Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

[Spork Schivago]

Hi,

I needed a VPS and did some research before settling on GoDaddy's VPS. I went with GoDaddy because of the price, which was okay. They had almost everything I needed and I could live with what they didn't. I paid up until January 18th, 2018.

Before I rented it, I had searched their website to look for the questions to my answers and when I couldn't find the answers, I called and talked to them. One thing that I needed, just not at that specific time, was IPv6 support. I found on their website some pages that say only their VPSes have IPv6 (not their shared servers), and that their VPSes were allocated 16 IPv6 addresses by default, if I needed more, to contact them.

So, three days ago, it finally came time when I needed the IPv6 addresses. Much to my surprise, my server had none! So I reach out via the on-line community and moderator shows me how to check how many IPv6 addresses I have. I follow his steps, even though I had already seen I had none. He tells me if there's none there, call the live tech support and they'll assist.

Long story short, their old servers supported IPv6 but because it's "too new and not widely adapted yet" they removed it from the new servers. There's no way to get an IPv6 address with them at all, no matter what type of server I rent.

So I figure okay, time to switch hosting providers. I find one that I like, Linode.com. It has some nice features and everything. I call GoDaddy to cancel, and although I can cancel my VPS, they're not going to refund me for my remaining time. So, even though I wouldn't have a VPS, I'm not getting any money back from this point forward till January 18th, 2018.

I think this is bullcrap! To me, this sounds like the old bait and switch. Not really sure what to do. From what I can see, I have a few options:
Suck it up and keep a server that I can't really do much with until January 18th, 2018.
Cancel and just lose the money
Try seeking legal counsel.

I think with the legal counsel, I might have a case, but it'd cost way much more money than what I'd get back, so I think that's out. Does anyone have any suggestions on some ideas I haven't thought of?

Here's the GoDaddy sites that talk about the IPv6 addresses:

https://www.godaddy.com/help/locatin...addresses-7533
https://www.godaddy.com/help/adding-...ux-server-7539

Here's the important parts, at the top of each respective page:

(first link)
At this time, we only allocate IPv6 addresses to our Virtual Private Server (VPS) environments.

(second link)
We initially assign 16 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) addresses to your Linux server. If you need additional IPv6 addresses, you must configure your server to recognize them.

If for one moment I knew I wouldn't have IPv6 addresses, I would have never of rented from GoDaddy. My software depends on a server with IPv6. To me, my VPS from GoDaddy is essentially pointless now.

[diif]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

I guess you tried the steps to add some ?
Write to them asking for confirmation. I see nothing in their literature to suggest they have stopped supporting IPv6, might just have been a clueless tech support person.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

Diif, I talked to two tech support people and then I even went and had a moderator on their community support check with someone higher up in the tech department.

Then, I went to the server. It's running under a Virtuozzo environment, so lsmod won't show anything. In a normal Linux environment, you can check for the presence of /proc/net/if_inet6. If the file exists, you have IPv6 support (but not necessarily an IPv6 address). In a Virtuozzo environment, I believe the file is /proc/net/sockstat6.

Neither of these files existed on my system.

Also, I ran ifconfig. I found the names of the two ethernet devices, eth0 and eth0:0. I then ran:

ip -6 address show dev eth0
ip -6 address show dev eth0:0

Absolutely nothing. IPv6 is not built into the kernel. There are no IPv6 support on this system. GoDaddy will not change the kernel configuration either, I already asked that.

The fact their website clearly shows the VPSes come with IPv6 support (and 16 IPv6 addresses by default), I think it's wrong for them not to give me a refund from this point in time now until January 18th, 2018. They simply lied.

Also, I did try the steps, regardless. That was the first thing I tried and instantly a no go. The file they tell me to edit, it's not there.

GoDaddy provides cPanel for 10$ a month extra. I went for that. This is what cPanel says:
The lack of a IPv6 support in the kernel is unsupported in cPanel as of cPanel version 11.54. However, CPANEL-9315 is open to discuss how to best handle instances where users enable PowerDNS on systems without IPv6 support.

Version 11.54 is old. I'm running 11.60 now. PowerDNS relies on an IPv6 address by default (at least the one provided by cPanel). Whenever cPanel updates PowerDNS, the PowerDNS config file gets replaced with a default one. At that point in time, any server that doesn't have an IPv6 address and is running PowerDNS will have their DNS server fail to load. Their website is unreachable until they edit the PowerDNS config file, remove the IPv6 stuff and replace it with IPv4 stuff.

CPANEL-9315 is this problem I brought to their attention. They're thinking right now, the best way to handle CPANEL-9315 is to enforce IPv6, which currently isn't enforced when cPanel gets installed. If the kernel doesn't support IPv6, refuse to install PowerDNS. There's another internal case number as well that will deal with this, but it's essentially, if the kernel doesn't support IPv6, refuse to install cPanel.

What a mess. You would have thought a company like GoDaddy would have made the switch a long time ago. 2011, the head IT guy from GoDaddy was talking about how all their servers supported it and how they're making the switch for their shared hosting environments. Why they removed it is way beyond me!

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

This is what the moderator said after I asked him to reach out to someone higher in the company:

Hey @SporkSchivago,

My apologies for the miscommunication. After speaking with a few members from 
our development teams for VPS and Cloud Servers, we cannot issue any IPv6 
addresses for use with either services.
 
I'm sorry to relay this news. While IPv6 is an important product feature, due to 
the low demand I previously mentioned it is not something we currently support 
in these environments. However, this is under consideration on our future VPS 
offerings and will be prioritized on the development roadmap. Keep an eye out 
for further announcements.

[stj]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

you were miss-sold the product - that's fraud.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying Stj. And although I have no proof, I also asked when I paid ahead for the VPS, if I ever wanted to cancel, would I be refunded my money. The guy said not for the time that I had used, but for whatever time I had left, they'd give me a refund. He said if I wanted to upgrade or downgrade as well, they'd just take the remaining balance to switch it over. So, right now, I'm ahead 390$ and have a VPS until January 18th, 2018. But if I wanted to switch back to shared hosting, that 390$ would be put towards shared hosting, and I'd have a shared server for much longer, because they're much cheaper.

What do I do? The conversation I had about the refund when I signed up for the VPS is useless, there's no records from that long ago. But the documentation clearly showing IPv6 addresses for their VPSes, that should be enough, right? How do I get them to cancel my VPS and give me the 390$?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

I betcha Judge Judy would help me out! She'd make them give me back my 390$! I hope their pants catch fire.

[keeney123]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

So find out which State GoDaddy's headquarters is in and contact the Attorney General of that State. Many States have online complaint forms to fill out , some you have to use US mail. If you can not find the State their Headquarters is in then contact the Attorney General of your State New York an fill out a complaint under GoDaddy.com. The other thing you can is contact your bank to see if they will help. Most likely the Bank will not. Also, if you find the their Headquarters you can see if they have a email or phone number to contact. Good Luck. also, if you have any email correspondence with them that acknowledges any information pertaining to the IPv6 you can also attach that to your complaint.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

Arizona. I've been trying to figure out how to contact Bob Parsons. He's a Marine. I figured if I told him what was going on, he'd get me my 390$ back. Surprisingly though, it's (almost?) impossible to find a billionaire's mailing / e-mail address.

Their TOS scares me. I was reading through it. It says if I sue or threaten to sue them, they can sell my domain name or something. If I take them to court, I waive my right for a trial by jury. But they also say whatever they say or whatever their website says cannot be used a legally binding contract.

If I take them to court, it says I gotta go to court in their home town, which is in Arizona.

Here's a link to some of it:
https://www.godaddy.com/legal-agreements.aspx


I will try the Attorney General of Arizona and see what they say. My Aunt fell for one of those, "Your computer is infected, call this company now" scams on her MacBook. She called the Attorney General of our state and they found these guys were in Arizona but got them to give back all the money and told them not to call her or anything like that.

Before I do that though, I think I should cancel my server, without getting the refund, and transfer the domain to another registrar, so they can't just sell it or something. I'm not sure how to do the transfer. I gotta read up on it. That always scares me though. I always think if someone's going to steal my domain, that's when they're going to do it.

It's happened before, just not with me. I believe it happened with the domain I own now.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

THEY'RE REFUNDING ME!!!!!!! When I posted on the GoDaddy support forum, saying this wasn't right and asking what my next step was, if there was a dispute department or something, the moderator sent me a private message.

He said he felt that the tech department didn't fully understand the situation and they're working very hard at getting the documents on-line changed so this doesn't happen again. This is part of the PM he sent me:

Just so you understand I am extending this as a good will gesture outside of our refund policy since I do agree that our IPv6 documentation on VPS plans was misleading in this situation and your order was made in good faith understanding that there was not limitations at the time of your purchase. You'll also be happy to know we're working with teams to get our documentation reviewed and corrected as quickly as possible to prevent further miscommunication for anyone else.

This is the best news I've had since the baby was born!

[stj]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

maybe they read this thread.

some company's do trawl the net looking for people saying bad shit about them.

[shovenose]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

Just call the damn credit card company an dispute the charge if they don't refund you...

[Topcat]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

godaddy is a useless company. When godaddy came out in support of that SOPA/PIPA mess some years ago, I had to pull about a dozen domain names out of there....they were very unhelpful and rude.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

Just call the damn credit card company an dispute the charge if they don't refund you...

Shovenose, I got e-mail today saying I'm officially being refunded, but can you dispute charges that far back? I would have thought something like that would have needed to be done when the charges appeared, not a year or so later.

Thanks.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

godaddy is a useless company. When godaddy came out in support of that SOPA/PIPA mess some years ago, I had to pull about a dozen domain names out of there....they were very unhelpful and rude.

Yeah, it's insane what they consider a qualified tech support person. It's a crap shoot. In the beginning, maybe every 4 calls, I'd get someone who actually knew about Linux. Now though, I think they replaced everyone with just run of the mill, flip-through-index-cards call support personal.

For example, I wanted some iptable modules enabled. The VPS runs under Virtuozzo. I cannot compile a kernel under Virtuozzo. The iptable modules needed to be added to a configuration file or two on the main node. All though I don't know much about Virtuozzo, I was easily able to figure out what needed to be done.

I called GoDaddy and the support person I got was a rude idiot. He said the person who set me up with the VPS didn't do his job and should have explained that if I didn't know what I was doing, not to get a server. Then he went on to say that if I had trouble setting up my firewall, I could pay them some outrageous price (maybe 175$ an hour (or 75$ an hour)) and someone would login and configure it for me.

I explained to him the issue wasn't with me not being able to properly configure the firewall. I said I just don't have access to the iptable modules I need. He was clueless. He told me to run the command ismod (not lsmod) and asked what it showed. I said it shows command not found. Do you mean lsmod? And he says yeah, lsmod. I said it shows nothing, because we're in a Virtuozzo environment. That's what I've been trying to tell you!!! This needs to be done on the main node, not in my VPS. He said he'd ask an admin and came back and said the admin agrees with me, you should be able to configure your firewall and if you're having problems, you can just hire us or google how to configure iptables firewall.

I ended up giving up and calling the next day when someone else was working. I got a good person that time, someone who actually knew what Linux was. He reached out to an admin and said they won't enable them because they can be used to bypass some sort of mail relay program they have setup to prevent people from sending spam.

But yeah, GoDaddy is a bad service. I just wish I knew about Linode a long time ago.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Why not to rent a VPS from GoDaddy.

I want to be RFC 2182 compliant. Too bad I couldn't find someone else who wanted to be RFC 2182 compliant, who had a server they planned on keeping until the end of time, like I do with mine. Then we could help each other become RFC 2182 compliant without it costing us any money.

Otherwise, I'm probably going to get one of those "droplet's" from Digital Ocean for 5$ a month and setup a nameserver on there. I didn't want to spend the extra 5$ just to be RFC 2182 compliant but I really want to be RFC 2182 compliant for some unknown reason.

Anyone else out there who wants to be RFC 2182 compliant? Maybe we could help each other out...