@info75d9201e3c4 - In many cases, the same would happen elsewhere if the billing / authorization department for [insert company] paid as close attention to billing matters as closely as DigitalOcean seems to. Using the same payment method for multiple accounts can raise a red flag in many cases; it’s not limited to DO.
No company, small or large, wants to get hit with a chargeback. When a new customer comes through, pays one account off, creates another and pays it off too, all within a short timeframe, that’d concern me as well. Chargebacks don’t play favorites. Whether it’s $5.00, $500.00 or $0.05, if you get hit with a reversal, as a company, you’re paying whatever chargeback fee was defined in your Merchant Agreement (and in many cases, quite a bit more). You can try to fight it, of course, though it’s best to do your best to mitigate the chance before the chance has the opportunity to surprise you.
It’d be different if you were a customer of 2-3 years and they were flagging you on payments, though more often than not, the issues are limited to new accounts and in many cases, PayPal (which always raises red flags - for one reason, they tend to be one-sided in many cases).
That said, it does not mean that you, or anyone else in this thread are in any way, shape or form “bad” or that you’re going to use your DigitalOcean account for nefarious activities. Thresholds are set and when they are met, whether it’s by you or by me, a red flag goes up. I’ve had it happen to clients I’ve worked with who routinely paid between $400-$4,000 a month for services with some providers. They share the frustration, but also recognize that if security measures were not in place, the cost of service would most likely be higher, the level of support would be further reduced, and in some cases, they too would be out $$.
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Yep, just created my account, payed 5USD to DigitalOcean and got my account locked without any prior warning or explanation why. And on top of it all those a*holes want my github and twitter accounts to “verify” my identity…
digital ocean is cheap, and all that but I WOULD NEVER RECOMMEND THIS SERVICE TO ANYONE.. imagine making a payment and getting locked out from your server. and that’s what happened to me. can’t believe such a big company would do this.
i had this account for a long time, then for business purpose i made another account from a different email and paid from my paypal. the next thing they say is that my old account has “MULTIPLE BILLING PROFILES” and CANNOT BE UNLOCKED. So there my server is still spinning there or something, i don’t have access and they still send me monthly bills saying i owe them this amount.
DIGITAL OCEAN FIX YOUR BILLING SYSTEM AND I WILL CHANGE MY MIND.
Absolutely agree they need to hold accountability for these random lock outs. If I were them I would do verification first then lock the account, but in this case its happening in reversed order first you get locked out then you have to prove you are the account holder in essence holding you hostage.
i have same problem here. i created my account just 30 minutes ago and paid 10$ with paypal then locked out! what kinda business are you running here guys? what kind of nonsense is this? if i cant even create a droplet why would i pay you? this is lame
This is slightly different, but at the same time it was a similar negative experience with this company.
digitalocean sucks… I am using amazon AWS, screw this company.
Here is why:
When I was younger, I wanted to try out digitalocean, and I had a $30 voucher code (or sth like that.) Anyhow, this code would allow me to have a server for 1 month free. At that point in time, I was in middle school, and didn’t have a debit/credit card, and I had no money in my paypal account (I didnt have any allowance or stuff). So, I decided to get smart about it and search up for a prepaid debit card with no balance on it online. Basically, you know those prepaid visa/mastercards they sell at Walmart and Safeway? Well a kind user decided to use up his card and post it online for people to use! :). So I used his $0 card to add to my account in order to use my $30 voucher because digitalocean requires users to link a card to their account (and keep in mind, this was with the original card owner’s permission), and I got banned instantly for credit card fraud. Now I am a Junior in high school, and I got another voucher for $50 from github education. I am running a successful new site that has gained increasing popularity over the past few months (its 1freebit.co.in BTW), and I ran out of bandwith on my original site hoster (because of the amount of users on my site). Therefore, I decided to turn to digitalocean (and I got my own bank account, thank god) for a solution, and digitalocean told me that my account was perma banned for credit card fraud. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? A MIDDDLE SCHOOL STUDENT COMMITING TO CREDIT CARD FRAUD???!?? I explained to their support of the situation, and they said that it was still my fault, and even though I used the card with the original card owner’s permission they could not unban my account. IT WAS MOST DEFINITELY NOT CREDIT CARD FRAUD, AND THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON FOR THEM TO BAN ME LIKE THIS. Well, for all of you to know, AWS (amazon web services) is so much better. They are free to use, have unlimited bandwith and have wonderful tech support. I highly recommend their competitor. Companies like digitalocean should not deserve to be so big on the current marketplace.
The efficiency of the world-famous cloud hosting business makes students feel disappointed!