I was really enjoying my 4 hour trial, enough so that I still had a couple hours left when I decided to get my linode. However, the registration/purchase process leaves a lot to be desired. First, it seems I was flagged as a 'risk' for fraud, with my credit card. I'm not sure why, perhaps they just don't get many women who are sysadmins/web developers... Anyway, then I had to take a picture of my license and credit card front and back and send them in. Okay, I figured... well, if I have to, it's not like I didn't already type in the info, they'll get my picture (worst drivers license picture ever!) and my birth date but not a huge deal, but then when I went to upload the file with the images, they had a max file upload size of 1M. Considering these were pictures, put in a PDF at print quality (I assume they'd want print quality), that was harder than it sounds. They don't even have proper error checking / messages on submit.

Anyway, hopefully the process won't take very long as I was looking forward to using my new VPS tonight. As a new customer, I really hope it's going to be smooth sailing from here on in.

Thanks for activating. I was worried I'd be waiting longer. This is my first VPS (personal) so I'm excited anyway... fix your upload form!

Hello,

I'm sorry for the hoops you had to jump through to get your account activated. Sadly, we deal with fraudulent signups so frequently that some type of net is required to prevent the baddies from getting in. Although we do our best to evaluate signups with the limited information provided, it comes down to a judgement call by the operator handling the signup. We try to balance the risk vs reward of accepting signups that we're on-the-fence about, but sometimes that call is conservative and legitimate customers are ensnared. We are constantly looking at improving our evaluation criteria, and cases like this are used to improve our procedures and evaluation criteria and training. I'm sorry it had to be you.

We'll look into the upload form limits.

You should be all set now. Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback. I'm in no position to pass judgement on DMV photos

Welcome aboard!

-Chris

Every time a company asks me for too much information I tell them to cancel my order and I go elsewhere. I've had companies ask for copies of credit cards, passport numbers, utility bills, notarized copies of various things and all sorts of silly stuff. I always just tell them I won't do it so cancel my order and I go to the competition.

Linode has never asked me for too much information. If they did I would not be here.

Companies like Linode have to balance out the risk of losing customers by making opening accounts to onerous vs the risk of losing money to fraud.

I believe Linode uses a two-tier process; if the initial data trips a flag then additional data is requested, otherwise the account is opened. I expect most accounts don't trip that flag.

_________________
Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

"Me too".

And the upload limit hasn't been fixed btw. My pdf was a tiny 1.4 megs... (Bizarrely, when I converted it to b&w it went up to 2.6.. so.. sigh.)

At least putting a note on the page would be helpful. I could have just broken it into 2 uploads..