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Surprise, pay $1000

forestwalk.ai

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Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#211

Post by Guvante »

SoftTalker wrote: post #154
rcleveng wrote: post #7

WoW. That's certainly a surprise to me. I'd never expect an invoice after not putting in a card. I also believe this is totally just a case of "billing and metering is hard, and may actually be a larger engineering effort than your actual service". I was just looking at them earlier today since our Github actions are slow AF, and while they sounds great, this tells me it'll cost me more time to make sure I babysit it…

A certain number of businesses will just pay an invoice if it looks real and has a business justification. There are scams around this, but also vendors who may be taking advantage of this. If 30% of customers will just start paying the invoices, it's worth it to them to deal with the questions from the rest of them. At least until reputational damage starts. A very simple example of a scam that's probably happened t…

It isn't technically a scam to offer a limited trial and bill when you go over as long as the terms mention that.

After all B2B transactions are often invoice based.

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#212

Post by zarzavat »

inigyou wrote: post #124
zarzavat wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like they still do: https://www.nic.at/en/how-at-works/domain-holder#id105 > I received a letter from the debt collection agency. What can I do? > If a domain hasn't been paid for despite several payment reminders from nic.at, the domain shall be locked and the open claim handed over to our debt collection agency. As a result, the invoice must be paid directly to the debt collection agency. Please contact our d…

It's both. It's normal business practice in the German-speaking countries (a.k.a. DACH) that would be considered a scam anywhere else. Basically, in most countries paying money is something that requires continuous enthusiastic consent - if you don't pay, that's the business's problem and they should stop serving you, and they may only recover payment for goods they've already given you and not received payment for.…

> You went to Austria and did Austrian business with an Austrian company, you should be aware that Austrian rules and norms apply.

The consumer purchases a domain name from their registrar. Neither the consumer nor their registrar are in Austria. The registrar is the one providing the service of registering the domain with the NIC. The NIC can't just say "we have a contract directly with the consumer".

The registrar can write in their contract that "consumer must cancel domain before it expires with the NIC" or "consumer must sign contract with NIC", and if the consumer doesn't do that then the registrar can maybe (depending on consumer and contract law in their jurisdictions) sue the consumer if they don't fulfil the contract of sale. But writing in one contract that the consumer must sign a third-party contract doesn't imply that the third-party contract actually exists. The NIC cannot go after the consumer because they don't have any contract with the consumer.

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#213

Post by sgerenser »

spogbiper wrote: post #168
SoftTalker wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A certain number of businesses will just pay an invoice if it looks real and has a business justification. There are scams around this, but also vendors who may be taking advantage of this. If 30% of customers will just start paying the invoices, it's worth it to them to deal with the questions from the rest of them. At least until reputational damage starts. A very simple example of a scam that's probably happened t…

Many years ago I met a woman that ran a "business" that simply invoiced legitimate companies for printer supplies and toner every month. A surprising number of her invoices were paid without question. That went on for a couple years. Then one day she left town basically in the middle of the night and we never heard from her again.

I’ve heard of these “toner scammers” since at least the 1990s and probably earlier. Apparently they’re still at it: https://www.eojohnson.com/blog/toner-scams

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#214

Post by baobabKoodaa »

inigyou wrote: post #200
watermelon0 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to use a provider, that resorts to shady practices, especially since there are a lot of alternatives out there?

Who cares how bad the free trial experience is if the paying customer experience is good?

Personally I do care if I get hacked or if my clients get hacked. If you don't care, you don't care, I guess. For you it's enough that the "paying customer experience" (???) is good, whatever that is. Okay buddy.

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#215

Post by explodes »

greg-m wrote: post #108

Hey folks - Greg here, I do product at Blacksmith. I want to say upfront - we've never pursued these invoices. If someone feels they didn't get value from the service, we've eaten that cost and always will. There's a bit of an implicit policy decision on our side here that we did a bad job of communicating - I want to clarify that, and then talk about how we can fix it. First, we wanted to let customers start using B…

> I want to say upfront - we've never pursued these invoices

So those people who would feel guilty not paying are punished and those who prefer to try to cheat the system by skipping payment on invoices are systematically rewarded?

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#216

Post by rafram »

inigyou wrote: post #185
rafram wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty difficult for the US government to tell a nonprofit what to do.

It's actually extremely easy. They send a couple big guys with uniforms and badges and guns to your house, and they say, do this or else. Why did you think Let's Encrypt suddenly blocked Iran? It isn't because their board members have the same ideological alignment.

That may be how things work in some countries, but not in the US, even under Trump.

Let’s Encrypt evidently didn’t mean to block all of Iran, only the Iranian government, which I assume is capable of getting its own certificates: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48465754

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#217

Post by lundstj »

I would test https://avrea.com They are from Helsinki, just launched and the founding team has multiple SaaS businesses behind them. Depending on the workload it could be really fast.

And they are from Helsinki so big plus for anyone from Nordics.

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#218

Post by protocolture »

numpad0 wrote: post #97
soco wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data was counted as minutes back then for you? I only remember kB and MB costs...

It was one thing to use the line to call an ISP, which can be a company of its own, and another to use their Internet access on that call.

I once had a payment fail and the ISP cancelled my internet, my voip, my mobile and my wifes mobile too.

Ok how do you expect me to arrange payment then lmao.

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#219

Post by mattcasmith »

keyle wrote: post #17

This doesn't seem like the right way to do business long terms. The off chance that someone actually take you up on it and pay your 'bill', you've destroyed a lot of goodwill and alerted the rest of the tech world of your scammy moves.

Indeed. Have never used Blacksmith and maybe there’s a good reason why they do this, but it seems odd that in world where so much of the signup and onboarding process is fine tuned for optimal conversion, a business would take an approach to a free trial that risks leaving such a sour taste in a prospect’s mouth.

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#220

Post by nikanj »

nerdile wrote: post #39
nikanj wrote: post #38

"I ignored a ton of emails from Blacksmith and then I was completely surprised by something that happened" Lessons learned: 1) When you spam your users with too many emails (engagement! marketing-thinly-wrapped-as-transactional-information!), they stop reading your emails 2) Read your damn emails

B2B is just businesses fighting over the value chain. Blacksmith can send as many invoices as they want. If the other business doesn't think it's worth the cost after the free trial, they don't have to pay the invoices.

The legal system generally disagrees with that take. ”It wasn’t worth the cost, so we don’t have to pay the invoices” is a tough sell for any lawyer
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