This is the email I sent to ReadySetConnect.com tonight. I cancelled my service with them in February, but I’m still getting billed, and they don’t offer any way to contact them besides email. (If you’re in a hurry, you can just skim the email, it’s pretty repetitive. The important parts are in the last few paragraphs).

Note: See the updates below.

TO: admin@readysetconnect.com
CC: support@readysetconnect.com
CC: billing@readysetconnect.com
SUBJECT: cancel my account and refund my money

I cancelled my account with you through your billing interface in February. Since then, my credit card has still been charged every month, and I have not received any sort of confirmation that my account was closed, despite multiple requests. I don’t have an exact date of my initial request because your system doesn’t send any sort of confirmation mail.

On March 15th, I sent an email to billing@readysetconnect.com requesting some sort of confirmation that my account had been closed and I would no longer be billed.

On April 13th, in response to a new invoice, I sent another email to billing and CC’d support, mentioning my first email had gone unanswered, requesting that I no longer be billed, and that I receive some sort of confirmation that my account had been closed.

Nearly immediately, one of the support guys forwarded me to billing. On April 15th, I sent a reply asking when I could expect to hear from the billing department. No reply.

At some point between then and April 29th, I received a phone call from the billing guy. I regret that I didn’t take his name or number, or write down when I heard from him, because he said it was all done, and he’d call me back later that day to confirm my account was closed.

A week later (sometime the week of April 29th), he called me again to let me know he’d had some problems, and that appearently there were two accounts under my name, and he was closing them both down. He couldn’t answer me whether or not I had been double-billed the entire time (reviewing my credit card bill later, I don’t think I was). He said he’d call me back “soon” and I haven’t heard from him since.

On May 6th, I got an email from admin@readysetconnect, Daniel Brock, who was following up with me to see if I had been taken care of. I replied that I hadn’t heard anything in a week and a half, and requested (again) that someone please see if I was getting double-billed, and send me some sort of confirmation that my account had been closed.

Having received no response, I sent ANOTHER email on May 13th to admin, requesting once again that someone contact me, ideally by phone, since there’s no phone number listed anywhere, so I’m at your mercy for email support.

It has now been a full week. I am sending this email to support, billing, and admin, posting it to my website as a warning to everyone to avoid your hosting service, submitting a complaint about your company to the better business bureau and contacting my bank to request that they deny any further charges to my credit card, which have continued to happen every month on the 21st.

I know what it’s like to work in a small company, and how difficult it can be to provide timely email support. But your complete unwillingness to even reply within a week is ridiculous.

If anyone does take the time to reply to this, I would like a confirmation that my account has been closed, and a refund for the months of March and April (and May if you send a charge for this month).

- Scott Vandehey

update 5/19: There’s a billing phone number posted! This wasn’t there when I started this whole thing. Of course, that was two months ago. I’m calling these guys tomorrow, and holding off on calling the bank and BBB until then. Oh, and one of the emails already bounced back (the one to support has an autoresponder asking me to submit a ticket through the helpdesk system – another change since this started in February).

update 5/19: Before I started writing this email, I also sent an email to support for TextDrive.com, asking them to cancel my account because I’ve switched hosts. In less than a half-hour, I’ve already gotten a reply from one of their support guys letting me know that he’s taking care of it, and will send me a confirmation when he’s done. ReadySetConnect, are you taking notes?

update 5/20: After getting my email last night and a phone call this morning, I got this short and to-the-point email this afternoon.

Your account was cancelled a month ago. You haven’t and won’t be billed since then.
Thank you.

No mention of the two months I was billed when I shouldn’t have been. I really should follow up with them (or contest the charges, like Sasha suggested), but I probably won’t. As long as it’s over, I really don’t care about the $25 enough to have to deal with these guys any more.