Hello!

I'd like to share negative experience when trying to use Weinbar hosting.
In may I tried to order virtual hosting at Weinbar hosting. My credit card info was accepted and I waited for technical information to setup the site. After I got nothing in three days, I sent a letter to support. No reply for another three days. I tried to order hosting again (I thought that maybe my first order was not valid for whatever reason). No reply again. I sent two more letters to support all without replies. I contacted CEO by e-mail (that time they had e-mails on the site). No reply. Ok, I thought, if they are so unpolite, I give up. I found an excellent hosting, cwihosting.com (and I use it now and I am happy).
Due to some technical problems I never checked credit card payments history until today. Today I had a chance to see what I paid for and what have I seen? During may-july Weinbar has taken over $70 from my card account. I was going to make a chargeback and now I see that Weinbar takes a $50 penalty on chargebacks. What a shame -- first they steal money and then they control what I will do with my money!

I would recommend everybody to think dozen of times before using their "service".

Sincerely yours,
Eugene Mayevski

I am 99.9999999% sure that a company cannot charge you for making a chargeback. I mean, what's to prevent you from charging back the chargeback penalty fee - and so on and so on?

--Tina

Eugene, they had some trouble a few months back. I suggest attempting to contact them again before considering a chargeback.

$50 penalty on chargebacks.

Could be wrong - but I've never heard of that before - is it possible / legal?

Eladesor

Originally posted by Chicken
Eugene, they had some trouble a few months back. I suggest attempting to contact them again before considering a chargeback.

At the same time (in may) several other people successfully subscribed to virtual hosting plan. After that they keep complaining about slow support.

Moreover, I can't find any e-mail addresses at weinbar site anymore. Having a really bad experience before, I don't want to be neglected again. Nothing in this whole story is as bad as neglection. If they ever said a single word ... No - four letters all ignored. And well, two orders were processed, then why didn't they send setup information? Nevermind, I am glad that I at least know where my money went.

Eugene

Hey,

One quick question - Did you use an email address at the domain you used to sign up with Weinbar?
If so, it's highly likely that your welcome email, along with responces from support, etc, are sitting in your Weinbar accounts inbox.

Just an idea. :)

Vince.

Originally posted by Chicken
I suggest attempting to contact them again before considering a chargeback.

Obviously he doesn't need the hosting anymore, and they didn't deliver the service so i think they should give back his money one way ore the other.

(Professor Look is on AlaskanWolfs face now)

(grunts) (looks seriously into everyones eyes)...........

It is Visa/Mastercard regulations which clearly state you can NOT charge any fees to a customers card if they request a chargeback. If its found out you are doing this, you may be banned (forever) from being able to accept V/M credit cards

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Vince
[B]Hey,

One quick question - Did you use an email address at the domain you used to sign up with Weinbar?
If so, it's highly likely that your welcome email, along with responces from support, etc, are sitting in your Weinbar accounts inbox.

I thought about this.
1) They shouldn't grab mail delivery if the domain is transferred (not new domain registered). For the reason you mentioned. I think that the admin who did this was not very professional.
2) I mentioned in the first letter I sent them, that I didn't get any reply. Qualified support should look at where they send mails. Or at least check the mailbox, right? ;)
3) If I remember correctly ( 5 months have passed) I mentioned in one of e-mails that I want to cancel my orders.

So if the explanation is really the one that you mentioned, this is another evidence of the quality of support.

Eugene

Originally posted by AlaskanWolf

It is Visa/Mastercard regulations which clearly state you can NOT charge any fees to a customers card if they request a chargeback. If its found out you are doing this, you may be banned (forever) from being able to accept V/M credit cards

NOTE: WeinBar Communications charges a $25.00 fee for returned checks and a $50 fee for chargebacks. For international customers, if you are sending a check/money order the amount must be drawn in US dollars.

In my opinion there are two types of chargeback's.
1) Honest ones - Someone's card was stolen or used fraudulently. These you right off as a business expense.
2) The fraudulent ones. The ones where some idiot host for 6 months, then gets upset because you will not troubleshoot scripts, so he does a chargeback for all 6 months. For this reason, we have a $25.00 chargeback fee PER chargeback. This helps us recoup loss that our merchant provider assesses to us. It also does something else. It will help put you over the $100.00 mark that collection agencies require before they will report to credit bureaus. So while the customer got away with free services, s/he will still find a treat later. Also, collection agencies go to court to collect too. Eventually (in most cases) the person who decided to abuse the system, will soon be back paying much more.

In 9/10 cases, refunds and good customer service will help you avoid chargeback's, but that 1/10 we go after by having someone else do our dirty work.

Mayevski, what happened to you would be the 9/10 case. They should just refund your money. Since they won't, a chargeback is what you should do.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
Since they won't, a chargeback is what you should do. Why they decided to charge another $50 is nuts. Just to be clear, I don't think they have charged another $50. What he's saying is that their AUP says that they will charge $50 if you do a chargeback. As AlaskanWolf says, they can't actually do that. I wouldn't worry about it.

I do think a chargeback should be an absolute last resort, used after you've tried email, phone, mail... the fact that chargebacks are so common in hosting is why merchant accounts are hard to get -- yet it's not uncommon here for hosts themselves to recommend that route to people.

In this case, it seems appropriate. The charge was incorrect, and several attempts have been made to contact the merchant.

Just to be clear, I don't think they have charged another $50.

True. I removed it.

I dont know if i should mention this because this company does everything wrong...but ***** also charge a fee for chargebacks

***** will bill each client $50.00 per returned check, per wire transfer received and per credit card chargeback received.

Are there any lawyers here who can shed some light as to whether or not this is legal?

take 10 minutes, call up your merchant and tell them to fax you a copy of Visa / Mastercard Regulations

EVERY merchant gets this when their merchant account is setup

You really have to question why a company feels a need to even have to put such a statement in their TOS to begin with. If it is a fraudulant charge then there is no way to collect on it anyway, so obviously this is directed to real customers. Chargebacks will happen, but you can keep them to a minimum by providing a decent service with decent support and doing what you say you are going to do, not by threatening your customers with a 'fee'. What a way of doing business.

Hello.

I have an experience with this case.

I accidently chagred back July/June hosting fee with JaguarPC, I had to pay chargeback fee, which was $15 addtionally besides the two months hosting fee.

Originally posted by klisis
Hello.

I have an experience with this case.

I accidently chagred back July/June hosting fee with JaguarPC, I had to pay chargeback fee, which was $15 addtionally besides the two months hosting fee.

Well i think in that case its fine because they didnt deserve it... now on a company that those i dont think you should pay for it.

Yes, we also charge a $25 fee for FRAUDULANT or INCORRECT chargebacks. We implemented this after we kept getting chargebacks because our resellers would use their customers' credit cards and not tell them where the charges would originate from. We finally had to tell everyone that if a chargeback was filed - we would immediately refund the money and shut down the account...but there would be a $25 fee to turn the account back on.

However, I can't imagine that a host would/could charge a fee if the chargeback was legitimate.

--Tina

Tina, why have such a policy if the account is fraudulent anyway?

I understand on the reseller side, but all this policy does is take up empty space..

If you dont have a signature of the credit card, then your screwed either way, they can just keep doing chargebacks, BUT i could see where it would be usefull if you do have their sig on file, then thats where you can charge their credit card the $25

Originally posted by one_web
I dont know if i should mention this because this company does everything wrong...but ***** also charge a fee for chargebacks



Ok, is seems utterly illegal and I guess if a company would charge me for a chargeback, I'd press for chargeback again. So they could charge me again. And I would...wow wow wow, hold on. Doesn't it damage their own record if they get too many chargebacks?

You can see it as jumping off a cliff and then going back after you were in the hospital for a year and doing it again....:)

Originally posted by AlaskanWolf
Tina, why have such a policy if the account is fraudulent anyway?

I understand on the reseller side, but all this policy does is take up empty space..

If you dont have a signature of the credit card, then your screwed either way, they can just keep doing chargebacks, BUT i could see where it would be usefull if you do have their sig on file, then thats where you can charge their credit card the $25

Well that depends on the merchant provider. Many orders these days are done on the web just as you would do if you picked up a phone and ordered something off of tv. Merchants recginize this and we ( I only speak for my company) do not have to provide a signature if we can provide other data such as the order form details, users IP data, and so on . This way even if it was fraud our merchant can attempt to catch the offending party.

I have to find the exact details we have to submit, I don't have it memorized since we do not have a problem with chargebacks fortunately. It also helps tremendously if you use AVS with your orders.

Originally posted by AlaskanWolf
Tina, why have such a policy if the account is fraudulent anyway?

I understand on the reseller side, but all this policy does is take up empty space..

If you dont have a signature of the credit card, then your screwed either way, they can just keep doing chargebacks, BUT i could see where it would be usefull if you do have their sig on file, then thats where you can charge their credit card the $25


I never said the account was fraudulent in any way. I also never said that I just charge them $25 - I said IF they figure it out later that the chargeback was a mistake....because they never told their customer where the charges would originate from....then it would cost them a $25 false chargeback fee to get the account turned back on.

--Tina

Originally posted by Mayevski
I see that Weinbar takes a $50 penalty on chargebacks. What a shame -- first they steal money and then they control what I will do with my money!



Technically, they didn't "steal" anything. Once you authorized the charge, it was your responsibilty to cancel the transaction once it became obvious you weren't getting what you paid for.

I'm not sticking up for Weinbar, and I'm sorry you're in such a situation, but you yourself are just as much to blame for any money you end up losing on the deal.

-Bob

OK, I was trying to stay out of this as long as I could, but I want to go on record with our side of the story... since so many of you have already made judgements based on one customers' experiences.

Let it be known that we are more than happy to refund any monies to anyone not using their service, provided that they follow the proper procedures to cancelling. The thing that really bothers me is that anyone thinks that they should get an automatic refund if they are not using the service. We have procedures in place to cancel, yet none of these have been followed.

For this user, I can post here every single email that was sent -- including a response after every single email and tech support request, but I will not post them here as this is not the place for it.

As for the chargeback issue:

We do not stand for chargebacks that people feel that they can do just because they want to. We charge $50 for chargebacks that are unfounded, and this usually bring the total owed to over $100. This is for the collection agencies.

If a user is in the right for a chargeback, then we just write it off. Most of the time it never comes to this, so this is usually not an issue. We put this in the TOS so that the user understands everything that we can and will do if circumstances require it.

For this user, I will be more than happy to return any monies that were not paid AS LONG AS THEY FOLLOW THE PROPER PROCEDURES.

Please either email me directly, or enter a request at the help desk.

I will not be commenting anymore on this thread. I just want to share our side of the story and to let everyone know that we never once recieved a cancellation from this customer. This is the first I have heard that they were unhappy, and if any customer is unhappy, then we will be more than happy to refund and cancel any service. But, if they used the service, they should pay for it.

Again, please email me directly and I will take care of this for you.

Originally posted by WeinBar
We do not stand for chargebacks that people feel that they can do just because they want to. We charge $50 for chargebacks that are unfounded, and this usually bring the total owed to over $100. This is for the collection agencies.


Do you have no comment on the standard clauses of merchant agreements with Mastercard/Visa which prohibit charging anyone for having initiated a chargeback? You can get blacklisted for violating your merchant agreement, and they are deadly serious about that.

Kevin

Yep, more than happy to.

My merchant agreement allows this. We have had our merchant agreement for many years and this was one of the items that we negotiated in.

End of story.

<<NOTE: Please PM Michael directly>>

David:

I have replied to all of your emails. Is this the proper place?

No.

Just got to the thread, a little late I know and maybe my input is not necessary but, im a customer of weinbar and have experienced no problems with their service recently, top notch service and support, no billing problems no network issues etc.

Its true they had some major problems many months back but they took notice of the issues facing them and now offer me a 5 star service for my dedicated server.

It seems this whole matter with a single client may have simply been an unfortunate complication in communication.

weinbar have offered a refund for unused services and hopefully this along with the sincere apology from weinbar will be enough to resolve the issue.

-XT