Hello World! I’m back. I wasn’t actually gone to begin with – but I had a minor fiasco with my hosting provider that was partially my fault but turned into a bigger train wreck of a situation than it needed to be.
Last month I realized my credit card was lost/misplaced/stolen, so I called Amex to report it missing. At the same time, I noticed a very weird charge on my account for $372 — given my credit card had been missing and I didn’t recognize the merchant, I thought the card had been stolen and said I did not make the charge.
A few days later I saw an email (from earlier that week) from my hosting provider regarding a renewal of a hosting account I forgot I purchased 3 years ago… for the exact amount that I just rejected over at Amex. Since Amex processed a chargeback against them (turns out the weird merchant on my statement is their bank – Evo Merchants – but I had no idea) and since it was in “pending” status the actual host name hadn’t showed up on my statement yet…
It all was made even more complicated (and surely made it look like I was trying to scam them) when I asked — before realizing I had processed a chargeback on this charge — to cancel the hosting account. They did cancel it and provided a partial credit for the $372 payment (since I don’t use that hosting account at all and forgot I had it.) I realize how bad this would look to the hosting company.
So I called Amex as soon as I figured out that I messed up (this is the day HerEveryCentCounts.com was suspended… although this site’s hosting was paid up, because of the chargeback on the OTHER hosting account they decided to suspend this one.) Amex said “don’t worry” every time I called them, but couldn’t give me a timeline on how long it would take to reverse the chargeback. I called everyday, very concerned that my host would delete all my content on HerEveryCentCounts.com (that’s 10 years worth of content that I’ve yet to back up — dumb me, I know) and so I kind of freaked out about it.
I emailed the hosting company every day and offered to pay for this charge and then some, to get my account back. No dice. The reversal had to process from the bank. I practically offered to sell my first born, but they weren’t having it.
Luckily, Amex processed the reversal on the chargeback in about a week and a half, and here I am again. Woohoo. Lesson learned – never file a chargeback unless you’re 100% absolutely sure that it’s a fraudulent charge. It sure looked like one — so I think it makes sense I was confused — but next time I’ll wait and do more research before calling my bank (clearly a google search on the merchant and identifying them as being located upstate NY — where I haven’t been in the last few years — is not enough research.)
Anyway, hello again. 🙂
LOLOL. Happy new year! Get a backup of your blog ASAP! Once GDPR goes into effect in May, companies operating in Europe -have- to delete your personally identifiable information (PII) within 30 days of you deleting your account with them. I know because I’m making my system compliant right now, and if there’s any doubt that a certain piece of info could possibly be PII, we delete it just in case. My company deletes all your data immediately upon you closing the account too, we don’t wait 30 days. You really don’t want to risk your hosting provider deleting immediately.
But welcome back, it’s good to have you around again! <3, Labangel