Dear Rackspace: You Pissed Me Off

By Steve Poland • October 31, 2008

Update: Rackspace got realistic about this situation and reduced my overages charge to 1/3 of the original amount. That’s much more fair. Overall it’s been a good relationship - there have been downs, but overall they have done well for me.

Dear Rackspace,

No need to split this $1,600 payment over 3 months, just send me the bill for the overages. Talk to your management and tell them it’s fucking bullshit too. And yes, word spreads. And yes, when I’m thinking about the next 2 servers needed for my startup, I will remember this.

I take responsibility for this — but I think you share equally in this. My expectations must be out-of-whack. When my bandwidth doubles on Sept 27 [roughly that day], I’d think you’d let me know, “Steve, wtf just happened — you’re using twice the bandwidth you have been using the past 6 months of being our customer.” This is managed services I’m paying for. I’m not asking you to wipe my ass, but tell me if my bandwidth or storage amounts go out of whack. Lesson learned, I’ll be checking bandwidth reports — but it was a simple thing to correct for me; I would have corrected it back on Sept 27, instead of having 800GB in overages at your RAPE RATE of $2/GB.

Pardon the fury in this email and the language — I’m typically composed and professional. But this is disgusting. As mentioned on the phone, I feel like when I have gone over on minutes with a cell phone and then they take full advantage of you [because you signed a contract at some ass-raping number]. You replied with, “yeah, but the cell phone company doesn’t alert you either” — well is that really the standard you want to uphold yourself to?

Amazon S3 offers the same bandwidth for $0.17/gb — I have now shifted things over to them, to ensure I don’t get above my bandwidth with you each month. Don’t you think that’s a bit fucked up? I shouldn’t have to do that, especially when I’m paying 3x what I normally would for a server — because I want your “managed” services (aka “take care of shit for me; alert me to problems”). We’ll see if Amazon has any other products that might work better for me — EC2, etc. You’re making me have to look at other companies now. I really hope you lose my thousands of dollars per year account because you are greedy.

If you charged me even $0.25/GB for that 800GB overage, I’d feel better. This was a mistake and will not happen again — if it does, I’ll shut the fuck up and pay my $2/GB.

Anyhow, I have no say here what so ever. You’re not willing to be reasonable on this 1st instance of a problem. So, bill me.

Not fanatical at all. Bad taste in my mouth — and unfortunately will likely tell everyone I know in the tech world about this distaste.

Regards,
Steve Poland

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Comments

7 Responses to “Dear Rackspace: You Pissed Me Off”

Scott T. on October 31st, 2008 1:17 pm (perm link)

Ouch. Rape is a fair charge. This is why Rackspace’s acquisition of Slicehost has me worried…
seand on October 31st, 2008 4:46 pm (perm link)

Thanks for the tip, I was looking at them to host some upcoming work I’ve got. I’ll definitely head to Amazon at those rates.
Michael Carruth on October 31st, 2008 8:42 pm (perm link)

Thanks for the heads up, Steve! I had a similar bandwidth issue (though nowhere near the scale of yours) yesterday, and my host took our site offline. I felt similarly, in terms of the “WTF” factor, and actually told our team :This wouldn’t happen if we were on a “premium” host like Rackspace!” This situation helps me to think again that the grass may not always be greener.

Well maybe being on RS would not have knocked us off the proverbial air for 90 mins, but the way-over-the-top charges you chronicled would have definitely made me seethe come bill time.

M
Jonathan Volk on November 1st, 2008 1:55 pm (perm link)

Yea WOW.

That is totally unacceptable for them to do that. I was going to use them for my next project but it seems like they’re not as good as they make it sound.

I’ll stick with Liquidweb which I am more than happy with.

Thanks for the heads up and sorry about getting raped in overages.

~Jonathan
Lew Moorman on November 1st, 2008 5:16 pm (perm link)

Steve, thanks for the candid feedback and pointing out an issue that clearly exists for some of our customers. Your note has us looking at all our policies in this area. From your update comment, it sounds like we got to a fair resolution this time. But, we need to make it programmatic. We have no interest in shocking our customers with punishing overage rates. I plan to reach out to you to get more feedback if possible.

We appreciate the comment. This is how we get better for our customers.
Richard on November 21st, 2008 5:48 am (perm link)

We had exact same problems with rackspace. No warning that our Backup had quadrupled overnight when we are paying them to manage these things for us, we should have been warned.

We are looking to move and so will many thousands more customers.

I have noted that they now offer an unmetered backup, but refuse to backdate this for us.
James Ostheimer on December 12th, 2008 5:59 pm (perm link)

Been using GoGrid for the last couple months. Easier to manage than EC2, but a bit more $$$… I know exactly what I am spending all the time (even an iphone app).