BudgetVM review - NY nightmare

This is long, but wanted to lay everything out so it's as objective as possible, including the timeline and ticket responses. TLDR is at the end.

I initially spoke with Steve at BudgetVM for a large EU storage server in early November. However, due to their lack of immediate stock and some concern from some of the reviews I'd seen, I decided to hold off for the time being.

In late November, we decided to get 3 smaller servers (2 in US, 1 in EU) and if everything went smoothly, to get the storage server too later on. Total budget for all 4 was ~$900 USD/m. After speaking to Steve, he said that that EU wouldn't be available until early January. After some back and forth we went ahead with the 2 US servers on December 8th, with the idea of getting the additional EU server in January, and the EU storage server soon after.

There was some initial delay due to billing taking almost 24 hours to verify a crypto payment. Payment was finally verified at 2025-12-09 05:49. The first server in LA was setup at 2025-12-09 23:07. So far so good, unfortunately problems began with the second server in NY.

2025-12-15, 6 days post payment:

• We still hadn't heard anything about the NY server, and politely asked for an ETA.
• They responded saying "Your server is being deployed. We will complete the deployment as soon as possible."

2025-12-17, 8 days post payment:

• I repeated a request for an ETA as we couldn't put the first server into production until the other was also setup.
• Again they refused, saying "The server is currently in the build. we are working hard to complete the deployment as quickly as possible."
• This time I insisted for an ETA, and they responded with "I have escalated your request to the deployment team."
• Later, they asked if we would be interested in another location if they could deploy it faster.
• I responded that NYC was the preferred option, but Ashburn or Miami could be options too.
• They replied with "Understood. We'll update you once we have a timeline from our deployments team."

2025-12-21, 12 days post payment:

• I asked for an update
• They responded "I apologize but we are still waiting feedback from the deployment team as of this time."

2025-12-31, 22 days post payment:

• Again, asked for an update.
• They reverted to the stock response of "We are working hard to complete the deployment as quickly as possible."
• At this point, I'd lost most of my patience, and said it was unacceptable and unreasonable to not have any kind of update or ETA 3 weeks after payment.
• They replied with "Unfortunately, we are still waiting on a hardware shipment to that location to complete this order."

2025-01-07, 29 days post payment:

• Again, asked for an ETA.
• 7 hours later, they responded: "The needed replacement hardware is shipping out today and we are scheduling technicians at the datacenter to install the hardware once it is on-site."

2025-01-08, 30 days post payment:

• Server was finally setup.
• They gave us some extra ram as an apology, which we don't need. I'd have much preferred better communication rather than the extra ram.

I know it was the holidays, but they had 2 weeks before Christmas, then 1 week after New Years. I know that there are shortages going on, but this isn't a complex setup. This is a single E2436 Xeon CPU, 4TB NVMe server. During the entire time, on their order portal, it showed the same server (but smaller NVMe) as in stock in NY with a deployment ETA of 1 day. I wouldn't have minded that much if they were just upfront and honest about how long it was going to take.

Unfortunately, the problems didn't stop there. On delivery I did some basic checks, including a speed test, and wasn't impressed. I was about to go away and unable to do anything more for a while, and due to the 30 day setup delay we'd already missed our roughly planned date to put the servers into production, so there wasn't a rush anyway.

2025-01-27:

• The next opportunity I had to look at the server. 300-800Mbps upload on a 10G port. Everything I tried was going through Sparkle.
• Opened a ticket querying if the 10G port was capped, and if NY was single homed, and provided 4-5 iperf3 and speedtest results to Comcast NY, Leaseweb NY, Datapacket VA, and their own Miami location.
• They replied it wasn't capped and wasn't single homed, and that they could have their network team to look into it if I wanted.
• I finally managed to find a iperf3 server that routed via GTT, 5-6Gbps upload. Looked like their Sparkle link was heavily congested, and the vast majority of traffic was routed via Sparkle. Asked them to contact the network team.
• They confirmed they'd contacted the network team and would get a response ASAP.

2025-01-28:

• Heard nothing all day. Their branded Debian mirror was so slow it was unusable (again via Sparkle) replaced with a Debian mirror which went via GTT. Did another test and speeds were even worse, 85Mbps from BudgetVM NYC -> BudgetVM Miami using their official iperf3 server. Updated ticket with latest tests.
• They responded there was no update from the network team yet and the issue is being looked into.

2025-01-29:

• Heard nothing all day. Asked for an update as it'd now been 48 hours.
• They responded with 'No, I do not have an update from networking yet. Of course, speed test results are simply a means to an end. If you're concerned about connection speeds to other specific regions, you may be better served with this server in a location other than New York.'
• Replied with 'We got a 10G server in NY because we wanted a 10G server in NY. If it's not even capable of consistently pushing 100Mbps across the east coast because 90% of the traffic goes through your Sparkle uplink which is insanely congested, then it's no longer a 10G server in NY.'

Also beginning to suspect that like the mythical 'deployment team', the 'network team' doesn't actually exist either.

At this point I think I'm just going to cut our losses. $357 USD and almost 2 months later, and we're still yet to have 2 functional servers. I'm not counting a server that is unable to utilize even 1% of it's port speed as functional.

I should add, the LA server was perfectly fine, which is why we hadn't given up until this point. Although it was never put into production due to the issues with the other server, it had been rock solid since setup, and network in LA is great. It's just a pity that NY is a nightmare.

TLDR:
30 days to setup a 1 CPU/1 NVMe server in NY, refused to give ETA
Can only utilize 85Mbps of 10G port at peak time
Ineffectual support, seemingly limited to basic T1 stuff
Poor communication, canned responses, require constant chasing