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I might have mentioned this before, but DigitalOcean's support is (or was, before I stopped being their customer) absolutely abysmal. I had a default card set

I might have mentioned this before, but DigitalOcean's support is (or was, before I stopped being their customer) absolutely abysmal. I had a default card set up for auto billing. That card expired. I went to remove the default card -- you cannot remove a default card. Okay. I added a new card and tried to set it as default. It didn't take. (Refreshing the browser reverted the change.) So I tried another browser, another computer, etc. The change never took. Finally, I contacted their support. It took a ton of back and forth with people who had dubious language comprehension before I finally convinced them anything other than user error was going on... but then, instead of fixing it, they demanded I take a video and upload it for them to prove it was real! I did, and I paid the invoice manually. The bug was eventually fixed after a month or two, but it was a pain until that happened. I found another provider who is cheaper for the resources I need and has better customer service by miles. If I can't get you to even take my money in an easy and reliable way, I can't trust you to operate anything I rely on.

oliverjudge 6y ago
Out of curiosity where did you move to?
- ivraatiems 6y ago
  I moved to BuyVM, https://buyvm.net/ https://buyvm.net/. I had already been using their services for a few years, I just expanded on what I already had. They are not as large an enterprise as DigitalOcean, by a long shot, but the upside of that is you can speak with the owner and his small staff personally and get personal service. They made me a very good deal. I also know from their Discord that they have some conservative political leanings, so if that's a thing that matters to you either way, it's there. I don't find it to be represented in their behavior towards customers or who they choose to host, so it was acceptable to me even though I feel differently.
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    Not treating people differently based on their beliefs sounds like someone with leanings on either side, rather than extremists on either side.
    - ivraatiems 6y ago
      Yeah. There are definitely people on their Discord I'd call extreme, but none of those people work for or speak for the company. They aren't people I would choose to associate with, but it's a free country. I thought about it quite a bit, actually. But there is a line there and they haven't crossed it.
  - voltagex_ 6y ago
    BuyVM's wiki has things in it like https://wiki.buyvm.net/doku.php/kvm#pagefileswap_disclaimer https://wiki.buyvm.net/doku.php/kvm#pagefileswap_disclaimer, which, without any numbers behind it would make me extremely uneasy to use the service. Other cheap hosts just put hard IO limits at the VM host level.
    - dannyw 6y ago
      BuyVM is a team run by humans who do care about every customer. As long as you're doing something malicious-y (like crypto mining, exploit testing random websites, distributing malware or a phishing site, etc), they will work with you.
      - kchr 6y ago
        > As long as you're doing something malicious-y (like crypto mining, exploit testing random websites, distributing malware or a phishing site, etc), they will work with you. Is this an extension of the Russian Business Network, or did you miss a negation in there? :-)
  - frakkingcylons 6y ago
    It blows my mind that people will hang out in a Discord for a VPS provider and express their political opinions. Communities form around anything nowadays.
    - dannyw 6y ago
      BuyVM is more or less a free speech host: if it's legal, they'll (usually) host it. It's my view that we need this on the internet.
      - frakkingcylons 6y ago
        I'm not for or against BuyVM. I'm just surprised that nowadays people will hang out in a VPS provider's Discord. Like if Wawa had a Discord and people decided to hang out there. I just don't get it.
        ivraatiems 6y ago
        I think people would totally do that for Wawa. I know some people who are crazy into the whole Wawa vs Sheetz debate. There's a whole community around "low-end" VPS and server hosting, and BuyVM's staff have historically been active figures in that community. The Discord is an offshoot of that. It's not all that unusual; a lot of companies do community outreach by running communities for people who do things related to their services. Digital Ocean themselves do this in another form with their documentation libraries. BuyVM's brand relies on the perception that they are laid-back, pro-free-speech, friendly, and helpful. The Discord is a way of broadcasting that. Now, personally - I think that attracts some people I wouldn't prefer to attract. But I know they've drawn lines in the past (banning overtly anti-Semitic people, for instance), so, fair enough. Their pro-speech attitude helped me when a site I ran was subjected to bogus legal threats from an unhinged former user.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    +1 to BuyVM. Happy customer for multiple years. They are really the perfect size for me: big enough for multiple locations, R&D, and support coverage; but small enough so that you personally interact with the team, and you have trust that a random DMCA isn't going to end up with your site nuked. The privacy-first stance (including allowing Tor exit nodes! sorely needed on independent infra!), and general willingness to help you ad-hoc (e.g. you wanna announce your own IP range? they'll do it, charge you a fair price for the work). On the other hand, I woke up one day with my DigitalOcean droplet suspended and account banned, and support absolutely refuses to tell me why. My only suspicion is perhaps because I used the GitHub Student Pack even after I was no longer a student.
- unethical_ban 6y ago
  I use Vultr FWIW, I got $50 in credit way back when, and they're stable, and their support was responsive, if a bit unhelpful, regarding a firewall issue.
mattnewton 6y ago
A small personal project of mine was flagged as compromised or something and taken down. Support couldn’t tell me why, I suspect it had something to do with updating regularly through git? To this day I’ll never know though, moved it to an aws ec2 instance.
wakatime 6y ago
Maybe they have support tiers? Every time I created a support ticket I got a response within an hour from a technical person. Their support responds much faster than AWS in my experiences.
- ivraatiems 6y ago
  The responses were fast. They were just also nonsensical.
sethammons 6y ago
My support issue was that I had a dead box and needed it to be available again. Their system thought it was up, but I could not reach it. There was no live support, just submit a ticket and pray. They need real-time support. I’m fine paying for it. Hell, bill me per minute, but I needed eyes in the issue. Instead of waiting for some unknown time for a support response, I deleted my stuff and rebuilt everything. If this were backing a commercial offering of mine, this would be unacceptable.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  This may be a dumb question but why would you put anything on a server at DO that you need 5 nines out of? DO is all about the price and mediocre tools and machine that you get for it. I use it for personal/fun stuff but I'd never put my business on it.
  - sethammons 6y ago
    Sure, you probably don't want to run your business on it; we agree. I think it is a missing opportunity for DO to allow growing smaller projects to continue to stay on their platform.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      Ah thanks for the clarification.
nerdbaggy 6y ago
Had the same problem, and switched to Linode, much better support. They recently won some support award, not sure if it actually means anything https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-wins-5-stevie-awards/ https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-wins-5-stevie-awar...

oliverjudge 6y ago

Out of curiosity where did you move to?

ivraatiems 6y ago
I moved to BuyVM, https://buyvm.net/ https://buyvm.net/. I had already been using their services for a few years, I just expanded on what I already had. They are not as large an enterprise as DigitalOcean, by a long shot, but the upside of that is you can speak with the owner and his small staff personally and get personal service. They made me a very good deal. I also know from their Discord that they have some conservative political leanings, so if that's a thing that matters to you either way, it's there. I don't find it to be represented in their behavior towards customers or who they choose to host, so it was acceptable to me even though I feel differently.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  Not treating people differently based on their beliefs sounds like someone with leanings on either side, rather than extremists on either side.
  - ivraatiems 6y ago
    Yeah. There are definitely people on their Discord I'd call extreme, but none of those people work for or speak for the company. They aren't people I would choose to associate with, but it's a free country. I thought about it quite a bit, actually. But there is a line there and they haven't crossed it.
- voltagex_ 6y ago
  BuyVM's wiki has things in it like https://wiki.buyvm.net/doku.php/kvm#pagefileswap_disclaimer https://wiki.buyvm.net/doku.php/kvm#pagefileswap_disclaimer, which, without any numbers behind it would make me extremely uneasy to use the service. Other cheap hosts just put hard IO limits at the VM host level.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    BuyVM is a team run by humans who do care about every customer. As long as you're doing something malicious-y (like crypto mining, exploit testing random websites, distributing malware or a phishing site, etc), they will work with you.
    - kchr 6y ago
      > As long as you're doing something malicious-y (like crypto mining, exploit testing random websites, distributing malware or a phishing site, etc), they will work with you. Is this an extension of the Russian Business Network, or did you miss a negation in there? :-)
- frakkingcylons 6y ago
  It blows my mind that people will hang out in a Discord for a VPS provider and express their political opinions. Communities form around anything nowadays.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    BuyVM is more or less a free speech host: if it's legal, they'll (usually) host it. It's my view that we need this on the internet.
    - frakkingcylons 6y ago
      I'm not for or against BuyVM. I'm just surprised that nowadays people will hang out in a VPS provider's Discord. Like if Wawa had a Discord and people decided to hang out there. I just don't get it.
      - ivraatiems 6y ago
        I think people would totally do that for Wawa. I know some people who are crazy into the whole Wawa vs Sheetz debate. There's a whole community around "low-end" VPS and server hosting, and BuyVM's staff have historically been active figures in that community. The Discord is an offshoot of that. It's not all that unusual; a lot of companies do community outreach by running communities for people who do things related to their services. Digital Ocean themselves do this in another form with their documentation libraries. BuyVM's brand relies on the perception that they are laid-back, pro-free-speech, friendly, and helpful. The Discord is a way of broadcasting that. Now, personally - I think that attracts some people I wouldn't prefer to attract. But I know they've drawn lines in the past (banning overtly anti-Semitic people, for instance), so, fair enough. Their pro-speech attitude helped me when a site I ran was subjected to bogus legal threats from an unhinged former user.
- dannyw 6y ago
  +1 to BuyVM. Happy customer for multiple years. They are really the perfect size for me: big enough for multiple locations, R&D, and support coverage; but small enough so that you personally interact with the team, and you have trust that a random DMCA isn't going to end up with your site nuked. The privacy-first stance (including allowing Tor exit nodes! sorely needed on independent infra!), and general willingness to help you ad-hoc (e.g. you wanna announce your own IP range? they'll do it, charge you a fair price for the work). On the other hand, I woke up one day with my DigitalOcean droplet suspended and account banned, and support absolutely refuses to tell me why. My only suspicion is perhaps because I used the GitHub Student Pack even after I was no longer a student.
unethical_ban 6y ago
I use Vultr FWIW, I got $50 in credit way back when, and they're stable, and their support was responsive, if a bit unhelpful, regarding a firewall issue.

mattnewton 6y ago

A small personal project of mine was flagged as compromised or something and taken down. Support couldn’t tell me why, I suspect it had something to do with updating regularly through git? To this day I’ll never know though, moved it to an aws ec2 instance.

wakatime 6y ago

Maybe they have support tiers? Every time I created a support ticket I got a response within an hour from a technical person. Their support responds much faster than AWS in my experiences.

ivraatiems 6y ago
The responses were fast. They were just also nonsensical.

sethammons 6y ago

My support issue was that I had a dead box and needed it to be available again. Their system thought it was up, but I could not reach it. There was no live support, just submit a ticket and pray. They need real-time support. I’m fine paying for it. Hell, bill me per minute, but I needed eyes in the issue. Instead of waiting for some unknown time for a support response, I deleted my stuff and rebuilt everything. If this were backing a commercial offering of mine, this would be unacceptable.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
This may be a dumb question but why would you put anything on a server at DO that you need 5 nines out of? DO is all about the price and mediocre tools and machine that you get for it. I use it for personal/fun stuff but I'd never put my business on it.
- sethammons 6y ago
  Sure, you probably don't want to run your business on it; we agree. I think it is a missing opportunity for DO to allow growing smaller projects to continue to stay on their platform.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Ah thanks for the clarification.

nerdbaggy 6y ago

Had the same problem, and switched to Linode, much better support. They recently won some support award, not sure if it actually means anything https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-wins-5-stevie-awards/ https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-wins-5-stevie-awar...