shells.com Reviews 23

This review has been edited from a bad experience to ok, due to their subsequent prompt improvement actions.

Overall experience is not bad. I decided to try Shells.com because they seem most economical with their yearly subscription for a cloud virtual desktop.

First off, their public ordering webpage is quite lacking some important details and is overly simplistic; only trying to boast themselves and stated "Risk Free 7 day money back guarantee". If you try their "build your own Shell" (customize the machine) it's some bizarre interface where you input a whole-number and they scale different specs based on that number...

Anyways, ordered their Shells Pro package which they display as USD $24.95/month, which is a little misleading because after you click it, a small bubble pop up shows that price is for yearly subscription, while the price is actually $35.95/month for monthly subscription. Ok, so I go for their yearly subscription ($299.40/year). Easy check out with credit card.

Now the problems start, I try to start and setup the virtual desktop and apparently there's and additional $9/month charge for Windows licence. What's more, if I try to buy it, it must be bought for my whole year subscription ($108)... so I can't even really try out their service unless I fork out another $100... I decided to cancel and refund. They do not have any automatic system for this; need to submit a request by messaging their support staff. After submitting the refund request, then it's slow (hours between their replies) email correspondences for me. They ask me why I want to refund. In the same email they tell me to note "If your refund request is not confirmed within 48 hours it will be archived and you will have to file another refund request". So I tell them the reason and confirm I want a refund. Like 10 hours later they reply with a message hinting they could extend my access to offset the additional cost of the license, but they did not provide any real offer. I reply I re-confirm I want a full refund... Anyways, the 48 hrs is about to lapse soon and I'm going to submit another request for refund...

Afterwards:

So with my second request they promptly replied and gave me the full refund and suggested I can try their discount deal on a partner seller site. For the price and package from the deal, their service is unmatched.

So overall the reason for the 3 stars:
- 1 star because they have hidden fee that is not presented before purchase (at least not clearly presented).
- 1 star because for their regular price (that is $24.95+$9/month = $33.95/month pre-paid yearly) at least one of their competitors that I have used before offers a similar machine (4 Pcrs,160GB Strg, 8GB RAM, Unlmtd use) for almost the same price (but without the pre-paid yearly). However, the machine from the competitor performs noticeably better.