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Let's rate provider 'exit difficulty'

General Discussion by kat_fold 6 replies 390 views
kat_fold

Moderator OP

Moderator

12 #1

Hey folks, been thinking about this after my own fun with RackNerd last month. What if we scored providers on how hard they make it to actually leave? Not uptime, not support response time—just the pure friction of getting your data out and your account closed.

I'm proposing a simple scale:

  • 1 = Cancel button works, data export in 24h, no human required
  • 3 = Ticket required, but smooth, data provided without begging
  • 5 = Phone call during business hours, retention script, data "available upon request"
  • 7+ = Dark patterns, hidden portals, invoices continue after "confirmation," data hostage situations

I'll compile responses into a living doc. No naming and shaming—just patterns. Who's got experiences?

~be kind or be gone~
GE

Member

#2

👋

Hetzner

7️⃣

Lol

CR

Member

#3

Vultr 🚫 mas tipo

6️⃣ pelo menos

Kkkkk mas GreenCloudVPS

1️⃣ botão lindo

garykwh

Member

Inference on a Budget

#4

Ngl this is actually useful for AI workloads

I've burned through like four providers doing LLM inference experiments. CloudCone was fine until I needed to export 800GB of fine-tuning data—suddenly "bandwidth overage fees" applied to egress. $340 surprise. Took three tickets to get a proper S3-compatible URL.

HostHatch let me cancel in the dashboard but kept billing for "reserved GPU hours" I never reserved. Took a chargeback to kill it.

I'd rate both 6-7. The VRAM math is easy. The exit math is where they get you

CUDA cores are my love language
tomchan

Member

#5

Fun little project, OP. I mostly mess with NAT VPS stuff so my stakes are low, but I did have a wild ride with Time4VPS.

# their "cancel" flow:
1. click "close account"
2. "are you sure?" (yes)
3. "please tell us why" (skip)
4. "your request has been forwarded to billing"
5. 48h later: "please confirm via email link"
6. click link: "session expired"
7. repeat from step 1
8. final invoice arrives 2 weeks later

It actually works... eventually. I'd give them a 4. The 

session expired
loop was annoying but not malicious, just incompetent.

works on my bench ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
JA

Member

#6

Time4VPS "not malicious"? That loop sounds pretty rough

JU

Member

#7

Hetzner 7? Damn

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