So the other day I wanted to get a virtual server. After digging the question, failing to register for silly reason, bad reason, good reasonno reason on certain platforms I’ve found an “respectable experienced German VPS provider” working since 2004 in the business.

I managed to register there without hassle and paid for a test server on Friday. The tip said that it might take up to several hours to set up a server, so I waited.

I have received an email confirmation from PayPal that the transfer was successful. Another mail came from the C company providing a link to track progress of my request. The link showed error 403, but I was optimistic. So I waited. The whole day until Saturday. That’s when I wrote an email asking if things are fine out there. I’ve received no reply on Saturday. Neither on Sunday.

I was about to file a complaint to PayPal on Monday when I’ve received an email from C stating that they are on their way and there is nothing to worry about. I got my server on Tuesday.

The admin panel completely proved the “working since 2004” claim: people stopped writing web like this around 2005. But if it works, why bother? Right? Error 403 on my order confirmation page stayed the same even after I connected to the server via ssh.

Anyway, I got my machine and I was happy that it’s one of those rare and highly valuable cases when you are not forced to set up monthly payment, nor attach your credit card to the account. You pay whatever sum you want and then you use the money inside the system. No money - no honey, which means no problems with automatic payments for stuff that you’ve abandoned. Awesome?

Awesome it was for the first two months. Then I decided to do exactly what was described in the user agreement: you stop paying, your machine gets deleted after one week timeout. I abandoned the machine and switched to other parts of my life. I received a persistent flow of emails almost daily with reminders to pay for the server or else it will be deleted. I started ignoring them after the first couple.

I got curious when I received this payment reminder one week after payment deadline. I logged into my account to find out I have a running virtual machine and I have paid for both one month prolongation AND for server set-up. None ow which I could have performed simply because I never logged in back then. On top of that I found out that now I owe that money to the provider and have a negative balance.

I wrote an email asking to revert the actions and restore my balance to nil. Provider replied that I must pay the money to regain access, including reactivation fee.

After a couple more letters I thought managed to explain what I want since i received an email saying: “Please clearly state that you want to stop XXX machine and you agree to lose all its data”. I sent them the letter with this exact statement.

On the next day I received a reminder that I still owe them the money. Hmm. I replied that this is not exactly the outcome we were discussing and the next day I’ve received an email asking me to wait since they’ve sent a request to the billing department and wait for their actions.

Four days later finally I’ve received an email. Stating that my account has been deleted.

It seems like C VPS provider has not only employed the bots as support team, but it’s the bots written in 2005 and taking legal days off at weekends. Because it’s Germany, you know.

Sent them a request to quote me asking them to do what they did. Also asked them direct question if I’m talking to bot. I’d guess the question will be ignored however

That’s where the story is now

Moral of the story: don’t use Contabo if you value your time