ServerHand Exits the LowEndMarket

raindog308

Thanks to @angstrom for sharing the news.

Due to some dramastic changes within the markets this year we've had to make some changes to the company and the services we sell and the one major change we're completing is the removal of the budget servers, we expect this change to be in place by the 1st January which is when all the clients on a budget server will be cancelled and put onto a different server.

As well as this we are changing the prices to our services to result in us being able to offer you a better service. We're aiming to ensure no downtime is caused throughout the changes which will occur in the next few weeks.

Furthermore we're turning up our support team to make up for these last few rocky months. We've brought on another support agent whom will be working around the clock to ensure a better response time is given, if you've got any enquires about the changes to our support feel free to open a ticket and we'll be more then happy to tend to the matter.

Strangely, they posted offers during Black Friday and as @brueggus observed in the Pit, some as recent as a week ago.

I guess the questions to @ServerHand are:

(1) Are you honoring your $10/year, etc. BF deals through the end of their term?

(2) "put onto a different server". Your ads call out specific CPU models: " Xeon CPU E3-1240v6, LA: Xeon E3-1241v3". Will the "different server" have these same CPUs?

uptime

TEH INVISIBLE @SERVERHAND OF THE MARKET HAS SPOKEN!

Taoron

@raindog308 We're going to honour them with a refund into there billing account which can be used to purchase another service yes we'll be moving them over to either LAX or which will mean better reliability and faster servers for our much loved clients. We were not prepared to handle 100 signups from the Chinese on that plan. We maybe were getting 1-5 signups every two weeks at most.

angstrom

@raindog308 said: Thanks to @angstrom for sharing the news.

I was reluctant to open a thread for this, but you were right to do so.

Taoron

@Quadranet_Adam

angstrom

@raindog308 said: I guess the questions to @ServerHand are:

(1) Are you honoring your $10/year, etc. BF deals through the end of their term?

Their reply in the cest pit suggests that the BF deals will end on January 1st, which (if true) is a little disappointing.

MasonR

@ServerHand said: going to honour them with a refund into there billing account

So a credit, then? That's pretty shitty. People signed up for the cheap plans only to have their plans canceled, a credit given, and an option to buy higher-price plans.

If someone was paying for a $10/yr service, they aren't going to want to sign up for a $10/mo service. Expect some chargebacks.

WSS

@MasonR said:

@ServerHand said: going to honour them with a refund into there billing account

So a credit, then? That's pretty shitty. People signed up for the cheap plans only to have their plans canceled, a credit given, and an option to buy higher-price plans.

If someone was paying for a $10/yr service, they aren't going to want to sign up for a $10/mo service. Expect some chargebacks.

This is pretty much what I was thinking, minus a handful of expletives.

@ServerHand said:
We were not prepared to handle 100 signups from the Chinese on that plan. We maybe were getting 1-5 signups every two weeks at most.

Welcome to LET! Now learn how to block billing for specific countries and VPNs.

Lee

ServerHand said: We're going to honour them with a refund into there billing account which can be used to purchase another service

So anyone who bought just a service in the last couple of weeks on a yearly will get a credit for another more expensive service? WTF...

uptime

... and now the market seems to be speaking back. Oy.

cccat

@raindog308 said:

(2) "put onto a different server". Your ads call out specific CPU models: " Xeon CPU E3-1240v6, LA: Xeon E3-1241v3". Will the "different server" have these same CPUs?

I think it doesn't matter which cpu they will use.
Their "Xeon E3-1241v3" core can only get less than 500 scores in unixbench.
Things can not be worse, right?

deank

This could be considered as bait & switch tactics.

Yeah, brace for chargebacks. I would.

6ixth

@MasonR said:

@ServerHand said: going to honour them with a refund into there billing account

So a credit, then? That's pretty shitty. People signed up for the cheap plans only to have their plans canceled, a credit given, and an option to buy higher-price plans.

If someone was paying for a $10/yr service, they aren't going to want to sign up for a $10/mo service. Expect some chargebacks.

This is some Treudler v2 shite.

Lee

deank said: could be considered as bait & switch tactics.

No, that is bait and switch and if anyone ever needed a justifiable reason to chargeback this is it.

Taoron

Please appreciate that we can't continue to run this server when a great fraction of our clients are using it for things that breach our terms of service or are alerting our fraud system. We're not able to run it are giving clients till the 1st of next month to help us find a suitable solution to continue here.

6ixth

@ServerHand said:
Please appreciate that we can't continue to run this server when a great fraction of our clients are using it for things that breach our terms of service or are alerting our fraud system. We're not able to run it are giving clients till the 1st of next month to help us find a suitable solution to continue here.

You simply shouldn't have made the offer if you aren't able to manage it correctly? At minimum you should be offering EVERYBODY refunds via their ORIGINAL payment method, not into account credit.

WSS

Didn't you already suggest shedding yourself of your problematic clients? They're going to turn into chargebacks no matter what you do, so you might as well just suck it up now and open a new LLC to accept payment under a different name.

Taoron

I understand. Just bad circumstances all around. Please feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

Lee

ServerHand said: I understand. Just bad circumstances all around. Please feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

As shitty as this all is you at least need to confirm that refunds will be offered if requested, not just credits.

Yura

ServerHand is getting Fisted.

WSS

Simple. Recheck all current "Budget" clients and terminate them with cause for doing bad things. Except, if they haven't. The way to properly do this is to "crash" the "shared storage" and give them weekly fsck updates until nobody cares anymore.

Lee

WSS said: The way to properly do this is to "crash" the "shared storage" and give them weekly fsck updates until nobody cares anymore.

Never seen that happen before...

angstrom

@ServerHand said: Please appreciate that we can't continue to run this server when a great fraction of our clients are using it for things that breach our terms of service or are alerting our fraud system. We're not able to run it are giving clients till the 1st of next month to help us find a suitable solution to continue here.

Speaking for myself, my main gripe at the moment is that your email was too light on details. You have three locations (LA, Dallas, Piscataway), and you currently still offer a number of Budget VPS plans, and the HostingBox plan was offered as recently as BF/CM, not to mention that you had sales (with recurring prices) on a number of these plans on BF/CM.

It would have been better to send an email that says exactly what the policy changes will be beginning on January 1st instead of asking people to submit tickets to ask about these changes (or to ask about them on LET).

WSS

@Lee said:

WSS said: The way to properly do this is to "crash" the "shared storage" and give them weekly fsck updates until nobody cares anymore.

Never seen that happen before...

That's why I suggested weekly updates.

Taoron

@Lee said:

As shitty as this all is you at least need to confirm that refunds will be offered if requested, not just credits.

We're offering the clients whom will be affected by this a better deal, quicker services and reliability. As well as offering free migration and within the new year are going to do whatever we can to make it up to all the clients such as free rewards and a better system for our clients in the upcoming year. (RAID 10 SSD, etc.)

We appreciate the concerns but we believe the way we're doing it is more reliable for the clients who want to stay and we've already had a positive reaction from this. We'll be working hard with clients wanting refunds to sort this out quickly.

Arirang

The credit they will refund is useless for LETer

Taoron

@WSS said:
Simple. Recheck all current "Budget" clients and terminate them with cause for doing bad things. Except, if they haven't. The way to properly do this is to "crash" the "shared storage" and give them weekly fsck updates until nobody cares anymore.

CPU limited down to 5? Real shitbox?

AnthonySmith

@ServerHand It is less than 30 days, just hit cancel and refund, it is very easy to find them, credit is not a refund, you clearly don't have cash flow issues if you are hiring new staff so please... don't treat people like they are stupid, don't be a complete con artist, refund.

Taoron

@AnthonySmith said:
@ServerHand It is less than 30 days, just hit cancel and refund, it is very easy to find them, credit is not a refund, you clearly don't have cash flow issues if you are hiring new staff so please... don't treat people like they are stupid, don't be a complete con artist, refund.

@AnthonySmith Sorry but you're wrong. I have refunded a bunch of people already and I just don't have any more cash to refund with.

IAlwaysBeCoding

@ServerHand even though your business decisions are going to cost you a lot. Shit happens man, and the LET community is ruthless for these kind of stuff. They all are ready to pull out the pitch forks ready to massacre you with useless negative comments, making you look like you acted in bad faith("bait-and-switch").

At the end of the day, who cares what 2 or 3 bad apples are going to say about your business. They have no stake in it, and are quick to throw the first stone when things go bad for certain providers.

I feel like you underestimated the amount of fraud the LET community brings when you as a provider offers a heavily discounted offer here. Nobody is looking at it from your point of view, they aren't looking at your books and seeing the massive amount of fraud you have right at your front door from exposing your company here.

Nah... none of those members throwing the pitchfork at you cares about that, they only care about the "LET buyers" now, later on they will be posting on another thread caring only about the "LET providers". They are all hypocrites.

I hope that this business decision won't hurt you main business in the long run , or cripple you. Good luck @ServerHand, only you know what is best for your company.

6ixth

@ServerHand said:

@AnthonySmith said:
@ServerHand It is less than 30 days, just hit cancel and refund, it is very easy to find them, credit is not a refund, you clearly don't have cash flow issues if you are hiring new staff so please... don't treat people like they are stupid, don't be a complete con artist, refund.

@AnthonySmith Sorry but you're wrong. I have refunded a bunch of people already and I just don't have any more cash to refund with.

No, you are wrong, you have literally just killed your reputation here LOL.