Ask HN: CloudFlare won't refund a plan cancelled on first day of billing period

First, I love CloudFlare and recommend them a lot to clients and friends.

We recently had a DDOS attack and enabled the business plan on two of our domains. Initially we weren't sure which one was under attack.

Thank you CloudFlare for providing a great service, it's well worth the $200 when an attack is under way.

The attack lasted about a week. We cancelled the business plan on one of the two domains before the renewal date but the second one we did not cancel until we saw the charge come through.

So I contacted CloudFlare support and they are indicating that even though our invoice says Aug 4 - Sept 4, they charged my client $200 on Aug 4th and we downgraded the account right after that the same day and contacted them for a refund.

They are indicating that their policy is that they do not provide refunds after a charge is made.

They did say they credited this account $200, but said it won't show up as a credit we can see in the dashboard which doesn't give me much confidence that there is a credit there. This particular domain didn't happen to be under attack so we don't plan on enabling Pro or Business on it in the future. So I don't expect we would ever need this credit.

On one hand I appreciate CloudFlare having a free plan and providing excellent services so I don't really mind 'donating' $200 to them for a plan we aren't using.

On the other hand I recommend them a lot and I do not feel this is a fair business practice.

They should offer prorated refunds of services not used. Especially when you cancel the same day they charge your card for a renewal.

It's a typical thing for SaaS users to cancel a service when they see the charge if they aren't using the service any longer.

Just wanted to see if anyone else has ran in to this with CloudFlare or if anyone from CloudFlare can reach out and give us a hand with this.

Thanks in advance.