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Comment by phamilton | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad the author didn't turn this into a negative review of DO. "What will you do when your server is lost?" is exactly the right question to learn from a scenario like this.

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Agreed. There may also be a customer service lesson in that refund email. Typically, your customer is not happy with you even after they receive a refund, so exclamation points and language like "Booyah!" is really not a good idea for that sort of message. It's always going to sound a little bit tone deaf -- and very tone deaf when the refund was for a major incident like the loss of an entire server.

Keep it professional.

It's the standard DO credit email, which typically is from referring friends or doing something else to acquire credit. Not getting a refund because DO accidentally deleted your droplet.

Though their should be another avenue for such things.

Hmm, maybe that's what they're thinking. But I wonder if it's really true that a refer-a-friend or similar, happy scenario is the "typical" cause for a refund. Certainly in my life I've received far more refunds due to company mistakes than than credits due to the happier reasons you mention.

And when in doubt, if you're refund system is not capable of discriminating between the two, it seems to me wiser to err on the side of a less jubilant message.

DO credits from positive events are pretty common in my experience; not just refer-a-friend, but they give out credits through ads on podcasts and the like, through promotions for students and whatnot. I think I've had something like $150 total gifted DO credit.

I'm well aware that this could happen with any hosting provider. Sooner or later everyone will encounter this kind of problems.

Forewarned is fore armed!

That's what I half-expected when I read the title, as well.

Not to mention that service credit is more than I've ever gotten from Amazon when they've lost one of our VMs due to underlying hardware failure.

I think it was an ad for some of their own services instead.

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