I have a client from Vietnam , who ran away transferring his domains out and his data to another dedicated server and never paid his bills, always promising that he is a devoted Christian and will not lie. I trusted him and is now left holding 6 months of dedicated payment outstanding + domain fees.

Lucky for me their licensed MS SQL retail box and license with me. Problem is they did paid this in full, so officially this belongs to them.

I think there is a way of applying to the courts to auction off this license anyone know the procedure? Or can I just take the license for myself?

In future never trust anybody - all of this promises it's not more then BS. We suspend all accounts with past due over 7 days and charge $100 re-connection fee for dedicated servers.

I hope you learn your lesson - you cannot collect anything even in USA - court costs going to be in $1000's, it's not worthy to even go this way.

When someone talks about God and goes to chruch regularly and sounds pious, sometimes it is hard to cut him off just like that. Yeap I learn my lesson. Really hope I remember this lesson.

One issue however, what to do with that retail version of MS SQL 2000? Return to them?

Keep the MSSQL as your payment and turn around and sell it. What is he going to do. Come from Vietnam to sue you over it.

Come from Vietnam and sue me, I am ok with it, but Vietnam a lot of AK47s .......

Originally posted by boonchuan
Come from Vietnam and sue me, I am ok with it, but Vietnam a lot of AK47s .......

:laugh:

yeah, keep the license under the circumstances.

I wouldn't let God himself use a dedicated server for 6 months without paying for it, the due date comes and you no pay, you can get a few weeks grace if I feel like you're up and up but even the best sob story ain't gonna get you 6 months without paying :)

Originally posted by boonchuan
When someone talks about God and goes to chruch regularly and sounds pious, sometimes it is hard to cut him off just like that. Yeap I learn my lesson. Really hope I remember this lesson.

One issue however, what to do with that retail version of MS SQL 2000? Return to them?

I think few people are expert in taking you over the sentiments by using such sentence, you should avoid as soon as you start imagining them.

Just for an example;

A chain smoker ask the priest of church- father "May I smoke during prayer?"
Priest said, 'No', "What you’re talking about" I wonder, "how you thought to smoke in the church during prayer?"

After few moment, he ask again the priest after changing the sentence, "father May I pray during smoking?"

Priest; oh yes! "Why not?":)

Keep the License and just send him an email saying that you are holding onto the license as payment and you consider the bill paid in full (what costs more the server or the SQL)? You might get his attention if you owe him money :)

Hmm... I'm not sure about the legal side of it, but it really sounds strange to give him that license considering he has such a long (and significant) overdue payment for other services you've rendered.

I say he's doing what he's doing because he thinks there's no way you're going to go after him in Vietnam, which makes me pretty certain he won't came after you either.

Keep the license if he doesn't pay. Write him a letter giving him a certain amount of time to pay his bill, and if he doesn't, just sell it. If you make a profit off of it, just send him a check for the remainder.

Originally posted by boonchuan
... always promising that he is a devoted Christian and will not lie. I trusted him and is now left holding 6 months of dedicated payment outstanding + domain fees.

Don't fall for that one again in the future. You got used.

Business is business. If someone doesn't pay the bill, give them a reasonable grace period, and that's it.

No next time, really dun have budget for fraudsters : (, I think I will follow ldcdc advice, sell it and refund him whatever left over.

Originally posted by boonchuan
No next time, really dun have budget for fraudsters : (, I think I will follow ldcdc advice, sell it and refund him whatever left over.

Refund him? He took off and left you for the wolves, don't refund him. He cut off his connection with the company and left you with the tab. I'm honestly not sure how much he owes you in comparison with the MS-SQL license but I would say withold it as a profit until you are paid the amount owed for the servers.

A MS SQL 2000 retail pack is about US$1500 new, I think should be able to fetch US$1000, there is a bit of extra money left over.

the guy might figure it's an even trade (what he owes ~~ what you have)

Originally posted by CD Burnt
seems pretty simple.

sell it. if he wants any of the proceeds, he needs to pay his old bill first, in full.

I agree 100%. Do not send him any of the license fee back unless the bill is paid in full.

That's the funny part, the VN guys was thinking that MS SQL can never be worth that sort of money, to them they can't seem to understand that a software can be worth far more than what a CD would cost!

Originally posted by CD Burnt
the guy might figure it's an even trade (what he owes ~~ what you have)

:angel: :D

Greetings boonchuan:

I am sorry to hear your experience.

Unfortunately, in today’s world it is far too easy to state one is a devout _________ (fill in the blank).

Last year we were approached by an organization that claimed to be a church in England but they wanted to pay with money from Nigeria.

Red flags went up all over the place just because valid businesses in Nigeria can be hard to deal with for payment; the ones we’ve dealt with in the past required invoices on letterhead, and there was a lot of paperwork.

In any event, they did turn out to be a real church; and a real non-for-profit.

But, not everyone whose approached us over the years (we discount non profits) told the truth.

And for those of us who worship and love Jesus, the Messiah, it is a slap in the face when another claims to be a Christian but does not live up to being a Christian.

That stated, I do recommend doing what we put into practice in late 1998; and that is a written policy on handling accounts past due that is enforced without respect of person.

We did that after we gave a NY company three months of breaks on an extremely high end managed dedicated server where our costs to the data center (we rented servers back then) was $9,000. They fled, and two separate collection agencies got zero from them.

Now, our policy is that on the day the invoice is due, a telephone call goes out along with an email. If no payment is received within three days, a letter goes out with a copy of the invoice. Come day ten, the account is suspended if shared, cancelled if dedicated, possessed if co-located (though we’ve been blessed never to have gone through this one), etc.

Thank you.

Agree, policies need to be uniformly applied, still trying to tidy up the mess we have had after years of being liberal. But we are tightening up.

Originally posted by boonchuan
I have a client from Vietnam , who ran away transferring his domains out and his data to another dedicated server and never paid his bills, always promising that he is a devoted Christian and will not lie. I trusted him and is now left holding 6 months of dedicated payment outstanding + domain fees.

Lucky for me their licensed MS SQL retail box and license with me. Problem is they did paid this in full, so officially this belongs to them.

I think there is a way of applying to the courts to auction off this license anyone know the procedure? Or can I just take the license for myself?

why would you wait for 6months? 6 months is the length of time it takes to transfer domains...

Originally posted by boonchuan
I have a client from Vietnam , who ran away transferring his domains out and his data to another dedicated server and never paid his bills, always promising that he is a devoted Christian and will not lie. I trusted him and is now left holding 6 months of dedicated payment outstanding + domain fees.

Lucky for me their licensed MS SQL retail box and license with me. Problem is they did paid this in full, so officially this belongs to them.

I think there is a way of applying to the courts to auction off this license anyone know the procedure? Or can I just take the license for myself?


take it as a loss, and not do it again

Are you sure the credit card or paypal account is not stolen? Most likely, you will also be faced with chargeback fee for processing a stolen CC.

I have entire Vietnam and few other scammer heavens on my firewalls **** list due to excessive fraud activity.


NEVER TRUST ANYONE

do not accept customers from vietnam. All of the signups from vietnam for over 1.5 years has been frauds for us.

unity100,

Well, they are good hackers, with nothing to do, unemployment is more than 60%,I think credit card fraud almost is common practice now especially from those countries. The basic problem is that fraud is always hard to deal with.

For us, we normally accept bank transfers, so we are lucky on these grounds.

Are those fraud orders really Vietnamese? I do know their english is horrible, after signing up quite a number have the guts to ask me where to pay via credit cards. Their english's quite hard to understand.

Some even tried repeatedly hoping to get an auto sign up account I guess.

Originally posted by GrindKore
Are you sure the credit card or paypal account is not stolen? Most likely, you will also be faced with chargeback fee for processing a stolen CC.

I have entire Vietnam and few other scammer heavens on my firewalls **** list due to excessive fraud activity.


NEVER TRUST ANYONE

I usually give a person 5 days to make payment for the dedicated server. After that we consider them to have cancelled the server, and we reformat the box and sell it elsewhere. Also, there is a legal way to collect money in the US, whoever said there was no way of collecting money even in the US, was dead wrong. There are hundreds if not thousands of collections agency who focus on just that, collecting money from non-paying customers. You sell the customer's bill to a collections agency (usually for something like 50% off) and the collections agency turns a profit by actually getting that money, or something equal in value, back from the customer who was late.

The idea to recover money from non-paying customers through collection agency is good, and it has overall good success rate.
However it is far better to be more cautious and to be alert in dealing with the customers these days.

Good luck collecting from Vietnamese scammers. I don't think any sane collection agency would buy this liability.

Surely interest on the money owed you, and administrative fees for dealing with their account, will consume any "profit" that comes off sale of the MSSQL license. Costs something to run your business too.

:D Bailey

Normally some of the reputed collection agency work as, No Collect -- No Fee commission basis, like gcs-group site of global credit solution.

However if the debtor refuses to respond to the attempt of those collection agencies to negotiate the recovery, they shall advise you if legal action is required for the recovery and then they can charge you for legal costs if required so.

if the amount is low...i'll give my customer another month and pay for two month. if the amount per month is high. either pay up or suspend.