DreamHost Charges $7.5 Million
So DreamHost accidentally charged customers over $7.5 Million the other day. People are in a big uproar over it, some saying they can’t pay their rent or buy necessary items for their kids. While being charged isn’t right, there is some responsibility on the customers part, and it’s something we can learn from.
Simply put, have a separate credit card for your online purchases! If something were to go wrong, it wouldn’t have an affect on your rent or your kids. I would think people would be doing this by now because of fraud alone, but apparently not.
So what are you doing? Do you have a card you use online, multiple credit cards, or are you putting all your eggs in one basket?
January 17th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Personally, I’ve been using my PayPal debit card lately. If I had a larger business, I would probably keep them separate.
This all makes me think that if I am to ever make anything that charged people automatically like that, to make sure you have a LIMIT set. That’s horrible what happened with them, and I agree with some people on the blog that a.) I wouldn’t doubt that the credit card companies start blocking them and b.) the “funny” blog post (which was more like something written by a 12 year old) was entirely inappropriate. Anything related to a business should be professional, you can do things like Google, but they’re still professional about their style.
I do not do ANY sort of auto bill pay, so I don’t really fear anything like this happening.
January 17th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Well even the Paypal debit card isn’t your personal checking account debit card that you have to use to pay your rent. I’m worried this is going to kill their business, I’ve been very satisfied (and still am) so I hope it doesn’t. Maybe they’ll have to use Paypal and Google Checkout and not be able to auto bill again?
January 17th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Thank you Tim for posting this.I have been thinking about getting a new credit card for a while cause I have been charged automaticly sometimes because of my program hopping. When I got my money in I withdraw so if someone want to charge me there is no money but I need to get another one.Thanks for reminding me
January 17th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Good blog Tim. I learned the hard way a couple of years ago. My Wife deposited my paycheck right before the 4th of July holiday. We went to the bank machine the next day to get some cash and my account was empty. They got it somehow through my paypal account. Since then I still use a debit card but it is a checking account just for my online expenses.
Mark
January 20th, 2008 at 7:48 am
I am always using a seperate credit card for all my Internet marketing actions. I have been doing that for years, I can’t take the risk for something like this happening to my checking account.
It will be interesting to see what will happen to DreamHost, I hope they will manage to sort things out.
January 20th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
So far they seem to be OK, there were set backs in the refunds but they are doing pretty good at letting everyone know. Of course there are many switching to other hosting providers, Lunar Pages has a special for Dream Hoster refugees.