How Linode Screwed Me | Hacker News Reader

How Linode Screwed Me

mufasa.gq

35 pointsfattypouch17 comments

I think Linode is totally understandable in what they are doing.

The author and his client however have both been deeply unprofessional. But ultimately the author has the responsibility to do better next time.

Here is where the author could do better.

> Don't mix your personal resources and clients resources. I highly suggest provisioning the client their own server and Linode account and showing them how to pay. If you would like to simplify life for the client then use your own account, pay through your card only after the client has paid you.

> Qualify your customers. A customer who doesn't pay is not a customer. A customer who is as difficult as the one you are dealing with probably shouldn't be a customer. I get that you're really desperate, going for 200$ opportunities but every now and then there is a customer who you should just say no to.

> Avoid the gig/freelancing space like the plague, it's rarely a place where you will be adequately rewarded for your time. Get a full time job, remote or on premise and perhaps in the future you can do high end consulting if you really like that freedom.

> Please calm down, I get the frustration that got you to write that post but it has affected your online image far worse than it has Linode's. Most people will read that post and come away with the idea, that you are unprofessional, desperate and highly unstable.

I agree, but next time please use * or - for the bullet points, because > is usually reserved for quotations.

Maybe this should be flagged and removed, but the author is completely in the wrong here.

As far as Linode, or anyone else should care, the guy who is paying for the account, owns the account. If he's the one paying the bills, why wouldn't have access to the account?

A wild linode representative appears

Interesting question.

I did some terms in the board for our cooperative housing association (Sweden). The association signed up for a web hosting account. The association paid for the account but a private person had to own the account, which had all the access.

Changing the owner - even if the association paid the bills - was a big hassle and not easy. The hosting company where/are pretty strict about this.

Hence, the everyone in the OPs story made bad choices.

Was it actually the guy's card on there? The author says he opened the account before meeting the guy, but doesn't say he changed the card on the account. If so, seriously, what's linode to do? Siding with someone other than the person who pays for the account is opening up to a whole lot of fraud.

I think it's good to keep here as a reminder about doing business properly and being careful.

I don't see how that is true. I own a web hosting business (since 2003). This situation is EXTREMELY common (like 5%-10% of accounts).

I do not see how the payer is the account owner. At all. Can you clarify why that would be?

Legally speaking (in german law): The account owner is the person who opened the account, because that is the person who the provider has made the contract with (except the situation of a "Geschäftsbesorgungsvertrag" or a "Vollmacht" [ letter of authorization, power of authority, idk. whats the english term] where you make the contract for someone else). The payer may have a legal connection to the account owner (will, in 99% of the cases, but must not), but not to the provider.

So legally speaking Linode - at least in german law - Linode is providing unauthorized access to a tzhrid party and will be held accountable for all the damages the account owner suffers. That is a violation of GDPR, too. You'd propbably resolve that by a simple letter from your attorney or a court order if Linode does not comply (taking a few days only because of "emergency conditions").

It's not easy to translate all the legalese, I hope you can follow ;-)

I am using OVH since we stopped using our own servers in a closet and had to upgrade our services.

When you rent a server, or a VPS, you have 3 contacts. Administrative, technic and billing. Like for domain names.

That way, when a client wants to directly get his own server, they put me as technical contact (and can revoke me if ever they want).

The main contact is the administrative one. It can change the other contacts.

All is clear, and if problems like OP had happens, then someone did a really worse choice

The part I don't get is... Somewhere along the line auhor got clients CC to out into linode...

which then paid for all servers, instead of just client's servers. And author didn't migrate his servers away.

But then auhor complains that client didn't pay, and author didn't charge his CC.

The situation may suck, but as author points out, he made a number of errors trusting client, and author made some additional errors as above.

As author can still ssh to his servers, I'd say he migrates the sites away, and chaulk it up as a lesson learned. Not sure why Linode is the one talking the blame in this tale.

When I was younger I had similar experiences with customers who ghosted when their needs to be paid. The lesson I learned is to make sure you keep control over your code / env until the customer has paid. I implemented some mechanism in my sites that when they ghosted me, I just did a special api call which cleared the database and showed in big letters that this website was stolen. Suddenly there is contact again.

When you accept that some customers will lock themselves out of their account and you permit an alternative pathway back in, you also accept situations like these.

There are lots of situations where the person who's managing vs paying are different; lots of situations where a web resource that's being managed is so important that no single person should have complete power. That's why Cloudflare provides extra security for those who don't think the convenience of getting back into their account is worth what's essentially a social backdoor.

If my credit card is paying for an account, why wouldn't I get access to it?

There's lots to wish about Linode, but them allowing the person paying the bills to manage the account isn't one of them.

I laid ot the legal situation above.

Nobody mentions that the dude was also paying for his other 2 servers? So how can it not be his account. It's obviously the authors fault

The counter to this is AWS. My credit card was not enough to access the account after I lost the password. No way to close the account either. Just cancel the credit card and hope they didn’t send debt collectors after me.

Please be smarter than me and keep your AWS account tied to a current email address.

I hosted a domain on Linode years ago, this sure brings back memories of that time.

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