BuyVM(Review) awful experience

[Hsin]

This started all because I requested a refund and I explained why I was wanting one.

I'm going to preface this by saying

1. I am well-aware that on sites like VPSboard, BuyVM is quite popular and what not so I don't expect impartial responses and I expect some negative responses but I am really not looking to argue. Just sharing my opinion/experience.

2. These issues stem from miscommunication/lack of communication and poor handling of the situation by management.

3. I let my anger get the best of me and I should've handled it better but I was completely caught off guard by rudeness but I am a bit embarrassed I got as pissed as I did.

PLUS:

From Aldyric(basically making excuses for Francisco's behavior):

"I have to admit I find the opinion difference between myself and Francisco confounding - as the person that deals with our policy violations and billing issues, _I_ am typically the one that people dislike. Francisco will give you the shirt off his back if it were his last, so if he were actually irate, then there was a very good reason for him to be so."

There is no reason for a professional company to catch an attitude, blame the customer or be condescending.

Here is what I sent them in the ticket...wasn't rude at all:
 

Hi Buyvm,

I am going to go ahead and cancel my account. I want to know if it was possible to get my full payment back. I know it is per your TOS that you do not refund the Cpanel license back to a customer but I hope after reading you guys will consider.

I am really disappointed tbh....I was expecting a lot based on the amazing reviews I've seen not to mention, while I don't agree always,. I enjoy the comments of Aldyric and Francisco on Vpsboard and other related sites. You don't see 'real' people with hosts...usually it is a façade and they are pretending to be perfect.

That being said, it has been nearly 12 hours since I've signed up and nearly 24 hours since I've been in correspondence and I am not feeling happy enough with the service and it is day 1.

1. I spoke with Aldyric last night and he sort of disappeared on me when I was waiting my order to be done....I rationalized and said "well it was after hours."

Francisco told me it was because I signed up with an email that was unverified paypal or something and that delayed my order. I am not sure how that is possible but that was okay because it got set up.

2. After speaking with Aldyric(who was a great help), I was told that I would have to wait for Francisco to do the litespeed installation and the ticket was put on hold.

I wasn't sure if I should respond back because I still needed my site migrated over and I didn't want to mess anything up. I was later told Aldyric wanted to allow Francisco to do it as he wasn't that experienced with litespeed.....Okay I understand that and I don't mind him doing that. And he did actually eventually do it for me...

But the response of Francisco being in a couple of hours sort of didn't sit right by me.

3. What bothered me now is the fact that I sort of went through the trouble of trying to get my backup onto the server and I was expecting the migration to be done.....it wasn't.

Francisco went to lunch and I expected that might take an hour...I believe it has been nearly 4 hours and I've still heard NOTHING back from you guys about that.

Not a good start and I didn't want to complain but it is like "Wow...."

So I am going to cancel and I just wanted to know could I please get my full $23 back I paid?

Thank you so much and I am sorry it didn't work out as I really wanted to use BuyVm and see the awesomeness I've heard about
 

************************************************

Wasn't rude at all. I made sure to be polite even though I was annoyed. So I then logged onto the sales chat to see if someone was on hoping they could get my ticket and this is the trouble started.....

Notice I was not rude or disrespectful at all. Notice who caught the attitude first because of my ticket(above).

4 hours earlier, Francisco claimed that he was going to go get lunch but he wanted to know how long the upload was going to take. He then proceed to say "I'll go somewhere close" and be back soon....However notice below, how he then turns around and tells a lie....thus blaming me despite the fact he told me he was going to lunch.



The "Owner" claims the refund policy isn't 7 days....despite me being told there was a refund period. I guess

he doesn't know his own policies

(I had asked Aldyric hours before about refunds...here is his response)





Asking the 'Owner' about my refund...watch him basically give no fucks and make excuses.....
 



 

The "Owner" has no control over business matters....he gave that up a long time ago.....Apparently if he were to step up and do something, a turf war would start.


I guess we're in gangs now or something? Why would their be a turf war in your own company?







 







 




Notice how he claims that he can see how long it supposedly was going to take(Despite it taking nowhere near his claims) but he then claims "How he was supposed to know it completed?" Didn't you just say you knew how long it would take?



He claims he reached out to me in chat....but he acknowledged that I left...which means I probably didn't see the message. So why would you not open a ticket with your customer to make sure that they got the info that you claimed you sent? That's like me posting something in our chatroom just because Frank's name says online and then he leaves....I shouldn't assume Frank saw it if he didn't respond.




 

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[k0nsl]

What? It shows you knew refunds for cPanel license would not be granted and you confirm that by showing us a ticket from Aldyric where it clearly says cPanel licsenses are not refunded, YET you follow up with a comment in your post trying to make Francisco look bad. You said:

The "Owner" claims the refund policy isn't 7 days....despite me being told there was a refund period. I guess
he doesn't know his own policies
(I had asked Aldyric hours before about refunds...here is his response)

That's total bullcrap and you know it. Francisco clearly said on the live chat that refunds for cPanel is not carried out because they already paid for it out of their own pockets. Nowhere does it mention a thing about VPS refund.

You're being very deceitful, to say the least.

PS:

I'm of course only a BuyVM customer. So I guess I'm one of those "biased" persons

Regards,

-k0nsl

 

[Hsin]

What? It shows you knew refunds for cPanel license would not be granted and you confirm that by showing us a ticket from Aldyric where it clearly says cPanel licsenses are not refunded, YET you follow up with a comment in your post trying to make Francisco look bad. You said:

The "Owner" claims the refund policy isn't 7 days....despite me being told there was a refund period. I guess
he doesn't know his own policies
(I had asked Aldyric hours before about refunds...here is his response)

That's total bullcrap and you know it. Francisco clearly said on the live chat that refunds for cPanel is not carried out because they already paid for it out of their own pockets. Nowhere does it mention a thing about VPS refund.

You're being very deceitful, to say the least.

PS:

I'm of course only a BuyVM customer. So I guess I'm one of those "biased" persons

Regards,

-k0nsl

I am not talking about the Cpanel license. If you actually read, without being biased, you'd see I sent them a ticket stating that I am aware of their policy of not refunding cpanel licenses though I hoped they'd at least consider refunding it.

If you actually READ....Francisco was trying to make it seem as if I was incorrect that there is no refund policy of 7 days for services themselves. Despite Aldyric saying otherwise and then fransisco follows up with "Then I guess that's what he would do" as if it was an open ended thing and it's up to Aldyric to dole out a refund should he feel the urge to do so. Again reading is key.

Hell, I even acknowledged the refund would be MINUS cpanel fee in the screenshot.

No one is trying to deceive anyone. You're just proving my point that you are biased and can't even logically respond to a post.

 

[k0nsl]

He said you'd likely get a refund for the VPS in the ticket screenshot you've posted in the OP, I understood that. Yeah, I read it all and I think I got a pretty good picture of the situation from what you've posted.

If you'd been correct, I would have gladly said so despite having services with them. I'm not afraid to say what I think. But I don't think you are correct at all.

-k0nsl

 

[Hsin]

He said you'd likely get a refund for the VPS in the ticket screenshot you've posted in the OP, I understood that. Yeah, I read it all and I think I got a pretty good picture of the situation from what you've posted.

If you'd been correct, I would have gladly said so despite having services with them. I'm not afraid to say what I think. But I don't think you are correct at all.

-k0nsl

Thankfully I am not here for you to deem me correct or not. I am sharing my experience. If you think I am bitching about a cpanel license(that in the screenshots acknowledged that I knew I likely wouldn't get it back), then it is obvious you didn't read because why would you then accuse me of trying to be deceitful? In fact why are we even discussing Cpanel licenses...and not the overall point of the thread to show how rude/condescending BuyVM is. You literally picked ONE thing out.

Come on now.

 

[drmike]

I'll start by saying I am a BuyVM customers.  Real invoice and all and have been since, I don't know when 2012(?).  

-----------------------------

I read the OP's post.

Moving in anywhere is a hassle.  You won't find many shops that are holding hands beyond whatever cPanel does and you as customer should be doing yourself.  Litespeed and custom hand holding goes on probably almost nowhere.  When I have annoying migrations, I pay an admin to handle things at hourly rate or fixed project cost. Cost is more than $23 monthly.

BuyVM offers a bit more above and beyond lowly cPanel management and they always have, just unofficially as a nice thing to customers here and there.

Probably 30% of all my new account experiences over the years have gone in similar ways even with lowly unmanaged commodity type accounts.

It is imperative that when migrating you plan very well and have expectations that align with success.  Good time range if other people need to know, gentle enough with hosting company, generally flexible.  Why?  Because you are in a deficient position.  This is to say, you depend on these people where you lack the knowledge or process or willingness to handle the setup and configuration yourself.

It is entirely too easy as a customer to have an experience like this anywhere and why most shops fall on lazy and whatever cPanel does and deal with it for maximum service offering.

I trust that BuyVM will do right here.  Bad for them eating time invested and license costs though.  Situation should have been manageable from customer side though, even with delay attributable to clock, misunderstanding and whatever else might have been in play. 

 

[drmike]

The other thing I smell here is a sense of artificial urgency by the OP.

I emphasized planning right and timelines about.

Was there something else going on to rush this whole process?   When I reread the timeline of this was obvious.  Why the hurry?

 

[mitgib]

After reading all this, if your experience is less than expected, your expectations were too high.  There is nothing in these posts you were offered that I wouldn't have provided as well, so I am a little miffed at why your expectations were not met?  If you wanted a seamless move, did you provide the source server auth details?  I move dozens of new customers in and offer to move their sites at no charge as well if the source is a cPanel server, but only if they provide the authentication details so I can access their current server, and I really do not care if I have to go around to a dozen different servers to gather all the sites you wish to host on the new server.  So you provided the backups, that is fine, but there have been countless times the backups are garbage, but having the old server details there are a million ways to get around that.  Maybe Fran was a bit to blunt for your liking, but Fran is a person too, and from the flow of the conversation, wasn't going to bow down to please you.  You are only seeing this as $23 a month and feel it is all going into the providers pocket, or at least know there is a cPanel license coming out of that as well.  So it looks like there is poor communication on both sides, and as you've already stated, you rage quit (for lack of a better description).  Move along and stop trying to drag BuyVM down in whatever attempt this is. I don't believe it is honestly about your experience, there is some ulterior motive at play here, I'm not slick enough to catch it at first glance, but this forum is full of high quality Sherlock's to catch it.

 

[Hsin]

I'll start by saying I am a BuyVM customers.  Real invoice and all and have been since, I don't know when 2012(?).  

-----------------------------

I read the OP's post.

Moving in anywhere is a hassle.  You won't find many shops that are holding hands beyond whatever cPanel does and you as customer should be doing yourself.  Litespeed and custom hand holding goes on probably almost nowhere.  When I have annoying migrations, I pay an admin to handle things at hourly rate or fixed project cost. Cost is more than $23 monthly.

BuyVM offers a bit more above and beyond lowly cPanel management and they always have, just unofficially as a nice thing to customers here and there.

Probably 30% of all my new account experiences over the years have gone in similar ways even with lowly unmanaged commodity type accounts.

It is imperative that when migrating you plan very well and have expectations that align with success.  Good time range if other people need to know, gentle enough with hosting company, generally flexible.  Why?  Because you are in a deficient position.  This is to say, you depend on these people where you lack the knowledge or process or willingness to handle the setup and configuration yourself.

It is entirely too easy as a customer to have an experience like this anywhere and why most shops fall on lazy and whatever cPanel does and deal with it for maximum service offering.

I trust that BuyVM will do right here.  Bad for them eating time invested and license costs though.  Situation should have been manageable from customer side though, even with delay attributable to clock, misunderstanding and whatever else might have been in play. 

The overall complaint I have is that on both sides(Mine and theirs) there was a failure in communication or a misunderstanding either on my part or theirs.

The situation could've been improved and handle far better. There was absolutely no reason for Francisco to come off as an asshole from the start talking about "putting this on me". Putting what on you? A customer was making a complaint...that was the time to discuss it and see if there was a way to fix said understanding OR amicably part from one another. Instead, he took a defensive role.

Then several times throughout the conversation...double talked, lied or was incredibly clueless.

I notice within their chatroom it is a bit of circlejerk so I am kind of glad it bombed out because I am not one to kiss ass to a host It's basically a fraternity of idiots I've gathered.

The other thing I smell here is a sense of artificial urgency by the OP.

I emphasized planning right and timelines about.

Was there something else going on to rush this whole process?   When I reread the timeline of this was obvious.  Why the hurry?

it isn't artificial urgency or anything of the sort......

The urgency was in the fact I had reached out earlier on Thursday evening to clarify with Buyvm about the fact I would be ordering the VPS later that night and I asked would I be able to get everything set up and he was like yeah. I needed to leave my current hosting as I wasn't continuing the service with that host.

Francisco claims he told me that Aldyric was sleep.......or would be sleep at that time. I don't recall him telling me that but let's go ahead and say he did tell me that.

I go ahead and open a ticket up to start up the request to order the managed VPS...For months now, Buyvm has been referring to Managed VPS but they have yet to put a signup so I have to go through the trouble of opening a ticket and going back and forth with them to tell them the stuff I need and blah blah blah. (Time wasted really).

I got a reply from a bot letting me know the office hours and blah blah....okay cool.

But then I get a response back from Aldyric moments later and we begin discussing and he is asking me about what I need, location, domain name, etc etc. Our replies are fast.

So then he just disappears....and I don't hear back from him until 8 hours later letting me know the invoice had been completely.

That is not unreasonable...I am sitting here for like 8 hours trying to figure what's going on or what happening.

(My site is now down officially since then).

Francisco later says the fact he told me Aldyric was sleep and it was "After hours" and it was "generous" that Aldyric was responding then. Thank you oh good lord for gracing me with your generosity.

The issue with that is....COMMUNICATION.

If he was not going to do the order till the AM or he was going back to sleep...SAY SOMETHING. That prevents confusion and assumption and communicates with your customer.

Okay cool...I let it go(First strike) and I asked a few more questions and then I proceeded to pay my invoice. I had let Aldyric know I was in need of getting my site back online asap....and asked how long it would take to get things set up, in hopes to know when I can migrate(I let him know I had my site's backup and everything ready).

He said about 3 hours or so....which was accurate. I was a little confused as to why it needed to be passed off to Francisco to do the litespeed install but it was because Aldyric didn't know how to install it(according to Francisco).

I take the hit for that annoyance because I could've used the server without litespeed....and they did actually eventually install it for me. So that was me being impatient.

The main issue:
Came when it was time to upload said backup...for whatever reason it was not uploading via cpanel so he was showing me how to use FileZilla.

He claimed that while it was uploading that he was going to get lunch. Which I happily understood and said go ahead and he responded back that he was going somewhere close.

That was my last correspondence with him in 4 hours.....I later was told by him via chat and Aldyric in ticket that Francisco did not in fact actually go to lunch and he was waiting hours for my reply. Not what I was told by Francisco....so it was a lie.

And from there it begun to spiral into something entirely more than it should have been.

After reading all this, if your experience is less than expected, your expectations were too high.  There is nothing in these posts you were offered that I wouldn't have provided as well, so I am a little miffed at why your expectations were not met?  If you wanted a seamless move, did you provide the source server auth details?  I move dozens of new customers in and offer to move their sites at no charge as well if the source is a cPanel server, but only if they provide the authentication details so I can access their current server, and I really do not care if I have to go around to a dozen different servers to gather all the sites you wish to host on the new server.  So you provided the backups, that is fine, but there have been countless times the backups are garbage, but having the old server details there are a million ways to get around that.  Maybe Fran was a bit to blunt for your liking, but Fran is a person too, and from the flow of the conversation, wasn't going to bow down to please you.  You are only seeing this as $23 a month and feel it is all going into the providers pocket, or at least know there is a cPanel license coming out of that as well.  So it looks like there is poor communication on both sides, and as you've already stated, you rage quit (for lack of a better description).  Move along and stop trying to drag BuyVM down in whatever attempt this is. I don't believe it is honestly about your experience, there is some ulterior motive at play here, I'm not slick enough to catch it at first glance, but this forum is full of high quality Sherlock's to catch it.

I don't care what you believe and there is no ulterior motive at play here. I am voicing a complaint....How exactly is my experience less than expected that my expectations were too high? LMAO...what? So everytime a customer is unsatisfied with a product or service it is because their expectations are too high?

Furthermore the VPS itself is not $23...it was $40 I believe but due to it being middle of the month it is prorated to $23

You acknowledge in your own post it is likely poor communication on BOTH sides and then thus you turn around making excuses (Francisco is a person...yeah but he is also in customer service/technical support and you carry yourself better than you do. It has nothing to do with  being blunt) and then turning around blaming me entirely.

I expected such ignorant responses on VPSboard.

 

[mitgib]

I expected such ignorant responses on VPSboard.

If you were expecting ignorant responses, yet made the post anyway, adds fuel to my ulterior motive theory 

 

[Hsin]

I expected such ignorant responses on VPSboard.

If you were expecting ignorant responses, yet made the post anyway, adds fuel to my ulterior motive theory 

You have no theory, you are grasping at straws. Everyone who posts a complaint doesn't have a deep dark motive...gasp, maybe they just want to...are you ready? REVIEW a service they used. Shocking I know.

I expected fanboy response and less impartial discussion but I hoped that wasn't the case.

 

[TheLinuxBug]

I know this will likely fall on deaf ears, but there are a few things that you need to realize here:  

#1. I think the issue here is you had the wrong expectations about what was going to happen and I think part of that was indeed BuyVM's fault, but the way you handled this issue was actually pretty poor, and if you need an example of why see #2

#2. They actually spent man hours setting up the server for you, you even admitted this.  They also purchased a cPanel license for you, which isn't free and can take a bit of time to acquire, so again more man hours.  Do you think this stuff is free?  If you ordered from me and I spent 3 hours setting up the server for you for you to turn around and basically be like a 16 year old girl and be like "I don't want that now because of x" I am gonna get pretty pissed with you to.  I delivered the product to you and now you want the money back.... so I make a net loss.  cPanel is about $11 as the cheapest, which means for the first half month you only paid them 12$, for which they spent 3 hours setting up your server and migrating the site.  Overall they have lost money out the ass on this deal now, so why would they refund you and why would you even ask?

#3.  What you should have done, instead of being a cheap ass, is express your dissatisfaction with the setup time and ask them if they would be willing to provide you a small amount of credit for the inconvenience or work out something mutual, not just cancel it once its all setup and ask your money back.  Surely you could have allowed your service to remain with them for a month and found another host in the mean time?  Surely the server they provided could fulfill you needs, you were just upset it didn't happen as fast as you wanted?

#4, Part of the issue is defiantly the expectations that were set by the host, but surely you took their time scale with a grain of salt seeing that you are not their only customer, right? Surely you can provide them enough time to actually complete the setup for you without bugging them by e-mail or chat every 20 minutes?  If not, this is where you have also failed.  They lost money on you coming in the door as they were providing you a  courtesy expecting you to be a long term customer and instead you were difficult to work with and expected the world for nothing.  

I am happy to accept your opinion, and I am NOT a BuyVM customer and never have been.  I simply see some failures on both sides and don't feel that BuyVM is deserving of the bad mouthing just because you couldn't be bothered to be patient.

Also, I just wanted to say, if you didn't already understand how to use an FTP client and they SERIOUSLY had to walk you through that then you don't deserve to be in this industry, this is the stuff you need to know as the basics of hosting.  If you can't even be bothered to learn how to upload files by FTP your self, I can only imagine what else you would have expected them to teach you for that $40/month.  To be honest, they probably wiped the sweat from their brow in relief when you left knowing they wouldn't have to put up with you asking questions every 5 minutes and being impatient.

my 2 cents.

Cheers!

 

[mitgib]

I expected such ignorant responses on VPSboard.

If you were expecting ignorant responses, yet made the post anyway, adds fuel to my ulterior motive theory 

You have no theory, you are grasping at straws. Everyone who posts a complaint doesn't have a deep dark motive...gasp, maybe they just want to...are you ready? REVIEW a service they used. Shocking I know.

I expected fanboy response and less impartial discussion but I hoped that wasn't the case.

I am no fanboy, I am not even a customer. I was at one time years ago, but rage quit for my own reasons.  I got zero refund, never expected it, never requested it, it is still sitting in my account as credit, and never said a word about it until this moment.

The way you are so defensive adds more fuel for me, you are after something more.  I misspoke about it being both your fault.  Fran was right, it's all on you, and you tried to bully him, and he wasn't having it.  Just as you are trying to bully me as well, but I also am not having it either.

 

[drmike]

Listen @Hsin  I've been buying hosting since the 1990's.  I've had plenty of bad experiences.  I've tried hundreds of hosting companies.  I've done my fair share of raging rightly and sometimes on the fringe of unrealistic for expectations not met.  These are people behind businesses.  Imperfect as people can be, things happen and sometimes at random.

"Came when it was time to upload said backup...for whatever reason it was not uploading via cpanel so he was showing me how to use FileZilla."

That's nice too.  Seriously, this isn't stuff usually a company does for customers.  No hosts will go jumping to say they want hand holding business either, because it legitimately means 24/7/365 staffing and of multiple well paid folks.  It costs quite a bit to provide.

I'll bet you the story went like this, you waited to move from prior host until the last minute.  Maybe your services were even already down.  If they weren't the were close to.

Like I tell my clients, your emergency doesn't mean I am the fire services and must spring to action and sacrifice for lack of planning on your end.  I see this scenario all the time.   I am nearly certain that's what this is.

Could BuyVM have communicated better?  Surely.  They also could have just been a lot rougher and told you to spit it out and sit tight and will be notified when done.  Expect people to be key in such and expect those people to sleep, eat, want a break from it.   All that effort and time and no one gets anything.... hrrmmm.

 

[Hsin]

Listen @Hsin  I've been buying hosting since the 1990's.  I've had plenty of bad experiences.  I've tried hundreds of hosting companies.  I've done my fair share of raging rightly and sometimes on the fringe of unrealistic for expectations not met.  These are people behind businesses.  Imperfect as people can be, things happen and sometimes at random.

"Came when it was time to upload said backup...for whatever reason it was not uploading via cpanel so he was showing me how to use FileZilla."

That's nice too.  Seriously, this isn't stuff usually a company does for customers.  No hosts will go jumping to say they want hand holding business either, because it legitimately means 24/7/365 staffing and of multiple well paid folks.  It costs quite a bit to provide.

I'll bet you the story went like this, you waited to move from prior host until the last minute.  Maybe your services were even already down.  If they weren't the were close to.

Like I tell my clients, your emergency doesn't mean I am the fire services and must spring to action and sacrifice for lack of planning on your end.  I see this scenario all the time.   I am nearly certain that's what this is.

Could BuyVM have communicated better?  Surely.  They also could have just been a lot rougher and told you to spit it out and sit tight and will be notified when done.  Expect people to be key in such and expect those people to sleep, eat, want a break from it.   All that effort and time and no one gets anything.... hrrmmm.

Just to address the FileZilla thing.....First of all, I've never used FileZilla. I've always uploaded my files through cpanel  and I attempted to do that as well this time. For whatever reason the file would not upload via cpanel(despite the fact it uploaded just fine on my current host Hawkhost).

I mentioned to Francisco that I was not seeing it upload to which he suggested that I use FileZilla and I expressed I was not familiar with that product and he OFFERED(keyword OFFERED) to show me. I never asked nor expected him to do so and tbh all he did was just tell me what info to put where....Literally I probably could've googled it and got the same information as well. So let's not pretend as if he was doing something time consuming...it took all of 30 seconds to show me. And again he offered I never asked.

You are right. That was my fault for leaving my previous host at the last minute but that was due to server errors. I had fully intended to renew with them after being promised one thing and discovering that to be false. So I backed my site up and prepared to leave.

I also accept accountability that MY CHOICE and I am not blaming BuyVm for that. I also accept accountability for the fact that I could have also handled this situation better which was what I mentioned in the original post. I handled it poorly and I allowed myself to get angry. When I noticed Francisco catching an attitude and then trying to double-talk/lie about this or that, I should have ended it there. That was my fault.

My COMPLAINT overall is the fact of how it was handled BY my host. How rude(There's a difference in being straightforward and being a jerk) they were by taking it defensively....My ticket I sent them was not rude. I thanked them for their time and requested a refund.

If I was a bad customer I would've been bitching

"Yo, you took this long and I am fucking fed up with this shit and you guys suck. Give me my damn money back. All that I paid now Or else."

It was nothing like that and there was no reason to get an attitude and handle it as badly as was done.....nor is there no excuse for it. The thread relates to what I perceived to be poor customer support.

I know this will likely fall on deaf ears, but there are a few things that you need to realize here:  

#1. I think the issue here is you had the wrong expectations about what was going to happen and I think part of that was indeed BuyVM's fault, but the way you handled this issue was actually pretty poor, and if you need an example of why see #2

#2. They actually spent man hours setting up the server for you, you even admitted this.  They also purchased a cPanel license for you, which isn't free and can take a bit of time to acquire, so again more man hours.  Do you think this stuff is free?  If you ordered from me and I spent 3 hours setting up the server for you for you to turn around and basically be like a 16 year old girl and be like "I don't want that now because of x" I am gonna get pretty pissed with you to.  I delivered the product to you and now you want the money back.... so I make a net loss.  cPanel is about $11 as the cheapest, which means for the first half month you only paid them 12$, for which they spent 3 hours setting up your server and migrating the site.  Overall they have lost money out the ass on this deal now, so why would they refund you and why would you even ask?

#3.  What you should have done, instead of being a cheap ass, is express your dissatisfaction with the setup time and ask them if they would be willing to provide you a small amount of credit for the inconvenience or work out something mutual, not just cancel it once its all setup and ask your money back.  Surely you could have allowed your service to remain with them for a month and found another host in the mean time?  Surely the server they provided could fulfill you needs, you were just upset it didn't happen as fast as you wanted?

#4, Part of the issue is defiantly the expectations that were set by the host, but surely you took their time scale with a grain of salt seeing that you are not their only customer, right? Surely you can provide them enough time to actually complete the setup for you without bugging them by e-mail or chat every 20 minutes?  If not, this is where you have also failed.  They lost money on you coming in the door as they were providing you a  courtesy expecting you to be a long term customer and instead you were difficult to work with and expected the world for nothing.  

I am happy to accept your opinion, and I am NOT a BuyVM customer and never have been.  I simply see some failures on both sides and don't feel that BuyVM is deserving of the bad mouthing just because you couldn't be bothered to be patient.

Also, I just wanted to say, if you didn't already understand how to use an FTP client and they SERIOUSLY had to walk you through that then you don't deserve to be in this industry, this is the stuff you need to know as the basics of hosting.  If you can't even be bothered to learn how to upload files by FTP your self, I can only imagine what else you would have expected them to teach you for that $40/month.  To be honest, they probably wiped the sweat from their brow in relief when you left knowing they wouldn't have to put up with you asking questions every 5 minutes and being impatient.

my 2 cents.

Cheers!

1. Please tell me how I had poor expectations? If a host does not properly communicate with me that they in fact just went back to bed and I don't hear from them for about 8 hours...is it wrong for me to assume that I was ignored or this host is not serious?

Is it wrong to expect some level of respect when dealing with a refund request? Aldyric was far more easier to talk to/work with and despite the fact of denying the full refund, I didn't have an issue with him.

Is it also wrong for me to expect a host to not sit there and try and lie/change their story?

2. Example:

I went out for an early birthday dinner with my dad. Food was cold and a bit dry. I was unhappy. So I complained to the manager and I requested a refund.

Someone(or some people) took the time to prepare the food and cook it and someone took the time to serve me it.....your point being?

You offer a refund policy/money back guarantee....It sucks someone spent their time doing something but if a customer is unhappy with the product or service for whatever reason, they do have that right to complain and get said refund that you advertise.

Notice in my original post, I was not rude at all. I expressed my displeasure and disappointment and I politely asked the refund back and I thanked them.

Who knew complaining meant I was being a 16 year old girl?

3. I'm cheap because I am asking for a refund? LMFAO.

You are absolutely right. I could have stayed with them. I could have stuck it out with them for the month. I am sure the server would have been fine...maybe.

But why should I stay somewhere I no longer want to? If my first impression of them was not the best impression, you're saying I should stay with them, ask for a service credit and cross my fingers and hope for the best because they spent the time setting up a server?

Good hosts such as Knownhost, Wiredtree, Hostdime, Liquidweb and even lesser known host such as Big Scoots would have handled that better.

If you see a customer is requesting a cancellation...your first instinct isn't to get defensive. It isn't to immediately turn around and blame the customer.

You see if there is anything that can be done to make the situation better/fix the situation(in many cases it can be fixed) and then if not, cancel the service.

How do I know this? It goes for any job that has customer service....My cellphone company asked me why I wanted to cancel. I told them why and I was able to work something out. They didn't turn around and catch an attitude with me.

4. It seems you misunderstand what the screenshots were about. I never once bugged them about anything nor did I rush them.....I know I am not their only customer.

The bad mouthing is not about the product(VPS) but the service and how they choose to handle their customers.Maybe they have great servers. I guess I'll never know.

 

[Hsin]

I expected such ignorant responses on VPSboard.

If you were expecting ignorant responses, yet made the post anyway, adds fuel to my ulterior motive theory 

You have no theory, you are grasping at straws. Everyone who posts a complaint doesn't have a deep dark motive...gasp, maybe they just want to...are you ready? REVIEW a service they used. Shocking I know.

I expected fanboy response and less impartial discussion but I hoped that wasn't the case.

I am no fanboy, I am not even a customer. I was at one time years ago, but rage quit for my own reasons.  I got zero refund, never expected it, never requested it, it is still sitting in my account as credit, and never said a word about it until this moment.

The way you are so defensive adds more fuel for me, you are after something more.  I misspoke about it being both your fault.  Fran was right, it's all on you, and you tried to bully him, and he wasn't having it.  Just as you are trying to bully me as well, but I also am not having it either.

Yeah you obviously have some screws loose there.

And if you think this is bullying you, you really need to seek some counseling for those issues you have because nobody is bullying you.

 

[Francisco]

I'll be making a reply or two in here, that's it, since I tried my best by you already. Here's some key points:

- When you originally submitted your sales ticket for the plan, the system informed you that our sales & billing departments were closed for the day as well as what time things were officially open. You put your ticket in well into the evening (after 10PM?) when obviously most people are asleep. Yes, I told you Aldryic was asleep

- OP signed up using an unverified paypal. In all the weeks he spent checking us out, at no time did he bother reading our TOS/AUP documenting don't do that. Aldryic still waved the order through to try to get things going.

- Once he was paid up, his VPS was fully provisioned and initially configured within 2 hours. During this time he could of told us he didn't know WHM very well and we'd like to get things going. No problems! we would have got him a temp account to start uploading right then

- OP had to wait a few hours for me to get up to get litespeed installed. While Aldryic was aware of how to get it done normally, he wasn't sure if I had something different going on in the managed plans or not. Litespeed did not stop the customer from moving in or even operating their site, at most it would have been a bit higher load than normal while I was asleep at the time.

- OP had no idea how to use FTP nor what it was. I guided him through each and every step of getting an FTP client configured and him uploading. He provided me an ETA of 3 - 4 hours on the file upload. We saw no reason to nag him for updates past the few bumps to in the live chat we did. He didn't reply to them (he was having browser crash issues and was dropping out of the chat we later found out).

- We handled all of the OP's DNS configuatiin with his registrar getting GLUE records setup with the exact names he wanted.

- OP also only moved to us after his prior hosting was cancelled. We weren't able to do the transfer for him, we were waiting entirely on him for the upload.

- OP was fully aware of the cPanel license refund policy before they ever paid us a dime, it was one of their original questions. Expecting us to give him the money back is silly. We're already out the administration hours.

I could've been nicer, I don't doubt that, but given we were already quite a few hours into it and he's being unreasonable I don't think it was unjusitifed.

You can't win them all, and while he might find a host that's going to hold his hand to the utmost (or he'll make sure he's not pushy to his next provider), I'm giving it some time before he has a similar run in with them.

Thanks,

Francisco

 

[kcaj]

Thankfully I am not here for you to deem me correct or not.

You can drop that act. If you post something here, on the internet, in full public view, you can expect others to drop by and leave their opinions/judgements/two cents/whatever.

Other than Francisco giving you unpolished responses, I don't think BuyVM have done anything particularly wrong here.

Moving on; you should maybe find somebody else willing to hold you by both hands for $23/mo.

 

[Hsin]

I'll be making a reply or two in here, that's it, since I tried my best by you already. Here's some key points:

- When you originally submitted your sales ticket for the plan, the system informed you that our sales & billing departments were closed for the day as well as what time things were officially open. You put your ticket in well into the evening (after 10PM?) when obviously most people are asleep. Yes, I told you Aldryic was asleep

- OP signed up using an unverified paypal. In all the weeks he spent checking us out, at no time did he bother reading our TOS/AUP documenting don't do that. Aldryic still waved the order through to try to get things going.

- Once he was paid up, his VPS was fully provisioned and initially configured within 2 hours. During this time he could of told us he didn't know WHM very well and we'd like to get things going. No problems! we would have got him a temp account to start uploading right then

- OP had to wait a few hours for me to get up to get litespeed installed. While Aldryic was aware of how to get it done normally, he wasn't sure if I had something different going on in the managed plans or not. Litespeed did not stop the customer from moving in or even operating their site, at most it would have been a bit higher load than normal while I was asleep at the time.

- OP had no idea how to use FTP nor what it was. I guided him through each and every step of getting an FTP client configured and him uploading. He provided me an ETA of 3 - 4 hours on the file upload. We saw no reason to nag him for updates past the few bumps to in the live chat we did. He didn't reply to them (he was having browser crash issues and was dropping out of the chat we later found out).

- We handled all of the OP's DNS configuatiin with his registrar getting GLUE records setup with the exact names he wanted.

- OP also only moved to us after his prior hosting was cancelled. We weren't able to do the transfer for him, we were waiting entirely on him for the upload.

- OP was fully aware of the cPanel license refund policy before they ever paid us a dime, it was one of their original questions. Expecting us to give him the money back is silly. We're already out the administration hours.

I could've been nicer, I don't doubt that, but given we were already quite a few hours into it and he's being unreasonable I don't think it was unjusitifed.

You can't win them all, and while he might find a host that's going to hold his hand to the utmost (or he'll make sure he's not pushy to his next provider), I'm giving it some time before he has a similar run in with them.

Thanks,

Francisco

To counter those claims

1. Pretty sure I said both in the chat room when I spoke and the fact that I believe in this thread...I was aware of the hours. I hadn't expected to get a response then.

However, moments after submitting the ticket, I did in fact get a response from Aldyric. The issue came when the fact that he...wait for it...went to sleep. While we were conversing and thus left ME unsure of what was going on/the next move.

That's where the communication comes in at so all parties involved are fully aware and up to speed.

2. The unverified paypal account....You are absolutely right. That was my screw-up and I should have read your TOS/AUP about that. Of course, had I been asked, I would've had no problem providing proof of whatever needed as well. So not sure what relevance it has. I wasn't aware it was an issue with the paypal until HOURS later when you felt the need to bring it up. I've always paid with all hosts. I assumed that it was fine(never had an issue) and that was my fault.

3. The VPS was actually set up within 3 hours and 10 mins(According to Aldyric) but I digress.

Here is where you change your story. You told me Friday in chat, that Aldyric was not familiar with litespeed and he didn't want to just read a guide or manual so it was left to you.....and you said you were going to be training him that night. So now apparently, he in fact DID know how to set up litespeed? I am sorry which is it. I notice you have a habit of changing what you say....

Considering this was also middle of the day, do you people not have more than 1 or 2 people working support at a time? Rhetorical question.

I was also under the impression that I had to wait for you to move forward...3 hours prior I already told Aldyric(when I asked how long it would take for the installation) that I had my backup and I was wanting to get my site back up and running. At no point did he mention anything about restoring the back up or anything. Therefore, I was under the impression I had to wait for you.

Once again communication

4. Youa re right, I was not familiar with FTP. I was trying to upload the backup to the Cpanel and for whatever reason it was not uploading. I also offered to have the backup uploaded to my onedrive account for download...you insisted on me using Filezila, which I expressed I was familiar with and you showed me how to use it.

I never once gave you any type of measurement of time...I never once said Minute, hours, or seconds...in fact that is also said in the screenshot.

What I said was it says 3:45-3:50 and it fluctuated up and to higher.

You ASSUMED it was 3 hours. I never once said that....

Furthermore, you claimed you could see the process it was going to take for the upload.....so why couldn't you see that after an hour it was done?

You tried to sit there and bold face lie to me saying it took 4 hours to upload the database...but you just said you didn't know and were waiting on me. But it in fact took a hour.

So which is it? You can see the progress or you can't?

5. What does the DNS have to do with anything? I didn't complain about that...

6. Again my prior hosting account is irrelevant and has nothing to do with you all. I had asked you the night before would it be easier to do the migration or if I just supplied you the backup and you said either or was fine. So whether I cancelled my hosting account the day before, a week before....or a week later, has no relevance here.

7. I asked for the refund of the cpanel license back....I was fully aware of your policy but it doesn't hurt to ask and I didn't make a big deal about it either. SO again I am trying to figure out the fact you and others feel the need to linger on the fact I asked for a refund of the license.

You are absolutely right you could have handled it better and the sad thing is, I fully am aware and acknowledge my own wrongdoing/mistakes and I also acknowledged I handled my conversation badly with you via chat.

But you still sit here and try to rationalize your own behavior/actions and deem it justifiable to be an ass and that is really the main issue here. The fact that you think you can just be an ass to a customer and justifiable.

At no point did I demand you or anyone to do anything for me. At no point did I ask for any of you to hold my hands. And I don't think my expectations of having good communication is anything ridiculous to expect.

I apologize I am not one of the fools you host who sit in your chat and praise you like the Gods they believe you are.

Thankfully I am not here for you to deem me correct or not.

You can drop that act. If you post something here, on the internet, in full public view, you can expect others to drop by and leave their opinions/judgements/two cents/whatever.

Other than Francisco giving you unpolished responses, I don't think BuyVM have done anything particularly wrong here.

Moving on; you should maybe find somebody else willing to hold you by both hands for $23/mo.

LOL I love how you all keep saying hold my hand? Please show me at any point in my responses where I asked for someone to hold my hand?

And thankfully, I have chosen what seems(So far) to be a decent host in hawkhost. And it may help you to read...it's not $23 per month. The $23 was a proration.

 

[tonyg]

I went out for an early birthday dinner with my dad. Food was cold and a bit dry. I was unhappy. So I complained to the manager and I requested a refund.

Dude, you sound like a real douche bag.