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Comment by kuschku | Hacker News Reader

And the ban reminds me of the recent case, where DO invalidated the credits of many people within of 2 weeks with a simple TOS change.

I had to pay 5€ to even be able to add the 100$ credit from the GitHub students pack to my account (for "verification purposes"), and then they – illegally – delete it just like that? (I never got to use any of it)

DO is one of the shadiest hosters I know.

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On one hand, the policy change was made a year prior. On the other hand, we didn't communicate it as well as we should have. I apologize for that. I consider myself as much responsible as anyone else on that. If you ever want that account credit back, please let me know. I'm an easy find on Google, or you can open a support ticket anytime.

For what it's worth, we posted on our blog about just this. https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/details-on-expirin...

I was affected by this - I lost some credit that I had remaining from the Github Student Pack due to it expiring with relatively short notice. If I open a support ticket, will I be able to ask to get that credit back?

Absolutely, please ask for me if you run into any trouble. You should not have any problem.

"Was made a year prior", that’s wrong.

I got the ToS change notification, and merely 2 weeks later my credit was invalidated.

I had had the credit on my account for over 2 years by that time, but hadn’t used it.

And I had opened a support ticket, and was advised to take legal action if I believed it was invalid or wanted it back.

No thanks, I’ve had enough.

The change was made a year prior. It was not communicated via email. That email you received was a reminder. We only put up a notification in the control panel. That was the communication failure, and I apologize for it.

At no point should anyone be advising you to take legal action to retain your credit, and I would be grateful for the opportunity to review the ticket in question.

> The change was made a year prior.

Why did I not receive any notification? A change in contract of that magnitude should have led to me being directly notified per email or other communication methods, so that I’d actually have a chance at still using the credit.

This way, you notified me right when the credit ran out, which was extremely shady, and I’ve met hundreds of others with the same issue in IRC when you invalidated it.

I can’t and won’t be able to assist you with an investigation to improve your public image, though, as I’m quite busy at the moment, and my time is better spent contributing to open source projects than discussing the wrongs of a hoster that won’t change anyway on HN.

>I had had the credit on my account for over 2 years by that time, but hadn’t used it.

>A change in contract of that magnitude should have led to me being directly notified per email

It seems to me the credit is a form of charity for students, and you had not bothered to redeem it for 2 years. Now, you seem to be implying that DO is acting in an evil manner for only alerting you to the change via the dashboard (which the DO rep in this thread admitted was poor execution on their part). I don't think you are being charitable, and I think the underlying assumption you are making almost sounds conspiratorial.

I'm not a DO customer, and don't have any affiliation.

Yes, I had not redeemed it, because, as a student, I was trying to save it up knowing I’d want to do a project where I’d require servers during summer break between 2nd and 3rd year of my undergrad degree.

The credit was invalidated 3 months before that.

With the legal 3 year validity period of promotional credit and coupons that German law guarantees, I had expected being able to do that.

> Why did I not receive any notification? A change in contract of that magnitude should have led to me being directly notified per email or other communication methods, so that I’d actually have a chance at still using the credit.

I agree with you completely. That is precisely why I refer to it as a communication failure. I had a year to ask "Why didn't we email about this?" I didn't ask that question. I failed. I'm sorry.

I understand that you're not interested in helping, but my offer stands, and I appreciate you and your feedback. We're all just people here trying to do what we think is right. I know I fall short, I make mistakes, but all I want is to own them and make them right.

They changed their ToS a year before, you got a notice to review them. What's illegal about revoking promotional credit?

https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/details-on-expirin...

No, they changed their ToS in March, and invalidated all coupons older than April of the year before by April.

That left me just 2 weeks.

And what’s illegal is that in Germany, promotional credit or coupons given without a time limit is valid for at least 3 years.

Here are their terms from March 2015: http://web.archive.org/web/20150309163745/https://www.digita...

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