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Disposition for IPXcore's 32mb VPS plan
This may be a little pre-emptory, but I want to get rolling on opinions early, in case we need to act upon it
On June 26th, I posted our "32 mb Open VZ plan for 50 cents a month!" offering on LEB, and only on LEB. This plan was not offered as a loss-leader, but at very little profit, and was intended more as a publicity type of "hey, check out our service with very little obligation" type thing. It was contingent on our current datacenter continuing it's pricing (which is locked by contract, so no issue there.). In other news, it was working fine.
On July 2nd, the datacenter we're hosted in, Atjeu Hosting, in Phoenix AZ, unplugged our network drop due to a single inbound DDoS attack on one of our clients that, despite at 700mbit, completely crippled their network and sent them into a panic. As of this writing, we're up to 8 hours of downtime, which is something completely unacceptable to me personally, and to the goals of our company, so we're contacting other datacenters to look for a new home. Please read http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/3473/ipxcore-down for the timeline of events as they've occurred, and for more information.
Anyway, we had approximately 450 people sign up for our 50 cent 32mb plan. It appears that many datacenters are charging about 400% more for IPs than Atjeu was, which means that our 50 cent plan goes from very-little-profit to a-very-large-profit-loss. This is not an atomic decision yet, as a few people have mentioned datacenters with low cost or free IPs, but as I said earlier, I want to get rolling on opinions early.
For the 32mb plans, would you rather:
1. Your VPS be cancelled, and 100% of your money refunded?
or
- Your VPS be cancelled, and 100% of your payment is applied as credit towards some other service of ours?
or
- Your VPS remains up, and we'll honor however long you've purchased your VPS for (3, 6, or 12 months were the terms), however, it will not be renewable at the 50-cents-per-month price at the end of your term?
I'm also open to other ideas that may have not been immediately obvious. With the hell that's going on at the moment, our minds are quite muddy, so we may have overlooked something.
Comments
I'd say just set the plan out of stock for now, you will have enough time to decide what to do with the existing customers when you finish the negotiations with other DCs.
Personally, I would be ok with the second option as you would still be able to at least have the VPS itself (also hopefully the price doesn't increase too much).
Edit: If this ends up costing you a lot, you're better off just refunding people.
I'm totally not fussed, I would however, if the 32MB plan goes to the shitter, have a equally as good plan at a equally as good price put up (in good proportion, ratio etc) for the users of the 32MB plan.
Is there no resolution with them guys?
I signed up for 2 32mbs, I prefer:
"Your VPS be cancelled, and 100% of your money refunded?"
edit: +1 on jarland. no need to refund mine.
Brother you can cancel mine and keep the money, because while it's only $1.50, I doubt a data center move is going to be easy on the bank, and if enough others agreed with me that would certainly not make things harder on you. I mean what the heck do I need $1.50 in my PayPal for
Although I'm not a customer of yours, I do appreciate your openness and constant communication regarding your crappy situation - It definitely shows you're trying to rectify the situation you've been placed in.
Huge +1 for you.
Good luck, whichever way this goes
Not sure why my formatting up there gives me points 1. and 1.. But anyway...
I like to be prepared... too much of a boy scout, I guess.
Considering how crappy our bandwidth was at Atjeu, and that's what our worst component by ratio was on our plans, I'm sure that won't be a problem...
Appears not.
I completely refuse to keep anyone's money for services not rendered. It goes against my personal Human Being views and the mantra of Don't Be Evil. I appreciate the offer, though. Jarland: you can apply that $1.50 in your Paypal to some other VPS company that doesn't seem to have constant issues, unlike us...
Thank you. It's not going well on a personal level, but we'll be back in the saddle soon.
@Damian Well then do you accept gifts of $1.50?
or I'm guessing $0.15 after PayPal fees.
It was a nice thing you did and a great idea, the community i'm sure wont go up in arms about it being cancelled and refunded, we do not want you to lose a chunk of money for a 32MB vps, it would be nice if you would be able to offer something like that plan with increased costs however.
We should setup an indiegogo for IPXcore DC move
!
@Damian how about make it credit we can use to sign up when you are up on another DC again?
I think it would be great if he let people keep it as credit in their accounts, that way he doesnt lose out as bad and we get to help a little.
That would be great actually... Credit would be better than a refund. @Damien -- Is there anything in your contract about this sort of thing? :P
Agreed, if we agree to credit that satisfies your personal convictions and saves you, potentially quite a bit if enough are ok with it. Complete refunds for those is going to be a decent bill, and I don't know or care how much you've got lying around, I'd rather lighten the load in any way I can because I understand the situation and that's what communities do for each other. Just give people an option.
This. And Im not even a client. You should post your address so I can send you a card for the effort you do to the LET community.
Cancel ALL the 32MB plans now; make a list of 32MB clients and what they've paid; when you're stable at a new DC offer those clients some service with a discount in proportion to what they've paid.
No-one will have invested a lot of work in a $0.50 VPS that can't be easily reproduced, so it's not a big loss for clients.
Focus first on getting your other clients up and running. After that, deal with the ultra-low-end-box stuff.
I'm a 32MB client, but I'd rather see you work on getting your business online instead of worrying about my mostly-idle 32MB VPS.
I appreciate the input. Here's my reasoning for asking the community their input:
1). This is our only plan that wouldn't be profitable under a $1/month-per-IP price level.
2). This plan has caused us a lot of good publicity. People like this plan! They start talking about us; our company name enters their vocabulary! Yay! We're finally getting to be known!
3). I remember the lengthy backlash that occurred when @jtodd cancelled people's VPS plans and offered them refunds. Granted, that was on his own accord, and this issue is not, but I would really like to avoid negative feedback.
4). I had a 4th point, but I don't remember what it was....
@Damian Nobody is using 32mb vps, just fool around with it. So don't worry about customers' feeling or losing stuff, because they have nothing in the box, if there is, they are idiots. Just take time, do whatever you have to do, don't rush, make a sound decision and come again...
I was hoping for IPv6 support so I could move one of my nameservers over. Why use a $15/yr box when a $6/yr box will work?
My mind is mush at the moment
That was never going to happen with Atjeu. They kept stringing us along saying that they would have IPV6, but they were never moving forward. Here's hoping that our next datacenter will offer ipv6; we had a lot of request for it.
What?
We all have those days...
I'm for the refund for the time being. I'll definitely try your offer in the new dc.
What?! No way!!!! This is oytrageous!!! I wsnt my money back!!!! Ill call the ponies!!
Oh wait, this isnt a BuyVM thread? Oh well
@Damian if you will not continue the 32mb boxes, cancel it and keep the money too
dont worry about that - just give me the image of the data i got there 
To be brutal: you're down. In a short time that will generate enough bad publicity to wipe out any gains made with the 32MB plan. Get the core business back online. Then explore innovative ways of providing those ultra-LEBs.
How do you pronounce Atjeu?
At jew?
I don't think you should suffer a loss on this. The plans are still very young. Explain the situation, give people time/ways to get their stuff if they need it then just refund the users once they confirm they are happy for this.
Well, if you don't want to keep the money, my suggestion is to apply this as credit for another service/invoice. (I have another service)
Maybe you need to review this case per case?
But you can keep it if you change your mind :P
@Damian why does your website say you have ddos protection?