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  1. #1

    SSD Nodes change TOS mid contract but refuse a refund

    I mentioned my problem in a reply in another thread but thought that it warranted a thread of its own.

    I signed up with SSD Nodes 25th November 2017 & paid in advance for a one year contract for a VPS to run Plex. Subsequently SSD Nodes changed their TOS to forbid the use of Plex (TOS dated 25th May 2018).

    Plex was permitted when I signed up & paid one year in advance. I even have responses to support tickets where I discussed network performance causing video buffering when streaming video from Plex on the VPS.

    I contacted support recently & they told me that Plex is now banned so I asked them to terminate the contract & refund me pro rata for my remaining contract. All they offered me was a credit towards another VPS which is useless to me if I am not allowed to run Plex.

    This is totally unacceptable & not the behaviour of any company the I want to do business with. Be warned anyone who is a current customer of SSD Nodes that they think it perfectly fair to arbitrarily change their TOS without warning & refuse to honour a contract.

    My only consolation is that at least I only paid for one year in advance & not three.

  2. #2
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    Since you had a one year contract, they could have terminated it at the end of the contract unless it was causing severe issues to their network. On the positive side, November is just a week away, so you won't lose much.
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  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by LinuxFox View Post
    Since you had a one year contract, they could have terminated it at the end of the contract unless it was causing severe issues to their network. On the positive side, November is just a week away, so you won't lose much.
    I'll lose $10 but it's the principle that's important. I considered buying a three year contract so now could be a couple of hundred out of pocket. I think this is not only deplorable business practice but illegal.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2018
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    Nigel,

    The principle that is important is honouring the contracts you enter into online.

    As a prerequisite to obtaining service on our platform you said that you had read and agreed to our Terms of Service (TOS). The second paragraph of the first page of the TOS says this:

    Note: Strasmore reserves the right to supplement and/or amend, at any time, the terms and conditions of its TOS, including the TOS, AUP, SLA, and any applicable addendum.
    Now you are complaining that we have done something that you agreed that we could do. Hardly a realistic position.

    The TOS change resulted from Plex Cloud no longer accepting new customers/servers from February 2018. That caused an inrush of new plex customers who in many cases expected to be able to consume 3-4 cores CPU for hours on end and pump sometimes tens of megabits each of traffic in (e.g. via rclone) and out again (to viewers) so they could watch pirated movie/TV content.

    I note that Plex themselves shut down their cloud service because they could not make it viable given the resource consumption required to run media servers in the cloud.

    We operate high-spec host nodes (70-80 cores & 1Tb RAM is usual) and prefer to keep them fairly lightly loaded (as the graph on our website shows average CPU usage across our platform is about 40%). The reserve capacity is there so that customers who need to burst up to the full parameters of their plan can do so for a period of time - e.g. to serve a page, run a database query, etc. The reserve capacity is not there so that several dozen people can watch pirated movies.

    We changed the TOS in May 2018 to explicitly ban plex. Initially that applied to new customers, but after 5 months we are now applying that to existing customers.

    This action was taken to protect the many thousands of customers on our platform from the excessive resource consumption of several dozen plex users. We stand by what we have done. We don't make changes like this often, but sometimes circumstances require it and we do have the ability to do this under the TOS that you agreed to.

    This is not "deplorable business practice" nor is it "illegal". The ability to unilaterally change TOS is very common in VPS provider TOS. If you are looking for a new provider and you don't want to agree to such a term then you should avoid, at least:

    Ramnode: "RamNode reserves the right to cancel, suspend, or terminate any service provided with or without a refund or notice or warning for any reason. RamNode also reserves the right to change and modify the Terms of Service at any time with or without client notification. It is up to the client to periodically check and familiarize himself or herself with the recent Terms of Service. If any client does not comply with the new Terms of Service modifications, his or her service will be terminated"

    DigitalOcean: "Agreeing to use the Services by clicking "Sign up" constitutes your acceptance and agreement to be bound by these Terms of Service, and all other operating rules, policies and procedures that may be published from time to time on the Website by us, each of which is incorporated by reference and each of which may be modified from time to time without notice to you."

    Vultr: "From time to time, We may revise this Agreement. We reserve the right to do so, and You agree that We have this unilateral right. You agree that all modifications or changes to this Agreement are in force and enforceable immediately upon posting."

    Linode: "The Terms of Service (including any policies, guidelines or amendments that may be presented to you from time to time) constitute the entire agreement between you and Linode.com and govern your use of Linode.com services, superceding any prior agreements between you and Linode.com for the use of Linode.com services."

    ChicagoVPS: "ChicagoVPS may without advance notice amend this Agreement from time to time, and will do so by posting the new Agreement on the ChicagoVPS web site in place of the old. Each and every such amendment shall be become effective immediately for all pre-existing and future accounts."

    OVH: "The General and Specific Terms and Conditions online prevail over the printed General and Specific Terms and Conditions. The Customer agrees that OVH may, as of right, introduce changes to the Services simply by informing the Customer through an online notice and/or by amending its General Terms and Conditions online."

    (And almost everybody else by the look of it)

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    Last edited by anon-e-mouse; 10-22-2018 at 06:34 PM.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by 4n6expert View Post
    Note: Strasmore reserves the right to supplement and/or amend, at any time, the terms and conditions of its TOS, including the TOS, AUP, SLA, and any applicable addendum.

    This action was taken to protect the many thousands of customers on our platform from the excessive resource consumption of several dozen plex users. We stand by what we have done. We don't make changes like this often, but sometimes circumstances require it and we do have the ability to do this under the TOS that you agreed to.
    That clause sometimes also referred to as "Maximum Profit Assurance" reflects a practice that is at the core of the problem and complaint here. If as you claim that there were several dozen Plex users why did you not handle those who abused your service. Case in point RClone running and streaming from Plex in Direct Play mode consumed negligible RAM and bandwidth resources and 3.5 - 19% of CPU load because of no transcoding as I monitored it during testing assuring Direct Play or Direct Stream was employed. You were leading me to believe that the transcoding was the reason because that is where the prohibition of Plex in the TOS appeared. Surely your final page of agreement before ordering should not read differently with additional restrictions then the TOS does.

    Bottom line while I applaud you for protecting those that use your services you should also remove those who abuse it, but to hide behind transcoding as the issue and consuming exorbitant bandwidth by the few should not punish the many that use it responsibly.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by 4n6expert View Post
    This is not "deplorable business practice" nor is it "illegal". The ability to unilaterally change TOS is very common in VPS provider TOS. If you are looking for a new provider and you don't want to agree to such a term then you should avoid, at least:
    https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizen...s/index_en.htm

    See section 10.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Afterburst-Jack View Post
    Not relevant, refer to July 4th 1776.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by ServiceProvider View Post
    Not relevant, refer to July 4th 1776.
    Unenforceable != Not relevant. Consumer rights currently being weaker in the states doesn't mean the subject can be tossed aside.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Afterburst-Jack View Post
    Unenforceable != Not relevant. Consumer rights currently being weaker in the states doesn't mean the subject can be tossed aside.
    Your feelings along with EU laws are irrelevant when discussing a contract held in the USA with a USA provider. OP should go with an EU provider if he wants EU protections, that would be his best bet.

  10. #10
    If its in the contract than I guess the customers should have read it more thoroughly. It it is unfortunate that the provider would not either grandfather the customers for the term of their contracts or at least allow them to leave with a prorated amount for what was left on their contract. Its not hard to see why the customer would feel irritated and would not want extend their service. As pointed out it looks like this is a standard clause, but that doesn't make it anymore palatable.

  11. #11
    Putting an unfair term in a contract doesn’t make it legal or enforceable.

    This is just a bait & switch scam. It’s like paying for a year in advance for your mobile phone contract then being told after six months that because outgoing calls put a heavy load on the system that in future you will only be able to receive incoming calls but there will be no refund. Likewise if a provider gives you a good deal on unlimited broadband if you pay one year or even three years in advance but after six months introduces a 1GB download cap & refuses to give you the option of a refund.

    Anyone who pays in advance for service with SSD Nodes should be aware that SSD Nodes feel no obligation to provide the service that the customer paid for & will in fact deliver a lesser service but still keep the money that was paid in advance.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
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    Hmm. I believe they should refund you in case you are not interested to purchase any of their services. That would be the fair deal. Adding credits make no sense in case you wont be using any of their services.
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  13. #13
    If there is only $10 in question, I doubt they did this out of greed but I agree that if they only have a few abusing accounts, changing TOS and forcing all relevant accounts out seems like a not so friendly decision by them.

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