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My bad experience with nodejungle.com
I have buyed two vps from nodejuntle.com at the end of March with $2.45/month,512MB RAM,30GB disk space,kvm vps. But at end of May, I receive the invoice to pay $15/month.
I send the ticket, they say "That is because you were transferred to better node with SSD drives in RAID 10. In order to pay off the machine we need to increase the prices for customers which wereusing the node before which was on cheap SATA drive."
I say "Your answer is not reasonable for your unilaterally Break the agreement.
I buy the vps is for the suitable price and hardware.So please resume what i buy ."
their answer "Situation is simple: Either pay your current bills OR make an order for 256 MB VPS with 5 GB SSD space ( on nodejungle.com site ) which is 20$ /year and transfer your
data from current VPS's there."
At the end, I closed the vps and share all of you the experience.
Do you think to buy the vps from the one who will unilaterally raise the price or force you pay more for a lower spec vps is safely?
Comments
While I know it sucks that this happened, price increases happen in the industry. The SSD drives cost considerably more than SATA drives and they didn't have SATA nodes anymore it seems. They should have sent out a notice that they were upgrading nodes and charging more - you didn't get the notice?
Price increases are sometimes necessary but they definitely should have warned you before surprising you with that invoice. What gets me more is their response which is essentially saying you need to buy yet another service from them and resolve the problem yourself. They could have been a lot nicer about that.
In rare occasions they might be justified, but that is not generally applicable and especially not after only two months of service and without any notice whatsoever.
This was simply bad and unprofessional service.
Bait and switch. Sadly, it isn't illegal, but it is a very poor way to do business. If you were in a contract with a company (for more than a month term) and the decided to do this it would invalidate your contract, but in a month to month situation since you agreed in their TOS that they can change the terms of the deal on renewal of service, they are technically in their right to do so. It is, however, a super dick move and a great way to piss off/lose your customers regardless of the upgrade benefits.
Any serious host would have given you at least a month at the same price to test their new platform. Then having given you at least a months notice on the price and platform change, you could have made a decision about whether you wanted to pay extra for the upgraded service or leave without having to rush.
TL;DR:
Find a better host, obviously this one does not really care about its customers as shown by their ticket replies to you.
Cheers!
Fully agree with all TheLinuxBug wrote.
@linxr9000 @neroux @TheLinuxBug @Scion @Corey
Hello,
As the OP is mentioning our company I have responsibility to explain the situation so potential readers/viewers can see both sides. Unfortunately I will have to include the ticket replies ( if screenshots are needed I will include them as well ). Let's start from the begin:
The company has been run from previous owner for a month who rented cheap hardware with 1 ( yes, ONE! ) 4 TB SATA2 drive. He offered prices that on long run would not get any profit so he decided to sell the company.
Company has been acquired then and we have transferred clients to new node from mid of March. New node is over 400$/month. We kept unreal price in terms of disk space for over 10 clients for a month in order for them to see/feel better performance we have made for them.
Price increase had to be done in May as we no longer could not take the hit/make any profit ( did not have disk space for new clients and our re-designed VPS plans because of old clients who paid few bucks and at the end got 30-50GB SSD RAID 10 Space. It has been announced to clients ( via e-mail and ticket opened in behalf of some even ). Some have stayed with us and some decided to leave. That is fine with us as we can't force any client to be with us if he doesn't want to.
OP opened ticket asking why the price increased.
Below you will find all info from our talks and you will see that we have suggested him to buy new 256 MB VPS on yearly plan which is 20$/year ( that is about ~1,7$/month ) and we can do the transfer for him or he can do it himself. We also suggested that in this case he notify use so we can extend current VPS until the migration is finished.
He opened ticket stating:
Client: I have buyed the vps for monthly pay 2.45, and now why you bill me for 15?
-Hi,
That is because you were transferred to better node with SSD drives in RAID 10. In order to pay off the machine we need to increase the prices for customers who were using the node before which was on cheap SATA drive. I'm sure you noticed better performance in your VPS after move ( ~1 month ago ) and that is because we are trying our best to give our clients the best service possible. Unfortunately that costs us money ( specially the SSD drives ) so we must raise the prices depending on which plan before did you have ( you are using 30-40 GB SSD space which is about 2 or even three 1 GB VPS on our current plans ).
We can however suggest you to buy some VPS from our current plans ( for example 256 MB one for 20$/year ( and continue to be with us if this price is to much for you
. You can find the 256 MB plan on our website www.nodejungle.com
Client: Your answer is not reasonable for your unilaterally Break the agreement.
I buy the vps is for the suitable price and hardware.
So please resume what i buy .
If you want cheap VPS we can offer you our alternatives in San Diego, New York and/or Frankfurt, Germany for 3$ to get the same spec.
Client:
if you didn't break any agreement, and you can continue the vps what i have buyed.
you say you have the same spec vps, i think you can migrate my vps to there.
Yes we can offer you same spec VPS. Please let us know which location do you prefer? If you are from china I suggest San Diego ( SSD powered ) OpenVZ VPS as it has best latency to your country.
Please note that migration will have to be done by you or we can migrate the files for 5$ per VPS. Reason for extra fee is that the vps is not managed and you are moving from two different virtualization ( KVM to OpenVZ ). This requires managed support which we must charge if you don't know how to do migration.
Please let us know if we can continue?
Client: ok, San Diego is prefered. i need kvm not openvz.
the migration i can do myself.
how to begin?
- Please note that he stated here he will do the migration by himself.
If you need KVM then you can only use this dallas node but we need to provide you our 256 MB plan which is 20$/year. Do you want to proceed with that?
Again our reply to the client as he was not answering for 24h
Any update on can we proceed with this? On long run 256 MB VPS is cheaper than 3$/month ( you pay it 20$ / year ). We need to create invoice for two 256 MB VPS and after payment we will create those servers and you can migrate data ( you will have 5 days ). Please let us know if we can proceed.
Client: You mean the same spec is "512 MB" down to "256 MB", and the price "2.45$/month" up to "3$/month"？
I can't see any reasonable!
20$ for 256 MB KVM VPS - 1 year. It means 20$/12 months=1,66$/month. It's not possible to pay per month as it's to little package. You must pay for whole year advance to get the 20$ pricing. Let me know if we can proceed as your servers will overdue soon.
Client: All we know the price pay monthly and pay annually is not same thing.
Because your internal adjustment， And require your customer to accept loss， No one would seen the reasonable.
I just want to continue the agreement ,continue the same spec and price , and promised do the extra migration myself (which caused by your company and was evaluated $5 per VPS by you).
If you can not decided this ,please let the higher make decision.
i don't know why are you complicating this.
Situation is simple: Either pay your current bills OR make an order for 256 MB VPS with 5 GB SSD space ( on nodejungle.com site ) which is 20$ /year and transfer your data from current VPS's there.
It's up to you to decide. Your servers will expire very soon so my suggestion is to act quick.
Client: It seem there's no solution. So i select not to continue the two vps.
And I will pasted my experience at LET for people to judge.
We have gave you the best solution possible and you are refusing to do so. Just order 2 x256 MB VPS and pay 20$ yearly for that VPS, transfer files from these VPS and all good.
Once again, we did told him to migrate data as he replied he will do that by himself.
We offered him solution which is even cheaper on long run. He refused that.
Now he is making thread here complaining about us when actually it's the client who refused all our suggestions.
I know it's a big conversation and I'm sorry I had to copy/paste it here but as it was my company which is being accused of something I must react like this and to show actually that the OP is wrong in his statements.
Uh, where?
Precisely, the situation presented by the OP is exactly what was just confirmed by the host.
You say you did communicate this to your affected customers. When exactly did you do this?
One thing that baffles me is the fact that you mentioned you migrated your customers mid-March, when the OP mentioned he purchased the package at the end of March. This would imply he bought it from you and not the previous owner.
Considering you pointed out that individual disk allocation for each client with such a contract would be a problem, I have to assume you have a zero-overselling policy.
Overall I have to say you should have taken these customers into account when you did the calculations for acquiring this company and, given that they had a valid contract, they should have been grandfathered. After all we do not seem to talk about hundreds of customers here but about around ten. Grandfathering these customers would have left a more professional appearance than simply forcing them to upgrade or out of their plans.
The OP mentioned this. This is far from comparable. Broken down on monthly basis it is only slightly cheaper, but is actually an upfront yearly payment and the hardware specifications are way lower.
Well, since the customer was on a monthly plan and the ToS/AUP likely did not contain any provision the prices will stay like that, for future billing terms, the host can "upgrade" the price or "downgrade" the specs. If the customer does not agree, will not continue, BUT:
1. There should be at least a month notice about the change;
2. The migration should be free if the customer agrees with downgrade specs.
Let alone the fact you did not research the company you bought and it's assets and now you try to pass the buck on the customer.
This is not professional.
This is not the first time when I see the violation of Privacy Policy in these 'bad reviews'.
The website states the following in the Privacy Policy:
Information collected on this site is strictly for our use, NO OTHER OUTSIDE PERSONS MAY VIEW YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION SUCH BILLING INFORMATION, ETC.
I see that no billing information exposed, however there is an ETC at the end of the sentence, and the statement have the following too: Information collected on this site. A private conversation between the Company and the client is also an information collected on that site. It does not matter If it is a phone call, an e-mail, or "ticket" conversation. It is still something private between you and the customer. (Since that conversation did not happen on a public forum)
I can be wrong too.
Correct me If I'm wrong about this one, because I would like to know that If it is a violation of PP or not.
But as @Maounique said, this is just not professional.
Nevertheless a simple: "We did notice them about the upcoming change" and "We are sorry for any inconvenience caused." would be well enough to be professional.
But copy&paste a private conversation is still a bit... I do not know... How could I trust you after seeing this? So If it is not against the Privacy Policy, it is still a Bad PR action. You supposed to store and keep safe every data that I give to you.
What do you wanted to prove with that move?
@perennate @neroux We tried to communicate with client and offered him a very good deal. He decided not to take it. End of story. I can't ( read won't ) discuss here about why the client wants 30-50 GB of pure SSD space for 3$. If someone else can offer that feel free to go with that provider. We have done our math and have even hosted the clients for a month on new node with same VPS spec in order for them to spot the difference.
@Maounique It says in our ToS that we have right to change the prices and trust me I don't want to loose client but if he doesn't understand why the price needed to be increased then I'm sorry but it's better for both of us to go our separate ways. Client offered to do the migration himself. Nevertheless I think you are missing the point that VPS is UNMANAGED. Free migrations are done as courtesy by the hosts ( which we do for most of our clients when they have understanding for us ). I know what I bought and I've even spent over 1k $ on initial investments to offer clients best service possible.
@hoczaj : One question: Did I copy/pasted answers from ticket in first place? No, I didn't. OP copied the part which suits himself in claims, but not the replies before on us being patient with him and offering him suggestions / solutions on the situation and for him to always say no. It's a bit unfair don't you think. I don't get people like you. When client is trying to bash the company and copying answers from tickets that is fine. When we do that in order to show the people whole story ( and no violation has been made as I have always watched on that ) then it's oh my God, LOOK, they copied the answers from ticket, how unprofessional. What should we do in this situation? Keep our mouth shout and let all other readers think that we are fault even though we aren't as we tried to work with the client to find solution on long run. Unfortunately that didn't worked out. Even though we offered him several options and he REFUSED every one of them. As for privacy statement, it's been never violated. The "information collected on this site" is strictly meant for billing information and/or private information of client ( such as first,last name , address etc ). It may look unprofessional to some of people and apologizes for that then but to have someone bashing the company when he was offered several options is just ridiculous to discuss. Like I said, we didn't come to an agreement. It's best to go our separate ways then. I'm pulling out of further discussion as it's pointless.
My question was of a different nature. When did you tell your customers of the mandatory move? Another question was when you migrated him? Based on the timeline of events it seems he actually signed up with you and not the previous owner.
Also, he did not want 30 GB (not 50) of SSD storage, but simply the deal that was agreed on when he signed up for. If you make changes here it is outside of his control and unilateral as the OP mentioned.
As to the deal you offered him, he could either pay more than 500% more than what he signed up for (and get an SS drive, which he apparently does not need) or get a fraction of the resources he purchased for basically the same price. I am not quite sure where anyone would see the very good deal here.
Again, would it have been such a problem to simply grandfather this handful of customers with possibly very cheap plans? I am sure you were aware of these customers when you acquired this host and included them in your calculation.
Last but not least you stated the OP is wrong with his statements but comparing his and your version I cannot spot any blatant discrepancies.
Thank you for all concerned.
1.sorry for make a little mistake ,I buy the vps at the early March.
2.I check all my email ,and find nothing about the notice that they were upgrading nodes and charging more.
3.They say:"If you want cheap VPS we can offer you our alternatives in San Diego, New York and/or Frankfurt, Germany for 3$ to get the same spec."
I think they can offered the same spec vps at other location, so continue the ticket.
But the end you know , they think the higher price and lower spec is "a very good deal".
Thanks for sharing the info.
IMO, 'providers' like these doesn't deserve to have any customers at all.
Thanks for the warning, probably would have never used them but now I'm 100% sure i'll never use them.