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Comments
I do feel a strict provider like Netcup has its places. It teaches kids the concept of contracts.
If the seller doesn't care - the rest doesn't matter.
For the record, I don't really care about the PS5 (I am able to buy limited numbers from a business portal for companies like mine).
You are the one who replied to me to argue - you haven't persuaded me any differently and I still see this as a seller issue. If someone bought 500 servers from a host, that's awesome. If they resell it, well, that's up to the host on how much they care about it. Why should I care if you buy it to idle versus a reseller selling it to someone else to idle? And even if I care, am I the host? Do I have control over the sale? No of course not. It's a pointless discussion to me.
Again, a host can literally stop that entire thing by one small policy change, if they cared to do so. Engaging that host to make a policy change - sure that's meaningful. Arguing with a stranger over LET on it? Completely pointless.
LOL. You completely ignored my points of how it hurts normal consumers. And, how raising issues like these in a huge platform like LET hurts the hosts. Hosts are there to make money. If you hurt the money, then it becomes their problem.
So. Just because you didn't face the problem with getting a PS5, then its ok right? Fuck all the rest. Who cares about others right?
Again, why would the host care about it? For them, they made 500 sales. But, when you raise this issue, in a huge platform like LET, then it hurts them. Now, who trusts a host with their data when they clearly don't have some basic protections.
I read it but ignored it as it is all irrelevant. You are listing problems, not solutions. I (at least) presented a simple immediate solution.
You misunderstand my dismissal of your arguments (which I consider not being of value to resolving the situation) as agreeing with reselling of services.
Your attempt to argue with me over the PS5 was fundamentally flawed. The rest is an assumption of convenience.
Has it actually hurt the host? Seriously? No, even if you dissuade 5 users that is nothing to them. All you've done is complain to a handful of strangers about how unfair this is to you. I don't see this post having any impact, large or small - and certainly no solutions.
Remember again - it is you who are actively arguing with me. I don't see what your stance changes. Further more nothing here dissuades me from using the host in the future.
Yup. You ignored it. Everything. Including the solution I provided. LOL. Well. Really no point arguing now, if you're just gonna ignore everything I write.
"Fundamentally flawed"? I mean you stated how it didn't inconvenienced you when 100s of thousands of people are still waiting on their PS5s. I don't think you know the meaning of "fundamentally flawed".
LOL. Its hilarious on how you can downplay the effect of negative publicity. Its not just 5 users. Its their friends and everyone they meet. For example, its just an opposite of referral.
And yeah, I pointed out actively your point and how it is hilariously and fundamentally flawed. There, I used the word right. I pointed out my arguments of why it is so.
And there again. The whole world doesn't revolve around you. Just because its not dissuading you from buying from them doesn't mean it has the same effect on everyone. Me for example. Really no point arguing now, I guess.
In the the time it took you to post your response, Greencloud literally gained 96+ positive comments on their host of the year thread.
The difference you made was aaaaabsolutely noooooothing.
Also, I didn't count this as a viable suggestion. Who is going to create a system to monitor all the different forums for resales, estimate if they are over profitable (what's the line here?), just to create a post complaining on LET? Who are we shaming, a host or a seller with a disposable account or the buyer? After 50 threads appear in a few minutes, how are the mods going to react? Is anyone going to even open the post?
If this idea is for the host to do this work, are they really going to spend time looking at forums for this, terminate and hunt accounts that they need to guess on who owns them, just to get bad reviews from the new innocent buyers and make less sales from autobuyers and from bad reviews while having an overworked staff moderate this stuff while paying their hours our of pocket? This problem is ridiculously easy to fix at the host level if they want to - stop resales of specials. Anything not being done by the host isn't (imo) worth the time.
Edited to try and be nicer.
Does it give sony negative publicity when PS5s are difficult for consumers to buy, and when lots of scalping is happening? Not really. They simply can't sell that many, and there is a lot of demand which shows it's a good/well-priced product. Same thing applies here for greencloud. In fact, I might even go so far as to claim this as good publicity. PS5s are now notorious for constantly being out of stock. And you know you got a good deal if some people are actually flipping greencloud servers for twice the price.
Also, it is a very complex problem not worth arguing about. The problem is with people who sell entire accounts together with the emails. These are mostly chinese customers who almost always use false details when buying servers. With hosting you almost always want real details from your customers, and when people resell accounts like this, it gets even more sketchy. But noone really cares. It only becomes a problem when people do seriously illegal things with their servers. In the first place, while there are definitely people in east asia who need many of the APAC locations, I imagine most of the APAC deals were bought up by chinese customers. Should a host care about false details? Maybe. But money matters more sometimes.
That would be pointless, but it seems virmach wrote a simple script to try to weed out those with multiple accounts, and those who sell entire accounts including emails. Is it worth it? Probably not. If I really had to think of something that negatively impacts providers when people resell servers like this, it would be that those who buy up resold servers are much more likely to fully utilize the resources. As we all know, these great deals are just here to fill up spare capacity or to cover initial costs of new servers. More idlers means more spare capacity to fill up.
That's the thing. For sony, PS5 is an one time purchase. If you buy a PS5, you are gonna the games as well. Also, considering, Sony itself doesn't sell PS5, its rather the third party sellers. In terms of service based products, its a monthly/annual subscription.
Let me give you an instance.
If 100/500 PS5s get scalped, then what can Sony do here? They literally have no power to do anything since PS5s are physical items and one time purchase. So, they won't get the reputation hit.
In case of Hosting, 100/500 Servers got scalped. There are literally a hundred ways to stop this. As I said that, on detection/reporting, instantly terminate the account without refund. There you go. Scalper got a reputation hit and Host got a reputation boost. Advertise that product in LET here, and it will be sold again in minutes and this time probably by a proper consumer.
Yeah they got 96+ positive comments. So what? As I said before, I won't trust a host, who doesn't even have basic protections against scalping considering how easy it is and almost every good host has for limited sales. Lord knows where else they have cut costs, considering there is so much that can done behind closed doors of virtualization.
The system is the nice people at LET. This thread is proof enough that it can be done. With these many replies and us talking about it in a meaningful way. This is a good system enough. And if we see it technically, I work as a security analyst and I can build a 100 systems that can weed out the disease that is scalping with a minimal enough cost.
Now, with the discussion, people were having here, told me that the scalpers sell the whole account, so stopping resale of limited items isn't going to help here. And, this is what we should be discussing about. And I thank you for bring cordial in the discussion.
Damn. MJJs know how to abuse everything.
Even charging transfer fee won't be able to deter them.
and what if the buyer lost contact with the seller?
The point is not to compare ps5 with greencloud vps directly. My point is that scalping is good publicity. If people are able to flip their servers for double the price, it means greencloud is offering a good product for a good price.
Take spartanhost as an example. I have never heard of them before a few years back. Now, I know spartanhost to have great connectivity to APAC from west US. And this is thanks to mjjs reselling spartanhost deals for 3-4x the recurring price.
That's exactly the point.
Without a legitimate service transfer via the provider, only the seller could renew the server.
The buyer knows there's a great risk of losing contact with the seller when it comes renew time, so that they would not engage in an account takeover.
Let me clear one thing. The comparison to PS5 scalping is apt. But, nothing can be done in this case. But, something can be done in the case of service providers like web hosts.
See. The problem is most of these servers are limited special deals. Even if the initial price is doubled, the per month rate stays the same.
For instance, a special deal server costs 20 euro/month. The scalper charges 40 euros for the account. The buyer from the scalper pays 40 euros initial price and then 20 euro/month. See. Since, the whole account is sold at a single price.
But, most people buying from scalpers are not good actors. What they buy has less to do with quality and more to do with price.
I'd be curious about if hosts notice that re-sold/transferred accounts might have higher rates of abuse-issues or just higher levels of resource usage overall. If someone is paying more for a scaled special-sale account, is the new buyer more determined to hammer it with use and does that have any impact on how they structure future offers of accounts (these deep LET sales generate 2% of the income and 20% of the resource usage).
How did you conclude that? They said it's taking a considerable amount of support time and pondered a transfer fee structure.
He said:
Just stop posting, you're worse than useless. Are you on LET so much every day because people around you tell you to leave them alone and go bother someone else?
No point in arguing.
Wait, you think they make money on consoles? No man, they make money on the games and lose money on the consoles. Having more money go to scalpers means less consumers with consoles in hand and less money spent on games because of scalping premium.
Scalping is bad. The only time it's good for the company is when they're the ones behind the scalping (e.g. Ticket Master).
Umm no, they do make money on hardware sales.
They profit from hardware, peripherals, licensing, game distributions, owned game studios of their own, and subscription services. Just to name a few. And no, the PS5 was announced as profitable now quite some time ago.
It's intended to be a multipronged revenue model. Why do you even post? You are like the epitome of the dunning-kruger effect. You read something somewhere once and have decided that MUST be the only truth in entire world. It's exhausting trying to breakdown your disinformation - it's like a full time job
To quote what some UK guy recently said:
Well, are you Timbo?
This is the general strategy, but it is not always true. Sony lost a lot of revenue with this strategy on PS3, and they learnt from it. Nowadays, they sell their consoles closer to their cost price and it eventually becomes profitable. For the PS4, I believe it was profitable within the first year. The PS5 with the disc drive became profitable mid last year despite covid.
It is bad, but not necessarily bad publicity.
I usually sell them at the original price to people in need.Most of the time I give it away for free, because IF I really like a server I usually don't throw it away.If you give something you don't need to someone who needs it, it's a good thing.
Correct, it eventually becomes profitable (and some variation wasn't profitable yet at time of annual report). That doesn't happen at launch or during the scalping period. I don't know what KermEd is ranting about. Saying something is sold at a loss and eventually makes a profit doesn't change the period of selling it at a loss during the scalping.
And that'll probably change now since part shortage means they won't sell as many this year and volume is how pricing goes up/down. I can tell you part shortages have price premiums well in excess of their current profit margins. Will the retail price of the console increase?
allowing free transfers is probably the least of all evils.
probably a balanced solution would be some algorithm to detect selling of entire accounts, and imposing a general criteria on recipient account (being an active account, having valid payment etc)
That's because you don't understand what the word profitable means - so when you said PS5 isn't profitable (and it is and has been for quite a while) while trying to belittle someone (again)... it just confirms for the 50th time what we ALL already know (you are a dumbass).
I have been thinking... Maybe you should call the UK, whatever weird school you were put in, and ask for an apology. Maybe even a refund, if your family could pay for it. I figure you were in class until grade 5 or so? So it shouldn't be that big of a refund.
Reading, comprehension, everything basically a normal person needs to survive somehow eluded you in life. That can't be entirely your fault and you do like to blame others. It fits with the parasitic nature of your personality
Nobody is asking the basic questions:
If the goals were simply about achieving certain sales levels at those price points, then they may not care who buys their sale products, nor what happens to them after that. Greencloud met their sales objectives and were paid accordingly.
If the goals were to find and attract new customers to grow their business and their reputation, then assessing the results may be more challenging.
Speaking for myself, I don't like it when companies offer a product sale, but fail to give their customers a fair and equal opportunity to purchase those products. It demonstrates a lack of focus on overall, long term customer satisfaction.
When there was a toilet paper shortage here a couple years ago, some local stores enforced a one package limit on toilet paper purchases until the shortage abated. Customers seemed to appreciate that the stores cared and were trying to find a fair and equitable way for as many customers as possible to get by. Other stores didn't care, and would let a single customer clean out entire shelves of toilet paper, sometimes filling multiple carts. I saw it myself once. In my opinion, those stores lost a lot of customer goodwill when they allowed it to happen.
i think this discussion is one sided. Many chinese dont care and want search in english sides. For somebody, one chinese guy, who is willing to learn englisch and use that knowledge to earn some bucks thats totally fine.
He is accepting chinese payment which greencloud can not offer or offer easly. The customer is happy and the provider has sell products.
For the provider this has an huge benefit too. The change he get trouble, because of the abuse is less, than other in my opinion. DCMA chance of claim from chinese Community is nearly 0. Other service are all allowed in china and will not punished.
VPN they dont punish the provider just block the server temporary. The only thing where can came some trouble is when this server will use for chine political movement against the government, which in opinion they will not use HK SG server.
From my point of view this deals have 3 winner, no loser.
I used to be a provider targeting Chinese market.
To my experience, these consumers use their VPS do following things:
1. VPN (A large amount use it for Torrenting, DMCA closely followed)
2. Fraud (Fishing also CVV stealing from China and other countries)
3. Porn websites including minors (Especially candid videos)
4. Coin mining (100% CPU all the time)
5. DDoS attack (Eg. ARP flood)
6. Piracy (Disney!)
Seems not a win-win-win situation...
It's not as simple as you think. If you were looking at just the hardware itself, the MSRP is higher than the manufacturing cost of PS5 since day 1. PS5s costed them $450 to manufacture back in early 2020. But why are PS5s still considered loss leaders? Because there's still the R&D, advertising and other costs to account for. And they have to consider the margins for retailers. They make a slight loss to make more revenue from other things. The part shortage problem existed since the start of 2020. Covid might have made things worse, but they have been facing this problem since the launch of PS5 even before covid happened. Considering all this, it's highly unlikely retail price will increase.
It eventually becomes profitable because of the R&D and advertising costs eventually being covered for, and process improvements and greater volume so economies of scale. And this is if we were only looking at the console itself.
I think @KermEd is being too aggressive. But my main point is that there has been a clear shift in strategy for sony. The margins for their consoles have gotten better because they are done with their consoles being huge loss leaders. And this was since PS4, so their strategy has changed for 9 years. They want to make money with their consoles. Everyone wants to, as long as they can sell their consoles. And sony has consistently been able to sell their consoles.
While I think this could be a useful strategy, certain virtual CC services allow the use of any random name and address/zip code.
Do you? You completely ignored that it's sold at a loss at launch for months to a year. The estimated BOM cost on $499 retail item is $450, NOT including assembly, testing, packaging and reseller profit. Any profit here is single digit % to negative depending on volume and pricing of components.
I know you think you're getting under my skin by saying I went to UK, but surely you've got to realize how dumb you look? You'd make more sense saying I was American, instead. The UK? Yeah, you just look like a know nothing dumbass with zero reading comprehension. You clearly have reality distortion field problems.
You are missing the point. Losing money on the consoles is an outdated strategy for sony. If they were willing to pay a premium for parts, there wouldn't be a shortage of PS5s since day 1. But they aren't willing to take that loss.
The $450 number is the manufacturing cost that is all-inclusive, not just the BOM. So, in 2020, PS5s cost $450 to manufacture and MSRP was $499. There's no doubt the PS5 will be profitable in the long run excluding all peripherals and games. (Consider that PS5s have been profitable since mid 2021)
In 2013, PS4s cost $381 to manufacture and MSRP was $399. Within 6 months, individual PS4 sales were profitable and the console itself made a ton of profit for sony over the coming years.
In 2006, the cheapest PS3 costed $805 to manufacture and MSRP was $499. It is evident there is a clear shift in strategy, and sony has made a huge profit off the PS4 consoles alone. Yes, they make even more revenue from peripherals, games and subscriptions but the consoles are profitable too.
Your initial statement:
This implies they lose money on consoles. My point being, they do not. They haven't been, for 9 years now. Times have changed. The only thing that remains constant is that everything changes.
Damn. Couldn't have explained it better. With instances to back it up.
People forget that a sale of a service is not as simple as - Paying money and Getting service. There's need to be a level of trust and care between the parties. And, when a company saves money in basic consumer practices, its hard to trust them. It is bad enough, there are only some hidden gems in the saturated cesspool that is low end hosts.