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DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region
- guillermovs 12y agoSoftlayer also introduced a London region a few hours ago. http://blog.softlayer.com/2014/london-just-got-cloudier%E2%80%94lon02-live http://blog.softlayer.com/2014/london-just-got-cloudier%E2%8...
- marcosscriven 12y agoOne thing I wish were available with many of these US-based services is billing in GBP.
- raiyu 12y agoAt the moment all of our billing across all of our geographies is done in US dollars, which given the exchange rate of the UK and EU is usually within your favor. Is there a conversion charge that your credit card company levies on you for paying in US$?
- Gmo 12y agoAFAIK, every bank (including for instance Paypal) charges a fee for conversion. At least, it's the case with my French and my Dutch bank. That's one of the great benefit of the Euro when shopping in the EU (well, except for our British friends :) ) Edit: corrected a typo
- drtse4 12y agoRegardless of the company, there is always a conversion charge around 2% and the rate applied is never the actual rate, banks usually calculate a rate using some kind of moving average.
- vertex-four 12y agoMy bank will charge £1.50 plus a variable commission for paying in anything but GBP.
- jordanthoms 12y agoOuch. Seems credit cards out of the US are nowhere near as good, common there to have no foreign transaction fees (apart from probably some margin on the exchange rate).
- fendale 12y agoIf you shop around in the UK for a credit card, you will get one with zero fees and an excellent exchange rate on foreign currency transactions. I use the Halifax Clarity card and I believe The Nationwide and the Post Office do a good card too. I'd never use a Debit Card for foreign currency transactions though, they always seem to have fees involved.
- Osmium 12y ago> I'd never use a Debit Card for foreign currency transactions though, they always seem to have fees involved. Nationwide used to have commission-free cash withdrawals on their debit cards abroad, but I think it was abused by people who had second homes in other countries so withdrawn a year or two ago. I believe they still offer a commission-free credit card though.
- bryanlarsen 12y agoMy impression was that the banks made a lot more money from the spread than they did from the commission, so I kind of find that surprising. In Canada it's easy to find commission-free cards. The spread is a hidden fee though, so the banks have hiked that up several times.
- gabemart 12y agoThe commission-free withdrawals abroad were offered at the wholesale VISA rate. Nationwide didn't take any vig. Their "Select credit card" still offers EUR and USD purchases with no surcharge and no vig.
- marcosscriven 12y agoI'm not sure how the dollar price would be in my favour, if you've not specified what the GBP price would be? Sure, once you've set the price it could go either way. Anyway, as others have said, there are charges and spreads on foreign currency banking. It also adds complications to my otherwise very simple accounting needs.
- justincormack 12y agoIts not in our favour unless our exchange rate appreciates every month more than our fees. And yes we get charged just like you would if I charged euros to your card.
- jordanthoms 12y agoMost good US cards don't charge an extra fee for non-USD transactions.
- kintamanimatt 12y agoThey do, they just hide it in the applied exchange rate.
- vamega 12y agoThis is not true. All Mastercard and Visa cards charge a rate that is specified my Mastercard and Visa on a daily basis. I've been tracking this rate for a few months now, and it's consistently been awfully close to the rate I find on xe.com. The CARD Act of 2009 mandated that credit card issuing companies clearly describe the fees associated with foreign transactions. Visa/Mastercard charge a cross border origination fee of 0.80%. However many credit cards (all cards by Captial One for example) waive this fee, and do not charge any fee of their on on top of this.
- petercooper 12y agoI'm not speaking for Marco, but another issue with dollars is tax accounts (and especially VAT accounts) for British companies have to be in pounds, so there's overhead in doing the conversions, tracking the exchange losses/gains, etc. We also have to reverse charge the VAT on those transactions as well (though I'd be surprised if the majority of business owners know they have to do that). About 90% of my company's expenses are in dollars, so I've had to become proficient at dealing with it, but I imagine it's more annoying for companies who only make the occasional USD transaction, especially as they may have smalltime accountants unfamiliar with or unwilling to deal with the exchange rate stuff properly.
- corford 12y agoCan't you just use the monthly tables published by HMRC for the exchange rate (IIRC, packages like Xero do this automatically for you?). For the reverse charge, wouldn't that always just balance out i.e. input and output tax are always the same?
- corford 12y agoOn the other hand, one of the nice things with using US services that bill in USD (apart from the current exchange rate benefit) is there's no VAT to pay. So, UK retail customers at least, get a 20% discount compared to using home grown offerings. Personally, I love being able to spin up Linode (and now DO) vms in London but pay USD prices.
- justincormack 12y agoThere is VAT to pay and these companies are required to register for VAT and charge it I believe. Eg see http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110202144320/http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageLibrary_PublicNoticesAndInfoSheets&propertyType=document&columns=1&id=HMCE_CL_000922 http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110202144320/htt...
- corford 12y agoThat doc is dated 2003 so I guess the regs have changed (and there have been some pretty major changes recently like CA2006 and FA2011). I certainly don't get VAT invoices from the US suppliers I use (linode and digital ocean for example). Edit: The 4th paragraph here seems to settle it: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/vatpossmanual/vatposs14300.htm http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/vatpossmanual/vatposs14300.ht... The reverse charge mechanism places the burden for accounting for VAT on the recipient if the supplier is outside the UK.
- artumi-richard 12y agoI have a more up-to date reference http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/start/register/when-to-register.htm#3 http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/start/register/when-to-register.h... I do get them from pingdom, and AWS. I do not get them from Mailchimp or hostgator.
- corford 12y agoCould be because Pingdom is a Swedish company and AWS is Amazon, which has a presence in Europe?
- resca79 12y agoDigital Ocean is the promoter of low prices VPS, many thanks!
- ukgent__ 12y agoyour IPs are resolving to Netherlands :(
- raiyu 12y agoUsually takes a bit of time for the registrars to update the Geo information.
- kintamanimatt 12y agoThe biggest thing that should be celebrated about this announcement is the availability of IPv6 addresses. Hopefully the rest of the regions will be enabled soon too!
- nwh 12y agoAt least one other region has had them for a while (Singapore I think).
- IgorPartola 12y agoIf by "a while" you mean less than a month: https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/announcing-ipv6-support-in-singapore/ https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/announcing-ipv6-su.... I am a customer of DO's but I am not a happy one since I have to muck around with 6in4 tunnels just to get this basic stuff working.
- CarlHoerberg 12y agoLong time customers have had access to it since early May.. https://assets.digitalocean.com/email/ipv6-grandfathered.html https://assets.digitalocean.com/email/ipv6-grandfathered.htm...
- IgorPartola 12y agoSo a small number of customers had IPv6 access in one of seven data centers for just over two months. Sorry, but I don't see this as a big redeeming correction (though it is factual).
- raiyu 12y agoWe are in the process of opening up in datacenters in NYC and AMS which will also feature IPv6 and then we'll be retrofitting the remaining datacenters for that. Thanks!
- benbristow 12y ago"We will need you to send us a high quality scan of a government ID or passport in order to verify your account. Please send the picture, or a link of the picture, to:" No thanks.
- raiyu 12y agoUnfortunately we deal with a large amount of abusive and fraudulent signups which leads to a bunch of abuse on the network such as mining, port scanning, and flooding. We do everything we can to filter out abuse automatically and then determine whether or not a customer is legitimate outside of that but unfortunately that information isn't always available or conclusive. We'd love to hear suggestion on how we can improve that without resorting to requesting an ID because obviously that isn't something that's ideal.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoSMS verification of a phone number? Barring that, detect mining and terminate it with system monitoring tools, and prevent port scanning/flooding at your network border (your netops team is active on NANOG and seem to know what they're doing).
- threeseed 12y agoHow does SMS verification help ? You can just buy a prepaid phone.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoHow does using ID verification help? I can just use a borrowed/stolen/pilfered ID? At some point, you're hitting diminishing returns in your verification requirements.
- thekonqueror 12y agoI assume they look for name on ID that matches name on payment method. That's what I used to do when I worked in a hosting company ~10 years ago. This way, if someone has a stolen credit card, there's a very good chance, they won't have a matching government ID with same name. Hence obvious fraud.
- Osmium 12y agoJust did a quick test from London, comparing lon1 to ams2. Pleasant increase in speeds (25 MB/s up, 20 MB/s down vs. 15 MB/s each way for ams2, though these fluctuate) and a nice decrease in ping (3.5 ms vs 8 ms). Nice to see. Not sure what the legal/regulatory differences are for hosting in London compared to elsewhere?