To Rus Foster,
Hello Rus Foster (pictured). I just want to take a few minutes to explain from a customers point of view how appalling your VPS user interface and customer service is. Three hours after trying to create a new VPS to add to my account I have no VPS, have accrued a USD$97.56 bill with VPS and am completely frustrated and bewildered.
To explain.
I have been a client of vps.net for the past 2 years. During that time I have paid an average of USD $170-$180 a month for the one 10 node VPS instance I have in the USA.
This afternoon I decided that I wanted to create a second VPS to host this site based on the recommendation of Yoast whose site is hosted there. Simple no doubt.
VPS provide a nice admin interface to create the new VPS – but that is where it stops. In my opinion VPS could not make the process any more difficult, frustrating even if they tried to design an absolutely impossible interface. It is mind numbingly stupid.
The create a new VPS format lets you go through the whole process – and upon creation you get an error message at the end. ‘Can’t create nodes on the fly.’ and something about needing a credit because I make the hideous crime of paying my monthly bill via Paypal.
I might add at no stage at this point was there any sort of decent explanation of why VPS would not allow the creation of the new VPS – I mean they created the goobly gook that says ‘can’t create nodes on the fly’ why not go to that bit of extra trouble to explain to the customer in the pop up why and how to remedy the situation. I mean really how hard is that – Its actually called customer service.
So fair enough I think – I’ll create a credit – but do you think you can find where to do that – no.
So I try to create the VPS again – same result.
By now I have 2 emails from VPS telling me
Dear Steve
Thank you for being a VPS.NET client! This e-mail is to inform you that invoice (# 8797-501136) has been generated on (Dec/04/2012).
INVOICE DETAILS
—————————————————————–
Your Client ID: ####
Inv. Due Date: Dec/08/2012
Amount Due: $ 32.52On Dec/08/2012 we will attempt to charge your credit card on file for the full amount. If you would like to make
alternative payment arrangements please login to your VPS.NET account at https://control.vps.net/login to edit your billing details.
Easy enough I think Rus Foster – I’ll just go to my dashboard > Invoices and pay the invoice and all will be sweet.
You guessed it – no sign of any invoice.
So then I resort to the the instant chat function on the front of your website where I encounter Dane S. who less than helpfully informs me that I need to contact the Billing department. When I explain to him that all I’m trying to do is buy another VPS off VPS.NET and pay for it he then tells me I need to use a credit card and hangs up on me.
Rus Foster I did say that the system was incredibly stupid and not at all user friendly but I did not swear and was not abusive – and do not believe I should have been ‘hung up on’ – for god sake I’m a long standing client who is frustrated because I can’t do more business with your company.
So I go back to VPS.NET and add a credit card and go through the process again.
This time I get the incredibly unhelpful message – ‘An error occurred processing you credit card‘ and just a few minutes later another email from VPS (the third)
Dear Steve
Thank you for being a VPS.NET client! This e-mail is to inform you that invoice (# 8797-501136) has been generated on (Dec/04/2012).
INVOICE DETAILS
—————————————————————–
Your Client ID:
Inv. Due Date: Dec/08/2012
Amount Due: $ 32.52
Oh great – I now have USD $97.56 worth of invoices that VPS is planning to debit my credit card for on the 8th of December and no new VPS.
So I go back to my account and attempt to delete the credit card info – VPS are to smart for that – no way to delete your credit card.
So I change my preferred payment method to PayPal and what do you know – VPS.NET has no record of that payment method even though I’ve used it to pay them every month for over 2 years. VPS requires me to validate the email address again – in fact they lock me out of my account with a great big “Access Denied” like I’m some undesirable.
So I go back to the live chat to friendly old Dane S. The first thing I ask him is not to be so rude as to hang up on me again. I tell him what has happened and guess what Rus – he hangs up.
To Dane S credit he did validate my IP address and give me access to my account again.
So here I sit 3 hours of my life wasted on trying to give VPS more money each month – in that time I’ve accrued a US$97 debt with VPS and have nothing to show for it except.
- Getting ‘hung up’ on twice
- Getting locked out of my VPS account.
- Have a USD $97.56 debt with VPS.NET
- Have no new VPS
Seriously Rus Foster is that anyway to treat a long standing client? I have to be perfectly straight with you – its completely unacceptable and its not the first time but we won’t go into that.
I am currently looking for another hosting company in the USA to give my money to each month. I have a terrific company here in Australia where we have our Australian clients hosted on the cloud we built with them, just wished they were in the USA. But they are not and I need to find a company who actually makes life easy for their clients – not a company like VPS who makes everything just as humanly difficult as possible.
Anyone have suggestions?
By the way the photo of Rus Foster came from this website Daily Host News