Hosting provider is currently 'full'

Hosting
1

Hello all,

I recently had a bad experience with a small hosting company that didn’t answer support tickets, they were not answering phone calls or emails and so on.
I decided to move my dedicated server elsewhere and started looking into VPS hosting.

For test purposes I ordered a small VPS with EuroVPS, which is a lot cheaper than my current provider, so I wanted to give it a try for a month just to see what support is like, if the VPS really has the capacity what they say it has, …
I got in contact with a sales representative and he told me that after the order has been placed and the payment is done, it only should take an hour to get everything running.
A day went by, the status of the ordered services is still ‘pending’…
So I contacted support asking if I had forget something and if that would be the case what I should do.
20 minutes later I received a message from one of the EuroVPS Engineers that the server has not been provisioned yet, but he forwarded my request to the billing department.
A day later, still everything ‘pending’, I contacted them again with the question if there was anything wrong with my order.
I got this reaction:

You will be provisioned tomorrow on brand new hardware. We are currently full and this is why you are being delayed on setup. Your subscription start date will be adjusted to the day the VM is provisioned.
I hope you understand the reason for the delay.

Everything is now ‘pending’ for three days on the VPS I’ve ordered, on the software licensing and even on the domain name.
Their reaction that they are ‘full’ and the amount of time they need to just get a small VPS up and running raised a red flag with me…

Would you request a refund and find another hosting provider?
Or would you ignore these signals and try their services anyway?

Best regards,
Vincent

2

Personally I would move on as they are not keeping you up to date with what is happening.

Again if they are so close to the limit with space they are either not planning ahead or are trying to keep the costs down; which may be the case as you said they were cheaper than your presumably shared host.

I assume they have a 30 day cancelation policy without penalty but I would be worried if you have asked them for the domain name and special software. Have they actually done anything about the domain name; either moving or buying it?

3

Hi Rubble,

Thank you for your quick reply.

I’m planning to abandon my ancient dedicated server (1 Gb RAM, dual core, 80 Gb hd) since I’m still paying a decent amount a month for it and my questions to upgrade to a new dedicated server remain unanswered by my current hosting provider.
Their slow support and inability to give me the required permissions to even manage the damn thing pushed me towards a new hosting provider.
Because of the bad experiences with my current hosting provider and a simple VPS meets my requirements I decided to order a VPS to get a feel with their support and test the services they provide.

The domain name really means nothing to me, it’s simply a domain name to use as a hostname.
The domain name was, and still is, available, so they did not register anything yet.

They don’t seem to have a cancellation policy, but I believe in Europe, or at least Belgium, you can cancel services or return products for free within for 14 days after purchasing them online.
I’ll let you know if I got a refund.

4

Even an ancient dedicated server with that specification might outperform some VPS. The problem is that a VPS is just taking a slice or resources (processor/memory/HD) and there are limits to the number of VPS that a server might be able to handle. If they are full then they may be close to their technical limits and that could be an indication that they are waiting for a non-renewal so that they can allocate the a VPS to a new customer.

It seems to be a Greek company on Netherlands hosting (based on the lookups for the .com domain).

Regards…jmcc

5

I’m very disappointed in EuroVPS, not because they don’t do refunds, but because of their rude attitudes.

I sent this to support:

Hello,

It has been more than 72 hours since I placed an order and made the payment without any progress.
I would like to cancel all my orders and request a full refund.

The reasons for this decision are the following:

  1. Setup time
    On your website you mention that the setup time for VPS+OS generally takes less than 5 minutes from the time an order has been accepted.
    A payment for ordered products or services implies that the order has been accepted.
    5 minutes, an hour or a couple of hours, that would be acceptable, 72 hours is not.

  2. Poor support
    After more than 24 hours I contacted support to ask if I forgot anything that caused the delay and if I should take action to correct something.
    My message was forwarded to the billing department.
    After another 30 hours I decided to contact support again to ask if anything was wrong with my order.
    The answer was that you are ‘currently full’ and that ‘I would be provisioned tomorrow on brand new hardware’.
    Support did/does not keep me up to date.

  3. You are ‘currently full’
    This raises a red flag. This means that there is insufficient hardware available to expand quickly and on demand.
    This also makes me question the following sentence you show on your website: “This, in tandem with our large spare parts inventory, …”

  4. Domain name has not been registered
    Even though you reached your capacity, you could still have registered the domain name to ensure the domain name’s availibility to me as a customer.

Therefor I would like to cancel my orders and request a full refund.
I would like to receive a confirmation for the cancellation as well.

Thank you.

A couple of minutes later I received a phone call from someone at the datacenter telling me they were busy putting in the new hardware, explaining that they had many signups which lead to the delay and that my VPS would be up and running within the hour. I told him politely I’d still like to cancel my order and would like a refund, then he cut me off mid-sentence forwarding the call to his supervisor.
The supervisor was quite clear about it that I had been provisioned as we spoke, and that there would not be any refunds.
I said that I understand, and that I’d still like to cancel all my orders, with or without a refund, which he took offence to, I guess, because he kept interrupting me and rambled on about that I can’t get a refund and so on.
When I finally had the chance to say something I said that I was watching the dashboard and all the services were still ‘pending’, to which he answered that ‘you could not see if it’s running or not because at that time only they could see it in their backend’. Again rambling about the refund…
I found his attitude extremely rude and I ended the call.

I tried to call them back at their support line in the Netherlands, no answer of course, so I had to contact their support line in the UK.
It took me a couple of minutes to call them back, and in the meanwhile I saw they started the VPS. Of course…
I ordered a VPS with another company earlier this morning and was up and running in 4 minutes 36 seconds (yes, I timed it :smiley: ), so I feel that the guys at EuroVPS simply fired up a VPS so they did not have to do a refund.

The guy at the datacenter cut me off mid-sentence and forwarded the call to his supervisor.
The supervisor kept interrupting me and raised his voice without any reason.
The guy at the support line lacked general friendlyness.
Basically, they were rude.

I don’t feel treated like a client, and indeed, you get what you paid for: poor support and 1 Ghz per core (which they don’t mention anywhere on their website).
And they throw the bad attitudes in for free :slight_smile:

Another experience richer…

6

If you check their FAQ:

What is your refund policy?
We offer a no-quibble 7-Day Money Back Guarantee. If you are not satisfied for any reason we’ll refund your payment in full. License fees for control panels and Windows are non-refundable.

But if they have already refused a refund I do not think they will change their mind if you quote from their FAQ but you could take them to the small claims court? But as you say is it worth the effort.