Quick heads up for anyone evaluating cloud fax services. I will state that In fairness, I didn’t check the data residency details ahead of time—that’s on me. This is more of a rant about having "a refund policy" that effectively means "no refunds"

I recently spun up a Fax.Plus (Alohi) account for a simple use case—just needed a fax number and low-volume capability.

Here’s where things went sideways:

1. Data residency (EU) not clearly disclosed pre-purchase: I only found out after provisioning that data is hosted in Europe. That’s a non-starter for a lot of orgs.
2. Changing residency requires a much higher-tier plan (\~$100 vs $9/month): The only option they gave was upgrading just to be able to change residency, which for our use case, is a non-starter.
3. Refund policy = effectively no refunds: I requested a refund within \~30 minutes of the charge and was denied.
4. Outcome: Very rigid “policy is policy” response, with no real path to resolution.

This could’ve been a non-issue with:

• clearer pre-purchase disclosure
• or a basic grace period

Instead, it turned into a dispute over a sub-$10 charge - which is honestly more about principle than cost. At this point, the time spent on the email chain probably cost them more than the charge itself. Not to mention this bit of bad press.