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Contabo Review and experiences - VPS SSD L
MikeSchmidt
Member
Hey guys, just wanted to write a quick review for one of Contabo's SSD VPS'. This is about Contabo.de.
Sorry, english isnt my first language. I tried my best.
I can not recommend Contabo to anyone. So far, Contabo has only caused me a headache.
The performance of the SSD VPS was awful. Too many users per SSD and on my tests with (https://github.com/n-st/nench) on average only 110 MB / s sequential write speed. I tested this several times a day.
That's not the worst part though.
During the payment there was an error and I got charged twice via PayPal.
I contacted the support by phone and by e-mail and they refused to refund the money and gave me Credit at Contabo.
This, plus the bad performing VPS lead me to cancel my slot after 3 days.
Contabo refuses to refund my money within the 14-day period. We have a law for that in Germany.
This is the reason they gave me when I asked why they didnt refund the money:
"Please note, we do not carry out any reimbursement to cover our expenses, which includes, among other things, the processing of your order with installation, provision and the previous term."
I already paid a Setup fee of 4.99€. And I asked for a partial refund.
They charged me the full price for 3 days of usage and refused to refund, even though I just asked for a partial refund.
It gets even worse:
Yesterday I tried to log into the Customer Control Panel and found out that Contabo closed my user account.
I can no longer use the credit.
I wasted over 40€ and got nothing out of it. I have since opened a paypal dispute and will update this post with the result. I doubt that it will do anything thought because of Contabos shady practises.
Im with another german provider now and I have to say im super happy.
I cannot recommend Contabo to anyone. Dont get fooled by the cheap prices. It comes at a huge cost.
They also seem to delete bad reviews, thats the major reason why I wrote a review here. I hope this is a "neutral" website.
Thanks for your time guys, dont make the same mistake as me.
Comments
You paid a setup fee for a VPS? And they say they "process and install" your VPS? When they clearly have an automated panel?
Did you contact Contabo about the 110 MB / s sequential write speed ?
I had a similar problem and after contacting support suddenly it increased to average I/O speed of 335.3 MB/s
did you order as customer or as a business?
did you issue a "Widerruf" at all or just cancel your contract?
not saying their AGBs will hold up in court, just pointing out, that they have regulations in there which you could have read upfront ;-)
I don't like practises like that, esp. the keeping any money as credit shit. but assume they will ignore you and bet on you not involving a lawyer over 40 bucks. sad, but true.
paging @contabo_m to hear if they are willing to chime in here.
First of all, thanks for the replies. I appreciate you all.
@Falzo I ordered as customer and sent them a Widerruf via Fax and E-Mail. I read that and how I understand it, they give you a refund based on how much you used the service. In my case 3 days!!! 3 days and they kept all the money? That doesnt make any sense to me.
Thanks for paging contabo, but I'm honestly done dealing with this company. If they offered a refund now, that would just be because I made a public post and they would ask me to edit or delete the post.
@hzr Yep thats the most frustrating thing for me.
"The customer has to pay the provider an appropriate fee which equals the ratio of the services already rendered in relation to the total services initially intended for the contract, up to the point when the customer informed the provider about the enactment of his right of revocation regarding the contract."
Please note, we do not carry out any reimbursement to cover our expenses, which includes, among other things, the processing of your order with installation, provision and the current term.
Isnt that what the setup fee was for?
Cover our expenses?
I had the VPS for 3 days and they keep all the money? For what was the setup fee when the deployment of a VPS is automated? It doesnt make sense to me.
@active8 Yes I contacted them and asked about the slow SSD speeds and got a standard response back.
The thing that frustrates me the most is that they closed my account where I had the credits on. I tried my best to communicate with the support before I opened a PayPal case. Never had such a frustrating experience with a hosting provider.
Regarding their SSD performance you would have only needed to raise a ticket/call support. After a talk with @contabo_m they happily lifted the limit imposed on my SSDs and I achieved quite good results (check my signature for benchmarks). Anyway, I am sure your issue will be looked into and am glad to hear you are happy with your new provider.
Do you have an idea why this happened? Was it before or after you opened a PayPal dispute?
So many good providers in Germany, with incredible prices and quality service (Hetzner, for example). There is no reason to choose Contabo. Unfortunately, you have discovered this in the worst way.
Thanks for sharing your experience and good luck with your new provider.
I am with Contabo and they have been good so far. I raised a couple tickets and they fixed. It is true sometimes they reply with a default template but if the issue is yet fixed I reply back saying it hasn't been fixed and I try to send more details and they always fix it.
I'm sorry you had such an experience with Contabo. Personally I have 3 VPS with them and my experience was allways a great one. The VPS performance is great. You should have sent an email regarding the speed. Regarding the refund I dislike Contabo policy.
I hope some day I get to issue a ""Widerruf" against someone.
@Ympker Yes I contacted them and asked about the slow SSD speeds and got a standard response back.
@teochristian I contacted them about the speeds via ticket. Still got the same speeds after I sent the ticket.
Why is there a limit on their SSDs in the first place? They don't tell you that when you buy the SSD VPS...
@angstrom I assume it was after I opened a dispute. I'm usually not the guy to open disputes or write reviews, but this experience was so frustrating.
How about their IOPS?
I agree: https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/2974289/#Comment_2974289
(But, seeing your case, it seems that not everyone gets the limit removed after a ticket.)
This is from my VPS M SSD
Hi all,
We would certainly love to provide assistance. However, there is nothing we can do as we have no idea who this guy who calls himself MikeSchmidt is. There is no customer in our database whom we can connect to this name. All he is doing is spamming the internet with his bad reviews. When we contacted him on a different website, asking him to provide his customer ID so that we can further investigate his complaints, we got no reply. Quite the contrary, all we got was an accusation that we would delete reviews.
Sadly, there is nothing more we can add.
We believe that whoever has a complaint should submit it with his real ID or at least provide it privately if contacted by the provider/company. Posting bad reviews anonymously... we leave it up to you to evaluate this.
@MikeSchmidt you should provide some more info backing up your claims, after what @contabo_m responded here. @trewq @JackH @FAT32 are some mods, contact with them. Your post seem even more shady, as you registered on LET just to bash Contabo.
My suggestion to the mods would be to ask for some evidence with a customer ID, the paypal dispute and some tickets, or else, OP's claims seem really questionable...
I also noticed that @MikeSchmidt had just signed up, which usually is a bad sign, but since he returned to make another comment, I decided to grant him the benefit of the doubt.
His story wasn't implausible, and he was reasonably articulate, but obviously he shouldn't be allowed to post negative reviews on various forums and at the same time be permitted to remain anonymous to the provider.
I also wanted initially to make a comment, but i saw that he responded with some technical claims, so I decided to let it go. But I am usually very suspicious with anybody that is registering in forums and review sites just to bash a provider. He is probably not telling the whole story...
@angstrom @jvnadr Here a screenshot of some the e-mails I had with Contabo.
Like I said Im usually not the guy who goes onto forums and bashes providers. This experience was so frustrating though that I took the time and made reviews on several websites so people dont have the same experience as me.
edit:
Just got 2 emails that they refunded the money.
It is hilarious that it takes a bad review for them to refund the money.
This screenshot only proves that he received e-mails from our customer support team. All relevant information has been erased, like the part after "Kundennummer" (customer ID).
With regard to the refund: As mentioned in our previous comment, we have no idea who this user is. Any refund possibly sent by our billing department has nothing to do with any bad reviews or comments made here. This is important for us to emphasize.
Since the user is still unwilling to reveal his identity, we will not provide any further comments here.
@contabo_m Im hesitant to give you my customer ID. I lost all trust in your company and dont want you to post my real name here. Im more than happy to provide proof to the mods.
When I asked customer support via e-mail AND via phone, you guys refused to refund the money I got charged twice.
This is what customer support told me when I asked if I could get the money back I got charged twice: That was on 18th May!!!!! Im happy to provide a screenshot or gif to the mods of the email they sent me on 18th of May!
Dear Mr. XXXXX,
Thank you very much for your email.
In fact, a chargeback is not provided. However, you can of course the credit for the rental period 01.06. until 30.06. use. All you need to do is cancel the PayPal debit order, so that no automatic collection takes place, but the rent is deducted from the credit. In the following month, ie for the month of July and following, the PayPal direct debit can then be reactivated.
If you have further questions or we can help you otherwise, please let us know."
Now, around the same time after Contabo commented here I get an email from customer support telling me there was a mistake and that they refunded the money?
This email was sent around the EXACT time Contabo commented in this thread!
Dear Mr. XXXXX,
In the past revocation case remained a credit in the amount of XXXX EUR in your customer account. A further check of the balance shows that you have sent us your initial payment twice. The double payment was reimbursed to the original account accordingly.
You will find a corresponding transaction within the PayPal account:
"XXXXXXXXXX"
with the subject:
"Your repayment"
We regret the end of the customer relationship and wish you all the best for the future
Any refund possibly sent by our billing department has nothing to do with any bad reviews or comments made here. This is important for us to emphasize.
I asked you guys if a refund is possible over 2 weeks ago. Via phone and email you said its not possible and that I can use the credits for the next month.
Now at almost the exact time of you commenting here, over 2 weeks later I get a refund for the money I got charged twice?
Come on...
You used the name "Mike Schmidt" to post bad reviews about us on several websites over the last couple of days. If we had been able to make a connection to any customer account registered with us, we would have looked into this immediately (and not waited for you to register and post on LET). As mentioned before as well, you did not even reply to a private message sent via the contact form of another website. In case any related customer account could have been verified, our dedicated support would have been informed to clarify the overall situation.
It is ridiculous for you to assume we would publish your real name on here. Just does not make any sense and would be a GDPR violation.
We still do not know who you are. Therefore we do not know why a refund was sent by our billing department and consequently, we cannot provide additional information. Seems like a coincidence to us, however, your quote already explains the reason for the refund obviously ("A further check of the balance shows...").
We kindly ask for your understanding that we will not discuss this further in public. Feel free to send us a ticket ID via PM and after finally checking your case, we will reply to you via e-mail.
@contabo_m Not so ridiculous to assume after all I had to deal with Contabo. I sent you a private message with my Customer ID and will update this post with the response I get from the support team.
I still dont think it was a coincidence that I get a refund after making this post while you guys said that a refund isnt possible when I asked over 2 weeks ago.
Yeah, we or even the mods don't need to know who you are, but @contabo_m needs to know in order to be able to verify that you're for real.
Well like I said I was hesitant to give out more details to Contabo, afraid they might write my real name here. I sent them a message with my Customer ID and I'm waiting for a response from them via E-Mail.
Witch big company do issue refunds immediatelly, without the apropriate department check the details and give the green light to the biling department? I don't know (with the exception of some one man show providers) that will issue a refund imediatelly.
And it is ridiculous to assume that a big company with many employes will act like a spoiled 10y/o child and reveal personal information of a current or past customer, violating the indeed strict rules of Germany or EU.
Anyway, you have your money back and you think this happened because of this bash thread on LET. Kudos to you, I would suggest you to continue with such behavior against any other company you will face some issues with. Just keep on hiding your ID, because you will eventually end on maxmind or other lists and it will be not very pleasent for you...
I understand, but I don't believe that they would have done this. Whatever the validity of the criticisms, Contabo are a well-established German provider and they wouldn't simply publish a customer's identity on a forum because of a dispute.
Yeah, please keep us posted.
I think customer support especially on public channels can always only be a two-way street.
you can't ask for help/support (a bad review essentially is a scream for help in my books) and at the same time expect the other party to know who you are, without providing a way to identify you.
at least from what can be read on here @contabo_m is willing to help and sort things out, which shows that they are not as bad as the initial post tried to paint them.
if the refunds are a coincidence or not is probably never to be clarified, could also be that they just acted on the paypal dispute then, regardless of any reviews - however it has been dealt with in your favour. grats ;-)
@Falzo > you can't ask for help/support
The point of this post wasn't to ask for help by the way. I thought I made that clear already. Contabo made it pretty clear via E-Mail and phone that they can't help me. It shouldnt take a public review for them to refund the money.
Point of this post was to just share my experiences with Contabo so people don't make the same mistake as me
Again, not what this post was about, but thanks. Also not really true since I still didn't get a partial refund for the 3 days I actually used the VPS.
It's not about the money though.
Nope, I just checked both PayPal disputes. Apparently I already lost them, but didnt get a notification. "Geschlossen" means "Closed" in german
I lost both on 23th and 29th of May . "Zugunsten des Verkäufers entschieden" means "Decided in favor of the seller"
No way that was a coincidence lets not be naive here.
It is what it is... I'm just waiting for Contabos response now. Will update you all.
So much Fuss going around here
I have a good experience with Contabo. No such issue faced.