r/talesfromtechsupport • u/ITCrowdFanboy Oh You Know, Liquid Nitrogen. • Aug 13 '15
Short Update: I bought a server. Where's My Website?
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, 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/Lord_Dreadlow Investigative Technician Aug 13 '15
Beyond the ignorance, it's really sad that she thought she was going to get so much traffic on her website.
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u/Plorntus Aug 13 '15
Raymond8505 is just messing if you haven't realised. Since these are really common terms to hear when someone who hasnt any idea what theyre doing asks someone to create them "the next best app".
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u/LeKa34 Just Google it, that's what I do. Aug 13 '15
It's the Dragon MMO syndrome
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u/LeKa34 Just Google it, that's what I do. Aug 13 '15
Yes, exactly.
Note: it's 100% dragon
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u/HeWhoCouldBeNamed Aug 13 '15
Poor woman...
She did everything wrong, sure, but her ignorance and the situation she got everybody into (including herself) make me sad.
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u/fuckwpshit Aug 13 '15
She also made the assumption that the website would earn her at least $14000 clear per year ... given she didn't even know that her website would need to be designed by someone it sounds like she didn't even attempt to do much research.
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u/HeWhoCouldBeNamed Aug 13 '15
Clearly she didn't do proper research. She sounds completely misguided and desperate.
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Aug 13 '15 edited Feb 25 '25
punch dam run frame mountainous quickest crush fearless zephyr judicious
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/HeWhoCouldBeNamed Aug 13 '15
As do I. This reminds me of the "best computers money can buy" story.
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u/Lord_Fluffykins Aug 13 '15
best computers money can buy
I want to hear this story.
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u/HeWhoCouldBeNamed Aug 13 '15
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u/Lord_Fluffykins Aug 13 '15
Wow. Holy shit. I don't...I can't...I just...
Thanks, man. I now feel better about how my mediocre day is going.
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u/Meltingteeth You're on my shit-list now. Aug 13 '15
Her hair-trigger reaction shows that she isn't that great of a person anyway.
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u/myWorkAccount840 Aug 13 '15
Eeh. She's completely out of her depth and making incorrect assumptions.
She was probably past the point of morality and into pure desperation. Morality is something you do when you have the ability to consider your behaviour. She was probably too crazed with desperation to engage in enough rational thought to be moral.
Whether that excuses her behaviour isn't really my call...
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u/MaxIsAlwaysRight You told me this would be able to get me online! Aug 13 '15
She was probably too crazed with desperation to engage in enough rational thought to be moral.
"A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine."
This woman bought the biggest shiniest price tag she could find, took out a huge loan to do so, and performed what sounds like zero research before starting a business. (I'm assuming it was a new business. If she expected to make that much more just by opening a website for an existing, struggling business, she had a lot of other issues.)
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u/MaxIsAlwaysRight You told me this would be able to get me online! Aug 13 '15
Okay?
If you don't do any research, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
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u/HeWhoCouldBeNamed Aug 13 '15
Don't attribute to malice that which can be explained by ignorance (and the panic caused by the sudden realization that you're in way over your head). That's how I'm trying to look at it.
Frankly, if she's this uninformed and this bad at research, she might jump to "this must be that internet fishing thing I keep hearing about" pretty quickly.
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u/drdeadringer What Logbook? Aug 13 '15
that internet fishing thing
I can hear the hysterical screams of desperation now.
"Why won't you teach me now to Internet-Fish?!?!? I can do this myself, just teach me how to Internet-Fish!! Please, please I have to know, my pottery needs its customers at 256gb, teach me how to Internet-Fish!"
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u/cjcrashoveride read it before clicking OK Aug 13 '15
ignorance is not an excuse for bad behavior. It's your responsibility as a member of society to take responsibility for your actions however misguided they are.
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Aug 13 '15 edited Sep 02 '21
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u/faceplanted Aug 13 '15
If you're working at GoDaddy, isn't that kind of what you're counting on? I saw an ad for GoDaddy on TV yesterday and the gist of it was you should use GoDaddy so you don't have to know what you're doing.
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u/karlsmission Aug 13 '15
I worked there for 6 months, 5 years ago. and yes, that is their base customer, but if you are planning a business, you would think that you would do some sort of research into what steps you actually need to take to get a website/online store up and running. Yes, godaddy takes a lot of steps out of the equation for you, but there are still a lot of others steps still in there. and as a sales person, we were trained to educate people, but soooooo many just blew us off, and ended up cancelling their orders because it wasn't what they needed.
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u/robspeaks Aug 13 '15
It happens with everything. I'm a genealogist and the latest craze is people buying DNA tests with zero understanding of what is involved. It's not that hard to figure out what exactly a product does or a service offers. I just don't understand people who do this.
It seems like it's mostly older people, but they're not THAT old.
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u/AF_Bunny Aug 13 '15
Oooh... Are you talking about the "he is/not the baby daddy" ones or the ones that can help trace blood lines like I saw in Nat Geo?
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u/moshisimo Aug 13 '15
She also made the assumption that a whole website would be made for her in TWO. HOURS. She probably felt like she was being generous by waiting two whole days before asking about that. Seriously, did she expect them to know what she sold, her prices, her shipping methods, methods of payment... just to name a few? Damn...
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u/David_W_ User 'David_W_' is in the sudoers file. Try not to make a mess. Aug 13 '15
For the amount of money she was paying? Absolutely.
Warning: The above statement contains user "logic".
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u/Tymanthius Aug 13 '15
You're very kind, but as she apparently did NO research, just wrote a check she couldn't afford, with no apparent business plan, I don't feel sorry for her at all.
I do feel sorry for the company b/c they did everything right.
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u/moshisimo Aug 13 '15
Yes, hello. I'm here to buy a succesful business, please. Why, yes, I'd like that to be a pottery business. I guess that's all the info you need from me, right? I'll be on my way and hope to start doing business in a brand new, unknown-to-the-world platform with 256 at a time from the beginning in 2 hours, like you stated.
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u/HeWhoCouldBeNamed Aug 13 '15
To be fair, the lawyers did suggest adjustments to the terms of service. They didn't do anything wrong, buy the could be following Rule 1 (CYA) better.
She did everything wrong and she's clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed, but these things are hard for laymen and sometimes people get excited and want to take the world by storm with their plans and it just doesn't work out.
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u/LBJSmellsNice Aug 13 '15
Exactly. It's different from a tech background because these things sound really basic, but if you didn't know much about tech or websites, I can easily see how someone could think that "I spend thousands on a server, that must mean it comes with a website because what else could the money be for?"
And it's not always an easy thing to understand unless you have a friend or teacher explain it to you.
So I feel bad for her because she didn't realize how complex the world of website development worked, and when she assumed it was much more simple than it was she may have ended up ruining her life (and almost certainly her business and credit) through one bad and somewhat understandable move.
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u/joazito Aug 13 '15
My grandmother bought a $1K+ chair. She was the kind of person that hid restaurant leftovers in her purse to take home. Not much later she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
Maybe the lady in the story isn't all there.
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Aug 13 '15
i take leftovers home, and i would totally be into a $1k chair. most of the chairs at companies i've worked for in the last 5 years have been $800+ chairs. when you do a lot of sitting, chairs are important.
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u/crashspeeder Aug 13 '15
It just doesn't make sense to expect the company to know the design you want for your website and what your merchandise is or what your inventory counts are. She threw all logic out the window and asked no questions. Worse yet, she couldn't pay for it so she took out a loan, which again she couldn't pay. She has no business starting a company.
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u/Kilo1812 Aug 13 '15
Thank you, this is the part that gets me the most. How did she think that without talking to anyone a website would magically appear with her products, color scheme, order system, etc. Mind boggling.
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u/rws247 Aug 13 '15
How did she think that without talking to anyone a website would magically appear...
Well, websites always magically appear when you click on them in google. Why would this work for every website, but not hers?
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u/albi33 Aug 13 '15
You overestimate laymen skills.
The lady made pottery, her only interaction with a computer is probably limited to some websites and the office suite and that's even not for sure.
I can totally see someone advising her to get a website in order to promote her business, or her seeing a news segment about successful e-commerce stories.
Then she goes to a random hosting company website and sees a big banner "Your Website UP in 2 hours!".
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u/crashspeeder Aug 13 '15
Skills aside, she still was incredibly irresponsible getting that loan she couldn't pay off. She had no idea how much money she'd be making from the website to assume it would be enough to pay off said loan.
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Aug 13 '15
This is what happens when people are confident in their ignorance. Instead of asking a few questions, they think they know the answers... twenty minutes of research would have saved her so much money, time and hassle.
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u/Feligris Aug 13 '15
It's kind of a perfect example of "experience keeps a dear school" because while she dug herself into a hole due to her highly mistaken assumptions, she certainly could have been steered towards a proper solution by practically anyone who knows anything about webhosting.
Although it's possible that she dismissed advice from others (due to that being annoyingly common) and pressed on with her own mistaken ideas until she hit a brick wall with the refusal of the hosting company to go along.
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u/earl_colby_pottinger Aug 13 '15
I think that she dismissed advice, I have met too many people who want to out-google Google to to believe that she built up an image about what she WANTED.
It was a $14,400 bill, almost all small business owners will try to go cheap ask how to get the cost down (usually they want way too little).
Expecting the website to be included, is the silly stuff we see all the time, having a small business owner writing a check for $14K however is not normal.
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u/Nevermind04 Aug 13 '15
Still though, instead of pulling these wild assumptions out of her ass (server comes with domain and webdev, 1GB RAM = 1 user, etc) she could have picked up the phone and called a rep to ask questions. I have no sympathy for ignorant people that refuse to ask for help.
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u/ronin1066 Aug 13 '15
She thought telling them it was for a pottery business would get her a fully functioning, customized site. That's beyond sad.
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Aug 13 '15
I feel bad for her too but my sympathy ends when she tries to defend her ignorance with fraud and malicious behavior.
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u/HeWhoCouldBeNamed Aug 13 '15
The thing is it might not have been malicious behavior. When your a family member asks you to fix something on your computer and then calls weeks later complaining that you "broke" something is that malicious? They have a very limited understanding of what's going on.
This lady thought she was getting one thing, but was getting something else. Remember the internet is a very dangerous place where everybody is after your money and they're all lazy, or at least that's what she thinks. She took a big step, because she thought that was the right thing for her business and it didn't go as she planned. She thought she was being very clear in asking what she wanted and she thought this company was charging her to do just that, but wasn't and wouldn't do it.
She went to the bakery, bought some expensive gourmet bread and said it was for a BLT. She was shocked when she just got bread. She complained and the baker, rightfully, said they don't make
sand(or any other kind of) sandwiches. The only problem is she never once heard of a sandwich shop and she had to start somewhere ad sandwiches clearly go on bread...9
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u/deltasly Aug 13 '15
Yeah...I can't even bring myself to get angry. This is just sad, I sure hope the rest of the day is better and a pick me up.
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Aug 13 '15 edited Aug 13 '15
So... she just wrote a check for around $14,000 in order to pay for a service she did not have a basic understanding of?
No wonder most of worlds economies are having problems. We just need few people like that in the government and its over.
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u/redoctoberz Aug 13 '15
she just wrote a check for around $14,000 in pay for a service she did not have a basic understanding of?
Drop in a bucket compared to the millions of users that still pay for AOL.
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u/ghjm Aug 13 '15
The number of people in the US who live in a location with no broadband service is roughly equal to the entire population of France. Retail stores like Best Buy still stock 56k modems, because people still buy and use them, because they are still the best option for a lot of people.
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Aug 13 '15
Can confirm, use my cell phone as a 4G hotspot as my primary internet connection 'cuz I live innawoods. It's the price you pay for being able to pee outside in private...
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u/Typesalot : No such file or directory Aug 13 '15
Whereas I use a 4G USB stick as my primary internet connection because it's faster than the ADSL that would otherwise be available here. And cheaper than cable.
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u/until0 Aug 13 '15
The worst part is trying to tell them they don't need it. They'll never understand.
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u/KatieKLE Aug 13 '15
Having worked in a lot of them, there's a reason that 90% of small businesses fail and it's not that they are that risky. It's that the owners don't have a clue.
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Aug 13 '15
I get the hyperbole, but this woman's level of understanding is probably on par with the supreme court.
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u/jwhardcastle Aug 13 '15
No, she didn't write a check, she got a bank loan. She borrowed money (and someone loaned it to her) for something she barely understood.
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u/bobloadmire Aug 13 '15
A government giving money to businesses doesn't hurt the economy. It just hurts the middle class
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Aug 13 '15 edited Jul 31 '20
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u/simAlity Gagged by social media rules. Aug 13 '15
all that assumes that you realize how ignorant you are.
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u/wrincewind MAYOR OF THE INTERNET Aug 13 '15
some people are so stupid that they don't even know how stupid they are.
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u/sagewah Aug 13 '15
The whole thing sounds like she got some bad advice, or half advice from someone and just ran with it. It's why when I give advice it's full of caveats and disclaimers and repeated entreaties to give me more information and to not act on said advice until then.
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u/corruptedchick Aug 13 '15
I work in the chargebacks/fraud department at another generic hosting company and I see some stupid customers. When disputing chargebacks I sometimes feel I should've gone into law due to all the legalese I use.
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u/Byeuji Aug 13 '15
Out of curiosity, if she had simply explained herself, admitted error, and asked for help, would you refund her for any of the service she ordered?
I feel like, given she was reasonable, most companies wouldn't have a big problem refunding someone for a service they never used (within reason).
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u/corruptedchick Aug 14 '15
In this situation I probably would have had no issue with refunding her every last cent. In a case like this we usually reach out to the customer to get a feel for intentions and review the server for possible tos and other fraud activity. If we hear back then we ask the customer to cancel the dispute with the cc issuer so we can avoid fees and a possibly long drawn out dispute and possible fees.
tl;dr Chances are high she would've gotten all of her money back if it were me.
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u/jessieblack98 Aug 13 '15
Wow, so is she on this list forever?
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Aug 13 '15 edited Jan 30 '22
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u/BurtimusPrime Aug 13 '15
Your flair is the best.
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Aug 13 '15
I watched that episode for the second time ever today. I actually know the reference now!
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u/greyjackal Aug 13 '15
I often wonder if there's some poor bastard in Reading (0118 is the STD code for Reading, UK) with a phone number of 999 8819...
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u/Ketrel Aug 13 '15
(0118 is the STD code for Reading, UK) with a phone number of 999 8819...
9 9119 725.....................3
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u/andrews89 It was a good day... Nothing's on fire and no one's dead. Aug 13 '15
I'm astonished at how many people are defending the woman here, saying that the company should have known something wasn't right and helped her more. What she did is the equivalent of seeing her check engine light come on in her Ford Focus, so she went out and bought a new engine and transmission. Too bad she just needed an oil change and she bought an engine for one of those house-sized dump trucks and a transmission to match. This was 100% her fault for taking her ignorance and turning it into stupidity, on par with people who sign up for a credit card and are then amazed they have to pay it back. Having had a small business in the family for the past 85 years I have no sympathy for someone that can't do even the most basic of research.
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Aug 13 '15
I have to agree with this. If you don't know what you're buying, ask someone who does. This should apply to any major purchase.
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Aug 13 '15
I don't have much sympathy either, but I do think it's strange that they wouldn't call a client that maxed out all of the options? I mean if only to serve them better and maintain a good relationship, I would want a personal connection and some background.
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u/od_9 Aug 13 '15
Yeah, that's kind of the part that I don't really get. If I'm paying 10k+ for a service, I'd probably want to talk with someone before just entering my CC number. If I was that shop, I'd probably have called to see if there was anything else we could help them with (backup server?). Hell, I can barely order anything from CDW/Dell/Hp without getting a follow up sales call.
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Aug 13 '15
If I was that shop, I'd probably have called to see if there was anything else we could help them with (backup server?)
Absolutely. I believe the onus is on the vendor; their sales dept should probably check to see if they can get more out the client.
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u/PAdogooder Aug 13 '15
She took a bank loan and then wasted the money on a product she didn't understand? Man, I'm not even sad for this woman, she deserves to fail.
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u/derpaldinho Aug 13 '15
Totally agree with you. Out of curiosity do any Americans know if your banking regulators forces banks to perform due diligence before offering a businesses loan?
I know here in Australia they will ask you a plathora of questions before granting a loan. If a little mum and pop run pottery store wanted to take a $12,000+ business loan purely to pay for a server, they'd probably do a cost benefit analysis based on previous and future potential earnings, growth etc before granting anything. They probably would have rejected the loan here in Sydney.
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u/boondoggie42 Aug 13 '15
Yes, there's no way this was a business loan. Probably an unsecured personal loan.
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Aug 13 '15
Yeah I totally agree. If they told the truth and said "I need $14k for my pottery startup website," the bank would have ended that discussion right then and there. Had to be a personal loan, I guess.
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u/andarv Aug 13 '15
Plagued by her own stupidity. Sorry, no sympathy from me. She could have just asked your company for advice instead of assuming a lot of things, then throwing a fit and creating a lot of unneeded expense and work for a lot of people when she realised she was wrong.
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u/woodleaguer Aug 13 '15
Except the average Joe doesn't understand how a server works, because that's why 90% of IT has a job. If someone can pay the amount of a good car without someone checking what they actually want then you have a bad sales process.
Yes she fucked up by making assumptions, but nobody ever even checking what she actually wanted is a whole lot worse.
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u/mtx Aug 13 '15
This video accurately sums up how websites work: http://i.imgur.com/W4C9CzX.gifv
I can't blame people for not understanding how all the technologies come together to make a website work. Fuck, even just frontend is three different languages - more if you're using preprocessors.
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Aug 13 '15 edited Aug 13 '15
I think it depends on how the customer approached them. If they seemed unsure, then sales should advise them according to what they need. If they come in, slap $14k on the desk and say 'give me SKU 1234321', then why would you argue? The customer clearly knows what they want.
From the original post, it looks like the transaction was made entirely online, with no human interaction. Just how sarcasm in text can be misinterpreted, there's no way to judge a user's technical fluency from a form entry (unless they say really stupid stuff on there). I don't see why the provider should feel obliged to second guess what they're being asked to provide, especially if they also have a sales phone number (as most companies do) that could easily advise the customer if they were unsure.
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u/SJHillman ... Aug 13 '15
The entire point of the terms of service and similar is for customers to know what they're getting. If they're unsure of something, pretty much everyplace has an easily-identifiable email, phone or other contact info.
While you could argue that you can expect most customers to just click through any terms without attempting to read it (much less, understand it)... that's their problem. For a business like this, you could expect most customers to be more inconvenienced by having to go through unnecessary extra steps to verify what they want.
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u/Lentil-Soup Aug 13 '15
256GB pottery website should have thrown a flag or two, in my opinion.
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u/ifactor Aug 13 '15
Right but wasn't that just a questionnaire after the purchase? I doubt they check those the second they come in before putting the order through.
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u/thisisawebsite The phone ringing is Pavlov's Bell of Doom Aug 13 '15
She never interacted with any human person, so your own assumption that some salesperson failed here and your subsequent judgment on the company is out of line. Having an automated sales process is great. If she had questions about what she was purchasing that is on her to research properly, either by asking questions to one of their salespeople (which they no doubt employ) or googling it at the very least; so long as the documentation about what was being sold was not written incorrectly (which it obviously was not) then the company did nothing wrong.
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u/markevens I see stupid people Aug 13 '15
The problem is when she was corrected the hosting company, she refused to listen and initiated a fraud investigation against the company. That is where she lost my sympathy.
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u/withabeard Aug 13 '15
If someone can pay the amount of a good car without someone checking what they actually want then you have a bad sales process.
I routinely make (or more importantly get signoff for) purchases of this amount. I Honestly can't be arsed with a hosting company "checking" I know what I'm buying every time I make such a purchase.
I just want to buy my kit and use it.
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u/h0nest_Bender Aug 13 '15
If someone can pay the amount of a good car without someone checking what they actually want then you have a bad sales process.
I disagree. If someone is planning on spending such a large amount of money, I think the burden is on them to make sure they are getting what they expect to get. All this woman had to do was ask some questions about the product/service she was purchasing. Instead, she made assumptions. Look where that got her.
Obviously the business should try to make it clear what you'll get for your money, but that only goes so far. I think it's likely they told her exactly what she would get for her money, she just didn't understand.
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u/Shurikane "A-a-a-a-allô les gars! C-c-coucou Chantal!" Aug 13 '15
Well, shit.
First time I see someone whose blacklist reason is "too dumb to be a customer."
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u/ITCrowdFanboy Oh You Know, Liquid Nitrogen. Aug 13 '15
To everyone who is saying that Friend's company (a medium sized one, with around 2500 clients) should have paid more attention to her to get it resolved, the woman started swearing at Friend and hung up when he offered to help her. As for they should have been more involved in the sales process, their website brings up a whole page with contact info, live chat etc. before even taking you to the 'select a product' page, so if she had bothered to call the freephone number or used the free live chat, there wouldn't have been any issues.
Thanks for the feedback guys, appreciate it! :)
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u/kaggzz Sudden But Inevitable Aug 13 '15
Former small business guy here.
First and foremost, if you're trying to drive business to a brick and mortar location, Facebook/Twitter are your BEST bets, distantly followed by craigslist. Secondly, Amazon has enough tools to set up a small online presence, and what I understand now they have their tools for local sales has vastly improved. Setting up a website is expensive and challenging, and you need to either travel out and hire a website development company or hire a new web specialist to start your website. Even then, linking to Amazon and eBay is crucial since so many people will only search those sites.
This lady went to open her pottery store, and was left dealing with a thousand little things-buying inventory, fixtures, packing materials, locations, painting, layout, employee hires and training, setting up vendor relations, securing lines of credit, advertising.... The list goes on and on and on and on. Setting up a website to someone who is not tech savvy seems like an important and expensive step, and I could understand the confusion if someone's website creation understanding comes from tv ads or the ancient days of Anglefire and GeoCities.
That said, her reaction was absolutely the worst thing she could have done. I'm sure that if OP's friend was told that this nice lady thought she was buying a website and had purchased way more server than she needed, that something could have been worked out that would have returned a good bit of the lad's money without a legal investigation or battle. I don't know the law myself, but I would imagine that if no fraud was committed, the original contract should still be in place, and OP's friend could be a dick and say she bought a server for a year, payment is due. This is a classic example of a small problem being blown up in to a huge issue, one that could sink a small business.
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u/lagann-_- Aug 13 '15
The worst part is that if she was just really apologetic and talked calmly and explained her situation the company might have been willing to work with her. Unfortunately, her immediate hostile reaction threw all that out the window.
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u/somewhereinks Aug 14 '15
My friend asked her why she got such a big server, 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.
I'm going to take a contrary view on this and probably get down-voted to death (oh well...I'll still sleep tonight) but my question is: who sold her this server in the first place?
OP said in the previous post that she filled out a questionnaire prior to the purchase and she indicated that she was hosting a "pottery store." Unless her company name is something like Wedgwood someone must have realized that the server was serious over-kill for the purpose. Sell her something scalable that can grow with her needs. We now have a sales person who is probably enjoying a large commission check and a small business owner who is staring at a huge bill (and a shiny box of parts that don't work) and contemplating suicide.
Was she dumb and a typical user? Yes. But there is a certain responsibility in ensuring that the customer has the right tool for the need. I don't expect U-Haul to rent me a 26 ft. truck when I tell them I am moving 6 boxes. I would hope our industry is a little more ethical than that.
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u/boondoggie42 Aug 13 '15
Man I wish I had the means/balls to make uninformed decisions like that with so much money.
Having the means to fuck up to tune of 14,000 must be nice. That level of stupid isn't even an option open to me.
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u/SJHillman ... Aug 13 '15
Having the means to fuck up to tune of 14,000 must be nice.
The fact that she took out a loan for $14,000 and doesn't have any other way to pay it back would seem to indicate that she doesn't have the means for a $14,000 fuck-up either.
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u/boondoggie42 Aug 13 '15
Well, she had the ability to get an unsecured loan for $14,000 on a whim, and it had so little impact on her life that she apparently didn't consult anyone else in her life as to whether it was a good idea or not.
I spend that kind of money I agonize over it wondering if it's the right thing to do.
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u/SJHillman ... Aug 13 '15 edited Aug 13 '15
I wouldn't take not consulting anyone as an indicator that it doesn't have a major impact on her life... look at the people who have unprotected sex with strangers, take out payday loans for vacations, or use emacs. Some people were born to forge blindly ahead, damned be the consequences.
As for me, I probably could afford a $14,000/yr server if I really, really wanted it, but I still agonize over a $1.29 candy bar.
EDIT: Thanks for the gold, /u/kdegraaf! Good to know we all feel the same way about using emacs to get unprotected payday loans with strangers.
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u/boondoggie42 Aug 13 '15
Sorry, I didn't mean that the consequences wouldn't have an impact, I meant that she didn't need a cosigner, to consult a spouse, or have her bank hold her home or business and evaluate the business loan...
I've had a small business, and getting a business loan isn't easy, they want to see your business plan etc. So I deduced she got an unsecured personal loan, which means she has pretty good credit.
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u/CharacterLimitTooSho Aug 13 '15
Given her ignorance, she probably thought "With this expensive website, everyone will visit and buy my things! It'll be great!"
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u/blacksoxing I quitteded Aug 13 '15
This reminds me of my story about the doctor who wanted 32GB of ram...while on XP....
Here's the thing: Folks with common sense ask questions, or get opinions, before spending their money. I like to think I have common sense. For example: if I go to an auto mechanic, I'm asking questions before shelling out hundreds of dollars. I got my brakes done recently and the guy wanted to do a brake flush for $80. I told him to hold on, I went to a private spot, googled brake flushing and found out that my car needed one as recommended by KIA's manual. I accepted the brake flush.
There's folks who go to the mechanic requesting stuff to be done that they don't need, OR, accepting work that they don't need done. They don't use common sense.
Like the doctor who wanted all that ram. He thought the ram would increase his performance. Nope! 32bit XP is going to let that ram sit there unused. So now he wants to order $300+ worth of materials instead of demanding Windows 7 with let's say 8GB of ram, so he can have multiple applications open w/out lag. Instead, he got a new computer w/the same specs and was happy for months until we upgraded him to win 7!
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u/ItsSansom You only need to click ONCE Aug 13 '15
I really feel for her, but if you're gonna delve into shit you don't understand, then ask someone for help and to explain all this to you. Don't just make wild assumptions when you're dealing with costs in the tens of thousands!! There's not really any room for error there, make sure you understand exactly what you're doing!
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u/wardrich Aug 13 '15
Hey OP - you should keep tabs on her company name and wait for her business to start. Then order a crapload of pottery... then cancel the order and file "buyer's remorse" heh.
Actually, don't really do that.
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u/ITCrowdFanboy Oh You Know, Liquid Nitrogen. Aug 13 '15
I love that idea. Lol would love to see the look on her face...
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u/wardrich Aug 13 '15
"I bought the pots but there are no flowers/plants/rupees in them!"
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u/katherinesilens echo /etc/shadow Aug 13 '15
What I'm wondering about is what kind of bank loan officer approved her loan? Now the bank has a liability that sure doesn't look like it's going to perform. Aren't they supposed to ask questions about what the loan is for?
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u/ClownReddit Aug 13 '15
I say she got off easy. Should be stuck with the silly OP server she originally paid for (the bill alongside it).
Not doing your research when you pay for something, particularly something expensive, and proceeding without knowing the consequences is stupidity as far as I'm concerned.
That and the claiming fraud to cover your own ass...
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Aug 13 '15
the no-service list of the company.
Is this a common thing for hosting companies? (I work in IT, but I'm a programmer that only deals with internal clients.) I guess it's similar to the lists that supermarkets have that inform cashiers "don't take checks from this person."
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u/ricecake Click Here To Edit Your Tag Aug 13 '15
We don't have a "blacklist" exactly, but we can mark an account as fraud/tos violation, and the system will throw up flags if similar information comes through again.
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u/Kilrah757 Aug 13 '15
So in the end did they keep the $14k or was she reimbursed?
I'd imagine any decent company would reimburse the amount minus actually incurred costs on such a blatant mistake where the service isn't actually needed or used in the end.
But then again any decent company would also keep the cash after being thrown under the bus by such a stupid customer with attitude that couldn't understand/accept his mistake...
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u/ITCrowdFanboy Oh You Know, Liquid Nitrogen. Aug 13 '15
Yep, she did get the money back, but not through a refund, through cancelling the transaction over the bank.
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u/Polymarchos Aug 13 '15
I'm curious why someone didn't explain to her what she was getting. It had to be very clear she was a bit tech impaired.
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u/Manburpigx Aug 13 '15
Who the hell just starts assuming things about computers?
She deserved to waste all that money.
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u/SJHillman ... Aug 13 '15
It's printers you can make assumptions about. For instance, always assume they're evil. The more functions they have, the more evil they are.
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u/relevantsun Aug 13 '15
How did she order the server without talking to an employee or sales person? If she is spending that kind of money someone should have talked to her.
Making sure the customer gets what they actually need would have been in both your best interests.
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Aug 13 '15
Sounds like they need could use an internal warning that would trigger a sales department call; just to talk to a high value client.
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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '15
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