If you read the other comments, you're certainly an outlier in this belief.
My own answer is that there is nothing (incromulent? uncromulent? well, anyway, not cromulent) about suing people who knowingly and deliberately racked up debts with you, but that common business practices, including the overwhelming abundance of free services everywhere in every product category, and the ability to immediately shut off internet services when you aren't paid, lead to sort of a gestalt of expectations about how things are done.
The article itself says that the terms of service only allow billing if a payment method have been provided, so suing absent that provision would probably be a non-starter anyway.
On the bright? side, suing would definitely keep them on the front page of hacker news longer.
I find that exploiting a difference between expectations and reality is a common way to make money, but I'm no good at it myself. I'm cursed with engineer-brain instead of business-brain.
> exploiting a difference between expectations and reality is a common way to make money
Maybe? Or maybe expectations catch up with reality? I mean, does anybody really go into a car dealership thinking the dealer isn't going to do their best to rip them off? Or believe that "their" real estate agent is "on their side?"
I think most people just accept that the world is full of rip-off artists.
Which is kind of sad, really. If one person pushes back on bad billing, the company still makes money, even if it has to do a refund.
But if everybody were to always push back? It wouldn't be worth it to try to tack on extra fees for non-rendered services.
Yes, lots of people who don't frequent HN think their real estate agent is on their side, and think car dealerships just sell cars for a fair price. They might even think politicians make laws to make society better.
That's why all these groups of people are able to make so much money. If everyone expected a car dealer to rip them off, car dealers wouldn't be able to rip anyone off and there wouldn't be so many of them.
My own answer is that there is nothing (incromulent? uncromulent? well, anyway, not cromulent) about suing people who knowingly and deliberately racked up debts with you, but that common business practices, including the overwhelming abundance of free services everywhere in every product category, and the ability to immediately shut off internet services when you aren't paid, lead to sort of a gestalt of expectations about how things are done.
The article itself says that the terms of service only allow billing if a payment method have been provided, so suing absent that provision would probably be a non-starter anyway.
On the bright? side, suing would definitely keep them on the front page of hacker news longer.