New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
I think all the comments of deadpool and thats what you get for using OVH are a bit unfair, well a lot actually. I am always seeing comments about minivps being one of the very few that provide a great service out of OVH and have not deadpooled as the majority already have.
That said we all know that OVH is not the best choice however if the demand was not there I am sure they would got rid of them by now however Martin has kept it going to keep customers happy at the price point paid. I know he would prefer to get out of OVH however he keeps boxes there due to demand.
Personally I would see this as the right moment to get out of OVH but I know he wont just do that in favour of customer choice.
Let's not forget that OVH have for long enough managed IP pricing the same way for a long time now, I could understand if they were being charged extra but fact remains that this is just OVH trying to make some extra money, nothing more.
It will hurt them but Martin is to shrewd a businessman who will not go out of the game due to this and at least he is not pissing around the truth and trying to hide anything or going all huffy like many do when something goes wrong.
I am pretty sure his boxes at ovh are not just filled with LEB yearly offers either.
Just my 4c
Considering moving to BudgetVM. They offer so much more disk, it'd almost be worth it anyway.
I used the live chat and asked if I could get a price reduction and give up 2 IPv4 (they give 3 on the $4.99 plan), but they said no
I certainly sympathize with them and @MartinD seems like a great guy who handles what he has quite well. I only point out that the profit margin being too small to weather this without a big fallout was an oversight just to say it, because it's true and I want to make sure other providers here or potential future providers here clearly get that message. I've no desire to see anyone fail. No matter how you spin it, none of us would be pleased to be in his shoes on this issue and none of us could deal with it flawlessly if we did manage to get ourselves there. Hindsight has a role, but that role isn't fixing what has been done.
I've finally found 10 minutes to reply here.
A few things to mention first:
@Jacob - Not sure if you're trying to scaremonger our remaining customers or not but your comment was really uncalled for and not required. Our agreements and arrangements with Melbourne have absolutely no basis on what you did (or didn't) have in place. I understand you're not happy with them but it would be nice if you left your own dealings with them at the door.
@Kujoe - thanks for pointing out the other side of this argument. It's good to see another provider demonstrate that we're not out to destroy people or take advantage of them. It's also true that not everyone is out there to make their wallets fatter. Sure, a few extra 0's on the bank balance is always nice but I believe in giving best value, not taking the most money.
The £10/year specials we offered were not profit leaders for us. Really, we took a loss on every single one we sold and publicly said as much a few times. We released more of these plans because the LET/LEB marketplace liked them and were always happy with them. Based on the pricing at the time (and cost to us) it was sustainable for us to take a small hit on each one sold as we have other plans and businesses that could make up the deficit. Unfortunately, this has come back to bite us as many of you are taking the attitude we're trying to screw customers over - nothing could be further from the truth.
Now, just to clear up a few points:
Our email never stated these were hard-set options for the problem at hand. I specifically said these were our "ideas" based on what we felt were the best possible options for customers. I didn't state these were the only options available. We've had a number of customers make other suggestions that would work best for them and us so we've followed through with them. I resent the suggestion I claimed these were the only 'solutions' to the problem. I would like to think the majority of our customers would agree when I say we have always been open and transparent with any issues we've had. We deal with customers on an individual basis and have never treated them as mere numbers. It's for this very reason we sent out the email with the aforementioned 'ideas' so customers new we were open to other 'ideas' and suggestions. If we didn't care, we'd simply have put the prices up (with or without notification) and be done with it. We've taken a different approach to ensure customers get the best outcome possible in a really poor situation. However, a select few have taken the view we're giving no options and have started complaining instead of, as the email said, getting in touch with any questions, queries or concerns so we can address them.
With regards to pro-rata refunds it is certainly something we're happy to do and have done so already for a number of customers. As @unused mentioned in his (helpful!) post, we didn't say we wouldn't refund so hopefully all the speculation and comments around that can be put to bed. Again, my email stated customers should get in touch with any questions, queries or concerns. I see a pattern here.
A lot of customers have indicated a wish to be moved to the UK servers which is great. We have plenty of capacity there to accommodate people wishing to move. We're also looking at getting a few other nodes up and running so we can continue with some of the lower end VPS's and an SSD node for those who would like it. This is all work in progress just now, based on the replies and wishes of our customers.
Just to reiterate, if anyone has any concerns, questions, suggestions or anything they want brought to my attention the email has all the relevant contact information. We have always listened to customers and done whatever we can to ensure things work out for the best. I have no problem with threads like these and would in no way try to have them stopped however common sense dictates if you have a problem you get in touch with the provider - please do so! I'll come back to this thread and update with progress as and when there is news (good or bad) but I wont be drawn in to silly arguments that serve no purpose.
Once again I'll confirm this has been a failing on our part, not the customers. It's something we should have been better prepared for. We're taking measures to ensure it doesn't happen again and in the meantime we've stopped all new sign ups for the OVH VPS's.
Thanks for reading.
I feel like the primary objective is to free up unused address space, by charging for them monthly, people will return their unused/unnecessary IP's. They probably can't get much/any more IP's from RIPE so it makes sense. Sure, OVH gets to make a little money in the process and they can sell some more servers.
Also, making people pay more on yearly contracts =/ Pro-rated refunds or free move to London! Don't offer something if you can't afford to provide it, especially loss leaders.
Don't look at me now as EACH of your so called ideas was to put increased costs incurred by third parties to your customers directly before end of their billing period or as alternative making pre-paid service more or less useless (for most people).
Out of curiosity, why in one of your "ideas" you're suggesting move to one of existing expensier UK plan with price change (again increase of course) instead simple migration to same plan without price change? Does your UK provider charge for IPs on monthly basis too?
I don't mean to attack in any way, but for the future...maybe don't sell that many at a loss. If you sold enough of them at a loss that you can't double the loss on them without falling over, I'd say you sold too many. If I sold a hundred on yearly plan and they became a $2/m loss I'd dig into my pockets and pay $200/m for the rest of the year (or however that worked out), grumbling the whole way, but still doing it. Again, not to brag on me, I just can't see losing several hundred dollars a month on promos, by choice.
But you've clearly realized a mistake. Just try to eat what cost you can here, because you sound like you'll go far as years go on, if you don't have a massive fallout over this.
Martin has said pro-rata refunds are on offer along with the other options, just tell them that is what you want seem to be the order of the day..
Me, I'd tell the upstream provider to work with me or I am going to jump ship and take my business elsewhere.
I don't see any real sense in providers charging like this on IP basis. Yes, there are costs for IP space, IPs aren't free. They aren't costly like this though.
If provider continues this bull, then setup new node(s) elsewhere and work on something to migrate some subset of customers and reduce use of existing facility.
OVH will die of so much laughter so problem solved :P
OVH are enforcing this across the board, they wont budge.
Someone of Linode size would only get laughter from OVH, wrong tactic to choose
Ovh sells more dedi than linode sells on vps. A multinational business of their size could care less about some providers with couple hundreds vps nodes. They are also a large European ISP catering some of the biggest corporates. 1 dedi with 60 IP or 60 dedi with one IP. Do your math.
Remember everyone? Constantinos tried to increase the price by $1?
I see the same pattern.
I see the same pattern.
In all fairness this increase from their provider is not a rumor, we all know it's happening. At least @MartinD is communicating and being mature about it. That's a lot more than some providers would do.
no more cheap OVH seems ... with 50 100 pounds in IPs per server ...
Probably OVH hired Constantinos...
Definately no more kimsufi crap either, you are just not allowed any ip's on them, simple as
Nope, you can have 1 ip4 and a /64 of ip6 plus the failover so no chance of being able to use them as vps nodes. Well unless ip6 takes off real soon which it wont.
Well OVH for all it's size should find a better way to raise revenue and grow.
I am sure they have their reasons doing this. Get rid of VPS providers who probably compete with their own offerings is high on that list. Reducing helpdesk load generated from VPS operators is likely another.
Right up front on their site they are pushing their own cloud and renting servers by the hour.
Founder of OVH says this:
Between 2007 and 2009, we limited our customers' orders to two servers per month. Between 2010 and 2011, we set up an installation fee of 50 pounds (50 Euro). This allowed us to control our sales, which were too high at the time, and so remain within investment area where we were not taking too many risks for the company.
Can't say I disagree with him on these points.
I'd take my business elsewhere. Clearly, OVH isn't interested in small providers.
It seems pretty rude to me that they didn't even mention in the email the possibility of a pro-rata refund. From reading this thread I can see it was an unintentional oversight but it's a whopper of an oversight.
As said previously in the thread, it's not about the money - it's about scaring people into giving up IPs. RIPE is down to their last /8, from which any provider can get a maximum of one /22 - 1024 IPs - and that's it, no more allocations ever.
They would easily sell 1024 servers a month. They've got >120,000 servers in total across seven datacentres. They need IPs to tide them over until they can start selling IPv6 + NATed IPv4 Kimsufis.
It's absolutely a dick move the way OVH are screwing existing customers, though.
For me, just as the host has good intentions and not behave like an ass is sufficient enough for me. I like how miniVPS has handled this compared to the other host that have problem last week.
Just to keep you all updated, we're bringing more UK servers online today with a view to moving all customers away from OVH. This means no change in current pricing and plans. We'll make a formal announcement later today.
Great
Your the man
@martind what happens when Malbourne increase IP prices? I wasn't able to find your records so I guess you use Malbourne's IPs?
@apollo15 - we have a locked contract with Melbourne at the moment so that wont happen. Even if it does, our pricing structure is such that any IP price increase on the Melbourne side wouldn't affect us - we took this in to account before we launched our UK services. We don't just have IP space from Melbourne, we have other subnets from other reliable sources, again with locked in contracts. The new UK location we're bringing on has the same - no problems with IP addresses or prices there.
+1
Good news, what is the new hardware in the UK, are the plans going to be the same as they are now?