Link: https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1vjfbq8/i_bought_a_server_wheres_my_website/

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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/JoySubtraction on 2026-08-09 03:40:00+00:00.

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/ITCrowdFanboy

Originally posted to r/talesfromtechsupport

Original post posted 2015-08-12

So my friend is a manager at a hosting company which offers basic web hosting, VPS and dedicated servers. This one woman bought a 1200 dollar a month server (with 256GB RAM and so on) and paid for a whole year in advance. As you may or may not know, dedicated servers offer only the hardware, nothing is done to the host itself.

When clients spend so much money, when they call in, they go straight through to a manager. So one day the client, let's call her pillock of the underworld (POTU) called in, reaches my friend and was frantic.

Friend: Hello, this is generic hosting company, how can I assist you today?

POTU: HELLO? I bought a server from you guys a few days ago and on your website you claimed 2 hour set up but it isn't online yet.

Friend: No problem, let me check it out for you.

So friend checks their CRM and find the server is, in fact, up and running. So he goes back on the line.

POTU: That can't be. I'm going to .com and it isn't working.

Friend: I'm sorry m'am, but you do realise that buying a dedicated server means you get only the host, and nothing on it right? So no website will be created for you.

POTU: But I filled in the box for what you want the server for (Mind you this is just a questionnaire box for customers to fill in optionally) and said it was for my pottery company.

Friend: That box is only to get feedback from our clients. I'm sorry m'am, you'll have to hire a web developer for that.

POTU: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, I'M GOING TO THE BANK TO CANCEL THE TRANSACTION. FUCK YOU, SIR, FUCK YOU. Friend: M'am, wait... click

She did, in fact, get the transaction reversed under the claim that the company is fraud and got my friend into a lengthy, expensive investigation.

TLDR: Woman buys metal, expects human baby to be created.

Update posted 2015-08-13

OK, so the previous tale happened a few weeks ago, and after the awesome response I got from you guys, I called up $Friend to get an update.

The investigation ended a few days after the charge was reversed, and the investigation found that there was no wrong-doing in the part of the company, but their lawyers suggested a change in their terms of service.

The lady later called back, crying, because she took out a bank loan to pay for the server and had no way to pay it back without the profit of the pottery company, which is why she had to reverse the charge. The call was being recorded, and she confessed all that, so the recording was given to the police and the fraud charges were dropped. My friend asked her why she got such a big server (editor's note: this was 11 years ago), and apparently she thought that 1GB of RAM meant that 1 person could access the website at once, so she wanted 250 to be able to get onto it at once.

In the end, no real harm was done to the company, beyond legal fees (which were paid by the woman, since she fraudulently declared fraud) and the initial deployment cost of the server. She was, obviously, placed on the no-service list of the company.

More sad than anything else