It is getting harder to survive as reseller if this is how a company handle this situation.

We provider resell dedicated and VPS services to Asia region, and as 'Middle Men' here is some questions hope to get some tips/answer from hosting providers.

On Feb 2nd, due to out of stock, we submitted refund request.
On Feb 3rd, Got replied, no refund, restock in a week.
However, customer cannot wait for a week ( to be honest, can you wait for a week to get VPS setup? Fast deployment that is one of reason why we use VPS.)
Then, we request credit to the account on PhotonVPS. Got rejected.
On Feb 5th, services in-stock, but services were cancelled. NO REFUND, NO CREDIT, NO SERVICE. Free Money to PhotonVPS. Is this new scam?

Converstation between @Profuse-Jimmy @photonvps

"We should have more stock later this week"
-- Shouldn't display (not available ) if out of stock? or they just want to oversold for more profit? And since no warning regarding this, shouldn't provide any solution rather than pay you and waste me and my customer's time on waiting game?

"Allow one refund per account"
-- Is that a standard terms now?

Shown in images
"You can choose to use them or not use them, but no refund/credit will be issued"

BUT on their TOS: photonvps.com/terms_conditions.html
3.6 Refund Policy Customer has thirty (30) days beginning from the date of first payment to a trial period of Services. Within the initial thirty (30) days period, the customer has the right to cancel or demand a full refund if customer is not satisfied with the services. However, upon exceeding the initial thirty (30) days period, the customer will no longer be entitled to any refund and they will be billed until a cancellation is incited. Section 3.6 Refund Policy DOES NOT apply to any terms under Section 5 enforcement. If Customers account is suspended within the initial thirty (30) days for any reasons in violation of this Agreement the Customer waives the right to any refund under this section.
-- This is no longer valid?, what happend to 30 days refund policy?

So, Any advise to avoid company like PhotonVPS? DO NOT BUY IT!


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oneprovider - Extremely Crappy Service - A MUST AVOID

oneprovider.com

This is based on my experience buying & using dedicated server at oneprovider.com

Following points make this host a perfect AVOID case:

1. No proper communication - you will not get answer when your server will be ready, just keep waiting

2. No Phone support at all - this is the worst thing to face as a client. No Telephonic support at all. Even for the greatest issue like server down, you have to raise ticket and start praying almighty.

3. Chargeable support - They have 2 paid support categories and to promote them, regular customers are treated in the worst manner.

4. Unreasonably Longer time to respond tickets - For server outage, network failure, their support took more than 8 hours to respond and again, they simply asked some choices and once you make one, another 8-10 hours.

5. IP issue - If for any reason, your server is to be replaced, they are unable to provide you same IPs even for same location ! Hence, DNS propagation and all will be the headache for clients.

6. Unfriendly Refund Policy - I have NOT received refund yet. For their own faults as well, they are not willing to refund customers. Rather, they want to make proportionate refund. They considered Time wasted on their support tickets as services used by customer!.

In nutshell, at oneprovider - Dissatisfaction Guaranteed!

I can also provide tickets' snaps in support of my views above.

You are advised in your own interest to AVOID crappy host oneprovider for any serious work.

Scam Dedi Report. Server.Trading.

TLRD Version

1. Offer very attractive deal in Webhostingtalk
2. Offer to sign with Monthly + No Setup Fee
3. Once Payment Done. Tell You no Stock
4. Option = You have to pay 1 year in advance. (because no stock, they need to buy hardware) Or Refund
5. Ask to change to available spec, still refuse. Request buyer Pay 1 year in advance.
6. Request refund. >24hours, no more reply.
7. Still posting new threads to promote this "UNAVAILABLE" Package in Dedicated Server Offer section (After tell me there is no stock)

i cannot post link, 1st 5 post....
Follow This thread ID : ?t=1846296
Company : Server Trading

Communication
-----------------------------------
Good morning,
I'm sorry, but we do not have spare dedics with such configuration.
We can get such a server if you pay for a year.

If you want refund, please write to support@server.trading or create ticket in support panel.
If you want to pay for a year, please write there too.

Witold Filipczyk,
server.trading ( 1 Days ago )

-- > Request to change to other spec from me. ( 2cpu, 4gb ram, large storage, anything )

Sorry we don't have it. We can order one (one of 3 types), but if you buy dedic for a year.
Other way is not remunerative for us. Sorry.

-----------------------------------
Change to anything also REQUEST ME TO PAY 1 year upfront


This happened 24 hours ago, and i found they still ADVERTISE THIS PROMO fews hours ago in Webhostingtalk, Dedicated server offer section
Thread link ID : ?t=1846296 ( i cannot post link . new user )


-----------------------------------
Conclusion
1. They might Refund me. They might Not.
2. If they dont have the hardware, Why still push the Offer ?
3. In their website, Still allowed for monthly payment for ( Unavailable package )
4. Once you pay, You are trapped.

Another Review of Lousy Customer Service, This Time at Total Server Solutions/Performive

I posted a TrustPilot review a few days ago describing my recent experience with Performive/Total Server Solutions. I have summarized that review here because I have benefitted from honest WHT reviews and feedback over the years which have helped me find great services as well as undesirable services to avoid. I'd like to repay the favor.

I was a big fan of Certified Hosting. I signed up for a budget dedicated server with them in 2011. The signup/setup was smooth and speedy, their data center speeds were superb, and their tech support was fabulous. In late 2018, Certified was acquired by Total Server Solutions, now called Performive. It wasn't long before tech support went downhill. Since then, I've had to contact TSS/Performive repeatedly about downtime and other problems that kept popping up every few months and never seemed to get resolved. However, I dreaded the chore of finding a new server host and migrating to another machine, so I grit my teeth and dealt with it.

On 03/12/2021, I was auto-billed by Performive for my customary six months of prepaid service at my negotiated rate of $75 a month. As usual, they charged $450 to my credit card. However, a month later, a guy I'd never heard of blasted into my inbox declaring himself to be my new sales rep and spouting dire warnings that my server had reached its "end of life," I was in breach of various banking compliance laws, a terrible security meltdown could happen at any moment, and I MUST upgrade my server immediately!!! I knew where this was going, and my suspicion was confirmed when Performive DOUBLED my monthly rate and demanded that I sign a 36-month contract at this new, inflated rate. They also switched me from managed to unmanaged and wanted to upcharge me to make the server managed again.

To be clear, this was completely unacceptable. I stated that the time to re-negotiate a six-month prepaid rate is BEFORE I've been charged and paid in advance, not a month later. Moreover, Certified had agreed to keep my server hardware and software up-to-date, and if TSS/Performive had allowed it to become an antiquated piece of junk with gaping security vulnerabilities as they claimed, the liability for that was on them. Nevertheless, I was given until May 31 to accept the mandatory upgrade and doubling of my monthly rate, which I declined. I agreed to vacate the server by May 12, the end of my second prepaid month, which left a $300 credit for the four prepaid months which Performive declined to provide.

I spent ten sleepless nights finding a new server hosting firm and migrating my web content, which I didn't plan on doing at a very difficult time of health and other personal issues. But I got it done and vacated Performive's server on schedule. Since then, I have sent multiple emails to their Billing and Sales departments asking that my $300 credit be promptly refunded. ALL of those emails to both departments have met with dead silence. Adding insult to injury, Performive emailed me three robo-surveys asking "How Are We Doing?" This is such a demeaning and insulting way to treat a 10-year customer.

Last Friday, I sent another refund demand, which I expect Performive's missing-in-action billing department and sales staff will again ignore. So, when my June 4 deadline to refund my $300 credit passes, I'm wondering if my 30-day Notice of Intent to Sue will bring another robo-survey asking, "How Are We Doing?"

You will lose money if you rent a server at OVH

Hello,

I am a customer of OVH since Apr 2016, previously, I only rented OVH 3-4 servers at the same time, so really using quality is fine, no problem arises. But 2 months ago, in 1 month I hired more than 30 servers at OVH to serve my clients, and I found many pressing problems, the quality of support at OVH was very poor.

1. The support time of OVH Sing since creating a crash ticket to check the server is very long, each system has more than 6 servers with 1 or 2 faulty servers that must stop all to wait for technical OVH testing takes more than 2-3 days, there are problems that take more than 10 days for OVH to find the cause.

2. Never trust OVH's hardware testing system, because before that I completely trusted OVH's hardware testing system, so the time I waited to solve the server problem took a long time. , because I thought it was my own problem.

3. And when the problem is due to the server error of OVH, we will still have to bear the loss of those faulty servers without a refund of reasonable usage date, as well as forcing to change the usage date to Other servers that do not support refunds.

Details you can see the attached picture.


My ticket :

These server problem when

1.
server ns569036.ip-139-99-125.net (server installed : 22:02, 16/11/2020 ; server return : 22/11/2020)
server ns544549.ip-139-99-124.net (server installed : 13:32, 15/11/2020 ; server return : 24/11/2020)
ticket id: 1141571, 1143377

Because this is a server system connected to each other, after receiving the server it takes 2 days to set up the system. That means around November 19, 2020, the system started to work. From the moment the server started to work, it started having connection problems (ticket: 1141571 - 21/11/2020 09:22), started to experience worse problems when the connection was dropped continuously and the machine server was not accessible around 21/11/2020 23:00 (this happened 4 times before on servers: ns544549.ip-139-99-124.net, ns569036.ip-139- 99-125.net, ns568999.ip-139-99-125.net), after about 2 hours of testing I created a ticket: 1143377 - 22/11/2020 01:18, speculating that the HDD is faulty so I asked to be replaced, but your technician has to wait until 08:00 23/11/2020 GMT + 8 before you can start testing the server. This means that the whole system of 10 servers has to wait more than 48 hours. I asked Belveder about the problem of not being able to wait long so I will buy another server instead and ask for a refund later, and Belveder agreed.


2.
server ns5002501.ip-51-79-162.net (server installed : 22:37, 19/11/2020 ; server return : 30/11/2020)
ticket id: 5805542655, 1158210, 1158130

This server was installed at 22:37 11/19/2020, it took me about 2 days to set up the system. And starting 11/23/2020, the system started to work, after about 1 day of operation, at 20:05 11/24/2020 there was a connection failure and inaccessible. I have to fix it by restarting this server in order for it to work properly again.

The situation continued on 11/26/2020 17:56 and 11/29/2020 20:28, at these 2 times I had to use reboot function in the OVH control panel to reboot the server (can check email let's see ).

Since I can't let the situation continue, my client has to report game server maintenance to wait for you to check the hardware. And because before that, you did not accept any refunds but forced to change the usage date, so I had to let customers wait for you to check and fix.

I created ticket 5805542655 - 11/30/2020 01:04 to request to check and replace the HDD, but until 11/30/2020 07:41 you have just started to check the HDD and do not agree to replace HDD, go to the extended test but still cannot find the cause of the error.

Continue with ticket 1158130 - 11/30/2020 10:00, because unable to find a solution, you agree to replace another server, and I continue to wait until 11/30/2020 16: 25 of you again informed me that the server could not be replaced and asked me to cancel my current server and order a replacement server.

Thus, my server had to be halted for almost 2 days from: 11/29/2020 20:28 until I bought a new server and installed it again on December 1, 2020.


3.
server ns563910.ip-139-99-125.net (server installed : 01:01, 20/11/2020 ; server return : 19/12/2020 ; problem report: 08/12/2020)
ticket id: 1262908, 1243789

This server problem when install first time, can check email: Hardware error during the re-installation of your dedicated server 19/11/2020 22:24

During the time of using this server, there were several times of connection failure, unable to access the server.

Until about December 5, 2020, it started to be automatically restarted, ticket id: 1243789, spent many days of testing, extensive testing, ... you still can't find it. The reason, until I had to take time to record the video to prove it, you guys can check and find out the cause on 12/16/2020 18:10, so more than 10 days the server is down, the system is idle for waiting

4.
server ns5004359.ip-51-79-177.net (server installed : 13:29, 24/11/2020 ; server return : 25/11/2020 )
ticket id: 1147496, 1148254, 1148617, 9905645348, 1148779

server problem with auto reboot, at this time i dont know problem, and your team also not know how to fix, so i buy other server for replace.

5.
server ns563916.ip-139-99-125.net (server installed : 00:50, 06/12/2020 ; server return : 19/11/2020 ; problem report: 08/12/2020)
ticket id: 1243789

After receiving the server, installing to use within 1 day, you will encounter the status of automatically restarting the server. The client temporarily turns off the server for you to check, but more than 10 days later you find out the problem, and the client has left the server not in use.


Thanks.

What solution(s) do you want OVH to offer you?
I want a full refund. Because of the server damage and delay in support time. I do not accept to change the usage date to another server, because the customer is no longer renting the server.

I have lost clients, and money in these incidents.

Quadranet.com Review - All good things must come to an end.

On my webhosting journey I started with free hosts (110mb.com) then graduated to Shared hosting ($1.99 oversold?) and then lowend vps to much more expensive vps and finally dedicated servers.

My clients/visitors are from Asia so I was searching for a host with good connectivity in Asia. Servers in asia are expensive so after a little bit of searching I found out that the next best thing is a server hosted in the west coast. That is when I found out about quadranet.com(This is back in 2011). They advertise their network before as the "Asia Optimized Network" so I gave them a try and it was indeed the best network that I tried. Quadranet had the lowest ping that I could get on all the servers that I tried.

My business grew bigger and bigger and I ordered more servers from quadranet. One of services I offer is VPN so it was really cool that they can even accommodate my IP needs. I got a lot of /24s back then (A lot).

5 years later on I started having issues with failing drives on my servers. I still like quadranet even with those hard drive issues but I moved some of my critical services to reliablesite.net because of the hard drive issues (And because their name says reliablesite nah just kidding ).

A bulk of my servers are still hosted at quadranet. I rarely had any issues and if I do need support they really respond fairly quick. When I say I rarely had any issues I mean really rare because most of my servers are running for years without downtime.

Fast forward a few years later, I moved my critical services back to quadranet because I love their service. business has slowed down so I need to cancel some servers because I just don't need them anymore.

And then here comes 2020 and the pandemic. This is the year that it really went bad maybe because of the pandemic and the support engineers are not allowed to visit the DC, I don't know.

But quadranet's network has been really bad. Frequent lost of connection. Q4 of 2020 they had an un-announced maintenance on their network which lasted for hours. They said it was announced but I never received any email so whatever. And then another maintenance. Despite the maintenance network is still.. well "Shi*ty.

I cancelled some servers and move my services to another provider. I still keep some server just because I still trust them.

And network is down again.

I cancelled a few servers again. They even offered me a free 1 month service just to keep the service. which I declined.

And now 2021 network is still spotty. frequent disconnections here and there.

I opened another ticket asking them if there are issues with their network again. And you know what the support did? He rebooted my server without any warning. WTF!!! I mean yeah when you have a problem with your PC and you call for support sometimes they would ask if you turned it on and off already?
But why wont you ask me first if its ok to reboot it.
I can SSH just fine to the server so the server is fine its just the network is having issues. rebooting the server wont fix your network.

And they said it was blah blah blah that their system noticed it is not responding.
I cant copy paste their response anymore because you know what they did?
They fluffing deleted my support ticket.
When I asked why? They said it was a mistake. Really? Their delete button has no confirmation that you want to delete a certain ticket?

I completely lost faith on quadranet now. So I moved some services again and requested a cancellation. And after reviewing my services. I found out that the server that I cancelled which they offered me a free month of which I CLEARLY declined is still there and I got billed this January.

I sent a ticket asking for a refund to a server that I am no longer using which I already asked to be cancelled which they did not. (They can clearly see that on the bandwidth logs)
I believe it is not my fault if they did not cancel it. I mean I asked for a cancellation. They offered a free month. I clearly declined. Now whose fault is it if the server was not cancelled?

Well now I am scared because I am still on the phase of moving my services to another host.
I am afraid because they might just delete my servers and say it was a mistake too. Maybe I'm just paranoid.

So my rating?

Support 2/10 - I am still generous here. because I know they are trying to do it right. Its just not enough
Service 4/10 - I believe I reviewed them before and gave them a 9/10 but it is down now.
Value 3/10 - Prices have stagnated. There are better offers now out there.

Will I recommend them? For non critical services I still might use them but if you want a better service just look elsewhere.

Its like 10 years of hosting and its sad that it must come to an end like this. Thanks to Dustin whose always been there to accommodate my requests at Quadranet before (https://www.webhostingtalk.com/member.php?u=252125) I dont know what happend but since Dustin was gone it was never been the same at quadranet. Lol maybe just a coincidence or maybe there is a story behind it.

Appalling Customer Service by Hetzner

I have had an absolutely terrible experience with this company. I used their services for a short period of time, then decided to close my account. I was not informed of any outstanding balances before doing so. The next day I was sent an invoice for 7.54.

The invoice states that the payment is due by PayPal. I only signed up for this company because they advertise as accepting payment by PayPal. When I click the link to pay the invoice however, it does not let me do so as my account is closed.

The support team has been rude and absolutely unhelpful. They have informed me that I am unable to pay by PayPal because I closed my account. I have asked them to reinstate my account so that I can pay my invoice. They refuse to do this because my account has an outstanding balance.

One of their e-mails to me stated the following:
As the account is disabled already, you have to make a bank transfer. There is no other option, and it's not our problem, you deleted your account, so disbaled it, before paying the invoice.

Its not their problem? Are you serious? When I closed my account it didnt show me an outstanding invoice. It didnt give me any option to pay. I closed my account on March 31st at 12:02 PM. I was sent an invoice on April 1st at 4:14 AM. It seems to me like the problem is the way they run their system.

They insist that I send an international wire transfer for 7.54 to them. I have repeatedly refused to send an international wire transfer where the fee to do so will cost me three or four times what I owe. After all, they clearly advertise that they accept PayPal.

I have on multiple occasions offered to pay by credit card. I have also asked them for an e-mail address that I can simply send a PayPal payment to. They have refused both of these and insist that I send them a wire transfer. They are threatening to send me to a collections agency if I do not do so. This behavior borders on extortion. I am actually trying to pay my invoice, but they are NOT giving me a reasonable way to do so.

Again when I asked to pay for PayPal, one of their replies states the following:
you don't have the option to do that as YOU deleted the account.

My last four e-mails to them asking them for a PayPal address to send payment to have been completely ignored. I suspect they will soon send me to a collections agency (as they have directly told me they will do this) for not paying my invoice, which I have repeatedly attempted to pay.

I have NEVER dealt with a company with such rude and appalling customer service. I recommend avoiding this terrible company at ALL costs.

W3space terrible support. Borderline scammers

Just wanted to post my terrible experience with W3Space.

They offer absolute ZERO customer support and ignore all tickets.
They claim 24 hour server delivery on their website. So, I ordered a dedicated server from them for $150 on May 18th (over 3 weeks ago).
After a few days of nothing happening, I opened a ticket asking if there's any ETA on delivery. Silence. No response. No, sorry we're out of stock and expect new servers soon. Absolutely NOTHING.
So, after just over a week of no answers I did the only thing I could and opened a Paypal claim.
I also opened a ticket telling them I no longer need the server and to cancel my order. This ticket of course was also ignored.

They still didn't bother to answer. As we all know Paypal claims take some time. After escalating, they had until today to respond.

So, today, last day to respond to the claim, I magically receive server details. No apology. No sorry for being late. Just an email with server details and ticket closed.

Needless to say after 3 weeks of waiting I've already ordered the server elsewhere don't need it anymore. So I have to wait to see what Paypal decides, as I'm out $150 and 3 weeks late received a server that I no longer need and requested multiple time to cancel after failure to deliver or respond to any tickets.

Surprise surprise... they're not answering those tickets either. The only thing they bother to answer is the Paypal claim.

If you want to waste money and get zero customer service. These guys are the place to go.
Otherwise, steer clear. Still waiting to see what Paypal decides now that they've provided them with server information 3 weeks too late.

Caution: PhoenixNAP/Secured Servers

Greetings WHT,

I wanted to issue a large dose of caution for fellow WHT users regarding our recent experience with PhoenixNAP/Secured Servers as their new policies run the possibility of breaking your integrations and create undue headache.

On May 7th, PhoenixNAP/Secured Servers sent an email to us asking us for feedback on a support ticket that had been opened, apparently on our behalf. We had no knowledge of this and our email filters actually flagged the message as SPAM. We found the email in the SPAM filter and it had a few obvious red flags. First, the ticket was titled "Password Rotations" and it came from their support at securedservers email, which is an email we typically do not get messages from. Obviously as soon as we read the message, we immediately reached out to them to find out who authorized the "password rotations" on a production, client facing server.

In speaking with their support agent via live chat, PhoenixNAP/Secured Servers has implemented a new company wide policy to start changing customer's root and user account passwords, without their permission, and without verifying with the customer. In the original email (which we did not get as it appears someone incorrectly opened the ticket in their system to show it was "us" that opened the ticket rather than the support agent), it states:

"Dear Customer,

We are notifying you that we have updated the root and user passwords for your
server in accordance with industry standard password maintenance
recommendations. We will continue to update the passwords on a regular schedule
that coincides with your patching schedule and the passwords will be posted to
your servers device page where you can view them in your portal. If you have any
questions please don't hesitate to contact us and we will be happy to answer
them.
Regards,"

The email is unsigned as to who sent it.

This server has their managed services on it at the client's request as they want a prompt response from the NOC should there be any issues, however the client did not, does not, and never asked for their passwords to be changed in this manner. As a result, our client experienced a broken integration for their custom environment, which we had to deal with their frustrations, (this is not the first time that PhoenixNAP/Secured Servers has broken this specific client's machine. They took the server offline for several hours back in December 2019, without permission, without a request to do so, and with no notice, because another customer of theirs opened a support request for a mem test. They also only gave us approximately a 10$ credit for their mistake.), and the best we get from them is, paraphrasing, "opps, sorry, but if you want this practice to stop, you need to drop the managed services."

We have less than 90 days left on the contract with them and have asked to be let out of that term so we can move our client to our primary datacenter vendor, with whom we know will not pull this kind of monkey poo with us. Thus far they are refusing to let us out per the "management team" so I have asked for a call directly with them. I'll update once that happens. This is the last machine we have with them and I am hoping our primary DC vendor can get us a deal to make this move happen as quickly as possible.

I'm not sure who in their right mind thinks its perfectly acceptable to randomly change a customer's root and user account passwords without their permission, knowledge, and without verifying with the customer if they even want this performed. Yes it's good practice to always change your passwords, however for a party who is once removed from the client, this should in no way be acceptable unless they have received, in writing, to do so. If this was one of our servers that housed our programs, I wouldn't be as upset about it, but when it starts affecting our client's and this is the second time you've done so, I am beyond upset. And the best you can do is offer us the 10$ credit in December and an empty apology this time around?

Word to the wise, if you're using PhoenixNAP/Secured Servers, watch your accounts closely, especially if you are using their managed services. They will monkey with your stuff without your permission.

James

OVH US Destroyed My TOTAL Business | HELP LESS | DON'T BUY WITH OVH US | NO BACKUPS GIVEN

I had 2 Servers with OVH US (BV1 & BV2) With them,In that one of the server got 2 Spamhaus issue and which we had removed that account and informed them about this

We got an sudden mail from OVH US Policy Enforcement Specialist

As you are well aware, we have received a persistent stream of credible reports of malware and phishing sites hosted on your servers. Such content and activities violates Section 5(b) and 7(b) of the OVHcloud Terms of Service and is grounds for immediate termination in accordance with Section 9(c) of the OVHcloud Terms of Service. We are therefore terminating your account effective as of November 6, 2020 at 15:00:00 ET.

As further provided in Section 9(d) of the Terms of Service, as a result of your termination, your OVHcloud services will cease functioning as of the time and date set forth above; after which, you will not be able to access any of your user data. All such user data will be destroyed. Due to your failure to comply with the Terms of Service, OVHcloud is under no obligation to extend your ability to access the OVHcloud Services following your termination.

Our decision is final and not subject to appeal. We had requested to give us 15 days time to take our Backup but they are not responding till now and My Service is about to terminated by them
There is no Warning they are just sending an notice that my service will be terminated in 24 hours..The both servers have about 4 TB of Data we are using it for Webhosting and another is for SolusVM KVM

How can an person take 4 TB of backup in 24 hours ?

They totally destroyed my business and They are not ready to give our backups or respond to our ticket

IF YOU ARE PURCHASING SERVERS FROM OVH US THEY CAN SEND YOU TERMINATION NOTICE ANYTIME WITHOUT GIVING PROPER TIME TO TAKE YOUR BACKUPS

I'm with OVH France from past 5 years and they are very proper on Abuse cases and incase of any service termination they will give us Final warning after that only they will terminate.But OVH US Does not give any time to take our backups

this is totally unprofessional and unfair

OVH US Teached me an Best lesson and My business was totally down

I don't know how to respond to our customers about their data's

TOTALLY LOST !

THANKS TO OVH FOR KILLING MY LIFE
KILLING MY FAMILY
KILLING MY BUSINESS

Reliablesite review

I used Reliablesite once a few years ago for a long since dead project, this review focuses on my most recent experience, starting in June this year (a 6 month review). We had a few servers with Reliablesite, that have since been moved to another provider who were able to offer better hardware at this price point.

Sales: 8/10
I've only used their sales livechat, which was quick and concise with their replies to most of my questions, more in depth questions I was directed to email sales (although I never followed this up).

Setup: 3/10
I'll preface this by saying that this was during a large sale event, so I imagine they were under heavier than normal demand.

The first problem was "specials" ordered with customisation (eg ports or bandwidth) are provisioned without their upgrades. This means you have to open a ticket and request the installation of a NIC, or chase up bandwidth upgrades so they are properly applied to the account. We encountered problems spanning multiple servers with NICs not working, IPMI not working, OS installs via the panel not working, these issues were mostly resolved quickly, although a couple took longer than I'd have liked.

I would have preferred if the setup of a customised server was delayed and everything delivered working as ordered, but I understand some customers may want everything ASAP even if it's partial (and in some cases, unusable).

The second issue we encountered was with our second order, where we had accidentally used the same hostname as the first during the ordering process. This resulted in confusion on RS' side during the setup process, as it seems they use hostnames to track servers within accounts rather than a numerical ID system, or possibly just human error on their side as well as ours.

The third issue was when we ordered a couple of "Intel special (5000+ score)" servers. One of the servers that was delivered had an 11 year old i7 860 with a score of 2891. Another was an 8 year old i5 3550 scoring 4805.

We explained that the i5 was fine and we didn't care too much about the score, the main issue is the i7 was so old that it lacked AES-NI, which was needed for our use case. One of the techs said they'd look into installing AES-NI (which obviously isn't possible). We requested an exchange with a server that had a CPU with AES-NI, or met the advertised 5000 score.

We were told that the Passmark algorithm was updated a few months ago meaning the i7 860 no longer met the advertised score, a swap wasn't possible so they'd refund the server and update the site. I'm not sure why they couldn't do a swap, as we just turned around and ordered a special with identical RAM/SSD but with a newer Xeon which was the same price. All in all, a lot of hassle, a needless refund and reorder, and they still haven't corrected their site with the correct score.

Support: ??/10
After the turbulent setup experience, we didn't need to contact support once. Obviously this is a very good sign, but as the only actual interaction we had with support was during the above setup period, I don't feel comfortable giving a rating here.

Network: 10/10
No complaints at all, speeds to Europe and across US have been very good. I'd seen no signs of packet loss, no drops, excellent.

Control Panel: 7/10
There's 3 separate control panels, 1 for billing, 1 for tickets, and 1 for managing servers. There is little integration between them visible from the client's side, making it a bit awkward to use. For example, you can't select a service the issue is about on the ticket control panel. The server management panel looks a bit dated but everything is there and functional that I could see, the only missing thing was the ability to edit the server names (which could lead to the confusion seen in the Setup section of the review).

One annoying thing is that RS blocks a lot of ASNs from accessing their site, I assume to block orders from proxies, however these blocks also cover their customer panels, meaning if you're on a VPN (be it a private or public) then you might not be able to manage your services. I understand wanting to block orders from anonymising services, however blocking entire ASNs from even accessing the management panels is a bit of an over reach in my opinion.

Pricing/Value: 7/10
Their specials are good value, although you do have to take into account the aging hardware on their cheaper specials. Their configurable hardware options are a bit pricey and I think could do with revisiting, eg $60/m for a 1TB SSD is a bit much for todays pricing. I'm sure they could work out a better deal if I were to contact their sales though. Their network upgrades are very good value, with cheap 10Gbps ports and bandwidth upgrades, especially during sales events.

Overall, despite the poor setup experience at the start, I'd say our experience was very good overall. I'd certainly use Reliablesite again for other projects in the future, and would recommend them if your use case matches their offerings.