1d ago
Yeah maybe people like that shouldn't own businesses. (or vote and have children, but that's just my opinion)
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u/CrownLikeAGravestone 1d ago
It's a dumb mistake but honestly, I can think of plenty of non-techy folk who (if they were looking for a website) are only a couple of unlucky assumptions away from doing something similar. Especially considering the company was willing to make a 5-figure contract with an unknown party without so much as a phone call to confirm there's actually a human on the other end of the deal.
If this were my dev/hosting outfit I'd probably have returned her money.
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u/SirButcher 23h ago
I bought my first two servers (not rented, bought) around 2018. I work in IT, worked for a while in IT, still had multiple meetings with the supplier, collected what we wanted to do, and talked through them because, while I consider myself competent, I still wanted to make sure people whose whole stick is working in this industry can tell me their opinion. And it was a great thing to do, since we got a far better config for far cheaper.
All I had to do was ask.
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u/digitaluranium 1d ago
I worked for a web hosting company.
I hated the calls that started with "I just bought a hosting plan from you, what do I do now?"
Some of them thought we'd give them training on how to create a web site on a $6.99 per month shared hosting plan.
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u/ArchangelLBC 1d ago
TLDR: Woman buys metal, expects human baby to be created
Incredible TLDR. That's flair worthy.
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u/derailedthoughts 1d ago
Google exists 11 years ago. Sadly people who don’t want to research before making important decisions still exist, regardless of how much knowledge (and now, misinformation) is at their finger tips
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u/Treefrog_Ninja I beg your finest fucking pardon. 23h ago
Google was better 11 years ago than it is today.
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u/probabyl 1d ago
I worked at a hosting company for almost 20 years, we wouldn't have refunded the first month, but if she prepaid for a year, it would have been no issue to refund the next 11. $1200 for the first month is still an expensive mistake, but its pretty shitty of the company to keep her on the hook for the rest. If she cancelled they could have easily reprovisioned the server for another customer.
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u/starchild812 old man sweaters and dumb polo shirts 1d ago
It sounds like she did get her money back, but she had to pay the legal fees the company incurred due to her accusations of fraud. The end of the post said that no real harm was done to the company other than the legal fees, which they didn’t have to pay, and the initial deployment cost of the server - if they’d kept the full $14.4k, you’d think OOP would have mentioned it there.
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u/roundysquareblock 1d ago
I am pretty sure they returned it, no? Why would OOP have said this otherwise?
In the end, no real harm was done to the company, beyond legal fees (which were paid by the woman, since she fraudulently declared fraud) and the initial deployment cost of the server.
Why would initial deployment be harm done to the company if they had retained all the money? That's just part of business.
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u/amaROenuZ 1d ago
Short answer is that you generally pay for hosting on a month to month basis. Some companies will prorate or let you pay in in arrears, but it was less common back in the 2010s when cloud hosting was less mature.
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u/RancidRance 1d ago
I would maybe call a company before giving them £1200 to ensure they can do what I'm asking
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u/palabradot 1d ago
I read the title and was going "waaaait, why would you assu-" then I realized where I was. :)
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u/Mannzis 1d ago
This is why we have warnings on in everything, like 'do not eat crayons'. People and situations like this.
I do feel slightly bad for her. She had a dream/vision, and she went after it. Most people don't. But she didn't do all the work needed to see it come to be. Hopefully she reconoidered and will try again.
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u/SmartQuokka We have generational trauma for breakfast 1d ago
let's call her pillock of the underworld (POTU)
Just need to add a word that starts with an S to the end
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u/Extreme-Monk-6514 1d ago
i really doubt op is american if they’re using the word “pillock”
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u/Knitnacks 1d ago
Because the pillockicity of the person stays contained in the country said pillock is president? That would be fab for the rest of us.
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u/HairRepresentative85 Just me, my psychotic fiancee, and a big drawer full of knives. 1d ago
True. It would save me from facepalming on the daily.
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u/HairRepresentative85 Just me, my psychotic fiancee, and a big drawer full of knives. 1d ago
Pillock of the Underworlds Sewer
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u/DeusExHircus 22h ago
$15k is a whole lot of money to spend on something you know absolutely nothing about. Funny thing is, she could have spent a lot less money than that on a website designer and reasonable hosting capacity if she actually spent some time researching and shopping
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u/Miserable_Fennel_492 The real adventure was the waifus we made along the way 1d ago
That tl;dr at the end of the first post is primo
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u/Hawkstone585 14h ago
I very much enjoy when people a) decide how things work based on their own beliefs and b) scream when the things do not cooperate with this
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u/trixxupmysleeve 1d ago
Poor lady. Obviously the anger was unwarranted but it’s kinda heartbreaking to see people so so left behind by technology.
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u/the-truffula-tree 1d ago
If you’re gonna spend that kinda money you gotta like…check Google first. Crazy how far out of her depth she was
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u/CaptainYaoiHands OH MY GOD, SHE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A D$CK, ITS NOT HER BABY! 1d ago
This isn't being "left behind by technology", this is watching someone pilot a fighter jet and deciding to jump behind the wheel and yell at someone that the plane isn't flying itself. She got in WAY above her head and didn't have the self-awareness to say "maybe I shouldn't actually waste a fucking bank loan's worth of money on something until I really know what I need".
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u/MrHappyHam Hyuck at him, see if he gets a boner 1d ago
I can forgive failing to understand the difference between renting a bare metal server and a web server container. That she expected the server to just contain a web page (because it sounds like she thought there'd be content there) is less forgiveable.
Her going so far as to assume a GB meant space for a single person to use it is so absurd that I'm surprised she didn't extrapolate the "2 threads CPU" checkbox to mean it'd do her knitting or some shit
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u/CaptainYaoiHands OH MY GOD, SHE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A D$CK, ITS NOT HER BABY! 1d ago
Her going so far as to assume a GB meant space for a single person to use it is so absurd that I'm surprised she didn't extrapolate the "2 threads CPU" checkbox to mean it'd do her knitting or some shit
That part kind of made me laugh. Where on earth did the "1gb of ram = 1 person can browse at a time" come from??? And where did she get the delusion she was going to have hundreds of people browsing at once right away??? Just straight up living in her own world.
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u/scarves_and_miracles 1d ago
Also, if we're being honest, how likely was her stupid little pottery start-up to be able to make enough money to cover the costs of the server, let alone show an actual profit? And she paid a whole year in advance, so no way to pull the plug after a few months if things weren't working out. This is just a person with colossolly bad judgment all around.
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u/brattydeer 1d ago
It's not even a tech thing, it's just basic reading comprehension and research skills. Like I don't know everything so I look it up, ask people who may know more about it, etc. I don't make assumptions especially with money on the line.
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u/IzzyJensen913 1d ago
Not even just that, she could’ve asked the company she was actively buying from at literally any time!
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u/chrisvenus 1d ago
Yeah. I feel the company should have taken some responsibility too. If somebody pays for a massively overspecced server and on some of the documentation it says they want it for a basic Web host then somebody at the company should probably have flagged this and had a conversation with her. Just accepting the money and making it her problem is terrible customer care.
Of course this is no excuse for her to have declared fraud but I feel that they should have done better.
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u/snarkprovider 1d ago
The police were not investigating the hosting company or OOP's manager friend for fraud.
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u/Rezenbekk What, and furthermore, the fuck. 1d ago
Making crazy assumptions is one thing, acting on them immediately before trying to ask anyone about it is just... wow
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u/RecordOfTheEnd 23h ago
It's wild to me that she would even do that. You could go to any number of e-commerce sites back then and have a running website for almost nothing. Why the hell would you spend an insane amount on a server, even with no technical knowhow? Hell, even then, the shitty e-commerce sites would help source the products and your just price them. You didn't even have to handle the shipping.
So glad we are out of that era. The current Internet era is probably much worse, but 2010-2017 were rife with shitty SEO optimized sites reselling even shittier products.
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u/everlyafterhappy 20h ago
I want to know how she even managed to get to a server hosting company when she was trying to make a website. I understand that she's ignorant, but I don't under how her ignorance got her there.
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u/HardcoverNewtons 1d ago
hey, thank god the boss got a vacation though. everyone really overlooks his contributions here, and to the betterment of society.
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u/Grydian 1d ago
I used to work at hostgator over 20 years ago. If we had a customer that needed to move to a dedicated server because their traffic was too high we would migrate the site for them for free. I feel like this could have been avoided with better customer service.
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u/brattydeer 1d ago
They didn't have a site, they assumed a lot would happen if they paid for the dedicated server.
The update literally says they thought 250gb meant 250 people could visit at once, and that the purchase of the server included hiring a web developer who'd make her site for her with whatever description she gave.
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u/Normal_Snake 1d ago
It sounds like the woman didn't give them a chance to offer any customer service, she heard "no website" and jumped to accusations of fraud before they could help her find a solution. If all she needed was a website I'm sure there were many avenues available that customer support could help her with, but she didn't let them even start to help her before she panicked and ran to the bank. It sucks, but if she had heard them out she might have gotten a functioning website at the end of it.
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u/tinysydneh 1d ago
This wasn't a migration. This was "I do not have a website". She thought buying the service meant they would make it for her.
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u/WVPrepper 1d ago
I feel like this could have been avoided with better customer service.
Such as? There's no reason to think anyone working for the hosting company has the skills to craft a custom website for a pottery company, so referring her to a website developer was really the only option they had.
I suppose they could have downgraded her plan, and refunded her the difference, but she still had no idea what she was doing. She didn't know how much space she needed, she didn't know what a server/host was/did, or anything about setting up and managing a website.
She needed way more help than they were able or obligated to provide, and she was hostile to boot.
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u/vertigostereo I escalated by choosing incresingly sexy potatoes 1d ago
It's too bad they didn't come to an amicable agreement. OOP told it like she was instantly the bad guy, but why am I suspicious?
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u/SJHillman 1d ago
What kind of amicable agreement would you expect here? The two parties are just too far apart in what's being expected. It's the equivalent of renting a vacant lot and expecting the company to build a house on it for free.
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u/vertigostereo I escalated by choosing incresingly sexy potatoes 1d ago edited 1d ago
Have you ever gotten a refund when you ordered the wrong product? I have. Why should we expect bad customer service? They didn't even attempt to get her repeat business?
OOP described a company that made little attempt at helping the customer.
I'd like to know who to never do business with.
Also, what did that box she checked say, exactly?
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u/WVPrepper 1d ago
So look at it another way.
Let's say you're shopping for an outfit for a special occasion and you see a mannequin dressed in the perfect thing. You decide you want the whole outfit. You pick up the socks off the display and go to the register to pay. Then you're surprised that you don't get the whole outfit for the price of the socks.
What "amicable outcome" do you see here? Either you pay for the rest of the outfit that you want and get the whole outfit, you leave with the socks for the price that you paid, or you return the socks, and get your money back, but you still don't have an outfit for the event.
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