Working customer support for a rather large direct broadcast satellite company has given me perspective on what ends up happening at Big Companies. While the customer service rep may (or may not) be competent and know exactly when to give a refund according to business rules and the rules of customer satisfaction, invariably the request for a refund gets sent along to someone in Accounting, where they sit on it for a few days before they deny it with absolutely no further info given, either in the account’s notes OR directly provided to the consumer. Therefore, Customer ends up waiting and waiting for the refund that’s not coming. That, to me, is Bad Business.

Was it Josh’s fault people were charged as if it were 2008-12-31? Yes. Did he publicly admit to his moment of stupidity including fat fingers and not placing controls on his billing system? Yes. Did he refund ALL THAT MONEY and GIVE CREDITS equal to that amount AS SOON AS THE BANKING SYSTEMS WOULD ALLOW? Yes. Did he pay for people’s bank fees related to his stupidity? YES! That’s something you’d be hard-pressed to find - most companies will tell you “tough shit” in that situation.

Are the banking systems screwed up in that it takes much longer to get a refund than to get a charge against your account? Of course we all know that to be true.

For the record, I was not one to get hit by Josh’s stupidity, because at the time my services were paid until June 2009 and there was a credit on my account. However, I would have the same outlook if I WAS hit - I know mistakes happen, and this is one of the few companies that will actually make it right - DAMN THE BOTTOM LINE! Personally, I can’t believe people are STILL complaining about it - not only did they lose THOUSANDS of dollars in merchant fees for doing all those refunds, but they gave you a credit EQUAL to the ill-gotten funds (costing them THOUSANDS more)! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT????????

Ah… good times when we had not even 1/5 of the current allocations… how times have changed.

I’ve had some serious issues with DH but their PS prices are fine — as zylox said, they do managed shit — root access is awesome for people who want to have total control and do all the command-line shit themselves, but if you are either not technically proficient enough to do it (but need resources that exceed the shitty shared plans) or are technically proficient but are tired of having to control everything yourself, a managed solution is awesome.

Honestly, if I had better results with their shared plans, I’d be game for using their PS stuff - but as it stands, I’m not convinced the service would be that much more reliable.