Yes you are being cheated,

pmorrison2588 — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:23:20 +0000

Yes you are being cheated, and you need to report it to the administration, and ask for a show cause. Why will you pay for getting cheated.

On face value yes it sounds

greg — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:46:00 +0000

On face value yes it sounds like it.
But sincerely, without knowing WHAT you pay for no-one can say.

Maybe their support is second to none? When you phone them a representative answers within 2 seconds flat - every time - who is a qualified web designer, developer, server manager etc?

Maybe you get 10TB a month bandwidth allowance? Or 100TB hard drive space?
Without knowing your plan and setup, it's impossible to say if that's too much.

All that said, if your agreement is to pay for a dedicated server with your own IP and you don't have that, then yes you are being ripped off.
But a "managed server" is a completely different thing to a "dedicated server".
One is where someone manages a server for you (and probably other people), the other is a type of setup - dedicated server, or shared etc.

Server management is a grey area to charge for. You can pay a lot for a server to be managed, but usually it's for a cluster of servers linked together or has complex setup and requirements.
Any hosting company needs to "manage" their servers to a certain degree to ensure they are all working correctly and secure etc, regardless of dedicated or not.

Basic packages for "most" website requirements start at around £10 per month, some less. But the price depends on what you need really. Have you ever used the server management you are paying major prices for? Have they installed other software your site(s) require with no extra charge?