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Disappointed by @crunchbits. This whole situation was preventable and now it’s just a mad dash to the bottom to offset responsibility. If you’re in the low end market, you need to have strong anti abuse measures in place from the get go.
We don't, a copy of the e-mail was posted there. The primary method are e-mails going out to everyone affected, but there is some rate-limiting involved and that entire process is just finishing up now. This thread was started before then.
Besides the fact that I've repeatedly outlined what to do here (and in the official statement) and won't keep repeating it, do you really believe a company is beholden to you for eternity? I'm genuinely confused.
He might be onto something.
The only reason I didn't go for the last Ramnode deal was because it had a 3-year limit - they plan to discontinue it after that or something.
As strange as it may sound, I prefer to stay with my hosts for years if everything's okay. Sometimes, I get a good deal and leave it idle, unused for a year or two, until I give it a purpose. Not the most economical approach, but that's just how things are I believe with many LET regulars.
But once I put it to use, I really, really don't like migrations. (I'm still hesitant to deal with both of my soon discontinued InceptionHosting VPSes, knowing how much work that will involve - the older I get, the lazier I am).
That's also the reason I'm not interested in random time-limited freebies, months of free trials for testing stuff for hosts, etc.
I even canceled my Crunchies some hour ago, even though they still had 2 years left. I just don't want to start or continue with something knowing that the deadline to migrate is approaching (I know, 2 years is a long time, but still...). It's just the way it is.
Maybe YOU did, but I have a statement from Crunchbits a few minutes ago saying that they are sending emails out in batches and that they have more to go.
And to check Discord in the meantime! I did, and apparently the issue is all going to "blow over" in a week.
When the amazing marketing blitz suddenly went silent here for months, I read the writing on the wall and bought two plans elsewhere and moved my most important services. I have seen the "go silent" thing before. Human nature never changes.
I spend more on coffee in a week . . . this LET stuff is just a helpful microcosm of the same things than happen in the bigger world for bigger bucks. It's like taking batting practice to stay sharp.
We are reaching out to inform you of an important update regarding our Yearly/Promotional VPS plans. After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue this product line. This change is effective immediately for renewals, but we will honor all existing plans through their current paid terms. We understand that this may come as a disappointment to some of you, and for that, we sincerely apologize. While many of you have been wonderful customers, this product line has presented unique challenges. A significant portion of these plans have resulted in disproportionate abuse and support demands compared to our other offerings. Despite our best efforts, this has created an unsustainable situation as the problems continue to resurface and continue to remain and/or grow with time. The only alternative to this would be implementing strict KYC/identification policies and limitations on all customer accounts which we are absolutely not willing to do. This has been limiting our ability to focus on other improvements across our entire platform. We greatly appreciate your business and want to provide as smooth a transition as possible
I don't disagree with wanting some continuity. I know many absolutely will want to cancel no matter what. That is why I specifically outlined option 2 for existing customers. It's just not going to be a 1-size-fits-all solution because it encompasses a few different product types/prices. The overall goal is to shake out the inevitable AUP/TOS abusers and change course letting people know that its a discontinued product so they don't come back attacking us saying they took the extra refund today and then couldn't buy another at a later restock.
This BF I resisted compulsive shopping and instead I gifted myself a ZFS root filesystem on my tiny 35GB VPS. I converted it from the existing EXT4 and the ZFS data compression ratio now is 2.9x. Big storage boost without buying a larger plan. The Pony was down a few hours yesterday because of it. I'm writing a mini-guide on how to repeat the conversion on a running VPS without data loss.
Just as an outsider, 10 days (in some cases, as I understand) to migrate away seems a relatively short deadline. @InceptionHosting is handling that a lot better.
reason why im stuck with some providers, cuz i know they arent going anywhere.
i can migrate, but hate to
im bit broke (student) so i prepay some services a year or two so i know when i dont have money, service is running
Their handling of the situation is excellent.
I think the issue came where they using Cogent IPs just by paying transit, but now Cogent has policies they don't come to terms with, we aren't worth them leasing IP numbering.
If you mix this with the correspondence of IPs changing, it makes sense in their eyes from business perspective, but pitiful for customers who expected a longer term host.
Last year their thread seem like a party, and now the constable has showed up due to a noise complaint.
When a company makes commitments to its customers, it should honor and stand by them, especially when those commitments are a major part of a promotional strategy.
You could have simply clarified that 'recurring' promotions were 'until another notice' or 'at your discretion' and let potential customers make their informed decisions, but you chose not to. It's about trust.
Is that a pre deadpool message or should we worry, that cb still exists in a year or two?
While this sucks, thankyou @crunchbits for the notification prior to BF so I can plan accordingly.
Crunchbits rake in millions per hours through GPU rental.
They release dealz to play with lowenders for their own amusement.
I agree, it is a bit short if they choose to just let it go and take no action. To clarify a bit: 10 days to contact us with a no questions asked extension, specifically for products that had not been renewed yet. I wanted to also get it out before Black Friday so the highest chance for similar deals are available for anyone who wants to migrate early. Anyone else has a much longer window until expiration to decide. People who are extremely upset will move (probably already have), others will contact support. There's no good time to tell people we're discontinuing a product and I just preferred the 'band-aid' removal method.
Seeing as we're veering way off into the deep end here, I'll probably just have to let this all run its course but I'll try.
You're wrong. The transit and IP space are separate accounts/billed products and not even on the same timeline to move. The transit has been gone for nearly 2 months. Cogent IPs made up some of the IP space, but not all and they were absolutely not limited to Yearlies. They were just mixed in with our normal virtualized allotments, at random. It would make sense for people that decide to talk to support also simultaneously (if affected) get the renumbering done at the same time.
Aside from that, there have been rumors for months about them raising prices (no notice given yet) and our own rep has told me multiple times that it is coming but they'd have to be a severe raise for pricing to impact operations. It's simply because we had some outside-the-norm contact from them about a few different customers they don't like and it ended with them telling us they would blackhole IPs and threatened BGP session if we didn't kick off those customers. We didn't, but they were threatening IP space they didn't own at a facility we don't even have a BGP session with them on the opposite side of the country. That felt like an extreme threat to business continuity to me.
Nobody is being cancelled. A product is being discontinued and as existing paid for obligations are met, assuming no action is taken by the customer to reach out to us (per #2 in e-mail) to look at similar options we can offer them, then yes you will not be able to renew a discontinued/non-existent product. We'll even let you out early with extra money returned if you're extremely upset by it and simply don't want it anymore. I didn't sell you a "lifetime" VPS which is more what that sounds like to me.
Same, I completely forgot about it, it's doing well!
Please do not take me as being upset. My two chickens are just fine, renewing next month but I will not renew, this makes sense from your business allocations. You are great, it is just a pity to move my Nagios and internet routing off.
Understand I am not upset with the decision in the end, business is business, I did not see the honeymoon coming to an end so fast, and made the wrong hypothesis about renumbering.
I would look at transitioning but the issue I see is that to get to the "promo" machines would be a magnitude more than what I'm paying now. Business is business but the pricing for the build your own for my Mast instance or my Bluesky PDS there doesn't seem to be any comparable plan that isn't near $100 a year x 2.
I won that expensive backpack, it's all my fault the yearlies aren't worth it for CB =[
I'm not, but I just want to correct that misinformation now. There are Cloud GPU products that will be affected by the same IP issue. It isn't a product/cost thing.
Something tells me it probably is only going to get better, but a little of a challenge is required on my end to clean out the cobwebs.
If you're interested, just need to open a ticket. There is a very good reason behind our approach.
You know we did get back (finally) the one that went missing with UPS for almost a year.
That was like: "did you really believe you can expect what we advertise? hell nah! was just gibberish to attract you dawg!"
Few years back up here, Rogers' official statement to the Competition Bureau was that they didn't have to tell the truth in their advertisements... It didn't turn out well for them..
I have some experience about US law, only from watching
Judge Judy. It is about the same as others here.This would be under 'puffery' 夸张 which is not illegal under US law. It's like used car dealer telling you exaggerate how great it is, or in this situation expecting your goods to renew.
All the good delivered at full length, so this does not even apply. Some only have less than a fortnight displacment, but they provided what was purchased.
Sad to hear that
The end of unsustainable deals era.
So sad to hear that
It's all up to the hardware lifetime.
We haven't increase price for any Black Friday deals yet but we might discontinue those once we are ready to replace our i9 nodes with newer Ryzen nodes.
Sure, but this decision had nothing to do with the age of the hardware, and all to do with customer abuse. That's a much more easily solvable problem.
Mentally strong developer design built-in redundancy such that there's never a scramble to find a replacement.
Moreover, BFCM is next week and you'll pick up a dozen new servers anyway.