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RackNerd refused refund after ASN access issues — full timeline and resolution offered
Hi everyone,
I’m sharing my recent experience with RackNerd and would also be interested in hearing whether the community considers their proposed resolution reasonable.
I purchased a one-year 1 GB KVM VPS for US$21.99.
The VPS was provisioned and is technically online and reachable. However, shortly after purchase I found that Crunchyroll explicitly rejected the connection with a message stating that the website owner had banned the VPS IP’s ASN, AS36352.
I also experienced repeated ChatGPT login failures through the VPS, although I have not established the exact cause of those failures.
I contacted RackNerd support and tried several times to find a workable solution.
RackNerd confirmed the following in writing:
- My current Los Angeles VPS uses AS36352.
- Their available US locations for my service are Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and Dallas.
- All of those US IPs are also announced under AS36352.
- They can move the VPS between US locations for free.
- Their France location uses a different ASN, AS29066.
- France is currently completely out of stock and they have no ETA for new capacity.
- If France becomes available, my existing plan is eligible to move there, but RackNerd would charge an additional US$5.99 per year.
- They cannot confirm that France would resolve the Crunchyroll or ChatGPT access issues.
I then requested a refund of the US$21.99 to my original PayPal payment.
RackNerd initially offered prorated non-withdrawable account credit.
After further escalation, RackNerd confirmed in writing that their Customer Success Manager is the final authority on refund requests and that my refund request had been reviewed and denied.
Their final resolution is therefore:
- Keep the VPS as-is;
- Move it for free to another US location that still uses AS36352; or
- Cancel it and receive prorated RackNerd store credit.
I also asked whether they could waive the US$5.99/year France surcharge if France eventually became available. That request was denied as well.
I understand RackNerd’s technical position: they do not control Crunchyroll, ChatGPT, or other third-party services, and the VPS itself is online and routable.
My issue is with the practical resolution.
A US migration keeps me on the same ASN that triggered the original Crunchyroll restriction. The only different-ASN option they identified is unavailable indefinitely, costs more if it eventually becomes available, and is not verified to resolve the issue. The alternative is store credit that cannot be returned to the original payment source.
I asked for the original US$21.99 refund and RackNerd has now confirmed that this request has reached their final internal decision-maker and has been denied.
I have not accepted store credit, cancellation, migration, or additional charges.
I’m posting this both as a factual record of the experience and to ask the community:
Do you consider RackNerd’s proposed resolution reasonable in this situation?
If RackNerd would like to reconsider a refund to the original payment method, or provide another concrete resolution, I remain willing to resolve the matter directly.
Comments
Technically this is not Racknerds fault, the service they provide works but due to something outside of their control you want special treatment eg a refund.
What would happen if you had the service 6 months and suddenly it had became blocked? Racknerds service is a cheap and cheerful service, if you need guarantees you are
1)Check before you buy
2)Go to a provider that will be giving you residential services but these will cost you a lot more
That is entirely reasonable and professional.
HOLY WALL OF AI GENERATED TEXT BUT THERE IS A PLOT TWIST.
It's not GFW blocked me, it's Crunchyroll blocked me.
Completely reasonable. They're not responsible for individual websites being blocked.
i feel your pain but i don't think rn is doing anything wrong here. as36352 is notoriously bad for anything ip reputation related and now you know to check that sort of thing ahead of time (at any provider).
find another use for the rn box/credit or see if you can transfer it to someone (mind i'm not even certain rn allows this, but check it out).
Well at minimum they clearly got a certain clinetele getting entire ASN block by crunchyroll is impressive ngl, but OP should not expect any services to ever be connectable by any DC IP. all can be blocked easy.
I run multiple site and autoblock all public proxies, and DC IP's not the provider fault.
No, I would consider them beyond reasonable unless (a) they advertise access to those specific websites or (b) they advertised a money-back guarantee to the original form of payment method
I should absolutely try to pull that on ovh. Unacceptable that I can't browse Reddit. /s
Generate spam with llm, drop it onto forum and never come back. Disgusting.
We had the same recently, Iran has been blocking certain networks / subnets due to the ongoing issues within the country, suddenly we get tickets of
"change my IP now or give me refund" type of tickets, we test the servers, all fine, check from every other location, the servers can be accessed, have a stable ping these issues are beyond any providers control but the end result is a demand and if you do not do as they demand the tickets turn hostile, threats of chargebacks, posts on LET, getting added to a "shame" list for one country deciding to block the range / ASN.
Once they connect to a VPN they can access their VPS again without issue.
I had one person at the weekend send a ticket because of this type of issue, I was asleep, I have ping alerts on my personal phone for outages ect but business whatsapp on my business phone, I had 18 messages and 4 tickets from the same person with everything from a chargeback threat, bad reviews, reporting me to the the trading regulator to telling me I should be f**ked in jail for being a scam
Their server was £8 a month, they had the server for 24 days of the month too
i should know not to click a topic with "full timeline" but whatever
Sometimes its very strange for that small amount of money. If someone wants cheap, theres plenty of other hosts with non scammy vpses.
It's the French in me but perhaps we should go on strike until these posts are dealt with
All this post did is make RackNerd sound completely fair and reasonable.
So many of these "negative reviews" just end up being promos for hosts.
Send an email to those service providers with your requirement to remove from the ban list. Until they resolve it, use a free service like cloudflare tunnel or proton vpn through a simple wireguard connection from your vps.
Sir, you're being reasonable.
is he?
Do you think Crunchroll hasn't blocked CF Warp already?
At least the https://www.crunchyroll.com is not blocked via cf tunnel. I think most of the internet uses cf and haven't found any major web service that blocks it so far.
ipv4 is shit.
Thought you guys just waved white flags, the protests i see on news is always boobies in france
The nudes weren't ruled out. I don't know what your concern is.
Hi @naveenlin -- happy to clarify, and appreciate everyone who has chimed in and shared their perspective as well - as mentioned, providers unfortunately can't control how third party sites handle access. Some of these third party sites/platforms end up blanketing entire datacenter ASNs (not just ours) i.e. Netflix is a good example of this, as they block datacenter traffic along with anything they determine may be coming from a VPN, proxy, etc. This isn't something any hosting provider is able to control.
As such, you'd likely run into this same issue elsewhere too. And even if not right away, it's often only a matter of time before whatever detection these sites use ends up classifying that traffic as coming from a datacenter network as well.
With that being said, we're still happy to assist with any of the options we mentioned. Whenever you're ready to proceed, just update the ticket and we'll be happy to help
This is why we can't have €7/y servers anymore .. + AI.
So please help me understand. From my perspective, one practical suggestion, however feasible or not, is for @naveenlin to contact crunchyroll and openai and talk to someone in their IT side about exceptions or review of the block. Either ask to narrow the scope or carve out an exception or whitelist?
But philosophically, if I, as a subscriber, subscribe to a VPS host whose networks have a history of causing bad things on the net such that the reputation of the network block is diminished, how is that not even a modicum of the provider's responsibility? It's their responsibility to police the traffic transiting their network, no? Presumably, they correct bad actors and ban them and the network's reputation is guarded. How is that reputation not the responsibility of the host operator? Isn't there an implicit assumption that if I'm purchasing both cpu resource and network transport resources that my packets will not be blocked due to the reputation of the provider?
Or is it simply a matter of scope? The ASN encompasses more than just Racknerd in this case? If that's the case, doesn't Racknerd still bear the responsibility of coordinating with the peering network/datacenter operators to reduce the harm?
(or whomever, I'm not trying to pick on Racknerd -- especially since I anticipate buying from them in just a few hours despite the possible reputational risk) ?
yes. its a third-party problem that they refuse traffic from certain ASN. Hosting provider can't help. You are rather lucky to get account-credit. Some hosts will not even provide that once a vps is used. So its a reasonable resolution. The other ASN is Velia in EU and there is no guarantee that the third-party site have blocked/unblocked it. You can try if you are lucky you can get connected or just switch to new provider.
have you tried suing Crunchyroll yet
Crunchyroll is garbage. Get a seedbox and use Nyaa at the very least.
Thank you for saving us all some time.
The six-month comparison does not match what happened here.
My timeline was:
So this was not a case of using the service for months, getting value from it, and then asking for money back because circumstances later changed.
I bought it, tested it, found out right away that the assigned network did not work for my intended use, and raised the issue immediately.
If the VPS had worked normally for six months and only later became blocked, I would agree that asking RackNerd for a refund would be unreasonable.
But that is not my situation.
I also did not simply demand a refund and refuse alternatives. I asked whether they could move me to another ASN. RackNerd confirmed that all of their available US locations still use AS36352. France uses a different ASN, but it is out of stock with no ETA, costs an additional $5.99/year, and they cannot confirm that it would solve the access problem.
I am not claiming that RackNerd caused the third-party blocking.
My point is much simpler: I bought an annual service, discovered the problem immediately, and asked for a refund on day one. In that situation, I think refunding the original payment would have been a reasonable customer-service resolution.
Thanks Dustin. I don't disagree with the technical explanation, and I'm not claiming RackNerd caused Crunchyroll's block.
I just want to clarify one important point that may not have been clear in my original post:
I purchased the VPS, tested it immediately, discovered the issue immediately, and started requesting a refund on the very first day.
This is not a case where I used the service for months and later asked RackNerd to absorb the cost because a third party changed its policy.
Had I used the VPS normally for six months and then been blocked, I would not expect RackNerd to refund me.
My disagreement is only about the customer-service decision in a day-one case. I understand RackNerd's policy and technical position; I simply think a $21.99 refund would have been a reasonable goodwill resolution when the issue was reported immediately after purchase.