So I got into a thing with Contabo last month and realized my "evidence" was basically vibes. Never again. Here's what I actually do now at 3am when I should be sleeping.
- Run fio every 6 hours, log to timestamped file. I use
fio --name=randread --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=32 --rw=randread --bs=4k --direct=1 --size=4G --numjobs=4 --runtime=300 --group_reporting --output-format=json - iperf3 to three public nodes, different continents. Log everything.
- Screenshot their own status page when it contradicts reality. Wayback machine if you're paranoid.
- Keep every ticket response. Forward to personal email because their portal will "lose" threads.
The fio json is ugly but courts or chargebacks don't care. Anyway I ran this for two weeks and got a partial refund idk why I do this
My dispute was over a "dedicated cpu" that was clearly oversold. Contabo's own monitoring showed 100% steal during "maintenance windows" that lasted 9 days. Bank sided with me after I sent 400MB of logs. Idk if that counts as "legal" but it worked. I used https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script for the iperf3 and disk stuff before I settled on my own fio setup.