Yes exactly that - I am a customer with several vps, I signed up knowing that it could be a dud (when something seems too good to be true, it normally is), $12 a year I think is pretty cheap (price of 4 coffees, one days caffeine for some) for the lowest spec. I'm happy enough, so sorry to hear you are having trouble, I hope you get it all resolved.

This article has actually been a pretty good advertisement for me. If I need some quick, cheap servers for non-critical stuff, I will definitely consider using this.

If you are interested in slow but usable, no they are not. I bought one early and any network connection to the server is hellish to maintain. There are plenty of cheap options that actually work, choose one of those.

Thanks for the advice. I would still consider at least trying them, as I've seen VPS providers change a lot over time. I did see the links posted here to other cheap VPS's, so I'd check those out too.

Note that my problems are not unique individual problems. They have had downtime and major infrastructure issues where they do not blanket communicate anything. Or just give vague promises and explanations.

I don't expect a lot. But I do expect a minimum level of dealing well with your customers. Even that is completely missing.

I've been using several services for very cheap VPS and cloud hosting and, while hit or miss, I've had my fair share of great customer support.

For example, in my experience iniz.com are really great at what they do, I strongly recommend them if you're looking for an alternative.

How is that even supposed to work? Are they renting Amazon VMs on stolen credit cards underneath?

Leasing space in existing datacenters. Put in some cheap ESXi/KVM hosts and sell tiny VPS instances on them.

"Support" consists of remote hands tickets with the underlying datacenter.

edit: looks like OpenStack, actually.

That's what all cheap providers do. How come these guys are about one fifth of a price that's almost unsustainably cheap?

Oh trust me, I did not expect a whole lot. Doesn't mean I can't have complaints though.