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I also had no issues with Contabo, other than the SSD issue which was resolved quickly.
Usually PayPal favors the buyer heavily. This not having been the case here at least seems like we are missing something here.
Just to explain this right to OP though:
If you canceled Contabo (even before the first month is over) you will always be charged twice. You can not get a VPS with them and not be charged for two months if cancelling normally (due to their cancellation policy). It's similar to Netcup where even with their monthly plans you end up paying for at least two months when cancelling normally. Now, Widerruf is another story and I do know that it exists for 14 days in Germany but I can imagine it to be a bit more complex with servers (think DO hourly billing, if DO was a german company Widerruf would be used for few hours of uptime?!). Anyway, just wanting to point out that, when you cancelled normally, first, you will always pay for 2 months with Contabo/Netcup.
That was true 3 years ago. Nowadays PayPal favors the seller. That’s because there’s a lot of competition for PayPal now so they can’t afford to heavily favor buyers anymore because sellers will go to an alternative service (Stripe, Amazon pay, Apple Pay, Bitcoin etc come to mind).
Im also speaking from personal experience (I‘m reselling clothes and sneakers for a living, mainly hypebeast stuff) dealing with chargebacks in the last couple of years.
They also won this case because I agreed to their terms of service in which they state that they don’t refund the money and give it to you as credit. Please stop accusing me of not giving every detail here. I tried to be as precise as possible.
My case is different though. I got charged twice when I paid for the first month. I’m aware that it’s similar to NetCup.
Edit: just got an email from Contabo regarding the refund of the money that got charged twice when I paid for the first month.
In a routine check at the beginning of the month, our system determined that you had a remaining balance. Our payment management then examines these cases more closely and, considering the fact that we received your initial payment twice, it was decided to pay you your balance. On the basis of the e-mails we received and the lack of response to our queries, we concluded that you probably no longer wish to receive any further services from us. Therefore, we have arranged the reimbursement out of goodwill. The associated administrative costs and transaction fees were borne by us.
Sounds like a standard marketing response for me. I got the refund 1 day after made this post. I was denied over 2 weeks ago and suddenly there is a routine check. You guys can chose what to believe.
There are several issues I have with Contabo:
Quote by @Ympker :
It shouldn’t take a ticket to unlock the full potential of the VPS. I’m paying to expect SSD Performance.
A setup fee for a clearly automated panel.
That they kept the money for the entire month even though I only used the VPS for 3 days. I was fine with a partial refund.
That it takes a public review to get anything going. Although I don’t think that’s a problem solely Contabo has.
Like I said before this wasn’t about getting my money back, but to share my negative experience with Contabo.
After all I can just say that I can’t recommend Contabo. This has been such a pain in the ass to deal with. Make sure to read the terms of service really carefully. Happy that it works for some of you guys, but I’m just sharing my experience with Contabo, which was quite negative.
Well, thanks for pointing all this out. I guess there are different ways people experience Contabo. My experience, however, has been a good one. Although unusual I do think the SSD limit is in place to prevent abuse and seems to be lifted without further problems when contacting their support (at least from my experience). Even with the limit in place SSDs will still perform significantly faster than HDDs ( I/O is not the only thing to consider here). Anyway, I can see why it could turn people away (just like you) but maybe @contabo_m can address this issue in some sort of feedback and see if it can be lifted in general so no extra ticket is needed
Last but not least: PayPal may have decided against your favour because you agreed to their ToS. PayPal is a global entity though. If you feel like you have been treated wrong and are from Germany (like me for example) ToS do not stand above the law. So if according to the law you feel mistreated you could still claim your money back and I am sure Contabo will happily help if you have been indeed lawfully mistreated
What excactly is a SSD performance? 100? 200? 400Mbps? And how this can be determined according to the clients that has been put in a server? How this number can be compared to the cost of a vps?
If you have certain expectations for a service, then, open a pre-sales ticket and ask for numbers. Or else, you are totally wrong to ASUME the speed of a SSD in a shared environment. A SSD in a shared environment is not only about speed but also the stability.
And at the end of the day, any issue with a provider can be solved communicating with them. I have a very good experience with Contabo on the term of communication and tickets, even if they are extremely strict with their rules (e.g. 15€ reactivating fee if you forget to pay the bill).
In this case, you have a point, but again, if you have certain expectations it would be good to ask for them on a pre-sales ticket.
Your review is somehow biased because you are frustrated with them, but in the end, I would call it valid and useful. We do not all have the same experience with providers, for me, Contabo is very good for the price, in fact, more than good. But, then, it is useful to be informed what did not work for another LET member and how this can be resolved (or not), if me or a new client face something like that in the feature.
@MikeSchmidt we had a similar problem with Contabo. In the end they took a bit longer to reply and a few days went by but they offered to refund the additional Pre-paid credit we added to our account before we decided they were not the right choice for our needs and cancelled within 14 days. We ended up only paying the setup fee and 14 days of service as agreed per ToS after a rather complicated chain of mails to get back our pre-paid funds which they initially refused to give back.
I personally think it's fine that they have a non refundable setup fee and of course don't want to operate at a loss so they take an adequate amount for each day of usage. If you are not fine with that don't sign a contract with them. But Contabo is a good example why you should always read the ToS before you make a contract.
The thing with the limited SSD performance is not ok in my opinion unless they start stating it somewhere on the product page before you buy but like @jvnadr said there is no guaranteed SSD Performance metric either. When we wrote Support about it they lifted the restrictions without a problem.
From the 14 days of usage we did to see if Contabo would be a good fit for the project we wanted to run on their service I can't say anything negative about the performance of the service itself and the one time we needed technical support for the SSD performance ticket we got friendly, professional and adequate support.
I think that even if their ToS is strict they honestly try to find a solution with you if you get to the right support agent. The problem really seems to be that outside of technical support their support team is hit or miss. Glad you got your issue resolved.
I personally would still recommend Contabo in my network if you can live with certain restrictions and are on a really tight budget or personal project.
I smell a rotten sneaker.
I smell setup fees.