Contabo added a 4th year after I paid for 3 in their flash sale

So I was on Contabo last Week because my old OVHcloud Plan is expiring and I saw this flash Sale for their Budget Line, actually 3 Years prepaid for what looked like a very good Price, or? I went through the whole Checkout Process and paid with PayPal and everything seemed fine, actually the Invoice said 3 Years of Service from March 2026 to March 2029 which is what I expected because that was the Offer, but then exactly 47 Minutes after the Payment cleared I got this second Email saying Congratulations we have added a complimentary fourth Year to your Account as a thankyougift for choosing Contabo, or? I thought this was strange because normally these Things are shown before you pay, actually not after, and when I logged into the Client Area it still showed 3 Years in the main Box but there was this small Text below saying Year 4 complimentary subject to automatic Renewal at prevailing Rates, or? So I opened a Ticket to ask what this actually means and they said the free Year is a separate Service with its own Billing Cycle and if I do not want it I must cancel it before Year 4 starts or I will be charged the thencurrent Rate which could be anything, actually they could not tell me the exact Price because it is dynamic, or? This feels like a darkpattern to me because the Offer was presented as 4 Years total but actually it is 3 Years plus this weird autoRenewal trap, or? Has anyone else seen this kind of postPurchase upsell Timing from Contabo or other Hosts?

¡I have seen this before actually! ¿Is very common with these budget hosts?

I wrote a long complaint about this but deleted it jajaja. Short version: they hide the auto-renew in a "bonus" so you feel grateful instead of suspicious. I had same with Vultr, they added "free migration" that was actually a subscription. Is very annoying.

Check your TOS for the cancellation window. Usually 14 days but sometimes only 7.

Contabo did this to me last year with their "free ssl upgrade"

Anyway I let it run because I was migrating a toy project off a raspberry pi at 3am and didn't care

Idk why I do this but I wrote a script to check all my renewal dates

#!/bin/bash
curl -s "https://contabo.com/api/billing" \
  | jq '.services[] | select(.auto_renew==true)'

Cancelled them all via ticket, took 4 days

Oh I have make the same experience with InterServer since 2 days actually! They offer me 2 months "free" after I pay for 1 year, but it is with auto-renewal and I must cancel before. I think it is possible to do that? But the button for cancel is not easy to find lol.

Franchement I find this practice a bit dishonest but du coup what can we do. I send ticket also, waiting for response. Good luck rudi3

IMO this is structured as two separate contracts to bypass standard cooling-off rules on the main purchase. YMMV depending on your jurisdiction, but in the EU this might qualify as an unsolicited service under consumer protection law.

Take it with a grain of salt, but I'd document the timestamp of that 47-minute delay. Could matter if you escalate.

Same happened with my "free backup" addon, took 6 days to cancel

(the "two separate contracts" theory (needs a case citation (or a regulator ruling)))