[ANMMark]

Charging the cost of the hardware is one thing, charging double the cost is something else. A 1GB stick of pc2700 RAM only goes for $90.00 now...and that's not even in bulk.

Ahhh I didn't realize that you were under the impression that the hardware was all one has to pay for. You see, there is a matter of the cost of the component, and since we don't have folks install it themselves, we have to pay a DC tech to install it. The monthly fee brings the client up to or at least close to, what other clients are paying for the same spec boxes, in our DC.

ServerBeach and several other providers offer this for free.

That made it all clear what this is all about, and I refuse to go into a debate over who YOU think is better.

If you're going to try to justify outrageous upgrade fees by putting a 'managed' sticker on something, why not just raise the price a little across the board instead of hitting people hard all at once?
This sounds like a loss leader to me. Pull someone in with a cheap price and smack them with a huge upgrade fee if they actually want to do something useful with their server.
"Oh..you wanted wheels with your car? That'll be an additional $20,000.99"

Explaining the cost of "managed services" to someone that apparently is use to unmanaged, is almost a lost cause. There are costs to offering managed services, plain and simple. Unlike unmanaged services, we must actually pay employees to manage each server. We charge what we're charged for the upgrades. If the client requests an upgrade, we make no profit on it. The DC charges us that amount, so we charge the client that amount. We don't need to make a profit on the upgrades as most of our dedicated services revenue comes from the box iteself, with the reality, that the majority of the clients rarely need to upgrade.

Now, in regards to your anology....It's a little inaccruate to say the least. In this case it wouldn't be "Oh you wanted wheels with your car?" It would be more along the lines of "Oh you wanted EXTRA wheels with your car?"

Our servers come ready to use, and are built per purchase, and only a few have ever had the need to upgrade. The servers are fully functional and serve their purpose at the time of purchase.

The "jist of MY opinions" are this:
If you want to promote your own business, or at least your favorite business, it's not necessary to put down others and call them ripoffs. While opinions are appropriate, and fair...your statements were not. You straight out called us a ripoff, without knowing anything about our company, nor our services, all within the effort of getting someone to signup on ServerBeach (which I happened to notice in your signature). Again, it's fine to promote the company of your choice, but to blast another with unfair comments, and half truths is a completely different ballgame. We are not ripoff artists, nor do we try to hook customers with advertising, and catchy ad phrases. We actually are honest people, with a downhome attitude, and although that may be hard for you to understand, or even believe on today's internet....it still does exist, and any of our clients can testify to that fact.