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Increasing the fee will not stop summer hosts, all they will do is run for either 110 days or 170 days max and close depending on how they have bought the provider tag
PayPal - 170 days
Card - 110 days
Due to the max time frames of these payment methods.
These are then they will report the transaction as an item not received to the payment method, pay advance on the servers for the same period, and do this to the server provider too
Provider tag and account suspended
Servers taken offline for the charge-back
All customers payments withdrawn to their bank
back a few months later, new domain, new name process starts again
The best way for LET to manage this will be to either ask for ID to be provided at the time of the tag request and verify it or use one of the online verification companies that many banks or even Hetzener now use and keep a separate list of names, addresses and maybe even ID numbers that they can search for each tag application to prevent people just signing up again later, the ID numbers will be unique to each ID such as license or passport because each country has a different method of indexing ID documents.
I vote to remove these obnoxious navigation menus and rent that space in 125x125 pixels each. There's also opportunity for revenues by increasing indent. I think you will pleasantly surprised in the potential revenues and improved user experience.
Might be a bit too much, but I would implement some sort of KYC for users that apply for a provider/host rep tag.
As for the fee? Nah. Even 100$ I think is too much for what the community has to offer in general.
A lot of orders for spam/scan/brute, chargeback when they get suspended. Tons of tickets with "plz change IP, not good for me" when there's no technical reason for an IP change, but I guess he used it to scrape data/fetch media and the IP got banned in the end.
And so on and so forth. Tons of fake IDs, fraud CC, stolen PP accounts used to pay for services.
Just this year we had to deal with authorities from over 7 countries for some materials hosted on a customer 5$ VM.
And you end up thinking... is it worth it? For me it isn't. That's why I refused to pay the fee, as I refuse to become a cheap ass provider.
For some of the good people here I do deals from once in a while or even free services, but on a selective mode, not open for all.
You would like to receive highly targeted advertisement for free?
Nope. I use Google / Facebook Ads for conversions.
Let's look at it from the consumer's perspective.
You come to LET to find deals on budget virtual servers. You're extremely price sensitive (even saving an extra dollar may change your purchasing habits). What I'm hearing is that you want more solutions or mitigation in place to reduce the risks of vendors you deem low quality or "scams" from participating in the market.
You want someone to take responsibility and have some form of resolution, whatever it may be, to filter, prevent, and remove unsavory vendors. I get it, there are already some processes in place to try and establish a minimum standard. However, these standards are focused on how much someone has "skin in the game" (e.g., business registration) and if they're doing things "legit" (e.g., valid WHMCS license). However, for you the "minimum standard" bar is based on infrastructure stack design decisions and how they offer the service on top of that. But this is the field/space where innovation (or risks) should be given the freedom to explore. I mean publicly disclose the information sure (no basement host-wooden-rack) but this should be used to communicate some form of hardware or infrastructure risks. However, I think you fail to understand that this is what the entire lowend market sector is.
As a participant in the Lowend Market Sector, you are sacrificing certain aspects of the infrastructure or you're taking on more risk as the client to get access to a server at a cheaper price point. The website is simply a medium to find vendors. That's it. They'll do what they can to try and reduce this risk for you but in the end it's just a bulletin board (forum) where people can post their flyers advertising their services. Just as a client, you have the right to choose who you do business with and work with just like how providers have a choice to pay and post their flyer.
In my opinion, there are really no victims here except for those who are definitely taken on a ride from legit scams (being sold a service but never receiving access to the hardware). We, as other clients or consumers can take the time to help each other out and be a guiding light to newcomers and help them understand the level of risk certain things have. However, in the end you're paying dirt cheap prices for access to services with higher risk. Many vendors here compare themselves to AWS/GCP/Azure in pricing but in reality don't have comparable number of hardware, expertise, redundancies, or thought to minimize the level of risk or build in reliability into their platform. You're paying cheap pricing for better hardware but losing in the reliability space, as shown in the figure below.
(Artist: Me. I'm selling commissions. 1 server per request)
While each point is not mutually exclusive, the general idea is that you're all sacrificing reliability because turns out, people only give a shit about reliability when shit hits the fan or when disaster events occur.
You get what you pay for. This is why we (I specifically but I assume most people here agree) advocate for people to take it slower and get informed on what they're actually signing up for. If they're using this for an actual business then what does that mean and how can you mitigate it. It's also why we talk so much about backups so strongly here... What you're saying isn't anything new. There have been previous approaches to try and fix this problem but it seems education is primarily the point. Just like how you have to learn how to use SSH or navigate the linux command line, you're going to have to pick up some soft skills and understand what's your risk tolerance and who do you want to introduce into your own infrastructure. It's why I'm so publicly shitty to Calin. I seriously do wish him the best but the decisions he's made and the shit that he's selling shouldn't be around, but he's taking being ratchet and shitty to an extreme to be as cheap as possible and sending the savings to his customers. And his customers being cheap asses only looks at the price tag and the amount of resources you get and goes "holy shit this is so cheap!" without thinking through how reliable it could be and then only bitching when... again... shit hits the fan.
So it's not "looking at it from the provider's perspective" or "providers have more money so providers should take the responsibility". It's just "this is how this market sector works. This is how we navigate it. Noone's going to do your homework for you, you need to understand how this all comes together." The entire reason behind this is because you, as the user, are the person who cares the most about your data and your infrastructure/service. I don't give a shit about your data. Your provider will do what they can to help you because their reputation is on the line but that data has higher value to you as the primary user of that data. You should be responsible for making sure your data's well protected and your service works well. Asking someone else to care or test something out will just fall on deaf ears because hard drives will fail, problems will occur. Nothing is guaranteed will always work from the start. It's the nature of failures in computing.
Also, to anyone else who thinks there should be an "insurance fund" to pay for those "who got scammed"? Take your head out of your ass. You're fucking stupid. Yes I'm calling you out @neverain
Wtf man, stop writting wall of texts. That graphic is flawed. Low end is only 1 corner - cheap. Reliability and new hardware - 0 fcks given. Look at ddr3 providers.
lol and there it is.
Get fucked too then chief.
The only reason why I'm spending time to try and get you to understand this is because you're proposing some stupid ideas that need a bit more nuanced understanding behind it.
security deposits are pretty common in places where there is a higher than usual chance of getting scammed, but you are right it wouldnt work out for LET
Wtf man, stop writting wall of texts. That graphic is flawed. Low end is only 1 corner - cheap. Reliability and new hardware - 0 fcks given. Look at ddr3 providers.> @HalfEatenPie said:
Nah, you are biased. This is clear enough. You can suggar coat this in words - it does not matter. At the end of the day decision is made not by us.
Security deposits are common in places where they want to build an incentive for you, as the client, to be liable for any impact to an asset that may affect the total value of the asset (e.g., resale value). Maybe might work for IP addresses but probably won't fly for a VPS or a dedicated server.
But the reason why I'm saying that fund idea wasn't going to pan out is because the wrong people get penalized and you're adding inefficiencies within the market by creating a premium to offset the risks from a scam.
8===D
Perhaps the provider tag should be the result of the vote and/or sponsorship by the members of the forum. (members eligible being those who are active, with a 1+ year old account, or something like that). Just a random thought while waiting for my hibernation.
That's one way to try and manage it, but then you'll have more of the sleeper accounts pop up and maybe @Chief coming back out from hiding.
The thing is, if anyone else can do better (and I think the bar is pretty low for this), then please do or make an entirely new website. I used to take this website relatively seriously back when I originally joined, but now it's just... even stupider.
Like... I can't...
https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/191555/looking-for-shared-hosting-that-doesn-t-have-a-lot-of-customers/p1
It's just a pure cash cow with no standards for Biloh now. Bleed it until it can't bleed anymore. All the posts for double bandwidth threads certainly encourage people to register but all you get as a by-product of that is that they post all these ridiculous threads like the one you mentioned which is not even the worst.
Far better quality hosting-related content at WHT these days. That is how bad LET is now.
The fact that you even said that is telling. WHT being considered better than LET? Hot damn.
WHT is rock bottom. OGF is #2.
LET is rock bottom. Just an advertising and complaints forum. Nothing more.
It is what members want here. I guess there is one word - drama.
WHT enforce their political agenda by heavily moderating everything. If its too black - give warning. Year after year - they became sterile and bland. Does the bear still moderates?
So basically you are suggesting that we are to create an incentive for people to try circumvent the forum rules by incentivising them to make alternative accounts with proxy servers and then using those to post generic content every now and then for a year? Just so they can use those accounts to "sponsor" their main account to get a provider tag?
Drama is nice and it's obviously a selling point but don't think anyone exclusively wants drama. I would rather say that people want at least drama. I'm perfectly fine with technical topics too but there are hardly any beyond "Guys, tell me the best VPS for $3/y" and after that the semi-spam of offers starts. What can i do about it? More or less nothing.
I don't have a lot of problems myself that would be worth discussing, so if noone asks any interesting questions there will be nothing to talk about for me in this regard, which leaves drama and shitposting for personal amusement. Sure in a way i'm contributing to the problem but it's not like me being more serious would attract another crowd either.
I don't want to offend anyone (OK, i'm lying - i really don't care) but people coming here posting "#Racknerd has two tons of steel hanging from his sack!" 30 times a day are pretty much the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to hosting. If they invest so much time and effort into such an obnoxious activity as begging (that's what all the post X for Y really is) for freebees i highly suspect they aren't doing much of value in general and the more providers start catering to this crowd the more their share of the forum population is going to increase. Combine this with the fact that the frontpage is basically just one huge advertisement with a little noise sprinkled between it people looking for actually interesting discussions will steadily leave accelerating the shift towards a platform for freeloaders without self-respect and interest in being part of a community.
Truth be told, we were grilled quite much before we were provided the tag, and most were genuine questions.
It just went to a point, we were debating if we should get it or not.
So, the process is indeed good, and time invested in that is decent too.
It's just most of the providers on LET, as you have guessed are starting out.
There is no way for them to have enough social proof.
Heck, you can even buy social proof lol, if that will be required, not a big deal today.
And if you want to stick with established providers, most will not give the deal you crave for.
So, do your own diligence, and stop blaming everything on admin when you buy unrealistic deals.
ROFL
sigh You remind me of porn sites with "POV" in their names and then don't shoot in POV perspective and never realize they are publicly announcing they are morons.
You mean a "novel" (my preference) or an "epic" (if you really struggle to read more than a few paragraphs without whining) to mean long text. A wall of text specifically doesn't have paragraphs that obviously make it not a wall of text. Or what fucked up walls do you live with?
In 2010 i received 15k in insurance claim, was contemplating to buy go all in on bitcoin but i blew it all on hookers in a couple of weeks. I would have been a billionaire if i went all in at that time.
The issue is not about providers, it is an issue of buyers, who buy the price, but not quality and reliability.
Would you buy a used car at significantly less than the market price without even checking it out?
Every year there is a new story, I do not doubt that in 2024 we will also get a service provider scam.
I doubt that increasing the provider tag fee can prevent scams here. Scams mostly depend on how the buyer chooses a provider. Did they check important details about the provider? Do they care about the reliability of the provider company, etc.? In most cases, if a customer only focuses on the price, they won't check anything else. I think the fee might be increased if the website owners feel that they need to upgrade equipment, add new features, or compensate for the inflation of expenses required to keep the site online.
Some outrageously stupid ideas suggested
1k provider tag? Good luck, not a single provider would spend that to gain this clientele
Insurance? You think LET should become a financial istitute? Or just to have a staff member on the side use his personal PayPal for said ”protection”?
Votes show that price increase is more than desirable. Only 1/3 vote for status quo.