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Darkstar LLC

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Shoeby

Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2004
Location
Florida
I had to come and rant about the complete and utter BS this company is. I can only hope that maybe this post will remind someone to cancel their account and they can save the hassle that I went through.

Jan 20, 2007 I signed up for a year of ventrilo service with darkstarllc.com for my world of warcraft guild.

Julyish 2007 the guild breaks up and we all go our seperate ways, and I don't even think about the ventrilo service.

Jan 30 2008 I notice in my old e-mail account, about 15 attempts to charge my card. I inquire and get told my account was never cancelled.

Jan 31 2008. I say cancel my service.

Mar 10 2008 I notice my card is being repeatedly attempted to be charged. I check in at the site, and they indicate that they never canceled my service because I owe them money.

I indicate that per my welcome e-mail and I quote "Darkstar communications requires a 1 day notice on all cancellations, this means if you cancel and your service is due in 1 day or less you will still be held liable for the next month of service."

As it turns out they insist I owe them $170 dollars when I insist that I owe them approximately 15 for the month of service that my welcome e-mail indicates I should owe.

Eventually, they wore me down and I paid $40 to cancel this service, which I find to be absolute highway robbery. This is a warning to anyone who had any ventrilo service, I'm sure most of them use an auto-rebill policy, but in particular to anyone who uses these guys.

I can't fault their ventrilo server, it was pretty nice, but their cancellation policy sucks. You must cancel via web ticket, you cannot call to cancel. Which if you ask me is a total joke. I'm steamed up pretty good about this, and hopefully someone reads this and is reminded to cancel any old auto-renewing subscription.
 
Yeah man, WTF. Welcome to the real world, where if you forget, you STILL OWE. You'll get a few marks on your credit, then you'll learn to remember ;)
 
I'm having a similar problem with another Ventrilo hosting company, Nationvoice. I canceled my account 2 weeks in advance of the payment date, got the e-mail telling me the account was suspended (not deleted). I thought everything was done at that point, but then I got charged again a few days after what the payment date should have been, THEN the account was deleted as it should have been in the first place. Still waiting to hear back from them once they "investigate"... Not the first time I've been erroneously charged by Nationvoice, but they provide great service so I will continue to use them.
 
ACID RAIN said:
Yeah man, WTF. Welcome to the real world, where if you forget, you STILL OWE. You'll get a few marks on your credit, then you'll learn to remember ;)

Way to miss the point entirely.

It's the whole month vs. year thing. I came to the website to pay for the month of service. I goofed and I knew it, so I went to the website to straighten things out, not to try to get out of a bill. I honestly figured that the service would go month to month after a year per their own welcome e-mail. Which said if you do not cancel you'll be charged for the next month of service. I find it to be horribly misleading that they would send out this e-mail and then try to charge for a year of service. Call me crazy, but in my world when they say failure to cancel will result in being charged for the next month's service, I should be charged for next month's service.

I really wanted this to serve as a reminder for anyone who may have had a long term ventrilo contract to cancel. My days of playing World of Warcraft ended rather abruptly, and the ventrilo server was the last thing on my mind. I have a few friends who have stepped up and paid for ventrilo contracts on their credit cards and then months later the guilds broke apart, just wanted to make sure that if someone reads this, they're reminded to cancel. That's all.
 
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Way to miss the point entirely.

It's the whole month vs. year thing. I came to the website to pay for the month of service. I goofed and I knew it, so I went to the website to straighten things out, not to try to get out of a bill. I honestly figured that the service would go month to month after a year per their own welcome e-mail. Which said if you do not cancel you'll be charged for the next month of service. I find it to be horribly misleading that they would send out this e-mail and then try to charge for a year of service. Call me crazy, but in my world when they say failure to cancel will result in being charged for the next month's service, I should be charged for next month's service.

I really wanted this to serve as a reminder for anyone who may have had a long term ventrilo contract to cancel. My days of playing World of Warcraft ended rather abruptly, and the ventrilo server was the last thing on my mind. I have a few friends who have stepped up and paid for ventrilo contracts on their credit cards and then months later the guilds broke apart, just wanted to make sure that if someone reads this, they're reminded to cancel. That's all.


I had a very similar issue with these guys:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=420564


Essentially my argument was the same - if I'm month to month and fail to pay, it's either faulty accounting on your part to allow me to use your service when not paying or you're simply leaving the account on to ensure it reaches an amount large enough to justify collections. Either way it 's bad business.

What interests me (but doesn't surprise me at all) is that companies like this, obviously bent on screwing people, stay in business. How many people do they pull this crap with and get away with it?
 
I actually have my current ventrilo server hosted with darkstar llc. I find them to be a good host. Though I actually had the exact same thing happen to me with the company I was using before darkstar. I had my previous server hosted by hurricane host on a month to month basis. They tried to auto bill me after I had sent them a email to close my account. End result being I contacted their CS service (which were very rude) and they tried to blame the extra month charge on me. Luckily I got in contact with a sane CS representative and he closed the account for me.

My advice with any company is make sure they know you're planning on canceling your account a week ahead of time.
 
Way to miss the point entirely.
Ooooh I see. Yes I did miss that. So they said after a year they would charge month to month, but in reality they tried to force another year. Gotcha.

However, do they have month to month subscriptions available? If so, then it's a very small loophole on wording that you're observing if you assume that even if you go order a year, you still get a monthly subscription later. Generally, businesses renew contracts and don't alter them to lesser charges for your sake. That is not a common occurrence and in some cases would void contracts altogether.

So really, in a way, they could complain as much about you as you did about them.
 
I've got a simple solution: Don't use Ventrilo...

Next time use: a website with a forum, an XFire group, and IRC....
 
I've got a simple solution: Don't use Ventrilo...

Next time use: a website with a forum, an XFire group, and IRC....

I assume you don't do much tactical play in teams.

You don't have time to goof off chatting on a keyboard, any more than a soldier in iraq can stop and type on a keyboard to his squad while rockets are flying over his head. It's voice or nothing really.

I say host your own TS server. Piece of cake to set up and takes very little bandwidth.
 
RegionalCreations.Com had trouble with Darkstar LLC also

We had trouble with these guys too. I posted a post on my blog about them and used their logo. It was replied to by the same representative that told me off about not getting a refund even though it was within that 45 day time period that I should have received a refund for any reason says their "Risk-free 45 day trial!" You can check out that post here:
http://regionalcreations.com/main/2009/04/do-not-use-dark-star-llc-ventrilo-and-teamspeak-servers/

We also posted another post after our site was shut down for a period of time until we removed their logo. We left the post, this is freedom of speech. Here's the other post:
http://regionalcreations.com/main/2...our-site-disabled-for-fair-use-of-their-logo/

Since these posts went up, they have changed their Terms of Service. They changed their wording on their refunds. The big ad in the middle has different wording and they added a clickable terms button on the sidebar.. I'm gonna guess their hidden ToS BS wasn't enough, so they had to make it a bit more apparent that they get to choose who to refund to and who not to.

I hope this post helps anyone out their doing their research for the perfect Ventrilo server host
 
I've got a simple solution: Don't use Ventrilo...

Next time use: a website with a forum, an XFire group, and IRC....

I assume you don't do much tactical play in teams.

You don't have time to goof off chatting on a keyboard, any more than a soldier in iraq can stop and type on a keyboard to his squad while rockets are flying over his head. It's voice or nothing really.

I say host your own TS server. Piece of cake to set up and takes very little bandwidth.
Exactly. TS FTW!

Sorry to hear about that shady deal man. :(
 
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