Paid $2400 to Cloudflare, support refuses to help

I signed up for Cloudflare's Business plan and paid for a year in advance. While adding a new domain I made a typo and now the subscription is stuck in a limbo.

I can't change the domain without contacting their support or paying another $2400. When I open a support ticket, their portal shows 'Unable to find your account' and tells me to open another support request for it.

All support tickets are closed automatically by their "AI" which points to the same article that says open a ticket.

Is shaming them on Twitter my only option left?

101 points | by thekonqueror 8 hours ago

11 comments

  • altairprime 5 hours ago
    This would be an excellent use of small claims court; you want paid-for service provided and they’re giving you the phone-tree runaround. The court would prefer a settlement be reached before trial and their legal team will have no trouble bypassing their support AI to get a ticket opened.
    [-]
    • PaulCarrack 1 hour ago
      Unfortunately that won't work. Most companies now have an arbitration clause meaning that you can't take them to small claims court.

      Had a similar situation happen with another company. Went to take them to small claims but the judge threw it out because of the arbitration clause. We then spent months and many resources but were unable to continue because we couldn't successfully contact their arbitrator to proceed with the dispute. Long story short, we wrote it all off as it was becoming too expensive both with time and resources.

      This is all by design, and admittedly, a clever way for companies to do what they do.

      [-]
      • Someone1234 58 minutes ago
        > Unfortunately that won't work. Most companies now have an arbitration clause meaning that you can't take them to small claims court.

        They can only enforce that contractual agreement IF THEY SHOW UP TO COURT. Which costs them money, which means they will pay OP's issue attention which is what OP wants anyway as a resolution. Win/win.

        In your case you wanted a cash settlement. In OP's case they want a resolution. Apples Vs. Oranges.

        edit: Looks like someone at Cloudflare responded to OP's issue below anyway.

  • swhitf 8 hours ago
    One of the things I was most surprised about recently is just how buggy and unpleasant to use the Cloudflare dashboard is. We only moved to them recently and I was really shocked. I had one situation where the dashboard literally showed me the wrong domain but rules for another, which I think was a session or caching bug. I really thought it would be better for a company that size!
    [-]
    • tracker1 5 hours ago
      You'd be surprised... I did a LOT of cleanup work for a private college that had a lot of "clever" developers that didn't understand static variables in C#, or how the ASP.Net lifecycle worked. Race conditions and all kinds of weird errors when the system got busy. Not to mention a lot of "fun" performance issues.

      Just because someone has a CS degree doesn't mean they actually know what they're doing.

  • jsheard 8 hours ago
    > Is shaming them on Twitter my only option left?

    Shaming them on here works better, if you get to the frontpage then their CEO or CTO will probably show up to defuse the situation.

    [-]
    • iruoy 7 hours ago
      @eastdakota (CEO)

      @jgrahamc (former CTO, now board member)

    • thekonqueror 8 hours ago
      Fingers crossed!
  • dknecht 5 hours ago
    Hi. I am sorry about this issue. Can you email dane@cloudflare.com, and it will get resolved? I am also working on more systematic fixes for when customers get into this situation.
    [-]
    • nextaccountic 5 hours ago
      The more systematic fix is to make paying customers speak with actual humans, rather than buggy AI
    • sieep 3 hours ago
      Escalating to a human in a time-appropriate manner seems like what people are asking for.
    • thekonqueror 3 hours ago
      Thanks, email sent.
    • johnwheeler 1 hour ago
      Thanks Dane!
  • nullable_bool 59 minutes ago
    I have a leak in my ceiling and my landlord doesnt even answer my texts anymore. I feel you.
  • leosanchez 4 hours ago
    Namecheap support immediately refunded when I mentioned them I made a typo in the domain i bought.
    [-]
    • thekonqueror 2 hours ago
      That's great. I don't even want to change a domain registration, just need to add an existing domain to Cloudflare.
  • mjwhansen 8 hours ago
    That's wild! Hopefully someone at Cloudflare sees this and can help you out
  • cosmicgadget 3 hours ago
    > All support tickets are closed automatically by their "AI" which points to the same article that says open a ticket.

    Maybe just have a script follow this infinite loop?

  • parliament32 1 hour ago
    You should ask an AI to help you file a chargeback.
  • csomar 5 hours ago
    They are more responsive on the Discord channel. I've talked with a few of their support people and am hardly a paying user.