If one considers the offical servers being corrupt..These guys here are holy in comparance to P-servers in general..
A company is actually bound with rules and has actual employee's. A private server is usually not bound to any rules, as they are (commonly) not legal in the first place - as such, there is absolutely no control to where the money goes. At least here you know it is going to be expensive and you know exactly what you're getting into.
If employee's disagree in a company, there are but a few ways out: come to an agreement, if not you either leave or get fired.
If a p-server team gets into a disagreement, it is followed by a sad show on the forums - the game will directly suffer and eventually either just close or just be divided especially if one of the leaving/involved guys is the one with the most knowledge about the server.
Call me biased, but i've seen it all. Nothing looks more unprofessional than developers fighting it out on their own forums for all to read.
Can it be good? Surely, but you can count those on one hand.. not per game, but all P-servers from all games together. Feel free to gamble.