This article is more than 1 year old

A Brit cloud biz and an angry customer wanting a refund: A Love Story

Outfit tells Reg reader his email was 'full of attitude', adds 'price increase was only 340%'

A Reg reader has passed on the most beautiful email exchange we've seen this year, between himself and UK backup business Monster Cloud, after the company suddenly bumped up its prices mid-contract.

The London-based reseller – now known as XL Cloud – came under fire from customers earlier this month when punters who had paid £50 for a year's worth of "unlimited" cloud-based storage were told that they actually had to pay an extra £30 a month for 1TB, while the former offer of £2.99 a month for 1TB of storage was bumped up to £36 a month.

The hike was driven by sweeping price increases at LiveDrive, of whom Monster Cloud is a reseller.

As reported on our sister publication The Channel, many of LiveDrive's customers have complained that the increased costs will “kill” them, though we're only aware of one reseller attempting to pass on this burden – as well as costs – to its customers.

Monster Cloud's new prices are to kick in on May 14, a month from when the announcement was made. Despite having sold its year-long £50 special offer to customers, Monster said, as its service runs month-to-month, its terms and conditions allow them to raise prices at any time.

Without further ado or editorial emphasis, we now proudly reproduce this wonderful exchange between a Reg reader keen to cancel his subscription, and Monster Cloud:

From: Reg Reader, To: Monster Cloud

As forced by your outragous price increase I have closed the account.

I expect a 75%+ refund of the fee I paid you as it was active for less than 3 months.

I hope this part of the process is less opaque than your other business dealings.

From: Monster Cloud, To: Reg Reader

Hi,

I'm sorry, did you want our help or did you think this was somewhere you could just be abusive?

Kind regards

Monster Cloud

From: Reg Reader, To: Monster Cloud

Thanks for your email.

The former, in getting my refund.

What you may have interpreted as “abuse” is only a statement of fact. At this stage, I am making no comment on the degree of business disruption caused by your self-publicised 8000% mid-contract price increases necessitating additional resources to change provider.

From: Monster Cloud, To: Reg Reader

Hi,

So factually speaking we did not increase our prices 8000%. Your email this morning was full of attitude, even though you have never contacted support previously. You insinuated that the owners of Monster Cloud have conducted themselves in a way that’s you determined to be dishonest.

So given that factual assessment of your email this morning would you now like to be a nice person, don’t judge on things you know nothing about and ask your question again?

Kind regards

Monster Cloud

From: Reg Reader, To: Monster Cloud

Wow! Great email.

Yes, attitude is definitely there and with justification given the difficulties caused by your imposed price increases.

I have attached the email from admin@monstercloud.co.uk that:

1. Shows I have contacted you previously (it’s the same email address you are using now)

2. Gives the source of my quoted 8000%. Your figures, not mine. So I take them as fact when you inform me its 8000%.

I am surprised that you have gone on record to suggest that my note below “insinuates..dishonesty”. But a record worthy of retention.

Just process the refund please. Is that polite enough?

Regards

From: Monster Cloud, To: Reg Reader

Hi,

If you did read the email we sent, we showed OUR data provider costs had increased 8000%, if you worked out what £4.99 per month, old costs, and £17 p/m, new costs, is then you would quickly learn that it’s not 8000% - the price increase to users was only 340%. So the increase to customers was just 4.25% of the business costs. I would say that was really well handled by our company.

Your email shows you contacted Marketing, you have not contacted Support until today. Different people, different building, different services provided. We are the engineers maintaining and providing the service, we help with user problems, service issues and we give 1st line support for accounts, as they do not have contact with customers.

As we are not here to debate your odd mind, “I am surprised that you have gone on record to suggest that my note below “insinuates..dishonesty”. But a record worthy of retention.“ We can put your weirdness down to the fact you maybe got confused and thought you were in school trying to be clever.

So let’s get back to why you contacted us today, you cancelled your subscription and would like a refund of your fees on a pro-rata basis. This request will now be passed to accounts, they will handle this and determine if your request will go through, though as you have in past indicated you would contact the media then I think they will contact our legal counsel before anything else. So this might take a while.

Kind regards

Monster Cloud

From: Reg Reader, To: Monster Cloud

Thank you for your email.

Please process my refund within the law and we can all put a stop to this.

Many thanks

From: Monster Cloud, To: Reg Reader

Hi,

As we said, this has now been passed to accounts for them to review. The law gives us 14 days to issue a refund, as you have decided to cancel your service after using it for a few months, on the grounds you do not agree to our new prices, this is another matter and why account s will look into this. Had you not consistently been quite threatening in your recent emails I would image this would have gone much smoother, but we don’t like to receive threats as much as you probably don’t, so things will have to be looked at more thoroughly now given what you have said in your emails.

Accounts will let us know in due course what they have decided to do and we will let you know their decision accordingly.

Kind regards

Monster Cloud

Monster Cloud did not wish to comment on the record when contacted by The Register.

Readers are encouraged to keep their “abusive” thoughts out of the comment section, as always. ®

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