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QualityServers Announcement
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QualityServers Announcement

jhjh Member
edited January 2012 in General

Hi everyone,

Today I have some bad news, which I'm sure will end up on LEB/LET fairly quickly anyway, so I've decided to open a thread to answer any questions in public. Here is the email we've sent to our customers today.


This email concerns customers who were under the QualityServers brand only. New UKCloud customers can disregard it completely. Please read it carefully.

Shared hosting customers: we're giving you a free upgrade to a cloud-based shared hosting environment. The migration is going now and you'll need to make sure your nameservers, if you're using your own ones, are updated to the IP 91.227.127.24.

Dedicated/colo customers: we're maintaining your accounts as normal.

SHOUTcast/gameserver/VPS customers: please keep reading.


Dear Customer,

As many of you are aware, we've had some hardware problems recently on a number of our servers. These problems have been mounting up recently and I've been running around trying to fix everything but unfortunately the issues are spiralling out of control (RAID failures, disk failures, corrupted disk images, poor disk IO etc) so we've had to rethink how we're going to approach them.

I'd like to start by giving you some more background. When we started up, I was the one funding everything purely out of a clerk's salary, so although experience was there from my last venture, money was tight. Despite that, we were keen to appeal to customers by offering great value for money, and to do this we decided to purchase our own hardware. We couldn't afford new hardware so we bought used hardware, which was 'ok' but not ideal (mainly Dell PE 1950 and Intel SR1550 servers in case you were wondering).

Disk IO was always fairly poor even with optimal arrays, so things were generally fairly slow. This wasn't ideal but we expected customers to have some understanding given our prices. Unfortunately very recently following all of the failures it has become apparent that the disk IO was poor not because the servers were a little old, but because the disks and controllers were of poor quality and were on their way out.

By this point we had already deployed our new cloud (and thanks to our now increased budget - we used new and much better and servers), and most of the customers whose monthly fees were suitable have already been moved over following our advice. This has left a lot of half empty nodes on the old system which despite begin half empty are still performing badly, and a lot of customers left over who are just not paying enough for us to warrant giving them free upgrades either to our cloud or to better hardware unfortunately. Likewise, maintaining the old hardware is so time-intensive that it's probably more expensive than giving the free upgrade.

Given the above situation we find ourselves in and following some discussions within our company, we have decided to discontinue the traditional VPSs for both new and existing customers effective immediately. I would advise you to:

  • Get your data if you still can,
  • Open a ticket under our Customer Service department for a prorated refund, bearing in mind we have deployed around 2000 traditional VPSs to date so we're expecting a lot of tickets,
  • Consider our cloud if you want to stay with our company - we'll try and work with you on the price where possible and handle the migration for you,
  • Consider the following providers who I can recommend, if the cloud is too expensive for you even after working with us on the price: BurstNET, VooServers (UK only), DMBHosting (UK only).

And of course I would like to apologise for all of the above - it's as bad for us as a company as it is for you as we'll bethe majority of the customer base we've worked hard to build up and no doubt will be swamped with angry comments etc. in the next few days. I would also like to assure you that we did intend to keep the old platform going but did not anticipate there being this many issues with it.

We have until the 31st of this month with our existing colocation contracts, after which we will be selling off our old servers, however I would urge you to move now to avoid problems. We will not be offering any more technical support for VPSs on the old platform.

Regards,

James

For QuickVPS Ltd

Thanked by 1Mon5t3r
«13456789

Comments

  • Thanks for being honest to your customers and giving them time and support during their move!

  • Just got the email. I know you had intended to keep the old nodes going but after the recent problems I cant say I'm surprised to have received this. Its a shame as I always had good service and was quite happy with my VPS's. Cant stretch to your new offerings though as I've already got a bigger VPS with bhost which I'm happy with.

    I'm sure others will have more to say here, but thanks for the service and good luck :)

  • +1

    I just got this email, too. You're my new hero. :)

  • Pretty disappointed with this. :/

    I'll send you a support ticket to discuss the possibility of moving to the cloud.

  • vldvld Member

    This is, to put it lightly, inconvenient. Well, I guess it's better to find out like this and not get any surprises.
    Great service tho, awesome price.

  • So my past prediction (denyed by James) was right :)

  • jhjh Member

    Thanks for your understanding everyone.

    @Spirit: I did intend to keep the old platform going but recently the issues have just snowballed.

  • @jtodd +1 for recommending VooServers, they have rocksolid performance

    and another +1 for being very honest on the issues everyone had and your position.

  • @jtodd this doesn't affect QualityServers customers with XEN VMs right ?

  • Agreed +1 for the honesty and for giving folks enough time to deal with it instead of just pulling the plug.

  • jhjh Member

    Xen and OpenVZ

  • SpiritSpirit Member
    edited January 2012

    Will refunds be issued before you sell old hardware or after?

  • jhjh Member

    We do have cash in the bank for refunds if that's what you're asking.

  • "If you still can" isn't really giving people time to migrate...

  • drmikedrmike Member
    edited January 2012

    @Aidy said: If you still can" isn't really giving people time to migrate...

    Almost 4 weeks isn't enough?

    edit: The first post says that they have until the 31st to move.

  • Oh please with all the "you're my hero" posts.

    I personally am deeply annoyed about this, I use mine as a test bed for a few things so it's not a big deal, but I feel they have mislead people, verging on a scam. When I signed up in August they had a large number of offers running here and wht for yearly payments. They claim in the email the old service was ran on a shoestring budget but now they are better funded and can afford better service, yeah by all the suckers who paid up for year.

    The old servers being "too costly to run" is complete and utter BS and should have been considered when they made those offers. They've now had a temporary infusion of cash, thanks to this community, and can get higher margin customers so giving the people who can be bothered to request pro-rata refunds is no big deal. I like how they've helped people do that by including links to customer portals at the new site.

    I thought it was equally "scammy" last month when a hardware node died and the emailed out saying you had to submit a ticket to get your VPS move. I wonder how many users never did that?

    After all it was a LEB and I didn't have great expectation but this is far beyond any low expectation I had and this community should be shunning not celebrating such an insulting move.

    I can honestly say, I repeat my sentiment in every WHT and LEB thread about UK Cloud, scam artist pure and simple.

  • Almost 4 weeks isn't enough?

    edit: The first post says that they have until the 31st to move.

    There's a difference between "if you still can" and "whilst you still can".

    Thanked by 1tux
  • jhjh Member
    edited January 2012

    @StolenToaster said: Oh please with all the "you're my hero" posts.

    I personally am deeply annoyed about this, I use mine as a test bed for a few things so it's not a big deal, but I feel they have mislead people, verging on a scam. When I signed up in August they had a large number of offers running here and wht for yearly payments. They claim in the email the old service was ran on a shoestring budget but now they are better funded and can afford better service, yeah by all the suckers who paid up for year.

    The old servers being "too costly to run" is complete and utter BS and should have been considered when they made those offers. They've now had a temporary infusion of cash, thanks to this community, and can get higher margin customers so giving the people who can be bothered to request pro-rata refunds is no big deal. I like how they've helped people do that by including links to customer portals at the new site.

    I thought it was equally "scammy" last month when a hardware node died and the emailed out saying you had to submit a ticket to get your VPS move. I wonder how many users never did that?

    After all it was a LEB and I didn't have great expectation but this is far beyond any low expectation I had and this community should be shunning not celebrating such an insulting move.

    I can honestly say, I repeat my sentiment in every WHT and LEB thread about UK Cloud, scam artist pure and simple.

    If you have a concern based on what's in the email I'll try and sort it out, but if you're jumping to very false conclusions that I'm trying to rip people off then I couldn't care less what you think right now, sorry. I'm too busy right now for people like you.

  • jhjh Member

    @Aidy said: There's a difference between "if you still can" and "whilst you still can".

    There are some XM11 is down now. XM13 is slow. XM9 has been migrated to XM11 and XM13. Some of VZ3UK is now on XM9. You're starting to see the extent of the problems here.

    I have Dan working the ticket desk while I'm working on getting XM11 back up and that appears to be a software issue.

  • Thanks jtodd - obviously you can understand the concern in receiving an email saying "get your data if you still can", and finding that your VPS is unresponsive.

  • @jtodd Too busy for low margin paid up customers that you sought out is exactly what I'm saying.

  • jhjh Member
    edited January 2012

    @Aidy said: Thanks jtodd - obviously you can understand the concern in receiving an email saying "get your data if you still can", and finding that your VPS is unresponsive.

    Which node are you on?

    @StolenToaster said: Too busy for low margin paid up customers that you sought out is exactly what I'm saying.

    Nope. Too busy for people with selective reading. See @Aidy for an example of a LEB customer I have the time for.

  • @StolenToaster yes its not great and id rather have my service still. But given that James is trying to start a new offering based on zero downtime im sure he would rather none of this was happening and the old platform was ticking along quietly. I would rather give him the benefit of the doubt that hes not spent the last 6 + months planning an elaborate scam and give him some credit for being up front and honest about the situation.

  • @jtodd said: but if you're jumping to very false conclusions that I'm trying to rip people off then I couldn't care less what you think right now

    You cannot do that if you want your new brand to succed and you know that. You will post everything possible to look nice but your act isn't nice at all.

    I will quote my old LEB post for those which don't understand problem, history and try to make hero from James

    **The problem I see here is that you knowingly drasticly increased LEB clientbase in last few months with aggressive advertising just to raise your hands off LEB boxes after and suggesting us move to more expensive servers everytime you get opportunity. With all those special offers you said that you need money for future project. It’s clear now that future project was UKCloud and I wish you good luck with that but I must admit that you give us impression like we are ballast for you now. That’s not our fault.

    I am predicting very bad future for all your LEB clients. Why? Because without managing of old nodes sooner or later all nodes will follow VZ2UK example and sooner or later we will stay out of place on non cloud nodes. Or you will invent something other to get rid of ballast which served you well to collect for UKCloud project.**

    This quote was posted weeks before James even discontinued old VPSs.

  • Personally, I'd rather be told that I have 25 days to get my data off, find a new host, and be offered a pro-rata refund on my yearly payment, than to be on a host that doesn't care that his nodes are slow/down, or takes the money and keeps adding more containers to the node.

    And that's what he's done :)

  • HeinzHeinz Member
    edited January 2012

    @Deor said: I would rather give him the benefit of the doubt that hes not spent the last 6 + months planning an elaborate scam

    Yes he did. There was around 10 "special offers" with yealy payment only few months ago to collect money for UKCloud. At some point he even admitted that he's doing this because he need morey for future project. And now when he realized this future project he don't need us anymore.

    and give him some credit for being up front and honest about the situation.

    What he can do anyway as he staying in hosting busines with his new brand? If he wouldn't open this thread others would but now he's atleast making good impression which is ordinary manipulation.

    @Damian4IPXcore that's just manipulation. He have another (UKCloud) brand which he want and need to keep alive with good reputation. If he wouldn't post this to make kind impression his clients would. It's nothing great here. Each his "special offer" was "last one" but he advertised them more than any other company at LEB/LET. Only few monts ago! Everything with aim to get fast money to start new brand. And now when he have this new brand he's kicking us out.

  • jhjh Member

    @Deor said: yes its not great and id rather have my service still. But given that James is trying to start a new offering based on zero downtime im sure he would rather none of this was happening and the old platform was ticking along quietly. I would rather give him the benefit of the doubt that hes not spent the last 6 + months planning an elaborate scam and give him some credit for being up front and honest about the situation.

    Thank you.

    @Heinz said: You cannot do that if you want your new brand to succed and you know that. You will post everything possible to look nice but your act isn't nice at all.

    I'm trying to be as pleasant as possible but I think the onus here is equally on the customer to be understanding as there is an issue outside our control.

    @Heinz said: I will quote my old LEB post for those which don't understand problem, history and try to make hero from James

    I'm definitely not a hero. I've done by best but have obviously let people down, for which I apologise.

  • I just created a ticket to recover data from XM11. I'm "happy" that you are trying to get this system back up, so we can make some latest backups. I hope you will succeed :)
    I hope you give us a chance (if the system is back up for some days) to backup some data. This will give us an reason to considering a migration to another product from your company instead of just moving to another company.

  • jhjh Member

    @Heinz said: Yes he did. There was around 10 "special offers" with yealy payment only few months ago to collect money for UKCloud.

    Correct. I made it clear this was the case all the way through.

    At some point he even admitted that he's doing this because he need morey for future project. And now when he realized this future project he don't need us anymore.

    This is an example of an incorrect conclusion you've jumped to with no evidence.

  • Most providers just shut down their servers and take your data and money when they run into trouble. At least @jtodd is trying to give people as many possible options before shutting down the servers and also giving refunds to everyone.

    Still sad to see qualityservers completely disappear though

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