DEAL CloudAtCost Promos

mbellot

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Hmmm. I've been looking around, and I must say, I don't see any recurring charges. I did have to agree to the 'changed terms and conditions', but the only thing it said about charges, it that they were whatever the main page said.
There's nothing invoiced against my account, and they don't have a card or account to charge against. I guess I'll see going forward.

Same here, and this is still the first question in the FAQ section:

What does One-Time payment mean?
One-Time payment means you only have to pay once and you get the service for ever and never pay again.

Which directly contradicts the updated TOS.
 

wardmundy

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Everyone might want to save a copy of the following screenshots. Should be all your lawyer needs. :sifone:

C7Du7fQWcAQzgNn.jpg


C7DvFoTWsAAIpQy.jpg
 

tycho

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My lawyer (me) already dashed-off a friendly email to them; a sort of back-door discovery document:

Code:
Feel free to route this to your legal department for review and the appropriate response.

(1)  Please provide me with the date that Cloudatcost first incorporated into its Terms and Conditions a provision providing that customers with "onetime payment service," or who obtained a product from Cloudatcost upon payment of a "one time product fee," would be subject to an annual maintenance fee.

(2)  With reference to item (1), above, please provide me with the dollar amount of the annual maintenance fee specified on the date that Cloudatcost first incorporated into its Terms and Conditions a provision providing that customers with "onetime payment service," or who obtained a product from Cloudatcost upon payment of a "one time product fee," would be subject to such an annual maintenance fee.

(3)  Please provide me with the date that Cloudatcost first incorporated into its terms and Conditions the following language:

9.18 Customers with a onetime payment service is subject to an annual maintenance fee of $9 which will be invoiced 12 months after using our service. This does not apply to users that have a monthly paid service. This Maintenance fee will ensure proper hardware upgrades and maintenance to reduce degradation of onetime payment services.

(4)  Please provide me with a full and complete copy of Cloudatcost's Terms and Conditions effective as of the close of business on [and there follows each date upon which I acquired the various servers...]

Cordially,
 

mbellot

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Went to log into the panel this morning and was presented with the new TOS, had to agree before it would let me go any further.

Undoubtedly this is their work around for changing from a one time payment to an annual maintenance fee structure.

Cloud servers page and FAQ (as posted by Ward) still remain the same (one time payment, period), which is starting to smell of bait and switch considering the "Terms" page on the same website HAS been updated to reflect the new $9/yr additional charge.
 

tycho

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Yup. I exited that page, rather than accept the binary choice of "agree" or "cancel my service." I think there is a very strong argument that they can't enter into the original contract, and then force existing customers to either agree to new terms, or lose service. That's what an attorney might call a "breach of contract."

Question: the Ts and Cs are written poorly. Can anyone determine/has anyone heard if the $9 fee is per account or per ... something else? Given that I could have either multiple small CloudPro servers, or one big one, I suppose the answer has to be "per account," but I don't know for sure. $9/year/account ain't bad. But still...

Given that these are mere toy servers for me, I'm tempted to be a d*ck and send some emails to the Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services.

General Info: https://www.ontario.ca/page/your-rights-under-consumer-protection-act

Filing a complaint: https://www.ontario.ca/page/filing-consumer-complaint
 

mbellot

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Funny (?) thing just happened...

Got an email from CaC informing me that I had an outstanding invoice and my account/servers would be deleted in 24 hours if I didn't pay up.

The "funny" thing is the invoice was dated 5/17/2017. I never got an email back then about the invoice, so it came as a bit of a surprise.

Anyway, since nobody has answered yet, I can confirm that the $9 charge was for my entire account (one CloudPro2 and one CloudPro3, six CPUs total), not per instance.

I can tolerate $9/year for the spotty service, it is more than adequate for my needs.
 

Trimline2

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Funny (?) thing just happened...
Got an email from CaC informing me that I had an outstanding invoice and my account/servers would be deleted in 24 hours if I didn't pay up.
The "funny" thing is the invoice was dated 5/17/2017. I never got an email back then about the invoice, so it came as a bit of a surprise.
.

Same here. When I logged on, my instance was gone. Oh well...
 

jeff.h

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I just got the same email telling me I was overdue on an invoice for $9 that was due on 5/17/17. It also says "Not Sent" for the "Sent On" date. So how am I supposed to know that I have an invoice due if they never sent it to me?

I haven't logged in nor used any of their services in so long I can remember when the last time was. I think I am just going to let it cancel. Of course this could also be their plan. If there are a good number of people that feel the same way I do it would return a good number of resources back to their pool.

EDIT:

I should also mentiont that I got the email at 10:28pm CDT last night with a 24 hour warning. It is now 7:10am and my servers are already gone.

I am done with CaC.
 

mbellot

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I should also mentiont that I got the email at 10:28pm CDT last night with a 24 hour warning. It is now 7:10am and my servers are already gone.

I am done with CaC.

Email came in at 10:09pm CDT, I received my payment confirmation at 10:23pm CDT and still managed to lose two instances. Not exactly 24hrs...

I really don't care about losing them, it takes less than an hour to rebuild one (assuming the instance comes to life the first time) and they only exist to circumvent overly locked down networks.
 

jeff.h

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What they are used for or how easily they are rebuilt isn't really the point. It's a shitty business practice and I will not deal with anyone that operates like that.
 

krzykat

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Now that I read this, I found that e-mail (otherwise I would have missed it). I've got the developer pro cloud 4 setup that I paid the "ONE TIME" fee on, and honestly haven't used it. When I want to spin up a test, I use Vultr. While I hate just throwing stuff away, for how often I'd use this, I'm tempted to just say "Nope - not worth the $9" annual fee that I never knew I was going to be into before.
 

hecatae

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my instances are still live, and I'm not going to pay the $9

I also have two undefined invoices for $0, not to worried if they all disappear, too many read only file system issues for me to care.

Will be interesting if they can kill the instances, they are not standard.
 

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