Linode Cancellation

I wanted to share my cancellation experience with Linode here on Hackernews so others may avoid being invoiced after they've canceled their Linode account. I've been a Linode customer for a year now. I've been very pleased with the service, but I wanted to spend less per month, so I moved a site off of Linode and canceled the account on Oct 30, 2011. Made DNS changes and all so nothing was going to Linode any longer.

When you cancel a Linode account, you do so through their web interface (The Linode Manager). After cancellation, it logs you out right away and you cannot log back in. It displays a message that your account has been closed. However, no other confirmation is provided... no emails or anything to prove the account has indeed been canceled. So today, November 1, 2011 Linode invoiced me for November 1 through November 30th. I went to the Linode Manager and found that my old account had somehow been reactivated. I have no idea why my original cancellation was not honored. So, I canceled the account again and emailed support@linode.com.

Linode support said that I had not canceled in Oct and that there was a 5 dollar fee to cancel the account now. Even though it was clear that I had no traffic to the Linode vps since Oct 30 (DNS change) and that I canceled again today right away after being invoiced again. If you do business with Linode and you cancel your account, email support@linode.com and confirm it with them in writing or your account may somehow be reactivated and you'll be invoiced again and then asked to pay a fee to cancel a service you are not using.

That sucks, I've never actually canceled my account with them, but I have deleted my nodes and got refunded the remaining money with no problems. Maybe it's a bug on their end? Did you delete the node before canceling your account?

Sucks big time, but I have never had, nor heard of too much problems with Linode. They're a pretty solid company.

Just a slight clarification after a quick web search since I was curious - the $5 fee seems to be a refund service fee and not a cancellation fee - so since you were billed for the month, they were charging you $5 to issue the refund, not to necessarily process the cancellation.

I don't know if I'd NOT trust them because of a node didn't delete for me. I'd just email support and let them know instead of the whole "zomg, my node didn't delete! I'm leaving this crappy host!"

$5 to refund erroneous charges? That sounds borderline criminal. BTW I like Linode. This just sounds like a bit of confusion that could be cleared up by going "up the chain".