Actually, I missed this point. Thank you for pointing out ;-)
I think that's why more and more open source tools (scripts or automation {cook,play}books, etc.} have been made available to enable people to self serve and build their own VPN service ;-)
The problem with personal VPN services is that it can be pretty trivial to reverse who the traffic is coming from (eg by requesting the billing address from the VM hosting provider).
This may not be an issue for some people and for those who it is an issue, there are ways around it (I'll leave that part of the post for someone more experienced than I as I don't want to risk giving out bad advice). But it's worth baring in mind when signing up for a VPS in view of running a VPN.
I think that's pretty unlikely to be honest - or at least easily avoided. There's enough reputable hosting providers out there (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OVH, Digital Ocean, etc etc) that there isn't really any excuse for signing up with a provider who does MITM your VMs traffic.
That all said, I'm not excluding the possibility of providers logging network connections passively. The way around that is to run more than one VPN; that way any particular provider only has visibility of either the destinations but not the source, or the source but not the destinations. I'm not recommending that people need or should run two VPNs though - just adding it as a workaround against passive snooping by hosting providers.
The corollary is that ones you pay for should not be trusted either: a service can both take your money and insert ads.
huh.... reminds me of pay/cable tv....