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speedykvm.com changed my recurring price without informing me
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There are some things the community should continue to police by itself, I submit that this is one of them. We, LET staff, should not be a continually growing list of babysitters. My honest opinion. Bad hosts will be allowed to post here, unpopular hosts will be allowed to post here, hosts that piss people off will be allowed to post here. Because we shouldn't be playing favorites, neither should we do so in reverse as any kind of overcompensation for personal opinions.
I completely agree costs always go up each year, every business has the right to increase prices. No profit means a weak business no one wants to go down that road.
Customers can vote with there dollars with who they want to do business with.
Recurring means ....happening many times, or happening again (dictionary definition)
I like SpeedyKVM, they are top notch for there service, I have services with them.
If your going to send a welcome email and have a recurring price on the client's portal your not being clear to your customers, hopefully it can be corrected so there is no misunderstandings
C+ there is a bulk pricing update tool built in to WHMCS that works just fine.
I have had to raise prices by 0.50c p/year once, that was for LES which is done at cost or at a small loss to begin with, everyone was emailed with notice and options.
I don't think some justified price increases are unacceptable, I don't think anyone here is saying that.
But in this instance there was obviously no intention of honoring it or properly notifying customers, then gave excuses about cost increases while still selling at the old price and avoiding the tough questions.
The intent was obvious I have literally illustrated that, they did a good enough job of reiterating it too, lets see what action/ judgment is taken then.
Price rises, passing on costs from vendors, suppliers, fair enough. Everyone's gotta eat.
The OP has the SEA-SSD30 plan. For the price with a 30% discount to be $16.8, the original price must have been $24 back in March.
Price of the SEA-SSD30 plan is now $80. That's a 230%-ish price rise, in 10 months.
Have costs really gone up that much?
EDIT: Price confirmed - https://web.archive.org/web/20170107064353/https://speedykvm.com/
Well the seattle location of theirs was scaled down due to cost increases by the DC. Additionally now if you want to deploy to seattle / NYC for a standard server off their website you will pay a higher cost for those locations: https://order.incero.com/edit-configuration/5573e0776cb4d6ad16accf9349aae71a
It makes sense to me
Well I don't think its exactly raising the bar but fair enough, clear bait and switch won't impact your provider tag, not a great thing to advertise but fair enough, feels like 'the bar' was just lowered a little imo.
The only lower it could possibly go is GVH/ServerHand level.
See that's where I see people asking for an exception to be made here, for unfair treatment, for mob rule. Because it's simply not true. We've never, that I honestly recall, gone after a provider here in any way for choosing later not to renew at the offered price. It only ever mattered that there was no indication at time of post that they knew it wouldn't be recurring, or when they didn't offer the sold product for the sold term.
And what would removing the provider tag even do? Make a few people pat themselves on the back? What would it accomplish here? I know a few people would just be happy to see me remove the tag from my best friend because it excites them to cause drama, but I'm not entertaining that.
No rules were broken. No we shouldn't add a rule every single time 3-5 people get upset about something.
Then that's completely fair.
Why not send an email to customers letting them know prices in those locations will be up significantly across the board, with more details being provided at renewal time?
So, there we have it, folks.
If we assume good intentions, Incero offered the $24 plan and 30% discount in good faith, then got hit by cost increases that made the plan unsustainable somewhere along the way.
The plan was increased to $60 around May, then somewhere between October and now, increased it again, to $80.
Customers are still receiving their 30% recurring discount (in fact, more than that) off the cost of the current plan price.
I think this is a fairly unique set of circumstances though, I don't need to go over it again, it was clearly deliberate deception from the outset, they confirmed that themselves.
Either way you're the boss, the decision is let it go so I will let it go, but lets not pretend it is 100% above board.
No let's do pretend that it's above board. Since when have I ever done everything that a handful of people have asked of me here? They don't need s provider tag to do anything they've done here since 2016. Requesting that I remove it is a joke. Symbolic actions are for satisfying people who are being emotional.
Was it though?
If they had significant increases from their DC, it's not unreasonable to pass on the costs, especially if the original plan was a zero profit/loss-leader jobbie.
Customer communication was something that I think the majority of us agree wasn't good enough, but clearly the patented Incero 'Don't give 2 fucks' approach is alive and well. It's not news to anyone.
Crap, sure, but it doesn't feel as cold as deliberate deception to me.
Still, wouldn't touch them with @WSS's.
I don't know anything about the VPS side, but this was communicated on the dedicated and cololocation side in August of 2016 for Seattle.
An extract:
I never said I was up for a threesome with two enormous dicks anyhow.
Well that's a bit different.
The $24 plan was being offered in March 2017.
I'm with Ant now, this sounds like a load of old guff.
Given that the provider can raise the price due to cost increment, I didn't recall seeing many times where a provider lower my recurring price due to cost down. Like, I'm paying $7/mon last year and next month I'm paying $5, and next year $3/mon.
I can't imagine why these charities are not doing that for you.
Fuck off.
I would be happy with, say, a general price increase as all others have done over the years. My insurance are all going up 10% pretty much every renewal. Having a 300%+ price increase would certainly have me shopping around.
It certainly looks as though these are incentive prices, and our issue is that these appear, in no way, to be stated for the initial term of service only - or many folks would not be interested in them. In my opinion, this is not only bait and switch, but is intentionally devised in a way to not tell the client that this is only a promotional price.
@jarland While I respect your wishes and attempts to allow us to self-regulate, it's pretty obvious that sometimes that doesn't work. To allow someone to show one price and then change it at the next period while presenting no data as to this price increase is shithouse, and LET will certainly lose respect for many folks with the Provider tag, not just those who pull such tactics. If this is allowed on the basis that we can't trust them to NOT modify the terms without so much as instructing us, what's to keep them from changing the service, too? "Sure, you paid for 1G, but prices are up, so you can pay more, or get 128MB for the rest of the term." Please prove me wrong.
I can't tell if you are great at deadpan, or just a huge dick. The animu avatar doesn't help me to discern.
How is that obvious and where is it failing? Define failure and success. What have I done to allow anyone to do anything? How many people here respect @AnthonySmith less because speedykvm increased their prices? Have I not at every turn specified that the provider tag is not and will not be an endorsement?
Let's see- you sign up for a service, and WHMCS shows you the initial price, and the recurring price. That recurring price is the same as the initial price.
Two weeks (now possibly a month) before the end of term, your prices have magically increased 333%, with no other notice from the service you just paid for. This is designed specifically to force the user to pay more, or fuck off. Two weeks (or a month) is rarely enough time to migrate services, as you are well aware, without having issues crop up.
So, I see this intent as snaring you with a cheap price while showing you that you will maintain this price, and then kicking you in the balls later.
You appear to be taking the stance that "Shit happens". Hey, fine, but I feel that rather there should be a way to identify those providers who will gladly give you what you offered the first time, but when it's intended to raise you the next time, it needs to be plainly and clearly stated that it's a promotional price only. I don't know of any other providers active in LET who have outright pulled this shit. Most just do a runner or convert your payment into credits that they know you'll never use. This is even more malicious, as it is staged and planned.
I also feel that by them being allowed to pull this tactic draws further question onto ALL providers if they're allowed to do this. Again, this wasn't an "Oh shit our house burned down we need money", this was a planned, staged change of pricing with absolutely no attempt or wishes to notify the client, because they can soak them harder the next time around.
Although you do not say the Provider tag is an endorsement, many of us trust that if they've managed to earn it, they're not completely shit. This will change as more providers decide to alter the pricing a month/etc before renewal and pull the same horseshit. If there are no repercussions for doing this, then this will not change, except for further malaise and distrust for everyone who holds the badge.
So you're saying that LET could become WHT?
Edit :and we all know WHT is frown upon around here, or so I heard.
I meant it would mean dire consequences for CC, because folks would begin to trust LEB less (and hence their paid-for spots worth less), but not so dire that LET would turn into WHT.
Agreed, and seems like great feedback for the provider.
Let's be clear, I'm taking a stance I continually take: Every single time something happens that someone does not like should not represent a burden on the LET staff or the need for additional rules in our community. Especially when whatever it was that happened occurred outside of the scope of our rules or the boundaries we typically hold ourselves to. We do not have a responsibility to regulate the market, we simply protect readers from known scams. Nothing that occurred here is evidently a scam, though I see how you could argue it by disagreeing on intent but it hurts the case for it that no one has failed to receive the service they paid for, which is typically where we draw the line on what is or isn't a scam.
It's not that it was allowed or disallowed. Not every occurrence within the market is going to be the burden of LET staff. You should ALWAYS be questioning providers here, with or without the tag. We've gone to every reasonable length I can think of to clarify that it is not an endorsement, short of flashing neon banners.
I think there you've identified a failure among "many of us" and not the staff here. The provider tag is permission to post a thread in the Offers forum. If someone is posting a thread in the Offers forum and breaking the rules, let us know.
You are my favourite shitposter @WSS and now you go and post a well reasoned argument about this...what a #DICK
Just a joke. Maybe it's too hard to be recognized.
If speedykvm antics are allowed then the people that don't yet know @AnthonySmith will have a harder time figuring out that @AnthonySmith is a nice guy. In short, LET will be less helpful.
I think that's what @WSS is trying to explain.
That's what WHM says, yet the consensus around here seems to be that WHM is a shill house that protect providers with paid tags. I remember that at one point there was a discussion about how to make the tag more "in your face". So there's that.
And how do you propose that they be disallowed? What change are you proposing?
How is this not bait-and-switch? Had they plainly said "this is a promotional price", we'd have no qualms. That they've gone out of their way to be snide about it with a "fuck you" attitude, well, I know who won't be getting renewed or used in the future, but the fact that they're deliberately doing this to screw the customer should be a concern of ColoCrossing, as they are representing themselves on a service which is maintained through our graceous moderators, and hosted by CC.
To do nothing is to condone it.
I don't disagree with you on this point. I'm just saying that it makes the tag fairly useless beyond meaning the user can post in the offers subforum.
Fair enough. I won't trust anyone with the Provider tag.
But isn't that the whole problem here? SpeedyKVM advertising a recurring offer that's not actually recurring in practice, and wasn't ever designed to be. Or is there something I'm missing here?