Good and Bad

[namecritic]

I bought the elite dedicated plan. Happy with the equipment. Fast server.

Customer service so far is not good however. So far I have had to go domain name by domain name and ask for things like aw stats to be activated, permissions have been wrong on several domains, the move took about a week, and when I contact customer service, it's always, well you have to email someone else because I can't do that or don't have access to that.

24/7 access to support is a great thing if anyone there actually can make changes when necessary.

On sales, the salesman made promises to get me to buy the server, then delivered on none of them. He said he spoke to tech support while I was on the phone and that they could have me moved in 24 hours. Took a week. Said they would have 48 IPs for us right away and would invoice me for them., Still don't have them 3 weeks into this. Said he wo0uld get me a better price for them. That didn't happen either.

Overall, as I say, the equipment is good. The service is poor and the salespeople need to not make promises they cannot keep.

I'll be staying around if they get these things I have asked for fixed by the time another payment is due.

[GatorWesley]

Hello,

Do you have ticket numbers for the requests that you made so we can look into this further?

[namecritic]

On your front page it says "Our control panel (CPanel 10) gives you FULL control of every aspect of your account. Managing your website has never been easier!

I still can't even check stats on some of the domain names. The permissions are incorrect on many of them.

I have asked to have all of them checked to make sure everything is working properly. The response I get is that I have to be more specific.

Specifically - I want to be able to check stats on every domain name on the server.

Specifically - I want the permissions problem fixed. I do not know what your techs did. You would have to figure it out.

Specifically - I want a working server for all my domain names after 3 weeks of going through this.

#UBK-151082 is one of the many tickets that have been filed.

I really do not wish to slam you guys. I wish I could just know all my domains are working correctly since I have to also answer to my clients.

[namecritic]

Error: LogFile parameter is not defined in config/domain file

Setup ('/home/mostwant/tmp/awstats/awstats.mostwantednewspaper.com.conf' file, web server or permissions) may be wrong.
Check config file, permissions and AWStats documentation (in 'docs' directory).

Thats what I get when trying to check stats on http://www.mostwantednewspaper.com

Each tiome I find one not working they fix that one. It seems no one in tech suppoort is willing to go check them all on this new box so I do not have to discover them one by one.

[GatorFord]

Hello,

We'd like to help you with your issue and turn this bad review into a good one. When moving to dedicated servers there sometimes are outstanding issues like statistics generation and so forth due to unforeseen possible differences between the previous hosts server configuration and ours.

I'm sure myself or another Level 3 can create a script to correct the issue on all domains. Thanks!

EDIT : I'm reviewing UBK-151082 and the history of this now.

[GatorFord]

After reviewing this, our ticket update indicates the 7 users which are still having issues are all over their respective quotas.

You'll need to increase the disk space allotment for said users or remove files in the accounts to free up additional space before statistics (and mail, among other things) will work for them properly.

[namecritic]

That was done. It's like asking you for a peanut butter sandwich and you saying, "I have a bunny".

The quotas being fixed on those 7 domain names has nothing to do with the fact the awstats was not working on most of the domain names.

My problem is not that there might be issues during the move. That is expected.

My problem is that when I send in a ticket with the specific error messages and an exact description of the problem, I get emails back telling me about other things they have discovered that I need to fix or they respond with, "Can you be more specific?", or they fix the problem on one domain name, then close the ticket so I have to put each domain name in a new ticket.

The impression is that techs are avoiding going into each domain name to make sure it is working or checking the domain config files and other upper level stuff to make sure it's all working.

Sorry it seems that I am complaining, but I have clients to answer to as well, so I have to get this done.

Someone is working on it now and they say they should all work by tomorrow. Here's to hoping I can finally turn this into a good review.

[namecritic]

Well, they got the stats running. I just now resolved this, right about the time I'm getting a bill for the next month. So a whole month to resolve issues related to moving to a new box.

That par for the course? I'm asking because I sincerely do not know. Does it normally take a month to move from one dedicated box to a new one and resolve issues like stats not working, email not working, etc.?

We did not do the move ourselves. Your techs did the move. So it is a fair question, since I am getting your bill promptly and on time with an urgance to pay it asap, while my requests to fix things asap were put aside and finally gotten around to after about 20 support tickets.

[GatorWesley]

When moving to a dedicated server rarely does it go without issue. It's normal for there to be problems and depending upon the complexity of the issues the time frame in which everything gets running smoothly varies.

The good thing is that once its all up and running our servers are very stable and the issues should be few and far between.

[namecritic]

On stability. I'm now getting this message in my email.

From: root
From: root@magic.magicanswers.com
Subject: [statscheck] Stats/Server Overload on magic.magicanswers.com
Message-Id: <E1IMTfM-0001Lt-RA@magic.magicanswers.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 12:08:33 -0700

IMPORTANT: Do not ignore this email.
This is cPanel stats runner on magic.magicanswers.com!
While processing the log files for user seopn, the cpu has been
maxed out for more than a 6 hour period. The current load/uptime line on the server at the time of
this email is
12:08:33 up 11 days, 9:02, 0 users, load average: 8.11, 6.57, 6.27
You should check the server to see why the load is so high and take
steps to lower the load. If you want stats to continue to run even with a high load; Edit
/var/cpanel/cpanel.config and change extracpus to a number larger then 0 (run
/usr/local/cpanel/startup afterwards to pickup the changes).

I don't understand what to do here. The server I was on at liquidweb was not as good as the server I got from you guys. The same websites and content are there as was on the other server, but now the BETTER server you guys sold me is maxed out?

So you see my dilemna here I hope. I agree and expected some issues. But email and stats not working are not issues I would have expected since those are pretty standard.

Now I do have a stability issue. Can you help with that? As for the bill I just got, it was for IP addresses not another month of hosting. It just didn't say so in the email. So understand that already.

[GatorPatrick]

Hello,

The box itself is very stable. The load is resulting from a stats run which was initiated for all of your users (I'm guessing in response to a support ticket about stats). It's only temporary. In the meantime I've raised the load threshold and taken some other measures which lowered your server load to 3.

[GatorPatrick]

I forgot to add, cpanel was just claiming the cpu was "maxed out" due to the load threshhold that is set by default in cpanel.config. A load of 8 is nowhere near maxed and your server was still serving out pages nice and quickly. Our servers normally run somewhere between 2 and 8 load at peak hours. We check them closely when that load rises up over 10.

[namecritic]

Thanks. I think everything is finally resolved. Again, I appreciate that the equipment is good and the server is fast. I will be staying with Hostgator and have even recommended a client to purchase another server.

I do hope however, that the customer service they receive is much better than what happened with me for the first month with you guys.

It isn't that your techs did not know how to do things. It's that they tried to avoid doing them.

One guy. Jason in customer service. He was excellent and initiated things to be done in a friendly and efficient manner. If not for him, I would have asked for a refund and moved to a new host.

[namecritic]

Also, Patrick. I do want to mention that the fast response here in the forum was also a factor in keeping me here.

[GatorPatrick]

Great! I personally love to see a customer come out of a support experience with a good feeling. I hope I get to work with you more in the future Also, would it be alright if we changed the icon to a positive?

[namecritic]

yes. it's ok to change the icon.