24 Hours+ Downtime on Dedicated Server, Frustrating Support and Confusing Website

[Julian Parge]

I don't really know where to start...

Perhaps I should mention that this is not the first time I'm facing problems with eUK.

This year I'd like to structure the complaint slightly differently, because I feel that something should really be changed.

I'll start with the fact that my client's server has been down for over 24 hours, despite all the promised monitoring systems and mirroring services you claim to have in-place for situations like this.

Next up is the main issue at hand:

The Support System
There is absolutely no reason why you should have two separate login systems, perhaps I'm stupid but I don't see the logic in this.

The situation I'm in is that I can't access the server that's down, this server is hosting the email address that is registered with the support account, so I cannot reset the password either. Note: the email on the main account is registered to a Gmail account.

The only way I seem to effectively get results is to take my complaint to the forum.

John, I hope you're reading this, when your colleague called me last year to resolve the issues I was having, they promised me that my client would receive a decent service - every time something like this happens, my clients have a little less faith in me and the only option I can suggest is to move to a more reliable provider.

The support system needs to change, firstly, the ticketing system should be tied in with the account, secondly, I don't want to talk to people in India who are reading from a script, I want to talk to a knowledgeable employee of the company who can reassure me that everything is going to be okay.

Thirdly, I never want to receive an email like this:

This is to update you that there is some urgent maintenance being performed at DC and it is affecting the chassis that your server is hosted in.
The issue is being investigated by the DC engineers and hope to have it resolved as soon as possible.

At present we do not have an eta on a resolution.
We appreciate your kind cooperation and patience in this matter.
If you have any further queries, do get back to us.

- This is not very reassuring; this tells me that you don't know why it's happened and you don't know when it will be fixed. Presumably DC refers to the datacentre, but who can know this if they don't even know what a datacentre is? Terrible, terrible, terrible.

And ultimately, I don't want my problems to boil down to a confusing live chat like this:

Please wait for a site operator to respond.

You are now chatting with 'Matt'

Matt: Hello and Welcome to Live Chat Support.
Matt: How may I assist you today ?
Julian Parge: Hello
Julian Parge: I am contacting you in regards to tick FAY-395-45779
Matt: Ok
Julian Parge: the account holder is Mr. *** ***, I am Julian Parge, *** is my client
Julian Parge: I cannot access the support area because the email address is hosted on the server that is currently offline
Matt: Ok
Julian Parge: I need to get a better idea of when the server might be up again
Matt: Is this a Windows or a Linux server ?
Matt: May I have the e-mail address, which you have registered with us at the time of signing up?
Julian Parge: linux... that's why I clicked the "Linux" live chat...
Julian Parge: the server IP is 2**.***.***.**
Matt: Ok
Matt: Let me transfer your chat to Linux Technical Support Department for better assistance
Please wait while I transfer the chat to the best suited site operator.

You are not currently in a chat session.

You are now chatting with 'Ambrose S'

Ambrose S: Hello Julian
Ambrose S: Give me a moment please. I am looking into this.
Julian Parge: right.
Ambrose S: Please provide the server root password
Ambrose S: as the ticket FAY-395-45779 is awaiting for your update
Julian Parge: password: *****************
Julian Parge: I can't access the ticket as I said, because I don't have the login details, and we can't reset the password because the domain hosted on the support account is down.
Ambrose S: Ok, we will be updating the server root password to the DC and the server should be accessible within couple of hours
Julian Parge: can you tell me why it was down?
Ambrose S: yes, let me provide you the update as per the ticket
Julian Parge: I can't access the ticket as I said before
Ambrose S: "This is to update you that there is some urgent maintenance being performed at DC and it is affecting the chassis that your server is hosted in.
Ambrose S: The issue is being investigated by the DC engineers and hope to have it resolved as soon as possible."
Julian Parge: the ticketing system uses a different login
Julian Parge: okay
Julian Parge: do you have a network status page or something where this information is available?
Ambrose S: No, we have not updated this on our network status page as only some of dedicated servers are affected. Kindly contact us on live chat to get an update on the ticket
Ambrose S: Also, regarding billing area issue
Ambrose S: Let me transfer your chat to billing team for better assistance
Julian Parge: right.
Julian Parge: thanks for your help
Ambrose S: You are welcome
Please wait while I transfer the chat to the best suited site operator.

You are now chatting with 'Moneeka'

Moneeka: HI Julian Parge
Moneeka: Please allow me a couple of minutes to go through the chat history.
Julian Parge: ok
Moneeka: can you please let me know the issue which you are facing with regads to teh billing
Moneeka: as I can see the above chat contains about the problem for support ticket log in
Moneeka: are you there?
Julian Parge: yes sorry
Julian Parge: I'm complaining in the forum
Julian Parge: I'm not facing a billing issue
Julian Parge: the issue is that I have two separate accounts, one for the main eUK panel, and a separate one for the support system
Julian Parge: this is not logical to me.
Julian Parge: and I cannot log in to the support system or reset the password because the domain is hosted on the server that is currently down.
Moneeka: May I have the e-mail address, which you have registered with us at the time of signing up?
Moneeka: so that I can check the domain name for you
Moneeka: as of why it is down please
Julian Parge: ***@***.***
Moneeka: thank you
Moneeka: Give me a moment please. I am looking into this.
Moneeka: Please let me know the domain name
Moneeka: which is down
Julian Parge: all the domains hosted on the server are down
Julian Parge: this is a dedicated server
Moneeka: please let me knao the IP
Moneeka: know* the server IP
Moneeka: your registered email address is wrong
Julian Parge: and the issue is not the server any more, if you look in the above history you will see that someone is looking into this, they just transferred me to you so that you could answer my question relating to the separate accounts for support and client area.
Julian Parge: I'm getting rather impatient, you asked me which email address the account was registered with initially, this was the one I gave before, the updated email address on the account is ***@***.***
Moneeka: yes we provide the different
Moneeka: log in details of the client area and
Moneeka: support log in
Julian Parge: why?
Moneeka: if you need the log in details for the client area I have sent it to you on the registered email address
Julian Parge: I don't need access to the client area, I am in the client area, I need to access the support tickets
Moneeka: since both are different and are manages by the differet departments
Julian Parge: that's absurd.
Julian Parge: it's easy to tie it into the same database
Moneeka: a moment
Moneeka: you may contact the account holder and get the details from him
Moneeka: since we are not authorized provide the details to any one apart from the account holder
Julian Parge: Okay you've not understood this at all, I will be posting a copy of this to the forum.
Julian Parge: I'm very disappointed and this has been one of the worst customer service experiences that I have ever had.

Finally I would just like to say how angry I am again, this has cost my client a lot of money and he is very unhappy, that leaves me in a really horrible situation.

Please, if you are reading this as a customer of eUK, switch to another provider, you can save yourself all this trouble, it's just not worth it.

On the other hand if you are a thinking about coming to eUK, I strongly urge you to reconsider, any hosting company that can invest time into making forum emoticons like this: , rather than investing time into creating a better manageable account and back-end system should definitely not be in business.

It's sad and shocking that a company can get this far through nothing more than luck. The website is unprofessional, it's badly designed and confusing, even to web developers like myself, I can't imagine how frustrated some of your other customers must be, but looking through the forum I can see that I'm certainly not alone in this boat.

Side-note: I was logged out of the forum while I was typing this - cookie expiration issue or admins trying to prevent me from posting this? Don't worry, I've used the web before, I copy everything before I submit it.

[John]

Hello Julian,

Sorry to hear about the downtime experienced.

Can you clarify the 24 hours down comment? I tried looking back through your support issue but I can see the ticket being logged at around 20:30 last night. Of course, it could be I'm missing something.

Firstly I'd agree with you that we have generally poor integration across our systems. It was one of the reasons why we developed our own billing system. Further integration is happening week by week.

As you aren't listed as a technical contact under the billing account, I understand that delays were suffered as a result of this. Stephen can request you to be added, which will then allow you to be authenticated much more quickly in future.

I actually like our new website design, but it doesn't properly link with the billing theme or support theme, which is of course is currently being worked on. As for luck, there is no luck in web hosting, especially when there are literally thousands of companies to choose from. eUKhost got to where it is today by largely providing a very good service to clients at a very reasonable cost. There is no luck about it.

The actual problem was a result of the blade chassi you are residing in having an unrecoverable technical fault. This was fixed relatively quickly, but it took some time for our technicians to realise that by swapping out the backplane of the blade enclosure the hardware IDs changed in network configurations. As we didn't hold a valid root password for you on file, this also further delayed things. I believe your issue has been resolved as of 10:14am this morning, but if you feel this is inaccurate please let me know. These types of issues are rare, but it is somewhat of a weakness when it comes to blades. This resulted in 5 servers sharing that backplane to have the same level of downtime. The blade chassi allows us to give a nice entry level server at a very low price though, so it is somewhat of a trade off.

In regards to the forum post, I think we both know it was a session time out and not one of our staff members somehow trying to dissuade you from posting. We could just ban you from the forum if we were that kind of company. Your review still stay here indefinitely, unlike the internal forums of other hosting providers. That's why you were also able to find previous negative reviews. We don't have anything to hide.

[Julian Parge]

Can you clarify the 24 hours down comment? I tried looking back through your support issue but I can see the ticket being logged at around 20:30 last night. Of course, it could be I'm missing something.

That's when I reported it, Stephen didn't know it was a server issue so he didn't contact me until the evening when he told me that the problems had been persistent for 12 hours already, at which point I had made the discovery that the server was offline. Granted, not your fault that it wasn't reported earlier, but you promise system monitoring and so-on, so you should really have known already.

You've obviously looked into it, so you know what the problem was and when it started. You can't really get out of that.

Firstly I'd agree with you that we have generally poor integration across our systems. It was one of the reasons why we developed our own billing system. Further integration is happening week by week.

... Year by year*.

I get the feeling we've been here before. I'm happy you accept that it's an absolute frustration and complete disaster for your customers.

I believe your issue has been resolved as of 10:14am this morning, but if you feel this is inaccurate please let me know.

I tried pinging from 2 different networks at 10:40 and I didn't get a response, however it was working shortly after that, around 10:50.

I actually like our new website design, but it doesn't properly link with the billing theme or support theme, which is of course is currently being worked on. As for luck, there is no luck in web hosting, especially when there are literally thousands of companies to choose from. eUKhost got to where it is today by largely providing a very good service to clients at a very reasonable cost. There is no luck about it.

I don't understand the logic in all of these systems being separated? Doesn't that make things extremely complicated on your side as well? It would take a team of developers less than two weeks to build you a system would make your current one look like it was built by children, which is exactly what it looks like from my perspective.

I completely disagree with you about the luck statement. You're still around because your prices are very competitive (cheap hardware, bad staff salary, I have no idea how you do it but you've found a way to keep it low) and because you have "a good reach into the pool", I seriously don't think you can compete with some of the other companies I have tried (in terms of customer satisfaction).

In regards to the forum post, I think we both know it was a session time out and not one of our staff members somehow trying to dissuade you from posting. We could just ban you from the forum if we were that kind of company. Your review still stay here indefinitely, unlike the internal forums of other hosting providers. That's why you were also able to find previous negative reviews. We don't have anything to hide.

Yes I know what it was, but I prefer the idea of your staff doing it to tick me off.

You may have nothing to hide, but you haven't got much to show for either, wouldn't it be much better for you if I came in here telling you how much I loved you?

Do you have statistics of how many people wrote bad reviews compared to how many people wrote good ones? I guess it would be somewhat biased as most satisfied customers would not see the need to write a review, but still, it would be interesting to see the ratio.

Nice to see your still available at first hand to deal with my complaints, A* service from the MD, thanks.

[John]

You've obviously looked into it, so you know what the problem was and when it started. You can't really get out of that.

Monitoring isn't full proof. It doesn't tell us about every problem. In this particular case a fault has now been reported with our vendor. As you know, we use Supermicro Chassi for the Atom servers and Dell for most others. These aren't cheap brands.

... Year by year*.

I get the feeling we've been here before. I'm happy you accept that it's an absolute frustration and complete disaster for your customers.

I accept no such thing. I agree that we have some way to go on integration, but the vast majority of our customers don't have a problem using it.

I tried pinging from 2 different networks at 10:40 and I didn't get a response, however it was working shortly after that, around 10:50.

I'm glad that it is now resolved.

I don't understand the logic in all of these systems being separated? Doesn't that make things extremely complicated on your side as well? It would take a team of developers less than two weeks to build you a system would make your current one look like it was built by children, which is exactly what it looks like from my perspective.

I wouldn't trust most developers with scissors to be honest. Integrating systems quickly is a sure fire way of being compromised and exploited. In our industry we have to draw a line between security and integration. There are many things we could do but choose not to because of the risks involved. As I said, integration is something ongoing, but to be honest it may never get to the level you want it. I'll always be favouring multiple logins from different parts of the system, that way if one is compromised the entire system isn't compromised.

I completely disagree with you about the luck statement. You're still around because your prices are very competitive (cheap hardware, bad staff salary, I have no idea how you do it but you've found a way to keep it low) and because you have "a good reach into the pool", I seriously don't think you can compete with some of the other companies I have tried (in terms of customer satisfaction).

You are free to disagree with me as much as you like. I think you summed it up with "I have no idea how you do it" and anything said thereafter was just intended to be insulting. I don't think anyone can seriously think we are lucky, but I thank you for complimenting us on our low prices and our "deep reach into the pool". No luck in either of those things. Perhaps we are lucky that we have so many competitors who are terrible though.

I agree there are a few companies out there who offer a better service than us in some regards. I also know some of those companies are much more expensive than us, in some cases more than 10 times. Those companies impress me though and make me committed to further improve our own team.

Yes I know what it was, but I prefer the idea of your staff doing it to tick me off.

You may have nothing to hide, but you haven't got much to show for either, wouldn't it be much better for you if I came in here telling you how much I loved you?

Do you have statistics of how many people wrote bad reviews compared to how many people wrote good ones? I guess it would be somewhat biased as most satisfied customers would not see the need to write a review, but still, it would be interesting to see the ratio.

.

You prefer the idea of our staff doing it to tick you off? Each to their own I guess. I'm not sure why you would prefer to think that.

You can check our customer testimonials section for our reviews. As you can see, positive outstrips negative by a large margin. Considering that someone is far more likely to take the time to complain, just as you did, I'm fairly happy with the ratio.

I freely admit we should have resolved your problem faster than we did. It shouldn't have taken until this morning to be resolved and if things had gone perfectly your server would have been up in half the time.

Nice to see your still available at first hand to deal with my complaints, A* service from the MD, thanks

I'm always around and give my direct phone line to any client who wishes to have it. I also take on an Account Manager role for a number of clients. Although I enjoy our chats Julian (I remember last year), I'm hoping we don't have another one next year. If you would like to pop in and see some of our underpaid staff in Leeds you are very welcome. I'll even stretch to buying you lunch.

[Julian Parge]

You know... if you and your underpaid staff keep my client happy for another year and I don't have to keep coming to this forum, I'll come up there and buy YOU lunch.

[John]

You know... if you and your underpaid staff keep my client happy for another year and I don't have to keep coming to this forum, I'll come up there and buy YOU lunch.

As Thomas says in the office, let's go Dutch He mainly says that because he is Dutch though. I can't argue with him because he is bigger than me...

I'll let you know if our vendor reports anything helpful back about that chassi failure.

[sihost]

This one caught my eye, an interesting read.

Firstly I'm glad my server wasn't on that chassis

I must say though, it's awesome how the MD of any company can have this kind of discussion on an open forum and be perfectly happy to leave it there.

The discussion does cover a huge amount of topics, from monitoring to website design, indian customer service, server set up (using blades backplates etc), and hosting businesses in general.

As a web developer and host myself, I know how difficult situations like this can be and can be much more costly in terms of unhappy or lost clients than standard hosting. This is because a web development/design client is worth 100 times what they actually pay for hosting (which in many cases is a supplementary service).
A lost client for us is a potential £1000's in future business and loss of referrals, a lost client for a big hosting company is £3.50 a month.

On the positive side, it's discussions like this that help companies thrive to improve even further. As John says, there are companies out there which offer fantastic service, but at the same time, there are also companies who charge much much more and offer shite service.

I think EUK do have a very good balance between service and cost. I've looked at other companies and if I wanted to move to one, I don't know right now where I would move to.

Monitoring
With the monitoring maybe sometimes the support teams are alerted to downtime but don't act on it immediately. I have Pingdom and get alerted immediately when the server is down. However, say I was in a meeting for 2 hours, I'd want to be absolutely sure EUK took pro active action to begin looking into the reason for the downtime.
I've never actually seen this happen as usually clients would start calling me after around 30 minutes, I'd need to leave the meeting and would usually contact EUK before they contact me.

I'm not saying what's right and what's wrong but it's always good to have more than one "monitor"... Pingdom is very good so Julian you may like to look into that and at least have peace of mins that you wouldn't go several hours without knowing a server was down.

EUK website
As a designer myself I have also noticed the different "themes" in various parts of the website and had guessed that the support and billing areas would be upgraded in time to match, I see it as work in progress.
I think the thing Julian is touching on is "professionalism" and "quality"...

As you say John there are alot of crap hosts about these days, we also have alot of hosts with shiny, top end websites, but behind it they are poor companies.
Design and image is an interesting area and something I could talk about for hours... does a shiny slick website look expensive, will that make you look professional or an expensive company?
Does a less shiny slick website make a company look less professional? Or does it give off the "affordable, cheaper" feel? Finding the look/feel to fit with the service and price of the products is always a hard one and is subject is many opinions as to which is right and wrong.

Indian call centre
As much as we love or hate them, if EUK was to have a 24 hour UK call centre full of highly trained staff, we'd probably be paying for it? So I think it's accepted these days that some things are a trade off for making services more affordable.
I do think however that the Indians should use their own first names, why do they need to use "UK names"? if they are Indian, in India, be open about it. Hey I'm in India, I'm here to help you, if I can't help, I won't waste your time, I'll admit it and transfer you to a senior tech in the UK.
Being open and honest and human has got me a long way in business.

Question
John you mention entry level servers and offering them at a cheap price, are these just the atom ones that have this trade off?
I'm looking at getting a Quad e2-1230 SAS which I assume is a top end server (hosted in MK).

And finally, the subject of luck. I do go with John on this one. Luck doesn't come into business, hard work does, none of us get things right all the time. But it's exactly this, as we read it here, on an open forum which keeps us in business. People like working with others who are human, not a large faceless corporation.

Hope I haven't gabbled for too long but I wanted to add another side to this discussion.
Keep my server up during 2012 aswell John
Cheers

[Ben Stones]

Indian call centre
As much as we love or hate them, if EUK was to have a 24 hour UK call centre full of highly trained staff, we'd probably be paying for it? So I think it's accepted these days that some things are a trade off for making services more affordable.
I do think however that the Indians should use their own first names, why do they need to use "UK names"? if they are Indian, in India, be open about it. Hey I'm in India, I'm here to help you, if I can't help, I won't waste your time, I'll admit it and transfer you to a senior tech in the UK.
Being open and honest and human has got me a long way in business.

I think what is quite true in business is if you are honest, upfront and communicate well with customers, that's the thing most customers are or would be looking for in times where problems occur. This is often why you'll see John actively involved in resolving customer issues big or small. Yes, it is obvious our folks in India have Indian names and I have asked John as to whether it would be in the best interest of our customers to start having all the folks in India using their real names; many other companies in various industries do it and I am sure customers would be happy with this. Though, some of our customers are not, and have said before to transfer their support enquiries over to our team here in Leeds simply because the person(s) they were talking to were in India. We have some highly-skilled senior technicians in India that work for us alongside our senior technicians in Leeds; our staff in India does not just consist of "level 1 support."

I have to say Julian made me chuckle with this thread with some of his directed sarcastic comments (understandably, however). But on a serious point, I am happy to read the issue is now resolved, which is the important thing.

EUK website
As a designer myself I have also noticed the different "themes" in various parts of the website and had guessed that the support and billing areas would be upgraded in time to match, I see it as work in progress.
I think the thing Julian is touching on is "professionalism" and "quality"...

The eUKhost blog originally had the prior website design and a few days after we launched the new website design alongside our cloud hosting platform, the blog was updated with the new design which took some extra work for us to implement. Likewise for the client/billing area which our team are actively working on integrating.

[sihost]

Quote: "We have some highly-skilled senior technicians in India that work for us alongside our senior technicians in Leeds; our staff in India does not just consist of "level 1 support."

I used to hate India call centres, but these days there are some good ones, but sadly there are also some very bad ones. Unfortunately many of us have experienced the bad ones. However, I think it's wrong to refuse help from someone with an Indian name, after all, that person could be in the Uk call centre? Just because his name is Peter or Rasheed, doesn't determine his location, Rasheed could work in Leeds and be 100% British.

The name doesn't matter, location doesn't matter. With access to the servers from anywhere in the world, it's their ability to deal with customers. I'm just as happy for a highly skilled tech in India to sort my problem if it's done fast and efficiently, as I would be for a tech with the same skills in Leeds.

Cristiano isn't an English name, I don't know if he's India or UK, I think he's India. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that his support, customer manner and knowledge is excellent.

[Welshy]

Have to agree with the comments on Cristiano, always has the time for us and share good banter, his knowledge and conversation is excellent.

On the issue about monitoring, we have alerts sent from EUK to us, these are also copied to the dedi support team, these though never get any attention until we contact support... Maybe a good thing to work on in the future.... not that we get many alerts as things are normally very stable....