Well, I paid one payment with Curve and so far they are refusing to make a chargeback.
It appears that the charge back procedure is a pain in the arse, fuck it.
Gonna be fun, to ask my bank, to chargeback curve and they will chargeback hostdoc.
@Neoon said:
Well, I paid one payment with Curve and so far they are refusing to make a chargeback.
It appears that the charge back procedure is a pain in the arse, fuck it.
Gonna be fun, to ask my bank, to chargeback curve and they will chargeback hostdoc.
@Neoon said:
Well, I paid one payment with Curve and so far they are refusing to make a chargeback.
It appears that the charge back procedure is a pain in the arse, fuck it.
Gonna be fun, to ask my bank, to chargeback curve and they will chargeback hostdoc.
@Neoon said:
Well, I paid one payment with Curve and so far they are refusing to make a chargeback.
It appears that the charge back procedure is a pain in the arse, fuck it.
Gonna be fun, to ask my bank, to chargeback curve and they will chargeback hostdoc.
Use the time machine feature and pick the bank that can chargeback better
@Neoon said:
Well, I paid one payment with Curve and so far they are refusing to make a chargeback.
It appears that the charge back procedure is a pain in the arse, fuck it.
Gonna be fun, to ask my bank, to chargeback curve and they will chargeback hostdoc.
Do it!
Your order to complain about the VISA booking has been received.
Done.
Still need to trash the Curve card, useless garbage.
PSA: Use with a credit card from Visa/Mastercard/AMEX (eh) and save the hassle next time when you pay with PayPal. Don't forget, PP automatically claws back the $ from the seller as soon as you charge back.
Of course, debit cards do work, but I'm fairly certain they aren't given the same protections as a credit card. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Man, this HostDoc thing really has been a mess. I'm glad I stopped hoarding new servers and just kept a few boxes from known, reputable providers.
Don't forget, PP automatically claws back the $ from the seller as soon as you charge back.
But how though. Only thing I can find is filing a complaint, and HostDoc won't reply.
When you open a paypal dispute they have about 14 days to reply, if they do not you automatically get the money back.
During the dispute unless the host has great standing with paypal (I do smug grin VIP business) the money is automatically deducted from the host and held by paypal.
You can open the dispute in the resolution center at any time and escalate the dispute to a claim this is what is usually used for when communication is not possible or breaks down.
Don't forget, PP automatically claws back the $ from the seller as soon as you charge back.
But how though. Only thing I can find is filing a complaint, and HostDoc won't reply.
When you open a paypal dispute they have about 14 days to reply, if they do not you automatically get the money back.
During the dispute unless the host has great standing with paypal (I do smug grin VIP business) the money is automatically deducted from the host and held by paypal.
You can open the dispute in the resolution center at any time and escalate the dispute to a claim this is what is usually used for when communication is not possible or breaks down.
Indeed. However, a proper credit card reversal will claw it back from PayPal and essentially skip the dispute process. I usually don't recommend doing this unless you've truly been wronged though as it is very costly to a merchant.
@FlamesRunner said: Indeed. However, a proper credit card reversal will claw it back from PayPal and essentially skip the dispute process. I usually don't recommend doing this unless you've truly been wronged though as it is very costly to a merchant.
Yep, I would always suggest going through PayPal in these cases though because if the host is hit with a lot all at once there is a good chance PayPal will side with the customer rather than risk chargeback fee's which they may never recover.
If you file a chargeback straight away and PayPal successfully fight it as thats the only option you have given PayPal and you loose, it could impact your relationship with your card issuer and possibly even borrowing ability in the future
Don't forget, PP automatically claws back the $ from the seller as soon as you charge back.
But how though. Only thing I can find is filing a complaint, and HostDoc won't reply.
When you open a paypal dispute they have about 14 days to reply, if they do not you automatically get the money back.
During the dispute unless the host has great standing with paypal (I do smug grin VIP business) the money is automatically deducted from the host and held by paypal.
You can open the dispute in the resolution center at any time and escalate the dispute to a claim this is what is usually used for when communication is not possible or breaks down.
Indeed. However, a proper credit card reversal will claw it back from PayPal and essentially skip the dispute process. I usually don't recommend doing this unless you've truly been wronged though as it is very costly to a merchant.
I didn't do a chargeback on my credit card because I always learned this'll probably cost you your PayPal account (and possibly more). At the time I failed the complaint, I still had the faint hope of getting a reply from HostDoc. This won't be happening, so now I've escalated it to a claim as per @AnthonySmith's post.
@g4m3r said:
Can someone write a summary about the hostdoc case, because I'm interested in, but I don't have the time to read all of those pages here and at LET.
tl;dr version.
Hostdoc had a technical issue that was allowing customers to view other customers details in the billing portal.
As it transpired this has happened a few times and people have quietly told them about it and it keeps happening.
Hostdoc only seemed to take it seriously when it was made very public.
Hostdoc had a bit of a public meltdown and decided it was to overwhelming to deal with and closed.
Hostdoc said they would refund all customers, it seems they only refunded a few.
Hostdoc said they would keep servers online for a month, a lot of their servers are already down.
Hostdoc started to file charge backs against their own upstream service providers for the server leases over the last 6 months to claw back some money.
Hostdoc maintains they had a profitable business, we all laughed and then found out the owner has a history of doing similar things.
People have started filing their own charge backs/disputes to get the money back they obviously dont plan to refund.
I'll exclude myself on the basis that if I was correct, it would be easy to argue that I rigged it. I don't have access but I do have some knowledge. I also still get emails from the live chat...
Get the best deal on your next VPS or Shared/Reseller hosting from RacknerdTracker.com - The original aff garden.
@FlamesRunner said: I'm glad I stopped hoarding new servers and just kept a few boxes from known, reputable providers.
Except he WAS seen as a reputable provider. First the whole colo shitshow now this.
Whole thing has kinda shaken my faith in LES style providers. Obviously I was aware that LES pricepoint comes with risk but still.
Gonna park my stuff on Azure. At least until I figure out a way to do cleaner automated backups & restores to a clean VM.
I wish I could say any of this was surprising, but I pegged HostDoc as scammy right after my first month with them and the experience I had. I tested HostDoc when it originally started, the week it started, I believe. The services were not really that great and then his tact for handling live chat was AWFUL. I was, I think, 2 hours late on payment and he tried to tack on a late fee twice the value of the actual service and hold my service hostage. After that, I had no delusions of staying with them or them being a long term provider. On top of that, it was easy to see that 90% of the infrastructure was just rented servers and nothing he was using was owned. As such, I canceled my server , got out after the first month and never looked back.
I then later posted about my experience in a thread where the owner started going off on people on LET and eventually others were taking pity on him so I let my complaints go and didn't continue after him. Though in retrospect, maybe more pressure should have been put on him then, instead of letting it go on another several months before finding his way out with this exit scam. Worst part was, all the community members blindly falling for his prices, his shtick and then doing mass advertising for him of the unsustainable deals he would offer, most specifically during holidays, not anticipating or considering what was to come.
TL;DR;
For me the signs were all there from the start, I tried to speak up a few times about it, but because of how favorable people were to the brand, it seems most of the sentiment was lost on people in their want for cheaper and cheaper services to the point where people were willing to overlook the obvious logical flaws (unrealistic cost) just to get services. It is most unfortunate he was allowed to rope in people with yearlies, where most other hosts in his position we would have openly recommended only month-to-month purchases. However, because of all the fan boys hanging around for HostDoc, many were convinced it was safe to take on longer contracts and blindly dove in.
Sadly it turned out to be one of those cases where, "If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck!"
My hope is we are able to learn from this going forward and be a little less proactive / more cautious about pushing and advertising newer hosts which are active without their own infrastructure and selling too good to be true deals.
@TheLinuxBug said: I tried to speak up a few times about it but because of how favorable people were to the brand it seems most of the sentiment was lost on people
@Clouvider said:
There are reliable providers on this forums, just saying. Just stop hunting the non-existent bargain.
One of the things for me in this case was that I'm fairly new to these forums. I knew the 'low end universe' before (had services with OVH, Online, Liteserver, First Root, UltraVPS before registering on LET) but had no idea of all the different providers and promotions.
As far as I was concerned, HostDoc had a very good reputation and good offers. This is why I registered with them on Cyber Monday. This wasn't a lower than low deal, but on fairly new hardware on a fairly good (OVH) network. That they didn't own their own hardware is not unheard of at this price point, so wasn't a dealbreaker for me either. It was only 4 days later that the whole ReliableSite drama began. That's when I got second thoughts about this provider.
Thing is though if not virtually everyone praised the heck out of HostDoc I wouldn't have bought something at his. Because he was known as a reliable provider with good deals. And deals are as addictive as potassium.
As a community we should be more careful with naming any new provider with good performance and deals as the next saviour.
Hopefully this post won't offend any providers...not intended to...
Alas that to be honest is a big part of the problem. Bargain pricing is the main (only?) selling point for LES sized providers. Price it higher and you're squarely in DO/Linode territory or worse GCP/Azure with all of the synergies of their other toys and free tier allocations.
Smaller providers can't compete on features with cloud and can't compete on stability with the big providers. That leaves cost & making this a race to the bottom. Focusing on the choices of a provider that "won" that race and painted themselves into a corner is the wrong interpretation imo. Warning signs or not - this seems very much like a structural issue in the entire industry / community.
Hell other providers here have given me even better deals than doc and said provider seems reasonable. Do I cancel that? Per your logic I should. Yet it's great value (while it lasts). Which is part of the reason why my thinking is doubling down on better deployment / backup processes to absorb the risk my side
Let me add some of my own perspective as a provider.
The issue is when you START off in business and you are already racing to the bottom.
There is no issue selling bulk/cheap as long as there is some profit in every single thing you sell, but when you come to the market selling at a loss or with 50c p/year margins, you are setting yourself up to fail.
You need to build a stable base, sometimes that means you need to stay working in your shitty day job for a few years while you build up a stable foundation.
I sell stuff cheap, sometimes I sell stuff so cheap that it would be a loss if I sold everything at that rate, sometimes you have a few nodes with say 4GB ram unused and a chunk of disk space free that have been full/locked for years and already more than cover their own costs + profit under no significant load, that is when you go for the 20 x 512mb plans for €10 p/year.
The issue is that some people see this and think that's the standard business model and they need to compete, this is when you start seeing the flash in the pan hosts that you just know will not last, you get an instinct for it, you just know they are either selling raid 1 as 10 or they have no raid at all, I have seen it myself when hosts have reached out for help with things and some kid puts the nodes (yes plural) root password in a skype message like its some emoji and you start trouble shooting performance issues for them and see that they have 60 VM's running in a single sata disk sold as raid 10. (true story)
Its a complete wash with dodgy tactics and zero common sense selling.
So you cant judge a host on price alone but i would say it is fair to say that if a deal looks unsustainable and the host is say less than 3 years old, it probably is long term unsustainable, all circumstances are different though, it could be a loss leader to make a name and they have solid financial backing.
I would say dont depend on any host, even the big ones go pop, if you are going to use lowend, have your own redundancy and disaster plan and only spend what you can afford to loose, no business is bombproof.
@havoc said: Hell other providers here have given me even better deals than doc and said provider seems reasonable. Do I cancel that? Per your logic I should. Yet it's great value (while it lasts). Which is part of the reason why my thinking is doubling down on better deployment / backup processes to absorb the risk my side
There is few key items I would concentrate on. Does the host you are working with own their infrastructure? If not, how long have they been in business providing the specific service you are looking to purchase?
If they own the infrastructure outright and have their own network setup for example, there is a real investment into that and generally, most who make money at it in the business, make longer term multi-year contracts to get the best prices on colo and power. This usually means they are more likely to have better investment and a better chance of long term existence. Many of the best (successful) 'low end' providers have done it / do it as a loss leader as well, it can be cheaper to break even or even take a small initial loss than to spend money on 'advertising your brand' and many will use it as a way to lower their advertising budget and get their brand name known.
The thing you need to be able to do is determine the difference between those companies which are established and able to offer the deals because it is advertising vs. those whom are literally running a one person business with rented servers on razor thin margins.
I am not saying don't ever support the small business whom currently operates with 'some rented hardware' , just set your expectations accordingly going in. If it is an OVH reseller, for example, the overhead can be quite low in some circumstance, so hosts reselling there with cheap plans makes a lot more sense, than for example, someone reselling Tier 1 networks for $3 for 4TB of traffic. Be logical and look at other offers in the same price range to determine if the price can be sustainable and if you like the services, don't be afraid to upgrade to the next tier. Most hosts are really hoping to get you in the door with these deals and that you will like their service enough to upgrade and pay for their higher tiers, especially it you really use the resources. That is how they stay in business long term, not from your $3.00 promotional server that you purchased.
If you are really concerned though, again, set your expectations correctly and only buy-in on a monthly basis. That way, when / if the day comes that you get the notification the service is going away, your max loss is no more than 1 month of service (a few dollars) and you won't be disappointed, instead, happy you had an opportunity to have a great cheap service while it lasted.
You missed the part when I said "known" as well. By that, I mean any provider that has been in business for at least half a decade probably won't go out of business (i.e RamNode/LunaNode/BuyVM/etc).
Comments
They are the gift that keeps on giving.
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Yep, i’m just having busy life those days ? so totally forget to request provider tag.
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Busy is good!
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let dedicated core will be down in 15th feb, i dm'd doc in discord
i'm not sure how to do this whole paypal chargeback thing, help this vegetable out
(jk, i'll be looking around now)
Your tagged up now.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
Well, I paid one payment with Curve and so far they are refusing to make a chargeback.
It appears that the charge back procedure is a pain in the arse, fuck it.
Gonna be fun, to ask my bank, to chargeback curve and they will chargeback hostdoc.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC
Do it!
blog archives
Use the time machine feature and pick the bank that can chargeback better
Your order to complain about the VISA booking has been received.
Done.
Still need to trash the Curve card, useless garbage.
edit: 5 Minutes later my bank refunded me.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
@Neoon
PSA: Use with a credit card from Visa/Mastercard/AMEX (eh) and save the hassle next time when you pay with PayPal. Don't forget, PP automatically claws back the $ from the seller as soon as you charge back.
Of course, debit cards do work, but I'm fairly certain they aren't given the same protections as a credit card. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Man, this HostDoc thing really has been a mess. I'm glad I stopped hoarding new servers and just kept a few boxes from known, reputable providers.
wget https://s.flamz.pw/dl/bench.sh && bash bench.shcurl https://s.flamz.pw/analytics/bench/stats.phpdhf> @FlamesRunner said:
But how though. Only thing I can find is filing a complaint, and HostDoc won't reply.
When you open a paypal dispute they have about 14 days to reply, if they do not you automatically get the money back.
During the dispute unless the host has great standing with paypal (I do smug grin VIP business) the money is automatically deducted from the host and held by paypal.
You can open the dispute in the resolution center at any time and escalate the dispute to a claim this is what is usually used for when communication is not possible or breaks down.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
Indeed. However, a proper credit card reversal will claw it back from PayPal and essentially skip the dispute process. I usually don't recommend doing this unless you've truly been wronged though as it is very costly to a merchant.
wget https://s.flamz.pw/dl/bench.sh && bash bench.shcurl https://s.flamz.pw/analytics/bench/stats.phpYep, I would always suggest going through PayPal in these cases though because if the host is hit with a lot all at once there is a good chance PayPal will side with the customer rather than risk chargeback fee's which they may never recover.
If you file a chargeback straight away and PayPal successfully fight it as thats the only option you have given PayPal and you loose, it could impact your relationship with your card issuer and possibly even borrowing ability in the future
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
I didn't do a chargeback on my credit card because I always learned this'll probably cost you your PayPal account (and possibly more). At the time I failed the complaint, I still had the faint hope of getting a reply from HostDoc. This won't be happening, so now I've escalated it to a claim as per @AnthonySmith's post.
And now we wait.
I filed disputes 4 days ago, then escalated to claims today. Let's see if PP helps.
looks like my vps isn't responding anymore..rip
the end is nigh
has been nigh
ExtraVM - KVM NVMe VPS in USA, EU, APAC -|- RackColo - Find Colo
Wow!
I'm still able to connect to my SGP VPN.
I guess the i7 will be up another 2 weeks.
Lol. Spoke too soon. Down 2 hrs after I posted that.
This is why I run LUKS crypt; Solves the data wipe problem with no labour.
Can someone write a summary about the hostdoc case, because I'm interested in, but I don't have the time to read all of those pages here and at LET.
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tl;dr version.
I think that covers it.
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Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
I must have also missed that part, did he run some hosting company before where he did the same thing?
Recommend: SmallWeb|BuyVM|Linode|RamNode
Someone posted some links to it, I did not look in to it much.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
love those vps you already have for a long time and don't look anywhere else ....
@vimalware said:
You jinxed it! SG3 is offline.
Ionswitch.com | High Performance VPS in Seattle and Dallas since 2018
Erith EPYC is still online. Migrated from Xeon to EPYC on 27th of January. It’ll be gone in 12 days.
Someone should do a time line of when the servers are getting knocked off and maybe take bets
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I posted one in another thread.
Ionswitch.com | High Performance VPS in Seattle and Dallas since 2018
It's not too late..
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https://status.kvm.doctor/
Shit's going down.
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Taking bets? Free ionswitch VPS if correctly predicted?
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Now we are talking.
食之无味 弃之可惜 - Too arduous to relish, too wasteful to discard.
@poisson @FAT32 that wouldn’t be nice.
But a death pool is a death pool. Call the time of death of Dallas Gold as noted in Hetrix in the status page within 45 minutes (+/-).
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I'll exclude myself on the basis that if I was correct, it would be easy to argue that I rigged it. I don't have access but I do have some knowledge. I also still get emails from the live chat...
Get the best deal on your next VPS or Shared/Reseller hosting from RacknerdTracker.com - The original aff garden.
You still haven’t blocked them? Wow.
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They go straight to spam, that's blocked enough for me to notice when they finally stop. The real question is why are they being emailed to me still?
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Except he WAS seen as a reputable provider. First the whole colo shitshow now this.
Whole thing has kinda shaken my faith in LES style providers. Obviously I was aware that LES pricepoint comes with risk but still.
Gonna park my stuff on Azure. At least until I figure out a way to do cleaner automated backups & restores to a clean VM.
There are reliable providers on this forums, just saying. Just stop hunting the non-existent bargain.
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I wish I could say any of this was surprising, but I pegged HostDoc as scammy right after my first month with them and the experience I had. I tested HostDoc when it originally started, the week it started, I believe. The services were not really that great and then his tact for handling live chat was AWFUL. I was, I think, 2 hours late on payment and he tried to tack on a late fee twice the value of the actual service and hold my service hostage. After that, I had no delusions of staying with them or them being a long term provider. On top of that, it was easy to see that 90% of the infrastructure was just rented servers and nothing he was using was owned. As such, I canceled my server , got out after the first month and never looked back.
I then later posted about my experience in a thread where the owner started going off on people on LET and eventually others were taking pity on him so I let my complaints go and didn't continue after him. Though in retrospect, maybe more pressure should have been put on him then, instead of letting it go on another several months before finding his way out with this exit scam. Worst part was, all the community members blindly falling for his prices, his shtick and then doing mass advertising for him of the unsustainable deals he would offer, most specifically during holidays, not anticipating or considering what was to come.
TL;DR;
For me the signs were all there from the start, I tried to speak up a few times about it, but because of how favorable people were to the brand, it seems most of the sentiment was lost on people in their want for cheaper and cheaper services to the point where people were willing to overlook the obvious logical flaws (unrealistic cost) just to get services. It is most unfortunate he was allowed to rope in people with yearlies, where most other hosts in his position we would have openly recommended only month-to-month purchases. However, because of all the fan boys hanging around for HostDoc, many were convinced it was safe to take on longer contracts and blindly dove in.
Sadly it turned out to be one of those cases where, "If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck!"
My hope is we are able to learn from this going forward and be a little less proactive / more cautious about pushing and advertising newer hosts which are active without their own infrastructure and selling too good to be true deals.
my 2 cents.
Cheers!
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This 100%
One of the things for me in this case was that I'm fairly new to these forums. I knew the 'low end universe' before (had services with OVH, Online, Liteserver, First Root, UltraVPS before registering on LET) but had no idea of all the different providers and promotions.
As far as I was concerned, HostDoc had a very good reputation and good offers. This is why I registered with them on Cyber Monday. This wasn't a lower than low deal, but on fairly new hardware on a fairly good (OVH) network. That they didn't own their own hardware is not unheard of at this price point, so wasn't a dealbreaker for me either. It was only 4 days later that the whole ReliableSite drama began. That's when I got second thoughts about this provider.
Thing is though if not virtually everyone praised the heck out of HostDoc I wouldn't have bought something at his. Because he was known as a reliable provider with good deals. And deals are as addictive as potassium.
As a community we should be more careful with naming any new provider with good performance and deals as the next saviour.
Hopefully this post won't offend any providers...not intended to...
Alas that to be honest is a big part of the problem. Bargain pricing is the main (only?) selling point for LES sized providers. Price it higher and you're squarely in DO/Linode territory or worse GCP/Azure with all of the synergies of their other toys and free tier allocations.
Smaller providers can't compete on features with cloud and can't compete on stability with the big providers. That leaves cost & making this a race to the bottom. Focusing on the choices of a provider that "won" that race and painted themselves into a corner is the wrong interpretation imo. Warning signs or not - this seems very much like a structural issue in the entire industry / community.
Hell other providers here have given me even better deals than doc and said provider seems reasonable. Do I cancel that? Per your logic I should. Yet it's great value (while it lasts). Which is part of the reason why my thinking is doubling down on better deployment / backup processes to absorb the risk my side
Let me add some of my own perspective as a provider.
The issue is when you START off in business and you are already racing to the bottom.
There is no issue selling bulk/cheap as long as there is some profit in every single thing you sell, but when you come to the market selling at a loss or with 50c p/year margins, you are setting yourself up to fail.
You need to build a stable base, sometimes that means you need to stay working in your shitty day job for a few years while you build up a stable foundation.
I sell stuff cheap, sometimes I sell stuff so cheap that it would be a loss if I sold everything at that rate, sometimes you have a few nodes with say 4GB ram unused and a chunk of disk space free that have been full/locked for years and already more than cover their own costs + profit under no significant load, that is when you go for the 20 x 512mb plans for €10 p/year.
The issue is that some people see this and think that's the standard business model and they need to compete, this is when you start seeing the flash in the pan hosts that you just know will not last, you get an instinct for it, you just know they are either selling raid 1 as 10 or they have no raid at all, I have seen it myself when hosts have reached out for help with things and some kid puts the nodes (yes plural) root password in a skype message like its some emoji and you start trouble shooting performance issues for them and see that they have 60 VM's running in a single sata disk sold as raid 10. (true story)
Its a complete wash with dodgy tactics and zero common sense selling.
So you cant judge a host on price alone but i would say it is fair to say that if a deal looks unsustainable and the host is say less than 3 years old, it probably is long term unsustainable, all circumstances are different though, it could be a loss leader to make a name and they have solid financial backing.
I would say dont depend on any host, even the big ones go pop, if you are going to use lowend, have your own redundancy and disaster plan and only spend what you can afford to loose, no business is bombproof.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
i can only think of
There is few key items I would concentrate on. Does the host you are working with own their infrastructure? If not, how long have they been in business providing the specific service you are looking to purchase?
If they own the infrastructure outright and have their own network setup for example, there is a real investment into that and generally, most who make money at it in the business, make longer term multi-year contracts to get the best prices on colo and power. This usually means they are more likely to have better investment and a better chance of long term existence. Many of the best (successful) 'low end' providers have done it / do it as a loss leader as well, it can be cheaper to break even or even take a small initial loss than to spend money on 'advertising your brand' and many will use it as a way to lower their advertising budget and get their brand name known.
The thing you need to be able to do is determine the difference between those companies which are established and able to offer the deals because it is advertising vs. those whom are literally running a one person business with rented servers on razor thin margins.
I am not saying don't ever support the small business whom currently operates with 'some rented hardware' , just set your expectations accordingly going in. If it is an OVH reseller, for example, the overhead can be quite low in some circumstance, so hosts reselling there with cheap plans makes a lot more sense, than for example, someone reselling Tier 1 networks for $3 for 4TB of traffic. Be logical and look at other offers in the same price range to determine if the price can be sustainable and if you like the services, don't be afraid to upgrade to the next tier. Most hosts are really hoping to get you in the door with these deals and that you will like their service enough to upgrade and pay for their higher tiers, especially it you really use the resources. That is how they stay in business long term, not from your $3.00 promotional server that you purchased.
If you are really concerned though, again, set your expectations correctly and only buy-in on a monthly basis. That way, when / if the day comes that you get the notification the service is going away, your max loss is no more than 1 month of service (a few dollars) and you won't be disappointed, instead, happy you had an opportunity to have a great cheap service while it lasted.
my 2 cents.
Cheers!
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@havoc
You missed the part when I said "known" as well. By that, I mean any provider that has been in business for at least half a decade probably won't go out of business (i.e RamNode/LunaNode/BuyVM/etc).
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