Jeremiah from ChicagoVPS emailed me about their grand opening — their domain was registered back in July but they have just opened shop on 15 Oct. The “Starter” VPS is $6.95/month $4.45/month with recurring discount (see below) which comes with
- 128MB memory
- 10GB storage
- 500GB/month data transfer
- 2 IP addresses
- Xen/SolusVM
Servers are located in… You guessed it — Chicago IL! Although there is “VPS” in their site’s name, they are actually also selling shared hosting and dedicated server services. They are backed by ColoCrossing in Chicago, which is part of Velocity Servers — at least their WHOIS says this way.
They are also running a promotion for the LowEndBox readers. Use promo code “lowendboxpromo” to get $2.50 off for the 1st month (i.e. not recurring discount). I also see newly released Ubuntu 10.10 is available as an OS option.
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Their TOS are unacceptable to me, some highlights as I understand them:
– 45 days to cancel
(Quote from section 7.2: “This agreement may be terminated either (a) after a
period of suspension as set forth in paragraph 7.1 or (b) except as otherwise stated herein by
either party upon 45 days notice in advance of a renewal period for any reason.”)
– potential termination fee of up to USD 100
(Quote from section 7.3: “In addition, ChicagoVPS may charge you an additional termination fee not to exceed $100.00 at its sole option.”)
– They may disclose any of my personal information, usage statistics, correspondence etc. to private (and public) third parties as applicable law may require or permit.
(Quote from section 8.1: “[…] ChicagoVPS may disclose such information to public or private third parties as applicable law may require or permit.”)
– I agree to receiving “commercial offers” from them and certain *third parties*.
(Quote from section 8.2: “During and after the term of this agreement you agree to receive periodic emails, telephone calls, or SMS messages containing commercial offers from ChicagoVPS and certain approved
marketing partners in regards to ChicagoVPS or such partner products and services.”)
– It’s enough for them to *send* an e-mail for any notices, my actual receipt of these e-mails is not necessary.
(Quote from section 9.1: “Any notice under this agreement shall be given by ChicagoVPS to you via email […]. Notice to you at this address is deemed sufficient regardless of your receipt of such email.”)
– I need to either call them or use postal mail for any notices. I would have to provide proof they actually received my notices.
(Quote from section 9.2: “Any notice by you to ChicagoVPS shall be made by telephone […] and is effective only upon receipt by ChicagoVPS of any such notice. Such notice may also be sent via United States Mail to the following Address:”)
I made a mistake on my part and have changed the promo to recurring for all of the users!
And totally ignored the issues raised in comment #1 up there.
My OC-48 agreement isn’t that strongly worded and this is just for a VPS?
Other concerns:
1.2 They can basically charge whatever they want and you agree to pay it. I;m currently yelling at my storage center since they raised their prices $10 a month when their contract states that I have a locked in price. This is worse.
5.1 No resell. “…You further agree not to provide access to the ChicagoVPS services to any third party…” I also read the rest of that to say that if you do any xdebugging or modification of any of the code provided on the VPS, it belongs to ChicagoVPS. So much for sending in bug fixes.
I stopped reading after that.
I did not ignore the issues. It simply was not posted at the time i added my comment for approval.
I do apologize for these entries, we did take this from another section of our business regarding the dedicated servers. I will be looking over this and double checking again all parts of the TOS agreement we have.
I will let you know now, that the 45 days to cancel will be changed as well as the termination fee. The personal information section I will reword, we are required by law to disclose certain information to law enforcement; however, that being said i will change it to not include public/third parties without the users consent. Sections 1.2 and 5.1 will be taken a look at closely regarding how they are worded and be reworded or removed from the agreement.
I do apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused anyone with our TOS but at the same time thank you for pointing out some of the issues we have missed that would affect our service and business towards you.
Thanks,
Jeremiah
I’m interested in this offering but it would be good to get some clarification/explanation of the TOS concerns that terrier raises. It looks like WHMCS is used for billing, which allows cancellation at any time. Perhaps the termination notice/fee clauses were with dedicated servers (rather than VPS) in mind?
Hi Chimp,
The termination clause was taken from another part of our business in regards to the dedicated servers. I am working on rewording and redoing the TOS again, but i will assure you that the termination of the VPS will not be subject to the termination fee or require to fall under the 45 day cancellation request.
Thanks,
Jeremiah
Alright the TOS has been reworked and reworded on several instances brought up.
However, DrMike, with section 5.1 we are covering our bases regarding our internal information and software we have licensed or have given to you. Now as far as bug fixes, i am much a fan of anything Linux and open source and disagree that doing anything for the community like that will violate our TOS. What we are meaning in general with that, is if you decode, reverse engineer, or disassemble anything that we have given you that is not by our right to decode like that. Looking over it again, myself and the rest of the legal team have consulted and agreed to keep it the way it is.
1.2 in our TOS is setup saying that we can institute new services are charge for them and offer to them to you as previous customers of ours. In no way does this mean we will charge you anything without prior user consent or purchase.
Terrier, we have fixed the issues you have brought up here to a more reasonable understanding in the TOS. The TOS now states 7 days for cancellation, which is not in our opinion very cruel now unlike it was before. We have removed the termination fee.
Section 8.1 further stated that we may disclose information required to use by law from legal action such as the court order, subpoena, or any other request from the state and/or federal government, compliance with the ECDA, and DMCA. In no way will we disclose information without properly checking the records given to us for such information about our services. We have decided to again leave this in our TOS for our safety and yours.
Section 8.2 was now reworded and no information of any party affiliated with CVPS or any marketing offer will now be sent. We have worded this now to only be official communication regarding our services about downtime, maintenance or of suck likeness.
Section 9.2 was reworded to include better likeliness of communication from our customers to better support our customers.
If you feel there is anything else, feel free to let me know.
Thanks,
Jeremiah
Do you allow openvpn servers in your vps?
Hi,
I do not see a problem with allowing openvpn as long as it does not breach any security set forth on the VPS or our nodes.
Thanks,
Jeremiah