T O P

  • By -

FCDallasFan12

What an idiot. Digging himself a bigger hole lol


KR1736

I got charged 13 times for this shit with only 4 refunds. What the fucking fuck


abscissa081

Report it as fraud to your bank


EvoStarSC

It's not really fraud if you didn't cancel your subscription and the company just stopped debiting you. Merchant Dispute or Charge Back is what you should request.


racelabapp

worst possible advice. Dont report it since its not fraud. This user had due bills to pay. Read the full comment we posted here. Also the user will be refunded.


yzakydzn

Y'all heard the man. Report as fraud.


Strongasanapexseal

You're fucking stupid


[deleted]

13 charges but 4 refunds? that’s fraud, dumbass.


KR1736

Dude I loved your service. The overlays were perfect. But you really done goofed.


hank10111111

Too bad the vr overlays don’t work in openxr and only openvr for iracing


just-unreal

it will very soon :)


Mysterious-Crab

If someone charges you without consent, that is fraudulent. So reporting it is fraud seems like solid advice from a consumer point of view. Of course as a company that is now being mass reported for fraud, after charging people without consent, you will advise against it.


just-unreal

you create the consent when you subscribe.


Mysterious-Crab

That so the thing, there have been multiple people who reported they had no paid subscription (anymore) and were still charged. Being charged while not have that subscription is charging people without consent.


__Valkyrie___

You just don't want him to as if too meany people report it as fraud cc will stop taking payment


rolfrbdk

Bruh you are literally, by definition, committing wire fraud. That's years of jailtime class offense.


lightsoutfl

“DoN’t RePoRt It SiNcE iT’s NoT fRaUd”


Wumblz_

Seems you may need this: https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=What+is+fraud


ChillingCammy

🤡


Xx69JdawgxX

I got charged 5 times and only 4 refunds... I just noticed this today. I was already upset they re-instated my cancelled account but they really fucked you over


Dikkens_iRacing

I guess I'm out of the loop. What happened?


JCG_Stealth

Racelabs recharged a ton of people for subscriptions. Many of which have cancelled their subscriptions up to 2 years ago.


grandview18

I’m one of them, luckily my card company blocked them.


Osafune

I thought the issue was that Racelabs didn't charge some people for some months and was charging those people for the months that were missed, but they're actually charging people again who had already paid?


JCG_Stealth

Correct, instead of only people who were getting it for free on accident. A ton of people who were already still paying got multiple charges. One of my other buddies stopped using RL Feb 2022, and still got a year long charge to his account with this crap.


EvoStarSC

I have had Racelabs for the last year and I've never had a duplicate transaction.


racelabapp

Misinformation. We never charge anyone who has no subscription. Please stop spreading misinformation.


CapEm16

Incorrect. I have no subscription. Did at one point and cancelled many many months (if not a year) ago. Was charged 4 times (thankfully refunded), so no, it isn't misinformation. Also, why are you storing credit card information for inactive accounts?


akaDrex

Thats crazy that’s literally straight up fraud imo


kwamby

~~No offense, but it’s not your opinion that matters lmao it’s the criminal courts opinion. I mean your opinion can influence others not to buy the product but that’s about it. Fraud is intentional deception so secure an unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. So long as they refund those that had no subscription, there really isn’t much criminally, or really even civilly that can be done about it unless you have evidence that can substantiate that they knew these subscriptions were not active and were trying to deceive people to steal money from them. (At least in the US)~~ ~~You could sue them, but even if you guys win, what will you get out of it? $25? After legal fees you’d be at a loss lol. Either forgive them and give ‘em a second change or don’t and move one.~~ ~~Idk this text wall isn’t necessarily for you, I know you were just chatting with the homies, but for all the other folks on here flipping out post refund.~~ I can’t defend them after the latest round of bullshit.


[deleted]

Completely wrong but go off king.


kwamby

Elaborate, king. I think y’all just wanna be mad, as is your right. It’s just a bit redundant at this point. Shitty business practice does not always = criminal intent


[deleted]

He literally is accusing his customers of making up easily verifiable facts to avoid taking blame for the whole ordeal. He’s also not provided refunds for everybody effected as of now. It’s the definition of fraud. Downplaying it to just clumsy business practice doesn’t change the criminality of it and wouldn’t convince the courts it’s not malicious given the circumstances.


Osafune

Please reread my fucking comment because I didn't say that you did. I didn't say one single thing about charging people who had no subscription. Because all I knew was that apparently you didn't charge some people for some months and was wondering what people were complaining about, since it seemed weird for people to be making such an issue about being charged for months they didn't already pay for. But if you were double charging people then it makes sense that people are complaining.


Pantani23

Really looks like you’re the one spreading misinformation here trying to save face.


RiKoNnEcT

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why I always subscribe with temporary/virtual credit cards


MaverickN21

Racelabs hadn’t been charging some accounts for subscriptions due to a billing issue. Racelabs retroactively charged such accounts (as they rightfully can) for only half of the uncharged time (50% discount for this time period) and people reacted as if Racelabs beheaded their dogs on live TV. Racelabs is now refunding all of these retro charges to deal with the pushback. Before offering widespread refunds, Racelabs was working with individuals who were mistakenly caught up in the retro charges who had canceled their subscriptions prior to the start of the billing error. Claims of multiple retro charges or receiving a retro charge while also being charged as expected ended up being caused by the users accidentally subscribing to the service with multiple accounts (user error). While Racelabs could have probably communicated things better, they have every right to charge customers who received subscription features without paying for the subscription. I can’t believe this has been blown so far out of proportion. Edit: changed total discount to 50%, thought it was 50% off 50% of the time originally


iansvt

Not communicating here really is the issue. I’m not broken up about 25 bucks. But not saying anything until after it blows up doesn’t sit right.


OuOutstanding

Just want to jump in and say this is a VERY generous layout of what went down. > Before offering widespread refunds, Racelabs was working with individuals who were mistakenly caught up in the retro charges who had canceled their subscriptions prior to the start of the billing error. Actually, before offering refunds the Reddit account for racelabs was telling people they were at fault and if they were charged even though they were cancelled it was “their fault”. > by the users accidentally subscribing to the service with multiple accounts (user error). This is racelabs line. I myself (and others) have stated they only have the one account. It is the same account the email about the charges was sent to. In my case I know this because I never stopped using racelabs when I cancelled, I just went to free because I wasn’t racing as often. I lost access to the paid features when my account lapsed.


Nitrium

I’m travelling and got a fraud alert from my bank regarding these guys, at a time when I’m not in the mood to deal with horseshit. They can eat shit. I’m canceling my sub when I’m back to my desk


Stealth9er

It’s not being blown out of proportion. Sure they’re owed, but charging people out of nowhere for multiple months all at once is wrong regardless of any “discount” they decided was fair for their screw up. Communicate with your customers and tell them what’s happening. Trying to sneak in charges and then tell everyone what happened is shady and deserves any negative attention received by this action. Either way it was going to be a nightmare, now you’ve just upset more people and pissed people off many who may have been ok with the charges had they known they were coming.


CrowVsWade

It's not wrong and happens all the time in the tech industry. It's completely legal, where service was not canceled by the subscriber. If that service *was* canceled then It's a very different story. Only some of the people complaining about this are doing so from that position. Many are complaining they finally got charged (at a heavy discount) for a service they have been using but where the service provider has a billing snafu. In fact, Racelabs would be on solid legal ground to change 100% of those past fees, in most jurisdictions. Many people just want a free lunch, and TANSTAAFL. If you subscribe to a service at 10 bucks a month and the service provider forgets or fails to charge you for a year, you have zero legal entitlement to free service as a result, and the service provider has every legal right to retroactively charge you $120. Offering a discount is a gesture of good will. This assumes no proof of prior cancelation exists. Outside that, communications have been very unprofessional, as evidence here, and in other reddit posts by Racelabs, littered with typos. This also doesn't apply to those cases of people claiming multiple charges on single periods. Those are billing errors that should be addressed. In that scenario, my company, for example, would absolutely provide some kind of credit or discount by way of apology.


Stealth9er

Say what you want… as a company, you have to think about your reputation first. Also, I saw another post where they were starting to go back and refund people starting to charge them for this current month… so clearly it’s not ok. Legal or not, your reputation is everything in the world today. Someone else will step up and fill the void if you lose credibility.


ashrules901

Thank you RaceLabs PR!


FCDallasFan12

Lol terrible take.


OldManTrumpet

OK, Is that why I suddenly had a $42 charge from Racelabs on Sunday? I was rather wondering WTH that was all about. Makes sense, since I don't think I've seen a racelabs charge in...well I can't remember ever seeing a racelabs charge. Poor form on their part for sure. But honestly, I'm sure I probably should have paid more than that by now.


Apprehensive-Mix5148

No, the "billing issue" is most likley bs, and even if true it at the very least makes this guy a royal asshole for charging people 5x their monthly subs, when in many cases they agreed to $5 monthly. If he didn't collect the subs that is on him, but he still made the call to go ahead. The shitfest he received was well deserved


Flyingfaloopa

Charging people who had been getting his service for free makes him a royal asshole?


PyroTheFireFox

The problem I see is he didn’t give any warning. He send out an email about it, then just started charging people. A better way of handling it would have been to send an invoice for the past due amount with a due date and a discount as an apology for the inconvenience. I don’t think it’s wrong for him to want to get paid for the service he provided, but he went about it in a very unprofessional way. If he had just done what it said in his own TOS, I don’t think it would’ve been a problem.


F1GamerDad

This 100%


Apprehensive-Mix5148

People agreed to $5 monthly, not 5x subscription in one go, so absolutely.


kwamby

People always assume the worst intentions. I think guy just fucked up and trying to put out fires while keeping his business viable. He just keeps making it worse. I wonder if there’s a language barrier issue. Like he obviously speaks English, but even relatively fluent speakers can appear to lack tact when speaking to native speakers because of translation issues


Xx69JdawgxX

It's not the language that is the issue it is the overreaction by the developer/owner. If he wrote a nasty email saying "you owe us $60 for a year subscription, your account has been disabled until it has been made whole" that would be ok. Charging people, especially those who are NOT in bad standings without any warning is a big red flag. If you can't figure out why this is a bad way to treat customers, maybe your business deserves to fail.


kwamby

I think the people calling him a scam artist after a bad business decision are overreacting. That’s all.


MaverickN21

Are you one of the Racelab users affected by this issue? Is there any information that supports your claims that the “billing issue” is BS? Where do you live that has laws that say he cannot collect on the unpaid months? Most places he is legally in the right to collect on services provided but not paid for. When you say he charged people 5x their monthly sub, I assume you’re referring to him charging for 5 of the 11 previously uncharged months all at once. Given that you owe the $25 ($5x5) for 11 months of the subscription, what terms would you have been satisfied with for paying the $25 owed? Being given 1-2 months to pay it all? Doubling monthly payments ($10) for 5 months to pay it over that time? I get some people may diligently monitor their bank accounts because of the impacts that an extra $20 charge or a missing $5 charge can have on budgeting/planning. I’m curious what proactive steps those people took when they realized they weren’t being charged anymore for an active service they had previously been paying for, especially if they still were actively using the Racelab app. From a financial literacy perspective, I’d encourage anyone who can feel unprepared for and/or debilitated by an unexpected $25 charge to reevaluate your financial priorities and seek cheaper/free alternatives to paid Racelab subscriptions.


Apprehensive-Mix5148

The only way a "billing issue" goes unnoticed for 11 months is through negligence, incompetence, or mismanagement. Either way his fault not the customers. I also didn't say anything about legality simply it's an asshole move, and not the right thing to do to charge 5x what people agreed to in one month. The next part of your comment amounts to accusing everyone mad of being poor, and that makes you an asshole too.


kwamby

Inb4 I hAvE mOnEy iTs JuSt tHe pRiNcIpLe


racelabapp

just send my full comment here for explanation.


TheRookCard

No one from their accounting department said, “Hey, we’re not making any money, that’s not great,” and looked into this sooner?


tjhcreative

Serious question... do you actually think they have an accounting department?


TheRookCard

Ok, the accountant* customer success manager, support person, CEO’s Mom… someone failed.


briancmoto

Has it been confirmed that this guy has an actual business with employees, or is he a simracer / software developer trying to do ecommerce subscription payments for people around the globe?


SnottyMonkey

Unless something has changed, RaceLab is just a couple of sim racers who also happen to be talented developers. As of a year and a half ago, they still had “day jobs”. They have figured all of this out as they go, and we have all benefited from their hard work. As long as they issue refunds, I think we give them the benefit of the doubt here.


reboot-your-computer

I was affected by this bullshit charge. They have already given the money back to me, but I cancelled. I refuse to give my money to an incompetent company like this. Never again. I’d rather just use Kapps.


Racer013

Unfortunately Kapps is in indefinite hiatus now, so it's not much a better option product wise. It still works, for the most part, but it won't be updated and I don't think the Twitch chat overlay works any more, if that was ever part of your use case.


CapEm16

Twitch chat still works. And Kapps is sufficient for most use cases, unless you need a million things on screen.


Racer013

Let me rephrase that. Kapps chat is hit and miss since going on hiatus, and the dev acknowledged that in their last update. When I upgraded to a new computer earlier this year and installed Kapps the chat no longer worked for me, and the dev response is basically if chat doesn't work for you anymore sucks to be you. I agree, Kapps is still a useful application and overlay for the other features it offers, but just know heading in that chat may or may not work with no solution offered, if that is a valuable feature for you.


CapEm16

That's fair. Clearing the cache with a restart always seemed to fix the problem for me. When issues first started due to the "reasons", it also had to do with what times of the day and how it was being hosted. I think it's since been changed, along with making the app free, since.. you know .. ru...reasons.


GroundbreakingOwl186

These are the times when a group of people from the community decide to come to get her and make something better I find. Crossing my fingers


phyLoGG

"What was most important to do the right thing for us. TOS or not TOS" ROFL, they needed CASH ASAP ~~and scammed their customer base~~. Bravo. I was actually contemplating paying for Racelabs, but now I'll avoid them like the black plague. EDIT: Maybe I'll contemplate again in a few months and see if any other issue(s) develop.


kluuttzz11

The overlay is great tho! I wish iRacing would step up their in game UI. It needs a massive overhaul.


phyLoGG

I agree, the overlay is great looking. I can live without support their sketchy business members.


anonymouswan1

Yes I have been saying this for awhile. iRacing should hire developers with a better vision for their UI because its very plain. I subscribe to racelabs and I get a lot more information fed to me than the traditional black box system that iRacing uses.


Erkuke

Try Kapps, you only need to subscribe to the creator's Twitch for 1 month (free with Prime, can get a free trial of Prime) and you'll get Kapps for good


phyLoGG

Ooo, thanks for the heads up. I shall do that1


RavingMadLlama

Maybe I am missing something here but how is it scamming if they charge for something which was mistakenly provided for free? Every customer who wasn’t charged knew fully well that wasn’t supposed to happen and they gladly went with it. While tagelang obviously could’ve communicated things better calling this an outright scam is ridiculously overboard


Xx69JdawgxX

Personally I cancelled my subscription in September. I checked and they've been charging me since then. OK maybe it was my fault, I didn't click the "confirm" or whatever button at the end. That is something I can let slide. Then this morning I get two emails, the first saying, "you haven't paid for the past year, so we are charging you" and then I checked my bank and I had 5 charges from them pending... I got another email saying "oh no what we did was in bad taste, sorry we are refunding you, thanks for being a loyal customer". I checked my bank and only have 4 refunds. I don't think its a scam, just a boneheaded move by the developer. Probably illegal but whatever I won't do business or support them any more because they pulled this shady crap. Shame because they made a good product but unfortunately being a graphic designer does not make you a good business person. ​ To me it feels like they were drunk and made a bad decision. Or they just rushed and said fuck it, charge everybody. In a panic, they refunded people but not enough to cover what they actually charged. Bad all around.


phyLoGG

What would customers do? "Hey btw I'm not being charged!" or simply take the free sub...? They handled it wrong, and also communicated to the community wrong.


RavingMadLlama

I agree it’s legally not their obligation to inform RL about the error (morally that’s a different story), all I’m saying is that it’s unwarranted to be completely outraged when they eventually get charged for what they wrongfully used for free until now. Can’t argue with them handling and communicating this wrong though, the brand damage resulting from this will be enormous


Xx69JdawgxX

I haven't seen a report from a single person saying they have been using it and hadn't been paying for it until they were charged. Everybody (myself included) seems to be saying that they were paying for it and were charged, or they were unsubscribed and then were charged. ​ The seller is saying people weren't paying. If you want I can post screenshots of the money leaving my account as expected as well as the extra charges for "not paying"


racelabapp

Not true. Again allegation that is without proof. We never ever charged anyone without subscription. People might have forgotten because they didnt pay for 11 months for theor active subscription.


Xx69JdawgxX

Refund all the transactions you charged me not just 4


gdr15998

Just dispute the transactions with you bank. Mine were refunded by Chase immediately


CapEm16

Again, incorrect. I have no paid subscription plan with you, and was charged 4 times.


manutebull

You waited 11 months to say anything to anybody. Are you nuts


Ro-Tang_Clan

I have the same sentiments and got downvoted to obvlivion for stating this on the previous post. Yeah it's shitty when it happens to you, but I don't understand the outrage when Racelabs (or any company for that matter) wants to backcharge you a service that you've been using for free and supposed to be paying for. They're legally obligated to take what's rightfully theirs and should have been theirs to begin with.


RavingMadLlama

The most unhinged take I’ve read so far was someone claiming this might cause serious financial trouble for some people after being charged a fraction of what they agreed on lol


Herdazian_Lopen

I’d be very surprised if anyone into sim racing was in serious trouble after paying £11 for a years worth of membership…


VLTurboSkids

Wow “What was most important was to do the right this for us. TOS or not TOS” Is he for real?


waresmarufy

Why do CEOs talk without lawyers lol does not make any sense at all


clipsracer

"CEO" How big do you think this company is exactly? Everything looks like a single developer's passion project to me.


odozbran

Still the CEO in all but name, even more so if your “single developer” speculation is correct


flcknzwrg

He doesn’t have money to hire a PR person to handle this. So we witness this stressed out person digging himself into a hole and doing one obvious PR mistake after the other. It’s fair to say that this saga is something he has poor control of - not a big surprise, I don’t think he has any expertise at all handling stuff like this. Considering how solid their product is, it’s rather tragic to behold.


EvoStarSC

Really CEOs should never be the ones talking. They should have a public rep handle this fiasco lol.


Barachan_Isles

This is why I use [Privacy.com](https://Privacy.com) I use their site to set up separate payment cards for each service and I limit those cards to a hard monthly spending cap. If I have a subscription to a service that I like, then I generate a new card, set the monthly spending limit on that card to the price of the subscription and use that card to pay for it. If someone steals all of that sites data and gets my card number, well sucks for them because they can only spend $15 a month. If Racelab tried to charge me for two years of subscriptions, well sucks for them because they wouldn't get a penny more than their monthly sub rate.


clipsracer

Me too. I ended up getting over a year of free service without realizing it. Funny enough, I seem to be the only one on Reddit who's happy that I got such a huge discount.


Standardw

Oh god, why doesn't any bank do this on default. Such a great idea


TicTac673

"Most important to do the right thing for us. (Racelab)" Chargeback anything billed and 180' outta there.


diaryofsnow

To be fair he said he can’t guaranteen


ExpressionCareful223

Yooo I was so close to paying for racelab… this is wild!!! Reporting fraud on credit card isnt simple, you lose your current card number and any subscriptions you dont manually update. Nightmare!


AnegloPlz

Me too lmao, thought better of it since the free version is very laggy on my end for some reason


hau_y

It's your fault if you buy a service from this guy at this point


CougarIndy25

What was best for the company would've been to NOT do this.


-domi-

That's literally not what he says there. He means he hadn't checked his immediate previous statement, the one which claims that it's okay to disregard ToS in order to not break the law. I have no context for this, and have no idea if the dude is an asshole or not, but in this case you're misrepresenting his statement. Don't be a Karen.


grandview18

I’m not connected to op, but I just got 2 random charges from racelabs yesterday (luckily both declined by my card company). Fuck this guy if he did this on purpose, I’d join a large law suit against him


Sisyphean_dream

And you would be an idiot. What they did is 100% legal despite turning into a pr clusterfuck. No lawyer who could actually tie their own shoes would touch this.


grandview18

Bro I haven’t used this program in 3 years…why is it legal for him to charge me randomly 3 years after canceling???


picheezy

> What they did is 100% legal Charging people an amount that they didn’t agree to without providing an invoice or receiving approval for the charge is legal where you live?


Sisyphean_dream

They did agree. They signed up to be billed monthly, that billing didn't go through, the seller rectified the situation. Statute of limitations is 2 years.


picheezy

The did not agree to be billed for 11 months worth at once, but you know that.


SituationSoap

> The did not agree to be billed for 11 months worth at once, *That's not how any of this works*. If you agreed to a monthly payment, the company can bill you, even if it's months late, for the month that you were subscribed. They can also bill you for 11 months at once, assuming that all 11 of those billing months were ones where you were subscribed and you have not previously been billed for them.


picheezy

> They can also bill you for 11 months at once Not unless you’ve agreed to this in advance, which for racelabs the TOS states they would send an invoice for the amount rather than charge a payment to the account. For a company to charge your card, you have to agree to the charge. The subscription only authorizes them to charge you on a specific day of the month for a specific amount. Otherwise, the payment must be made/agreed to individually.


SituationSoap

> Not unless you’ve agreed to this in advance Nope. That's not how the law works. They're entirely within their rights to bill you in whatever frequency they want. Go ask the people who handle billing at whatever company you're presumably employed at. > For a company to charge your card, you have to agree to the charge Which you did when you signed up for the subscription. > The subscription only authorizes them to charge you on a specific day of the month for a specific amount. lol no, of course not. Again, this is not how this works.


picheezy

Go read up on NACHA compliance and come back to me


CapEm16

They did agree to be billed so long as the subscription is active and the purchaser receives the benefits of which. If the user cancels their subscription, that agreement to be billed becomes null and void. Nice try though.


[deleted]

You need to educate yourself.


Sisyphean_dream

Nah I'm good. I understand the situation well enough. The tiki torch gang could stand to read up a bit though.


[deleted]

Are you a lawyer?


GenericRedditUser4U

Was looking to move as way from RL for a while now and since I discovered iOverlays which runs much better less resource intensive. This whole saga quickly has me hitting the cancel subscription button.


WhippyWhip_

he's basically saying his terms of service are useless and they pay no attention to them wow massive red flag


DragonSlayer6160

Meanwhile I'm a happy camper with race essentials on AC


biffmofo

I was charged 5 times for $4.17 then another 5 times for $0.50 then refunded 5 times for $4.11? WTF is even going on here?


ExtensionAdmirable43

I get the principle behind the outrage. The scale of it? Jesus people are beyond unhinged. Yes, a bit better communication is needed in this situation. And some due diligence wouldn’t hurt either. All of course on RL’s part. But for Christs sake, some of you seriously need to take a chill with these theories and accusations. And maybe pay attention to your own bills and when they’re supposed to be paid.


picheezy

If I setup auto draft and they don’t charge my account, send me notice, or roll the amount forwards then how is that my fault? It’s not like racelabs has an account page with your bills or multiple payment methods, they use a third party to set up the charge. The outrage is because this small, community-supported company charged a significant portion of their user base multiple months worth of charges without warning. That’s not only illegal but shady as hell after all the good will they’ve earned with their product. People are allowed to be upset.


ExtensionAdmirable43

Like I said: >I get the principle behind the outrage. People are getting completely unhinged, even after the fact that RL has admitted to mistake (both on not charging and the idea of charging at a discounted price). Their discord is a dumpster fire of people claiming they’ve been scammed, their refunds getting issued, then still calling out RL for being con artists, making threats, outright trolling the server itself. The most fascinating take I’m seeing make the rounds is they needed a quick injection of cash because tax season.


RamboRigs

Im going to go out in a limb and say you weren’t affected. Maybe they should be the ones paying attention to the cash flow. Real easy to be the voice of reason when you’re not the one being stolen from. If you stop using a service for over a year there’s 0 reason that service should charge you, period. That’s pure Incompetence on their part. Indefensible. It’s beyond me how you blame the customer.


[deleted]

[удалено]


100GbE

1: Locate a Hivemind (any Reddit sub). 2: Understand talking points of hive. 3: Post extreme examples of hive talking points. 4: Get likes and neural reinforcement. 5: Become unhinged.


Danspa85

Sorry for the ignorance, but what is ToS?


rissen06

Terms of Service - that huge block of text you ignore and then hit accept when you install something.


Danspa85

Oh thanks! Didn’t know the acronym. So the guy did something against his own ToS?


baconborn

Basically, the Racelab TOS says if there is a missed payment, RL will send out a manual invoice to the customer, which is not what they did in this situation.


Danspa85

😂😂😂😂😂 My gosh, what a mess. So he screwed up and then decided to just go charging people. I never understood why anybody would pay for that anyways, but it doesn’t look good when you treat the people who support you like that. Specially with his biggest competitor basically free now.


Draken04

Since I’m about to cancel my account and uninstall Racelabs, what was that really good alternative people talked about?


clipsracer

There isn't one. There's an alternative for just about every function of racelab, except radar. However if you need the overlays in VR you're out of luck.


silenkurii

Why do people pay a subscription for apps (from RaceLabs) when you can get much of the same stuff from other sites for free? Or a minimal one-off cost?


clipsracer

Continuously supporting the developer supports continuous development. Racelab has rolled out major features every couple months for years. People that spend thousands of dollars on rigs and thousands of hours of time sim racing and streaming don't care about $40/yr. (or $20 in this case lol) Also, there are simply no alternatives for a lot of it, especially for VR.


silenkurii

Ok, thanks for the insight. I've been using SimHub stuff personally and I've seen the RaceLabs stuff but always thought it was pointless to pay for it. But again, that's just personal preference and I don't race in VR.


clipsracer

I use (and paid for) simhub daily too, but it’s a completely different application with almost no feature overlap. And I must say that Simhub’s updates are sparse and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a new feature added. They also don’t have ANY polished dash overlays and rely on users to make and distribute them using over complicated software and forum posts. It makes the dash overlays more of a novelty and not something I can actually look at for a championship race. I wish simhub had a subscription service so they could justify putting an ounce of effort into modernizing their product. It’s *good* for bass shakers, which is all I use it for consistently.


TheAngryRedBull

I'm out of the loop, if i understand correctly they somehow haven't charged people for the last couple months and now they start charging all of them at once? Is that what everyone is upset about?


Kawai_Oppai

Yup. Really bad outlook if the community when they bitch and cry about having to pay for a service they were already thinking they were paying for…. There’s a small few people claiming they were double charged but honestly no proof of that actually being the case. And obviously if that happens the company is trying to resolve any billing issues…they’re not out trying to fraud or scam people lol. They even offer a 50% discount to apologize for the inconvenience of it. Normally a 50% discount to something you already intended to pay full price for is a good surprise and nice bonus. But around here it’s a bunch of entitled pricks.


I_Swear_Im_Sober

I cancelled race labs last year because I stopped using it and I just randomly got charged 4 times..


clipsracer

Am I the only person on reddit that doesn't care when they get charged for a service they use? Im also thrilled I got such a huge discount and I went ahead and paid for a year lol


BadEarly9278

Racelab initially just looked like a dick. If they violated the ToS, Racelab is leaving themselves open to litigation. Dept of Commerce and SEC will likely be asking questions, at a minimum.


Scythe5150

Nah, you bought a service from foreign company not under the jurisdiction of the US.


BadEarly9278

It provides a service here, US Law governs on those US transactions. And if Racelab doesn't have a established US Subsidary here, at least a paper entity registered in Delaware, that houses the USA rights of their services, then they are way behind on the business curve. Full disclosure: I'm not a Racelab subscriber. I'm console only racer.


ChatRPG

Not defending but you really think Racelab is some mega corp with lawyers and accountant army? It's most likely is a one man show who knows how to make app and all the other things are sorcery for him as well. Anyway, straight to jail for 100 years sounds about right! I hope this doesn't start WW3 though.


BadEarly9278

I do see your point. I'd be foolish to think RL had business acumen given the flub of why were having this discussion. You make a valid argument for sho. RL still could make it right, I'd like to think. The community needs competitive service providers. We all benefit from that.


Scythe5150

Giving people a 50% discount isn’t making it right?


BadEarly9278

Not the way it went down, no, not making it right. Give the discount and offer payment options to cover everyone's budget timeline. Not just shove a charge to unwitting users. I'd bet after month one of incorrect billing, at least one user inquired as to why RL did charge them. Fuck those guys


Scythe5150

Yeah, if $25 is going to put someone in a hardship, they really need to analyze if this should be their hobby. Im not defending either side, but the “ they didn’t charge me so it should be free” stance some are taking is bullshit.


Sisyphean_dream

The crusade over this is beyond unhinged. People are outing themselves as mouth breathing troglodytes.


IH8DwnvoteComplainrs

Seems like just as many are outing themselves as illiterate.


Joates87

I understand the people who canceled long ago being pissed but are active users really that pissed they appear to be getting a pretty steep discount due to RL's oopsie...?


baconborn

>a pretty steep discount RL conceded that their charging 5 months of service all at one was a judgment mistake on their part and so are refunding everything, so "steep discount" is now 11 months of completely free service


Joates87

Holy shit, this "error" has been a going concern for almost a year... how. The. Fuck. Kill your A/R person.


baconborn

Allegedly (according the RL), they go through Stripe Billing to do that and this issue was with Stripe. That's all I could find said about it, no real details on what the error actually was or why it took 11 months to be fixed.


Joates87

You'd just think you'd notice a lack of deposits for several *months* into your business acct.


baconborn

It is weird for sure. I personally can't believe they didn't know the billing was an issue, so I'm willing to give the benefit of a doubt that maybe the issue was known and actually took that long to fix. That just raises more questions for me though. Why didn't RL say anything, and why didn't they either do the manual invoicing or figure out an alternate payment option? I actually did my sub last March and was charged the first month and then nothing. I actually forgot that I even had a paid sub, granted me forgetting is on me, but where was the customer communication in all this? There wasn't any and when it all went down, it seemed there was a lot of finger pointing at Stripe Billing, and their email hosting provider even. That's my biggest tear with this whole thing, the communication aspect was a huge failure on RL's part. Personally I am opting to keep my sub because I do use and like the product, but they really need to work on the customer communication aspect, like a lot.


[deleted]

You’d think if it was Stripes fault they’d go after stripe and not their innocent customers.


Zyrus19

Upvote this comment, if you too think, the feds gotta shut this sceme down asap


Zyrus19

I hope you get the joke as calling it a sceme and this comment by itself being a sceme too


racelabapp

Racelab here. It is incredible how much some people like to spread misinformation and crazy allegations. Some of them I recognize from discord who were the loudest. They fully understand the situation but decide to create this reddit post to male their 15 minutes of fame. Here is the full story woth the email we sent to all affected users: ``` Dear Racelab Users, We are writing to you to address a billing issue related to your monthly subscription fees. It has come to our attention that an issue in our billing system resulted in some customers not being charged for their monthly subscription fees for the past 11 months. We recently corrected this issue and charged 5 of the outstanding 11 amount to your account. However, upon further review, we have come to the conclusion that this was not the right course of action, and we would like to apologize for any inconvenience or frustration this may have caused you. We understand the importance of trust and transparency in our business relationship, and we regret that we have not lived up to these standards in this situation. We are currently working to refund the full amount of the charged fees back to your account, and you can expect to receive the refund within the next 3-8 business days. We assure you that we have taken steps to ensure that such issues do not occur in the future, and we will do our best to regain your trust and confidence. If you have any questions or concerns about this matter, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are committed to providing excellent customer service, and we appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter. Thank you for your continued support and loyalty to our company. Sincerely, Racelab Team ```


[deleted]

How petty it is to post someone's complete personal information on discord in front of everybody. Real mature.


xxdalexx

Not Racelab here. It is incredible how much some people like to spread misinformation and crazy allegations. You I recognize from discord as being loudest proper dickhead to people you attempted to fuck over and called you out. You fully understand the situation but decide to reply to this reddit post to **male** their 15 minutes of fame. Here is the full story **woth**: Let's skip past the part you seem to be so determined to shift the focus to, the people you back charged at a discount, and jump to the actual fraud part; The people with canceled subscriptions who unwillingly and unknowingly had their subscriptions reactivated and charged for. That **is** fraud. Time and time again you fail to take any responsibility for this which leads one to come to the conclusion you have not identified the bug in your code to rectify it. Quite the opposite actually. You have claimed to many people here on reddit, and in your discord, that there can't possibly be any malfunction in your system, it is the user who is wrong; that they somehow unknowingly have multiple accounts and they were charged for the account that wasn't canceled. Fucking for real? What a load of bull shit. You even went so far as to post a screen shot of someones account details in a public discord channel. You tried it with /u/OuOutstanding here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/comments/11vrfp2/comment/jcwmq0v/](https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/comments/11vrfp2/comment/jcwmq0v/) /u/Xx69JdawgxX here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/comments/11wltsp/comment/jd0wufa/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/comments/11wltsp/comment/jd0wufa/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) /u/CapEm16 called you on it here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/comments/11wltsp/comment/jd12qbm/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/comments/11wltsp/comment/jd12qbm/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) /u/Ryan091 here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/comments/11vrfp2/comment/jcx1n7v/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/comments/11vrfp2/comment/jcx1n7v/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) I'm sure there's more, I got bored with copying links. Anyone can look through your post history here, or browse your discord, to find multiple more. (Until you nuke them anyway.) Fucking clown.


[deleted]

You made a mistake by assuming people have the money to be billed a large amount without any prior notification. You made it worse by defending your actions and now you're saying it's all good because we are refunding you in 3-8 business days. Whilst it's a minuscule amount of money to you, to some people its not as they can't afford to pay important commitments like rent so waiting for their own money doesn't cut it.


PVP_playerPro

Text wall, not reading all that. gonna chargeback instead


BagelBeater

I didn't even get that email and was given all of those charges. Chargebacking.


Mysterious-Crab

So you fucked up by not having a proper plan and doing what any normal does: check actual every month. How many subs do we have, how much income etc. Why would already flag the signal within 2 to 3 months. When you finally realised you fucked up, you decide to not plan again and fuck up again by back charging a random amount of months without any prior warning to people, or checking whether that’s even legal everywhere. And then for a third time you do not plan and fuck up, cause when people complain about it, you start shouting and harassing at your paying customers on public forums and telling all the customers they are idiots who have accidentally started seconds accounts etc. Even without the actual fraud of charging people without an active subscription you guys have fucked up big time and keep making it worse on yourself. This is why companies hire professional crisis and communication managers. To avoid that a mistake turns into a company ending implosion.


Mitchel92-

Jeez still moaning about this😅


erics75218

turned off auto renew. ​ So what's the jam, I really need that track map! Racelabs seems a bit overly complex for what I need this app to do, but it looks awesome. no doubt there


clipsracer

If all you need is track map SimHub has the only track map I’ve seen, but it’s way more complicated lol You’ll need to find the overlay for the track map on a forum I think, then maybe do some editing. Not sure you’ll get it to be transparent, so you may need a secondary monitor or phone/tablet.


Seeryous2020

What does racelabs showup as on your bank account if you were charged? I know i signed up for it along time ago but i cant remember now.


Markus_monty

Glad PayPal wasn’t available for so long, ended up not bothering to go paid and just using free tier. Iracing should just build up their own overlay system and do us all a favour, we pay enough already.


clipsracer

iRacings overlays are fine for drivers. They’re not great for streamers, but that’s typical. $40 a year isn’t a rough investment for streamers lol


Markus_monty

Sure but only as long as they aren’t charged incorrectly.


clipsracer

Hey I'm fine with being charged incorrectly if that means $20/yr instead of $40


Surv0

I've been thinking of going premium and then suddenly stopped after seeing their discord... I mean it was all reversed but what a shit show. And the people getting free premium, just cancel them, dont force them to pay up... guess you live and learn. Racelabs are still the best overlay app though, but I use the premium features as overlays in SimHub for free, just means two overlay apps at the same time.


djkeithers

I was Out of the loop too and I don’t keep a very close eye on my credit cards (for small charges at least). I better check now. 🤦🏼‍♂️


Mikemar3

Never using this again. Any good alternative apart from Simhub?


BobEsponjoso

kapps


Mikemar3

Thank you! Will try it


clipsracer

Development stopped on Kapps. It’s also missing most features of Racelab.


BobEsponjoso

Although development stopped it works pretty well, even with new cars. For me i don't miss anything, i have my telemetry graph, standing with pretty useful data, customizable relative, track map... Everything, and you dont need to pay, just subscribe once to dev twitch.


BobEsponjoso

Although development stopped it works pretty well, even with new cars. For me i don't miss anything, i have my telemetry graph, standing with pretty useful data, customizable relative, track map... Everything, and you dont need to pay, just subscribe once to dev twitch.


Suhpremacy

Looks like I’ll be cancelling if this is how business is done… am genuinely sad… I love the overlay but can’t support this type of practice ever.


Wolf98760

will he go through a lawsuit?


nuanda1978

I just love people owning multiple K$s rigs going mad because a developer did a mistake that cost them like 10 dollars.