[HH#494116] Re: HelioHost VPS Late Payment

[HelioHost]

Username: hippo, Server: Tommy, Main domain: hippo.heliohost.org

Dear HelioHost team,
I believe I had the VPS till 6th May (not 6th April). At least that's what
the reminder I set for myself says. Could you double-check the records?

We've been making manual payments because PayPal recurring payments don't
work from India. I can't find any email from you stating that it ends on
6th May, but I have

- an earlier email from Krydos saying "you're good to go till 2022-11-06"
- a payment with transaction ID 81X39290UA608530J in October which I'm
guessing should have extended it by another 6 months.

If you think the mistake is still on my end, could you send me a link to
pay for one month? I was planning to switch providers by May in any case,
so I just need it until then. (No offense, just that I'm running a
public-facing website which needs a bit more stable setup in this
particular case).

Thanks,
Badri (and Manasa)

On Tue, 11 Apr 2023 at 01:41, HelioHost wrote:

> [image: HelioHost | Community powered free hosting for everyone.]
>
> Hey Puppy,
>
> Your VPS payment of $21.60 USD is 5 days overdue. Please try to make a new
> payment within the next 24 hours. You can do so with the link below.
>
> Let us know if you face any issues or have any questions regarding this.
> Renew VPS
> [image: Twitter] [image: Facebook]
> [image: Phone Number]
> <+1-802-884-3546> [image: Support Forum] [image:
> Email]
> ? 2005-2023 Helio Networks. All rights reserved. | Unsubscribe
>
>

[Krydos]

It looks like you made your last 6 month payment on October 5th so 6 months from that date is April 5th. However, looking at the payment before that it looks like you made your October payment early. Our system doesn't account for a previous balance so when it sees a payment it just moves the expiration date forward 6 months from the payment date. This works fine for automatic subscriptions which 99% of our users have, but doesn't work as well for people like yourself who make non-recurring payments, and don't check their email often enough to see the warning to get it figured out prior to the VPS being powered off.

Of the 500 or so VPS that we've sold over the years only you and one other person, also from India, have ever had a problem setting up a recurring subscription, but we do plan to upgrade the payment system eventually so people can just make one-time payments when needed rather than relying on PayPal to bill you automatically as some people would probably prefer that.

I'd like to point out that our VPS service is extremely stable, suitable for public facing websites, and we have 99.99% uptime with only maybe an hour or two of scheduled maintenance per year. This is actually the first time anyone has claimed that our VPS are unstable. Are you referring to your VPS being powered off for lack of payment, or were you having some other issues prior to this?

Anyways, your VPS has been powered back on, and your expiration date has been manually set to May 5th which is one year from the start of your first 6 month payment.

[HelioHost]

Thanks for the changes and the explanation! I'm aware of the complications
related to international payment, and no I'm not referring to that. I've
experienced a couple of hard-drive glitches in the past and more recently
the waves of DDoS attacks which were slowing down the network. I know the
DDoS attacks weren't really your fault and perhaps I'm dwelling too much on
the negative points, but my team was getting increasingly annoyed and,
during one particularly bad bout of DDoS, when we saw a sale going on at
RackNerd which supported easy Indian payments, we decided to make the
switch (I think budget also played a factor). In retrospect, perhaps we
should have asked you before making the move; then again, it didn't feel
right to put pressure on you for something that wasn't really under your
control. It wasn't an easy decision and there were many positive points on
your side including the personal interactions, the sense of community, and
the fact that we can just hop onto Discord to figure out an issue instead
of having to jump through customer care hoops.

Personally, I'm not moving away from HelioHost and will continue to support
you when I can and be part of the community; it's just for this specific
server for which things didn't work out and HelioHost is still my first
choice of recommendation when someone asks about hosting services. Thanks
for reminding me about the uptime though; it is harder to notice when
things go right than when they go wrong.

On Thu, 13 Apr 2023 at 09:27, HelioHost Support
wrote:

> It looks like you made your last 6 month payment on October 5th so 6
> months from that date is April 5th. However, looking at the payment before
> that it looks like you made your October payment early. Our system doesn't
> account for a previous balance so when it sees a payment it just moves the
> expiration date forward 6 months from the payment date. This works fine for
> automatic subscriptions which 99% of our users have, but doesn't work as
> well for people like yourself who make non-recurring payments, and don't
> check their email often enough to see the warning to get it figured out
> prior to the VPS being powered off. Of the 500 or so VPS that we've sold
> over the years only you and one other person, also from India, have ever
> had a problem setting up a recurring subscription, but we do plan to
> upgrade the payment system eventually so people can just make one-time
> payments when needed rather than relying on PayPal to bill you
> automatically as some people would probably prefer that. I'd like to point
> out that our VPS service is extremely stable, suitable for public facing
> websites, and we have 99.99% uptime with only maybe an hour or two of
> scheduled maintenance per year. This is actually the first time anyone has
> claimed that our VPS are unstable. Are you referring to your VPS being
> powered off for lack of payment, or were you having some other issues prior
> to this? Anyways, your VPS has been powered back on, and your expiration
> date has been manually set to May 5th which is one year from the start of
> your first 6 month payment.
>
> You may view the status of your ticket by visiting:
>
> https://helionet.org/index/index.php?showtopic=55655
>
> Thank you,
> Heliohost support
> https://heliohost.org/
> https://helionet.org/
>
>

[Krydos]

Thanks for the feedback and the honesty.

You are correct that there's not a lot we can do about the DDoS. We were working closely with our ISP to mitigate the effects as much as possible, but a large enough DDoS can overwhelm any website in the world. Each individual user can choose to use a service like Cloudflare that helps hide the server, but a smart enough criminal can use MX records instead of A records to find the host. Each individual user can choose to use a service like Zoho that helps hide the MX records, but it's not reasonable for us to require everyone to use Cloudflare and Zoho. Our ISP helped a ton by null routing the targeted IP address at the perimeter to help keep the rest of our IPs online, but the attacker kept changing targets when they got null routed so our network would get overwhelmed again for a while until the new IP was null routed too. Our ISP was even kind enough to move us off of the shared port and give us a dedicated port for free so we wouldn't be reduced by the bandwidth of their other customers as well.

Regarding the hard drive glitches, when we first started building VPS we didn't realize how much the performance would drop as we added more and more VPS to the same raid array. We tested the raid array quite a bit before we built the first VPS and the speed and latency were really good, but as we kept piling them on there the performance started to drop below an acceptable level. Then we had the infamous VPS33 that really ruined it for everyone. He was using so much disk I/O and CPU that everything really fell apart. That's when we started a fundraiser to buy some higher performance hard drives to help isolate his load from everyone else. He was paying us about $30 per month so it's hard for us to decide whether to kick off a paying customer that isn't violating any of our terms of service. Since we're a non-profit powered by donations and run by volunteers we can't just order a new server and have it delivered and installed the next day like a for profit company could so it took us a few months to get the money and get it all installed. Things have been going much more smoothly since then, but we're taking everything we've learned so far and buying our next server to provide even better shared hosting and VPS hosting. We're already to 67% of our goal so hopefully we can get it set up soon.

Another thing we can do for you is move you to a faster server immediately if you're still having problems. We have some free space on one of the hard drive arrays that we bought from our last fundraiser. We don't just offer people upgrades like that without them coming to us first though because it causes a few hours of downtime to move a VPS between servers, and if people are happy with where their VPS is currently there is no reason to cause unnecessary downtime. You've still got a month of VPS time prepaid so if you want to try the faster server for this last month and don't mind a few hours of downtime while your VPS is moved just let me know. We can also give you a free rebuild to a newer OS if you want. You signed up in 2020 and it looks like you're running Debian 10. We could upgrade you to Ubuntu 22 or Debian 11 if you want to try them. We can also rebuild you with Debian 10 again if that's what you prefer although security support for Debian 10 ended 7 months ago so it's probably a better idea to upgrade to a newer OS.

Anyways, thanks for using our VPS service, and thanks for recommending us to people you know. It doesn't bother us for you to let us know if things aren't working well enough for you. If people don't say anything we have to assume that everything is working well. If something isn't working well enough we can try to come up with options to make it work better.

[HelioHost]

Thanks for the offer and sorry for the late reply! I had a bunch of
programming things and a talk to give this weekend, so I wasn't able to
focus on the tech stuff. Give me a few days to set things in order and then
I'll reply in detail + take you up on the offer!

(By the way, I started with Debian 10 but IIRC I upgraded to Debian 11 at
some point, so that's fine).

Thanks,
Badri

On Fri, 14 Apr 2023 at 02:14, HelioHost Support
wrote:

> Thanks for the feedback and the honesty. You are correct that there's not
> a lot we can do about the DDoS. We were working closely with our ISP to
> mitigate the effects as much as possible, but a large enough DDoS can
> overwhelm any website in the world. Each individual user can choose to use
> a service like Cloudflare that helps hide the server, but a smart enough
> criminal can use MX records instead of A records to find the host. Each
> individual user can choose to use a service like Zoho that helps hide the
> MX records, but it's not reasonable for us to require everyone to use
> Cloudflare and Zoho. Our ISP helped a ton by null routing the targeted IP
> address at the perimeter to help keep the rest of our IPs online, but the
> attacker kept changing targets when they got null routed so our network
> would get overwhelmed again for a while until the new IP was null routed
> too. Our ISP was even kind enough to move us off of the shared port and
> give us a dedicated port for free so we wouldn't be reduced by the
> bandwidth of their other customers as well. Regarding the hard drive
> glitches, when we first started building VPS we didn't realize how much the
> performance would drop as we added more and more VPS to the same raid
> array. We tested the raid array quite a bit before we built the first VPS
> and the speed and latency were really good, but as we kept piling them on
> there the performance started to drop below an acceptable level. Then we
> had the infamous VPS33 that really ruined it for everyone. He was using so
> much disk I/O and CPU that everything really fell apart. That's when we
> started a fundraiser to buy some higher performance hard drives to help
> isolate his load from everyone else. He was paying us about $30 per month
> so it's hard for us to decide whether to kick off a paying customer that
> isn't violating any of our terms of service. Since we're a non-profit
> powered by donations and run by volunteers we can't just order a new server
> and have it delivered and installed the next day like a for profit company
> could so it took us a few months to get the money and get it all installed.
> Things have been going much more smoothly since then, but we're taking
> everything we've learned so far and buying our next server to provide even
> better shared hosting and VPS hosting. We're already to 67% of our goal so
> hopefully we can get it set up soon. Another thing we can do for you is
> move you to a faster server immediately if you're still having problems. We
> have some free space on one of the hard drive arrays that we bought from
> our last fundraiser. We don't just offer people upgrades like that without
> them coming to us first though because it causes a few hours of downtime to
> move a VPS between servers, and if people are happy with where their VPS is
> currently there is no reason to cause unnecessary downtime. You've still
> got a month of VPS time prepaid so if you want to try the faster server for
> this last month and don't mind a few hours of downtime while your VPS is
> moved just let me know. We can also give you a free rebuild to a newer OS
> if you want. You signed up in 2020 and it looks like you're running Debian
> 10. We could upgrade you to Ubuntu 22 or Debian 11 if you want to try them.
> We can also rebuild you with Debian 10 again if that's what you prefer
> although security support for Debian 10 ended 7 months ago so it's probably
> a better idea to upgrade to a newer OS. Anyways, thanks for using our VPS
> service, and thanks for recommending us to people you know. It doesn't
> bother us for you to let us know if things aren't working well enough for
> you. If people don't say anything we have to assume that everything is
> working well. If something isn't working well enough we can try to come up
> with options to make it work better.
>
> You may view the status of your ticket by visiting:
>
> https://helionet.org/index/index.php?showtopic=55655
>
> Thank you,
> Heliohost support
> https://heliohost.org/
> https://helionet.org/
>
>

[HelioHost]

Hi again!
I've decided to stick on to the server for a bit. (Also, I haven't managed
to move my things across yet!). I just got my friend to PayPal in the
payment (she also emailed separately) so could you extend it by another 6
months? Transaction ID: 6YD90116X3711640X. Also, you can reduce the RAM
from 2 to 1 because I believe the discount period for that is already over
(I'll increase it again later if needed).

Thanks,
Badri

On Fri, 21 Apr 2023 at 10:17, Hippo wrote:

> Thanks for the offer and sorry for the late reply! I had a bunch of
> programming things and a talk to give this weekend, so I wasn't able to
> focus on the tech stuff. Give me a few days to set things in order and then
> I'll reply in detail + take you up on the offer!
>
> (By the way, I started with Debian 10 but IIRC I upgraded to Debian 11 at
> some point, so that's fine).
>
> Thanks,
> Badri
>
> On Fri, 14 Apr 2023 at 02:14, HelioHost Support
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the feedback and the honesty. You are correct that there's not
>> a lot we can do about the DDoS. We were working closely with our ISP to
>> mitigate the effects as much as possible, but a large enough DDoS can
>> overwhelm any website in the world. Each individual user can choose to use
>> a service like Cloudflare that helps hide the server, but a smart enough
>> criminal can use MX records instead of A records to find the host. Each
>> individual user can choose to use a service like Zoho that helps hide the
>> MX records, but it's not reasonable for us to require everyone to use
>> Cloudflare and Zoho. Our ISP helped a ton by null routing the targeted IP
>> address at the perimeter to help keep the rest of our IPs online, but the
>> attacker kept changing targets when they got null routed so our network
>> would get overwhelmed again for a while until the new IP was null routed
>> too. Our ISP was even kind enough to move us off of the shared port and
>> give us a dedicated port for free so we wouldn't be reduced by the
>> bandwidth of their other customers as well. Regarding the hard drive
>> glitches, when we first started building VPS we didn't realize how much the
>> performance would drop as we added more and more VPS to the same raid
>> array. We tested the raid array quite a bit before we built the first VPS
>> and the speed and latency were really good, but as we kept piling them on
>> there the performance started to drop below an acceptable level. Then we
>> had the infamous VPS33 that really ruined it for everyone. He was using so
>> much disk I/O and CPU that everything really fell apart. That's when we
>> started a fundraiser to buy some higher performance hard drives to help
>> isolate his load from everyone else. He was paying us about $30 per month
>> so it's hard for us to decide whether to kick off a paying customer that
>> isn't violating any of our terms of service. Since we're a non-profit
>> powered by donations and run by volunteers we can't just order a new server
>> and have it delivered and installed the next day like a for profit company
>> could so it took us a few months to get the money and get it all installed.
>> Things have been going much more smoothly since then, but we're taking
>> everything we've learned so far and buying our next server to provide even
>> better shared hosting and VPS hosting. We're already to 67% of our goal so
>> hopefully we can get it set up soon. Another thing we can do for you is
>> move you to a faster server immediately if you're still having problems. We
>> have some free space on one of the hard drive arrays that we bought from
>> our last fundraiser. We don't just offer people upgrades like that without
>> them coming to us first though because it causes a few hours of downtime to
>> move a VPS between servers, and if people are happy with where their VPS is
>> currently there is no reason to cause unnecessary downtime. You've still
>> got a month of VPS time prepaid so if you want to try the faster server for
>> this last month and don't mind a few hours of downtime while your VPS is
>> moved just let me know. We can also give you a free rebuild to a newer OS
>> if you want. You signed up in 2020 and it looks like you're running Debian
>> 10. We could upgrade you to Ubuntu 22 or Debian 11 if you want to try them.
>> We can also rebuild you with Debian 10 again if that's what you prefer
>> although security support for Debian 10 ended 7 months ago so it's probably
>> a better idea to upgrade to a newer OS. Anyways, thanks for using our VPS
>> service, and thanks for recommending us to people you know. It doesn't
>> bother us for you to let us know if things aren't working well enough for
>> you. If people don't say anything we have to assume that everything is
>> working well. If something isn't working well enough we can try to come up
>> with options to make it work better.
>>
>> You may view the status of your ticket by visiting:
>>
>> https://helionet.org/index/index.php?showtopic=55655
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Heliohost support
>> https://heliohost.org/
>> https://helionet.org/
>>
>>

[Krydos]

The new 6 month payment has been linked to your account and your new expiration date is 2023-11-05. You're correct, the sale price of getting 1 GB memory for free ended like 2 years ago. Your VPS has been reduced to 1 GB memory, and moved to a faster server. Let us know if you can tell any difference.