All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Cloud at Cost - bait and switch alert
CAC offered a $35 lifetime VPS offer, which I ordered back in Sep 2014. Since then it's been absolutely garbage - almost any time I go to login it was down. Since it was a lifetime purchase, I didn't prioritize complaining that much. I finally did back in Nov 2016.
Well, apparently in "March" (I guess of this year?) they changed their terms of service to say that all one time products now have to pay a $9 custodial fee per year. There was no notification, he says that the terms were updated on their site and pulled the "you agree to all the terms simply by using the service, and we reserve the right to change anytime"
Okay, sure, legally - I guess you're covered. I asked for a refund, he won't give me one. The principal of it is what drives me nuts. I am getting termination notices on a lifetime account. I can understand companies who go out of business... they were offering a lifetime service, getting a bunch of money up front, and then realizing later on "well we need those people to keep paying us" is NOT ethical at all. It's cheap tactics. They didn't go out of business. They stayed alive, began offering better speced deals, and completely forcing out the lifetime customers.
I wouldn't have given them a dime if that was the case. I only bought it because it seemed like a limited time offer I should jump on. Since I have a lot of VPSes and use them very infrequently, this one wasn't critical... but wow. I just had to report this.
Comments
I'm not seeing any bait and switch tactics here. Please update your thread title to something more accurate and less clickbaity like "Cloud at a Cost - TOS updated".
Trust me lifetime is not even possible.
Explain to me how you would run a lifetime vps successfully, indefinitely, and then we can talk about this being a scam.
This was already mentioned a few weeks ago: https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/115459/cloudatcost-not-so-one-time-fee-anymore
Taking money for something you know you can't provide (lifetime vps) is the definition of scam.
I was referring to them updating their TOS.
Technically the fee is for the account, not the services. A clever loophole indeed and a great deal for people with multiple services. As for "bait and switch" it does not apply here.
I'm referring to this part
By running a scam operation knowing full well it will either deadpool (making it a very "brief lifetime") or bait and switch down the road.
While I do get that it was a bait & switch, please keep in mind that to have a valid complaint you have to admit for falling for the bait.
In what world could you possibly come to the conclusion that anyone could offer you something for life without recurring cost, or a huge payment up front, which takes physical finite resources and external utility services? One might conclude that you were asking for this, or even waiting for it to happen and hoping to ride the complaint train. Both are easier to swallow than the notion that you believed that service could be provided. They may be scum, but you actually gave them money for an obviously deceptive business practice that could have never succeeded.
Last time when I was logging into my account I was asked to agree with the new user agreement and I gladly clicked on "I do not agree" and I was told my account was deleted and services cancelled.
But I got invoice recently asking me to pay the account service fee. So definitely their billing system is shitty.
But that does not mean you should expect to pay $35 for a literally "lifelong" VPS, nor should you expect the existence of a perpetual motion machine. Does that make any sense to you?
Not be definition. Bait and switch refers to advertising an unbelievable deal and then you come in and they replace it with a more expensive model. They advertised a VPS at $35 for the lifetime of the account, he bought that VPS for the price advertised. Now they've changed their TOS to add a maintenance fee to the account, he's still not paying more for the service just the account. Now if they charged $9/year for each service then that would be one thing but they've added the fee to the account regardless of the number of services you have so it's not adding a cost to the service. It's still extremely shitty that the company is pulling this crap, but it's not a scam and it's definitely not bait and switch.
True. I'll call it close enough in terms of moral equivalency and let it slide.
Fair, I was talking more about him expecting too much, but I got my points crossed.
I don't expect too much, other than what I paid for.
TOS updated to start charging people recurring fees for a one-time charge. That is effectively a bait and switch.
While you may say "what do you expect" - I called their bluff, it wasn't an expensive one, but it's not my responsibility for them advertising a lifetime deal and then figuring out creative ways ("account fee" and probably purposely letting the lifetime VPS customers having unreliable service)
I don't consider it ethical and companies and people pulling this crap should be put on blast.
Since you bought in 2014, its already been 2 years.
When did they start charging an account fee?
It's not ethical, but enabling it doesn't make one blameless either. When you paid them money you kept the circus running a little longer, you enabled the continuation of their service. Collectively, with the other LET members who did the same, you all probably caused the sham to continue running for long enough that some other people who don't even post here got caught in it too that wouldn't have if they had ended it sooner.
The last thing I do when I see unethical business practice is to fork over cash. I cannot, for the life of me, understand how anyone else can see it as unethical/recognize this for what it is and then reward it with money. Mind blown.
What are you talking about? I bought it years ago, I haven't given them any more money. I'm not giving them a dime. I'm letting the service expire. I mean, it was garbage service anyway - I wonder if I was entitled to an SLA and I could argue their own terms back? If only I had more time. I just wanted to report this company to the LET/LEB community, since it's not like there is any other place to share for companies like this.
Let's be honest here. A large part of LET simply jumps from one unsustainable offer to the next with a drama thread in between how the provider either changed the contract, went deadpool or has a performance so bad the service might as well not even exist.
Just a few threads down I see the virmach special offering a 1 vCore 512mb RAM vps for $5 per year and the drama didn't even wait until the offer ended before it started.
If we didn't have an income of new people falling for this time and time again this community would be dead cause truly good LET offers only appear a few days per year.
So you see a Ferrari with a $100 price tag you expect a Ferrari? must be nice in your world, either nice or a life of constant disappointment when your naivety punches you in the face every day.
If you had this service for 40 years they would have been providing it to you for about $0.07 yes 7 cents per month... give yourself a god damn shake and stop plowing money into these ridiculous schemes.
side note: I have some shares I can sell you in the big 3, snake oil, sky hooks, and skirting board ladders.
One time fee is not possible. I don't expect LIFE TIME SERVICE.
Coming up next: panel price of just 1$ per login.
My point didn't require a second payment.
why in the world should that behaviour not be called scam?
if it wasn't about that lifetime/onetime charge here, would any provider who suddenly starts charging additional service fees "for the account" considered to be alright? I doubt that.
and if the account wasn't part of the lifetime contract or initial deal, then please simply provide the lifetime service independently without any account.
next time someone starts charging fees for visiting their site, changing their tos or even for the air they are breathing while sending you some advertisement mails. of course simply because they can do that by just changing their tos, which everyone agreed to...
cut that crap.
It's funny to see how everyone is calling this whole situation a scam and getting pissed, as if they thought that paying $35 one time would be a feasible business plan to hosting a lifetime VPS.
Everyone knew ahead of time that this wouldn't last long term, and I'm sure many people still chose to invest in this product because hell, it sounded like a good deal at the time, and it ran for much longer than expected before the company took a more stable economic approach.
At this point, nobody should complain. This was long expected and it was a good deal at the time. Either choose to stick it out and pay the fee, or don't renew your services and enjoy that you were able to get a VPS for a duration (depending on how long ago you purchased their product) at a fairly cheap price.
Also before anyone starts bringing up the quality of their service, remember it was $35 for a one time payment and some of you had a server with them for over 2 years. Paying $35 for a 2+ year VPS doesn't give you much leverage when talking about quality.
Sure it is, but the problem is that it was an obvious scam from the beginning. We've been calling it that for years. Now that we're here years later, finally seeing them admit that their offer was impossible, I'd like to take a moment to call out everyone who made it possible for them to do it this long.
Cloudatcost may be dishonest and running a horrible business, but that's not really new. What's new is that I get to point to people now and say "You see the thing that everyone, even you, knew would happen? You see that it happened? You see proof in hand that it was dishonest, even though you really knew it all along? Yeah you supported that, you paid them for their dishonesty."
I'm tired of talking about how stupid and dishonest their lifetime offers are. Been there, done that. Now I'm railing on the people who voted with their wallets for dishonest business practices. You have no right to complain about dishonest business practices if you're the first one to open your wallet every time a new one comes around, and a lot of people did just that. So they won't find a friend in me on this issue.
I pay 3.5$ actually!
It's only money after all and not like u've lost your house to a force majeur like a tornado or a bank... Nothing lasts forever and "lifetime" implies just that. It's not like they specified who's lifetime that was or did they?
My advice to you is to forget about it and move on cause life's too short to waste your time with these nuisances or the trolls(spoiled brats) in this thread. 
I totally get your point and agree with you that people buying those offers are enabling providers to practice such crap in the first place.
yet it doesn't change the fact, that I'd clearly call it scam if they suddenly add fees for something you need to use an offered service at all. as I already tried to point out I wouldn't agree with that practice on any provider regardless the offer I booked before ;-)
I got my degree in Criminology. One of the courses that we had to take was victimology. A concept that I learned in that class was called "victim blaming."
Now, victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially responsible for the harm that befell them.
If I can quote my own statement at https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/2257021#Comment_2257021
Common argument... Well, you should have known and it is quite obvious that this was an unreasonable and unrealistic offer!
If what Mike503 said is truth than it is illegal. If I used the same logic in applying the "victim blaming" concept then since @Jarland knew that it was a scam then he and Low End Talk forum is responsible because it was not moderated when the initial offer was posted.
How ridiculous is that! I have done a lot of illegal stuff and I can tell you from experience that before the Lord saved me that I paid it back in multiples of the little money that I though that I had gained.
In truth, it is not worth it to be dishonest. Not to say I do all things right, I pray and ask for the Lord's help but it is sad to see a person bashed because they were taken advantage of. God bless you!
While it has some value in some discussions, here that would be a phrase used to shut down logical discussion by drawing correlation to and stimulating an emotional connection to events where that phrase is more commonly used, which is in more serious circumstances where people are physically harmed. Though I prefer we don't make this about it, discussion about rape is the only example where I commonly hear the phrase "victim blaming" becomes a hot topic. We're obviously not going to compare the two. However, by using it here, it's no oddity that it will trigger an emotional connection to the events where it is more commonly used elsewhere, which are typically highly emotional discussions. While I appreciate the effort, I'm a bit too seasoned in debate to waver at the notion.
I doubt your criminology degree taught you that victims are never to blame for what happens to them. Perhaps in more serious and personally scarring circumstances it is insensitive to engage in such open discussion and best not said, but we're talking about buying a hosting service that everyone knew was impossible to provide, and that almost no one who didn't know that would have a need for anyway. We're not talking about more harmful or scarring situations.
Cloudatcost has never posted an offer here, and would have been quickly told to GTFO. We let our members discuss offers they find, if they want. Upon discussing this offer they consistently railed on Cloudatcost for selling a service that they all knew was impossible to provide. It is a well known and commonly held view on LowEndTalk among it's members that Cloudatcost is a scam because it sells something that it logically cannot provide. I have made no efforts to censor the discussions around this, nor do I regret not doing so.
Bottom line is if you're a technically inclined person who can benefit from a Linux VPS and you purchased this, you are intelligent enough to know that you funded a dishonest business practice. What they did here is inexcusable, but it's phase 2 of inexcusable, not phase 1. It was inexcusable when they sold it, it was inexcusable that someone bought it, and it was inexcusable that they changed it. Three inexcusable actions occurred here. Two by Cloudatcost, one by their customer.
If I walk into a place knowing that I will be harmed when I walk in, I am a victim and I share the blame. If you purchase a product that you know cannot logically be provided, and you get burned, you are a victim and you do share the blame.
You as well friend