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Questions about what to expect with some of these deals
Kia ora from New Zealand.
I'm a novice webDev who tinkers with frameworks in my spare time. Until last year I was using a managed and expensive reseller service. Not having root access forced me to look @ other options and a friend pointed me to LowEndBox.
I was blown away by some of the offers but thought to be patient with the idea, "If it's sounds too good to be true, it probably is." I ended up choosing a storage option VPS with 100GB and low specs. This was a dev environment and playground more than anything else. I had a couple of sites that I was hosting as well and since they were low traffic I moved them over.
It was a huge learning curve for me to set up and configure the server. Awesome experience though.
A couple of weeks ago this provider sent a poorly worded email that said I needed to choose a new package as they were no longer offering the one I signed up for. They weren't asking for more money but telling me that I needed to choose a new package within four days. I actually didn't see this email and somehow it ended up in my trash folder.
I'm a busy person with a full time and demanding job so I can go weeks without even looking at the domains I have hosted. I didn't see the email and didn't notice the downtime until the day before yesterday. I contacted them via their ticketing thing and they took a day to respond with:
"I don't even sure if your data still there. this mail was sent since 27th March and dead line was 1st April and now it's 11th April."
Holy what?!?! They just unrecoverably deleted everything with that much notice?!
I asked them for a refund and they said they'd only do a partial one. Still, my server is gone as I didn't make an ISO. My individual projects have git repos so I haven't lost the actual stuff but all the work I put into setting up the server is gone now.
Is this normal?
Comments
No this is not normal. If you look closely, you'll find companies that seem too good to be true, but have been around for years. Take @Cam for example, he sells VPS boxes for 2 bucks a year. It doesn't come with dedicated ipv4, but still, that's dirt cheap, and he delivers. I can suggest AlphaVPS, Hetzner, inception hosting and VMHaus, just to name a few. They're not likely to ever pull this kind of stunt. And if I recall correctly, AlphaVPS is still priced at 12 euro / year, just look for their black Friday promotions.
Being given a short notice of impending doom is a common sight here on LET if you choose some unknown provider.
Like Mr.S indicated, choose bigger boys and they will likely honor their package.
Or you were baited into a trap. Some do it. Lure people with dirt cheap prices and then demand them to upgrade later, citing that it won't be supported/dropped.
as they are dirt cheap, buy two VPS from different providers next time.
use one for proper backups.
repeating the setup will help with the learning process ;-)
We for example still have our free sponsorship VPS-es running, so I can say that we honor deals.
Shameless Plug
But anyway, op choose a bigger provider or buy multiple VPS from different ones. In case of downtime, just swap DNS records. You can also setup scripts to do it for you.
Pick a good one from the top providers list. Get a slice™ or a linode, or a DO, etc.
Wait, what? No this story is not believable. Sometimes we see VPS hosts shut off their servers and vanish (called "deadpool", "pulling a runner" etc) on little or no notice, so users lose their data and money. It sucks but it's a recognizable situation that usually results from the host mismanaging their finances and not paying their own datacenter bills, so the DC pulls the plug. IOW it's a garden-variety business failure, sad for the people affected, but not exactly a novel phenomenon in the wider world. It follows from the basic precept that there's an unlimited amount of incompetence in the universe, so some of it finds its way into the hosting industry.
On the other hand, more competent hosts are able to keep their stuff running sustainably, or else close things out in a fair and orderly manner if they decide they have to exit the field. VPS hosting isn't rocket science, so someone with a bit of technical and business clue can make a go of it and see if it works out without too much drama.
You're describing a host incompetent enough to shut off your active service on 4 days notice, but not incompetent enough to have to go out of business completely. That's a very tiny target, like flipping a coin and having it land on edge instead of coming up heads or tails. We don't often hear of anything like that.
I won't even ask you to "name and shame" since it sounds like a story that's missing important detail. We get that all the time too, and without getting all the info we can't make a sound judgment.
Anyway, there's plenty of good hosts here. If you post the basic VPS specs and server location that you want (maybe in the requests subforum) then you'll get trustworthy recommendations from LET members.
Well, now you have. This is exactly what happened. Your coin analogy interesting but arbitrary. :P
Thanks for that tip. I have pretty simple requirements. Now those are x2 as I want to rsync one server to another as backup in case this next attempt goes "pear-shaped".
Update:
Now LetBox is messaging me privately through LowEndTalk saying that I need to remove my negative comments here and then they'll process my refund or give me 10 months free service.
It took all of this to get them into gear. I've since moved service to another reliable provider here and just asked for a pro-rata refund from the time they deleted all of my data with four days notice.
Buyer beware. LetBox is not a company I would ever recommed anyone dealing with again.
Ifnsomething’s too good to be true it probably is, that’s proven over and over again. If you want to risk it, you do daily backups and you accept the fact that it one day disappears with little or no notice, else you need to choose a reputable provider who is less likely to pull a stunt like that...
Some still think the bullying tactic works in 2018, eh.
wtf LetBox!!!
rip your money, but glad you mention your host here. so we can avoid it at all cost. Hopefully his provider status revoked too, since he doing shady practice, asking customer to remove review before processing refund.
@key900 :
Let's say you do my pro-rata refund without me removing these truthful comments here so that others don't fall into the same trap?
For readers, here is evidence that I'm not fabricating any of this.
--------- original email from letbox sent on March 27th --------------
Dear ______,Since there is a lot of bugs and issues with LXC we will shutdown LXC services , We provided 2 options1 - Moving to KVM without any price incressed and same configurations2 - Moving to OpenVZPlease send us back Immediately all LXC will be terminated @ 30th March----------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't catch this email in time so my data was deleted. I was using their service for a low traffic website so I don't check its up status often. On April the 11th I noticed it was down and I couldn't log in via SSH to reboot. I opened a helpdesk ticket with them but they only agreed on a pro-rata refund after I threatened to go public (as you see here). They also countered with this gem:
" ... stop threatening us we will set you at fraudrecord"I didn't do anything fraudulent so I'm not sure where that came from.
BUT they still have not processed my refund as of the 29th of April.
The latest correspondance with LetBox was via LowEndTalk's messaging where @key900 contested the PayPal dispute that I attempted to open and asked me:
" ... remove your negativity responses and i will happy do pro-refund"Summary:
I've put everything here transparantly for your discerenment when deciding whether or not to use LetBox as a provider. I hope this helps someone in the future.
@ekendra
To be clear, FraudRecord allows the removal of fraudulent records @ https://fraudrecord.com/removal-process. It should not be used as a threat, and I'm sure they'll see you through if you submit the right details.
Now, I'm not saying I don't believe you, but screenshots would improve your credibility.
Ok, @FlamesRunner. Good idea. Here's the original email.
And the correspondance via LowEndTalk:
Well then, good luck @ekendra.
Seems like everything is in order, so I'll side with you on this one.
Luckily we have a rule for these practices. (Misc. Rules. 4.)
OK Im not going to side with anyone here but
The email was not hard to follow. I could understand it and english is not my first language.
I want to see tickets not just conversations via pm.
When did you file the paypal dispute or did you even file one?
I don't like the fact what the provider did either threatening you to remove comments or not to get a refund. I will escalate that matter.
The provider should have at least gave the customers more time to make sure they were properly notified. As a provider you know weeks in advance if something is not working out for them. They should of better prepared themselves by beta testing products before you putting them out to paying customers.
Issuing an end-of-life (EOL) for a product with three days notice is pretty incredible, and not getting positive confirmation from paying customers who have active services is even more incredible. To then not even keep a backup of paying customers LXC instances who did not yet respond is icing on the cake.
Satisfaction guaranteed,
Or just keeping a copy of everything, just in case something like this happens. The speed at which they turned off services and then deleted data bit them in the rear end this time.
Hello,
I wasn't here to got this ticket however i will provide what i collected from this case with the screenshots as well.
@PieNotEvenEaten
We send he notification at 27th May and the services shutdown in 9th April this not True that we shutdown it after 4 days. We give people more time to thin about it.
The Staff sent the OP new KVM access with the same resource without any cost increased as we promised 2GB RAM KVM $25 year
We gives more time after dead line almost 14+ days
proof that we shutdown the node at 9th April
Client start threatening the staff to go public if we don't do refund , The Staff said he would do pro- refund for the left of his time but after few minutes the OP open dispute at PayPal
More over i 'd to resolve this ASAP and yes true i asked the OP and i'd like to refund or give 10x months more of the services this no began like threatening OP just would to be appreciate if he do so.
Even after dispute which totally against our TOS and we all know how much dispute cost the providers and have to charged him $25 for that but we ignore all this and still happy to refund the pro-refund or give extra free services if he want whatever he like just ask. the OP stop respond what he want refund or extra months.
at last I will take this as learning lesson for me and my staff to handle it better, i would admitted my apology if there is anything goes wrong it would be miss-understanding from both sides.
We don't give 4 days we extend dead line for 14 days
Well, I am on the fence here, on one hand I really do not like someone's money being taken for a service that cannot be provided, I also hate peoples money being held ransom in exchange for removing comments etc, yes misc rule 4 pretty much applies.
On the other hand, if your service has been down for 10 days and you only just notice, I have little sympathy in regard to your claims of your data being important etc, and in reverse I really don't think threats of public shitposting is the right way to reach resolution with a provider.
I suppose the most important factor here for me is, what was initially offered in exchange, was it like for like but just on a different platform? If so then the provider offered to make you whole already and essentially gave 14 days before doing anything to data.
If like for like on a different platform was not offered then @key900 none of this is surprising and you need to refund him regardless.
Everyone please keep in mind that if the email ended up in the users trash some how then the notice period is ultimately irrelevant as this would have happened even if the host gave 90 days notice.
I have done service shutdowns in the past for legacy stuff, I am in the midst of doing a Xen PV eol in Phoenix right now, people get 30 days notice to migrate to kvm with a promise of data retention for a further 30 days which in reality I will keep for 60 days to cover myself because the hard truth is customers rarely bother reading service announcements emails, regardless of efforts made, some always slip through and this happens.
So, first off, OP did not name the company. Yet somehow @key900 was able to deduce that it was about his company, and shoot the OP a PM telling him to remove the negative comment in order to get the refund... !memebot bird_culture
Furthermore, LETBOX expected the OP to migrate his own websites within a few days. Yet 1 month after shutting down all LXC services, the info pages on LXC are still live on the LETBOX site:
It seems OP bought the following plan:
which should grant him 1 year worth of service for 25 usd. If he bought it monthly, he'd be paying 3.5 usd/month. Wouldn't it be fair if LETBOX refunded him 21 usd (6 times 3.5 usd), which seems about equal to the 10 months of service they are offering.
Then again, if OP was entitled to the rest of his service period (be it on KVM, be it on OVZ), why throw away all his data? You're supposed to have the disks anyway, given that you offered him a replacement service with the exact same specs...
This ture that we don’t handle the migration of LXC like well and as I mentioned I admitted that we do this mistake and that first time we deal such issue and shutdown services like that and we promised that we do offer KVM even cost us more than client pay. And i already mentioned before i’m happy to refund or 10x months or even we happy to do both of them we working with the OP to got it work ASAP however the OP won’t respond what he want and still happy to helo and resolve it.
Why do you need the OP to respond to anything, just do the refund?
Sorry but you are the one that failed to provide service, you really don't get to impose special conditions on the refund.
I cannot just do refund which i already tried “”You are over the time limit to perform a refund on this transaction””
So i have to sent the money manually which the OP not provided the PayPal mail. Or where he want the money in.
General practice, to also comply with money laundering laws, is to refund to the same account using the same payment method.
I’m on phone with slow connection right now can’t do anything useful in few i will check this over.
I would be mad as hell if you delete my data just because you want to migrate your customers to other services. (Yes, we are supposed to have backups, blah, blah, blah)
You should do the migration for them or keep a backup for them just in case. At the end of the day, you are the admin with sudo.