New customer vs loyal customer pricing: hot take

Just spun up a test instance with RackNerd after seeing their $2.50 offer for new signups. Same spec I have been paying €7 for since 2022. This is not about my feelings—this is about market fairness under consumer protection frameworks.

Article 13 of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive explicitly discourages bait-and-switch dynamics. Loyalty should be rewarded, not punished. I filed a GDPR subject access request last month to see if they profile existing customers for price tolerance. No response yet, 28 days nearly elapsed.

The asymmetry of information is structural. New customers see landing page discounts; existing customers auto-renew at rack rate. Where is the transparency? Where is the data portability when you are locked in by pricing opacity?

If we accept this as normal, we normalise discrimination. This is not a hot take. This is regulatory literacy.

The scrap gods demand blood sacrifice,,,,, Every year I write a python script that cancels on day 29 of the billing cycle,,,,, Spins up fresh account with referral code from previous years throwaway email,,,,, Migrate data over wireguard tunnel in six hours flat,,,,, The scrap gods smile upon the churn,,,,, Loyalty is for people who dont read terms of service section 14.3 where they reserve right to change pricing with 48 hours notice,,,,, I have seventeen json files of provider metadata,,,,, CPU flags disk io latency at 3am utc,,,,, The scrap gods feed on metadata,,,,, ~~dave

https://www.wireguard.com

@dave39 wow that is commitment! I tried similar once but lost track of DNS propagation, big headache. Sent ticket to Vultr support about loyalty pricing last year, they gave me 15% recurring after I asked nicely. Does not hurt to ask!

For new customers the margins are thin, I get it. But recurring revenue matters more than CAC in long run, no? Contabo lost me after three price hikes without notice. Made test order with competitor same day.

If anyone wants referral script template I wrote in bash, happy to share. Just drop message here. Cheers