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Our experience with HostSlim

naphthanaphtha Member
edited September 23 in Providers

This is our unfiltered experience with HostSlim, specifically their colocation service.

The purpose of this post is to serve as a warning for anyone considering doing business with them, and nothing else. Perhaps this is just a misunderstanding and they are welcome to clear everything up.

As of time of writing, they are still refusing to ship our server.

Around February this year, I personally delivered a server to a provider near Amsterdam. About 6 weeks later, they still had not completed the setup, our server was still offline, at which point I contacted HostSlim to ask whether they would consider personally picking the server up from the datacenter and setting it up in theirs. Ralph agreed and picked the server up at the agreed date.

That's about the end of our positive experiences with them.

I won't bore you with details but the server only went up about a month after the deadline both of us agreed to (which they also charged us for, a month+ of our server being down).

Shortly afterwards, a clear pattern emerged:

  • server goes down
  • blame the hardware, claim they're changing the thermal paste (or swapping the CPU, or the fans, most of the time they wouldn't even tell us what they were doing with our server)
  • server goes back up after DAYS of downtime, and of course:
  • charge us hours of unaccounted remote hands. No log, no nothing. Not even an informal note of roughly what they did.

Rinse and repeat, infinite money hack.

Of course, the server's BMC never indicated there was anything wrong, EXCEPT one time the server shut down due to overheating, at which point he tried to gaslight us into thinking it was our fault again. IIRC, he quickly retracted that after being presented with the logs, and admitted their cooling system failed.

We've asked them to swap the RAM, CPU and SSDs into another known good server (we would've paid for this, of course), they refused.

We've asked them to allow us to send someone else into their datacenter to troubleshoot our server, they refused.

As of right now, the server has been down for 6 days. Before we had enough and asked them to ship our server to another datacenter where they could hopefully actually figure out what's wrong with the server, Ralph kept sending us completely irrelevant pictures of the health LEDs on the front of the server (he does this every single time). I personally asked him a few times to plug in a monitor, he ignored me (they also refused to set up an OOB IPMI management uplink).

This already happened once before, and he brought the server back up after we threatened to leave, but this time I think he understood that we're leaving for real. This is his response to us asking him to ship the server, for the ~fifth time:

You have a 12 months agreement for the colocation till april 2027. If you want I can make an invoice for the remaining time.
If you have a problem with the server - let me know. We can investigate all caused and find a solution for you. What is the current problem you have?
If you have more questions please don't hesitate to contact us.
With kind regards, Ralph

Of course, I have never agreed to such a thing. I've asked him to show me where I agreed to 12 months commit, he ignored me again.

I'm not the type to whine, especially not publicly or officially. For example, Kyun has been a loyal customer of iHostART from day one, and still is to this day, through all of the downtimes and issues that you know as well as me if you frequent this forum. I don't have a high bar. I don't need 99.99% uptime.

All I ask is that you don't gaslight me and don't extort me.

#FreeKyunNL

«1

Comments

  • many more to come if needed

    Thanked by 2oloke sillycat
  • AlyxAlyx Member, Host Rep
  • slacreditplsslacreditpls Member
    edited September 23

    https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:GHARL:2019:4141&showbutton=true&keyword=hostslim&idx=1

    https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:GHARL:2019:7612&showbutton=true&keyword=hostslim&idx=2

    Why would you even go with an walking idiot called ralph karseboom?
    He's known for being an absolute moron, overbilling poweruseage, being a clown, recently moving his NL bv to estonia while being dutch to avoid god knows what bill that he disagrees with (probably ongoing courtcase)
    Possibly to dodge paying suppliers like He did with "hostslim Global Services BV" when He moved all away from Severius to cellnex lelystad Tower to the Hostslim BV

    Ralph is the most incompetent Dutch-ran hosting on all of LET.

    What's next? you're gonna move to bankrupt axushost and complain about them in 2 months?

    Jesus christ.

    Thanked by 1naphtha
  • @slacreditpls said: Why would you even go with an walking idiot called ralph karseboom?

    right, blame the victim! in my defense, i was desperate

    Thanked by 1sillycat
  • @naphtha said:

    @slacreditpls said: Why would you even go with an walking idiot called ralph karseboom?

    right, blame the victim! in my defense, i was desperate

    this is how i explain my poor choice in woman to my friends and family

  • @naphtha said:
    This is our unfiltered experience with HostSlim, specifically their colocation service.

    The purpose of this post is to serve as a warning for anyone considering doing business with them, and nothing else. Perhaps this is just a misunderstanding and they are welcome to clear everything up.

    As of time of writing, they are still refusing to ship our server.

    Around February this year, I personally delivered a server to a provider near Amsterdam. About 6 weeks later, they still had not completed the setup, our server was still offline, at which point I contacted HostSlim to ask whether they would consider personally picking the server up from the datacenter and setting it up in theirs. Ralph agreed and picked the server up at the agreed date.

    That's about the end of our positive experiences with them.

    I won't bore you with details but the server only went up about a month after the deadline both of us agreed to (which they also charged us for, a month+ of our server being down).

    Shortly afterwards, a clear pattern emerged:

    • server goes down
    • blame the hardware, claim they're changing the thermal paste (or swapping the CPU, or the fans, most of the time they wouldn't even tell us what they were doing with our server)
    • server goes back up after DAYS of downtime, and of course:
    • charge us hours of unaccounted remote hands. No log, no nothing. Not even an informal note of roughly what they did.

    Rinse and repeat, infinite money hack.

    Of course, the server's BMC never indicated there was anything wrong, EXCEPT one time the server shut down due to overheating, at which point he tried to gaslight us into thinking it was our fault again. IIRC, he quickly retracted that after being presented with the logs, and admitted their cooling system failed.

    We've asked them to swap the RAM, CPU and SSDs into another known good server (we would've paid for this, of course), they refused.

    We've asked them to allow us to send someone else into their datacenter to troubleshoot our server, they refused.

    As of right now, the server has been down for 6 days. Before we had enough and asked them to ship our server to another datacenter where they could hopefully actually figure out what's wrong with the server, Ralph kept sending us completely irrelevant pictures of the health LEDs on the front of the server (he does this every single time). I personally asked him a few times to plug in a monitor, he ignored me (they also refused to set up an OOB IPMI management uplink).

    This already happened once before, and he brought the server back up after we threatened to leave, but this time I think he understood that we're leaving for real. This is his response to us asking him to ship the server, for the ~fifth time:

    You have a 12 months agreement for the colocation till april 2027. If you want I can make an invoice for the remaining time.
    If you have a problem with the server - let me know. We can investigate all caused and find a solution for you. What is the current problem you have?
    If you have more questions please don't hesitate to contact us.
    With kind regards, Ralph

    Of course, I have never agreed to such a thing. I've asked him to show me where I agreed to 12 months commit, he ignored me again.

    I'm not the type to whine, especially not publicly or officially. For example, Kyun has been a loyal customer of iHostART from day one, and still is to this day, through all of the downtimes and issues that you know as well as me if you frequent this forum. I don't have a high bar. I don't need 99.99% uptime.

    All I ask is that you don't gaslight me and don't extort me.

    #FreeKyunNL

    I really don't understand why you waited so long.
    Run and don't look back.

    Thanked by 1naphtha
  • @croweb_host said: Run and don't look back.

    agreed, but we need our server first, which they're refusing to give up

  • sillycatsillycat Member
    edited September 23

    Shoutout Nap, shoutout Kyun. Kyoko did nunfing wrong.

    Both of these are Hostslim sueing, not being sued. Read what you post, please.

    recently moving his NL bv to estonia while being dutch to avoid god knows what bill that he disagrees with (probably ongoing courtcase)

    This could also be related to how the general Dutch company ecosystem works. As a BV you need to pay yourself a minimum of 58k/y. If he makes less than that, but still wants no personal liability, it might make more sense to move to Estonia. Taxes, etc are also lower in Estonia.

    Thanked by 1naphtha
  • remarkable youtube channel by him

    Thanked by 1naphtha
  • AlyxAlyx Member, Host Rep

    @slacreditpls said:
    remarkable youtube channel by him

    10x your income by forcing customers to pay for colocation they don't wanna use 🤔

    Thanked by 1naphtha
  • Dum dum? It says Hostslim is defendant.

  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker

    Sorry, I don't know a decent and cheap colo provider in NL but I do know that Ralph and any company he's involved in is a terrible "solution".

    Thanked by 1naphtha
  • 🍿

  • @jsg said:
    Sorry, I don't know a decent and cheap colo provider in NL but I do know that Ralph and any company he's involved in is a terrible "solution".

    my issue wasn't cheap my issue was that no one else seemed to accept just 1u regardless of cost, which is understandable

    we're going with @Alyx from now on

    Thanked by 5oloke Alyx rpqu jsg Murv
  • Grim

    Thanked by 2naphtha monsoon73
  • He made his videos private, which means he is watching this thread instead of doing his job :)
    @VPSSLIM any comment?

    Thanked by 4sillycat rpqu r3k Obelous
  • UPDATE: ralph finally replied to me on telegram, told me he doesn't have a box for shipping. i asked him WHERE my server is exactly so I can email the datacenter personally and try to arrange shipping with them directly.

    got a PM here from another customer of ralph's, saying the reason he isn't shipping servers is because they've been kicked out of the datacenter and they aren't letting him back in. customer tried emailing the datacenter directly, they said they aren't shipping anything because it might affect their case, legally speaking.

    not sure how true that is, because every customer seems to know something else and it's impossible to sort out what's true and what's not

  • @naphtha said:
    UPDATE: ralph finally replied to me on telegram, told me he doesn't have a box for shipping. i asked him WHERE my server is exactly so I can email the datacenter personally and try to arrange shipping with them directly.

    got a PM here from another customer of ralph's, saying the reason he isn't shipping servers is because they've been kicked out of the datacenter and they aren't letting him back in. customer tried emailing the datacenter directly, they said they aren't shipping anything because it might affect their case, legally speaking.

    not sure how true that is, because every customer seems to know something else and it's impossible to sort out what's true and what's not

    Not the first time they get kicked out somewhere for too many overdue invoices?

    Just ship/buy him
    https://www.servershop24.de/servershop24-versandkarton-1he-2he/a-120751/?srsltid=AU7gw4VCEKATFBx55HEMvT7vKv7Ex-BlG54l2Wb6ZkL-7Z21jUpcCQPR

    Servershop24 sells you empty boxes with foam included for servers.

    No excuses anymore if its really just a box missing

    Thanked by 2naphtha rpqu
  • layer7layer7 Member, Host Rep, LIR

    @naphtha said:
    UPDATE: ralph finally replied to me on telegram, told me he doesn't have a box for shipping. i asked him WHERE my server is exactly so I can email the datacenter personally and try to arrange shipping with them directly.

    got a PM here from another customer of ralph's, saying the reason he isn't shipping servers is because they've been kicked out of the datacenter and they aren't letting him back in. customer tried emailing the datacenter directly, they said they aren't shipping anything because it might affect their case, legally speaking.

    not sure how true that is, because every customer seems to know something else and it's impossible to sort out what's true and what's not

    Hi,

    if this is true, then you can already prepare some papers showing that:

    • you bought this server in question
    • the colocation invoice with the provider
    • proof of your payment to the provider that you paid all invoices

    so you can proof with the datacenter that this is your property and can obviously not be part of any legal case that does not concern you. And that you have no open balance with the provider.

    I dont know how hard/strict the datacenter would handle this case, but if you can present all this 3 papers, then you are in any case safe.

    Good luck!

    Thanked by 2naphtha rpqu
  • @slacreditpls said:
    remarkable youtube channel by him

    Video was private, anyone archive it?

  • @ailice said:

    @slacreditpls said:
    remarkable youtube channel by him

    Video was private, anyone archive it?

    Unfortunately no

  • AlyxAlyx Member, Host Rep

    Now we will never learn how we can 10x our income 😭

  • hostslim... as always: stay away!

    Thanked by 1Alyx
  • zedzed Veteran

    was this the guy that everything was great if you bought 200+ servers?

    Thanked by 1HOSTCAY
  • HOSTCAYHOSTCAY Member, Host Rep

    @zed said:
    was this the guy that everything was great if you bought 200+ servers?

    That was Hostslick

  • update again: another company (not sure if they want to be mentioned but thanks a lot) offered to handle in person pickup for us from hostslim. they sent them an email to coordinate the pickup, no response yet. it's been 8 hours. i told ralph about the email on telegram, he said "Ok I will ask to check"

    Thanked by 1AirnodeHosting
  • naphthanaphtha Member
    edited September 28

    the pickup was supposed to be today (tuesday). ralph, of course, delayed it because he can't get engineers there. but he says he thinks he could get it done later this week. here's what i think is happening, this is just a theory until further confirmation or proof that i'm wrong. i have no concrete proof to back most of this up

    • my server is at qupra right now
    • hostslim didn't pay their bills at qupra because they weren't satisfied, or something
    • hostslim started moving servers out to nlighten
    • before getting to our server, qupra found out, now they're not letting them back in and switched the power off, which is why our server is down

    what i don't understand if this is true

    • back when qupra had cooling issues, why ralph tried to charge us remote hands for the server failing instead of just saying "hey the datacenter's cooling failed it's not our fault". i only recently found out about qupra's cooling issues which coincided with the time our server went down
    • why one qupra invoice or ralph's ego is worth more than his company's reputation. from what i understand and speculate, this is all over one unpaid invoice at qupra. waiting for the court documents to hopefully find out what's really happening

    oh, and ralph, as expected, didn't find out where i signed a 12 month contract, because i didn't. we paid one more month of colo that we won't use, because that's what his tos says, and i do what's right. now it's time for you to do what's right, ralph

    Thanked by 1sillycat
  • @naphtha said: now it's time for you to do what's right, ralph

    You are delusional if you think he'll do the right thing.

  • @Obelous said:

    @naphtha said: now it's time for you to do what's right, ralph

    You are delusional if you think he'll do the right thing.

    i don't think, i hope, because the alternative is getting lawyers involved and my customers losing data until the case is resolved in 5 years

    Thanked by 1rpqu
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