Ask HN: Starlink Signup failed, no recourse

On october 27th, when I first heard about Starlink for RV's, I immediately signed up at starlink.com and paid €480. I filled in my email and my phone number, but to date I have not received a confirmation of receipt from Starlink. The payment was a direct transfer.

I have gone through the (not great) starlink support pages, and one can apparently only contact starlink through an account that becomes available through the confirmation email. Naturally I have none. It also states that if that confirmation email wasn't confirmed, the order would be cancelled after 7 days (it hasn't). There was no email in my Spam folder.

Now it's been over 3 weeks. I am a customer but as far as starlink is concerned, I am not. They obviously did their utmost best to not need a helpdesk, having generous procedures in place for when things fail. There is no one to talk to, not even a silly bot. This is all great when it works, but when you fall on the side where things don't work as intended, as I do now, it doesn't exactly feel great. It feels like a scam, it's indistinguishable.

There is also a potential for a scam. If I somehow filled in a slightly wrong email address someone else could, in theory, have taken over my account, and could have redirected the shipment. The point is, I'll never know, and I was not made aware of such risk while signing up. Indeed the signup experience was strangely feed-forward, without an email-confirmation step. In the end it felt like I was supposed to dump €480 into a void, with nothing to show for, except a bank transfer. I was forced to rely on the reputation of the brand, only.

I think the above is a relevant data-point to many of you (non-scammers), because it represents an extreme case, even beyond Google, one where not only the non-fallability of software artifacts is presumed, but also the non-fallability of the organizational process that led to its 100% no-contact design.

That's sure to have some relevance to the community, but of course I just want someone to talk to and solve what could have been the smallest of issues. Any advice on how to proceed next is appreciated.

Edit:

- as commenters have mentioned, there is a reset option, by email or phone. AFAIK neither works.

- I'm pretty sure I filled in everything correctly, and at the correct site. Never had this kind of problem.

I suppose you won't have anything but the payment to prove this? Might still be worth taking this to a consumer protection association in your country - Starlink is the kind of service they might be willing to take on if stuff like this happens. It would still be some hassle for you, but you'd have a very good chance of either getting your money back or getting what you ordered.

Paid by creditcard? Compile your efforts to get in touch with them (needed to proof you did everything to get them to live up to their promise) and file charge back.

That might be a very good idea actually. For me, it would be enough to get my money back. If I had paid by credit card, this would likely have been no issue.

Forgiven, as you are correct to check this off, as I forgot to mention I had done this already. Nevertheless I've filled in both my phone and email again. Didn't detect a response.