VPS lack of Customer Service - UK Web Hosting

**maxmanners** · #1 (**permalink**) 18-05-2009, 15:37

On Saturday evening at about 23.00 hrs my email went down, I assumed just another eukhost problem that would be fixed over night, their have been so many in the past!
Early Sunday morning contacted ChatHelp - waste of time they told me to raise a ticket. So a ticket was raised and that achieved nothing.
Late Sunday afternoon they said the swsoft engineers would have to solve the problem, then at 2.30 am on Monday they said that the 8+ websites would have to be closed down while they checked for an email virus and I would have to give my permission. Well surprise / surprise I was asleep then, why did they think for themselves and close it down in the middle of the night when things were quiet?
So early Monday morning I said close it down and do anything you want.
Eukhost take many hours to respond to emails and even longer to do anything.
So now its 16.30 hrs on Monday, two trading days lost on all those websites, nothing been done by eukhost or swsoft.
So I phoned them and received political platitudes but no action.
Why am I with such poor company, they have no understanding of their clients needs.
I cannot think of one good thing about eukhost or swsoft engineers.
Regards
Max

**Scott** · #2 (**permalink**) 18-05-2009, 16:05

Hi Max,

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. We have managed to fix the problem with email services. I have also verified this by logging into the email account using same password and it is working fine. I can understand that this has taken more time than expected but we have to rely on swsoft engineers for such technical problems.

Everything is working fine now. Please let me know if you need help with any other problem. We will be happy to help you.

**maxmanners** · #3 (**permalink**) 18-05-2009, 16:12

Hi Scott
What a strange coincidence, I leave a message on a Forum after waiting two days for a fix and no action then suddenly you tell me that the problem is fixed.
Well I am very sorry to tell you that it is not fixed!
I receive 2000+ emails per day, so I should receive 5000 email but I have only received 50 emails.
Where are the other 4,950?
Have you lost them or are you going to mysteriously find them because of this email?

**eUKhost.com** · #4 (**permalink**) 18-05-2009, 20:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by maxmanners

Hi Scott
What a strange coincidence, I leave a message on a Forum after waiting two days for a fix and no action then suddenly you tell me that the problem is fixed.
Well I am very sorry to tell you that it is not fixed!
I receive 2000+ emails per day, so I should receive 5000 email but I have only received 50 emails.
Where are the other 4,950?
Have you lost them or are you going to mysteriously find them because of this email?

Hi Max,

I apologise for the problem you had in last 48 hours. I will let you know what exactly went wrong with your VPS and credit will be issued for the downtime. I am not sure if this problem is related to the one you had on 19th October 2008, but detailed investigation will be done by myself.

I won't pass any comment on whose fault this was, but I will investigate tomorrow and get back to you within 24 hours. If this was due to our negligence then we will take necessary steps to avoid such problems in future.

We don't get much support from Parallels(Swsoft) and that is the reason we have switched our Windows VPS hosting to Microsoft Hyper-V technology, for Linux we will be switching to Cloud Computing from next month.

Emails which failed to reach your VPS should manage to reach your VPS within next 24 hours. Most of the sending servers must have stored them due to "email delivery failure error", but I cannot assure you whether you will get all 4950 emails which are expected.

**eUKhost.com** · #5 (**permalink**) 19-05-2009, 22:36

Hi Max,

I am done with my investigation and I am slightly disappointed with the downtime you had. Problem you had could have been fixed by one of our Windows System Administrators, but it was escalated to Parallels(swsoft) instead of our Windows Department.

Some Mailenable modules got corrupt on your VPS and it was necessary for us to replace those. Our VPS staff members failed to find any other VPS with same version of Mailenable and they escalated this matter to Parallels.

Parallels don't answer ticket for minimum 12 hours and this time they took much longer. Our Staff members kept on waiting for response from Parallels and they never tried anything else to rectify this problem on their own. Parallels only managed to give suggestion and nothing else after 24 - 36 hours of waiting.

I sincerely apologise for the problem you had, but our staff members rarely make such mistakes. I will talk to VPS Team members and ask them to escalate such complicated windows problems to our Windows Department before forwarding them to Parallels.

**maxmanners** · #6 (**permalink**) 20-05-2009, 07:30

Hi
Thank you for the update, but it doesn't seem to me that either you or your staff see this problem from a customers perspective. Your staff seem to be message givers and unable to discuss the problem in depth!
I have now discovered that the websites were down at the same time but did not receive the reportage till today because the email was down for such a long time.
May I suggest that you install proactive systems that monitor your servers so that you are aware of email / website server problems rather than customers having to tell you?
Nine websites went down that day, this is the reportage for one.
Monitoring stats for: 1TripCamera

Day Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Weekly
Total
Date 05/12 05/13 05/14 05/15 05/16 05/17 05/18
Outages 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
Time on error 00:00 00:00 00:00 00:00 01:12 00:00 00:00 01:12
% Uptime 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 94.97 100.0 100.0 99.28
Connect time 0.14 0.12 0.12 0.12 5.01 0.11 0.12 0.82

Outages- number of times we were unable to access this URL
Time on Error- the total time this URL was not available (hr:min)
% Uptime- the percentage this URL was available for the day
Connect Time- the average time in seconds to connect to this URL

Support-FAQ

**eUKhost.com** · #7 (**permalink**) 20-05-2009, 15:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by maxmanners

Hi
Thank you for the update, but it doesn't seem to me that either you or your staff see this problem from a customers perspective. Your staff seem to be message givers and unable to discuss the problem in depth!
I have now discovered that the websites were down at the same time but did not receive the reportage till today because the email was down for such a long time.
May I suggest that you install proactive systems that monitor your servers so that you are aware of email / website server problems rather than customers having to tell you?
Nine websites went down that day, this is the reportage for one.
Monitoring stats for: 1TripCamera

Day Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Weekly
Total
Date 05/12 05/13 05/14 05/15 05/16 05/17 05/18
Outages 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
Time on error 00:00 00:00 00:00 00:00 01:12 00:00 00:00 01:12
% Uptime 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 94.97 100.0 100.0 99.28
Connect time 0.14 0.12 0.12 0.12 5.01 0.11 0.12 0.82

Outages- number of times we were unable to access this URL
Time on Error- the total time this URL was not available (hr:min)
% Uptime- the percentage this URL was available for the day
Connect Time- the average time in seconds to connect to this URL

Support-FAQ

Hi Max,

Your websites were down due to Anti-Virus check that kept on running for 6 - 9 hours. Anti-virus check kills all processes running on the server. We had no other option to troubleshoot this problem as first possibility was a virus infection and second was corrupt mailenable software. Our staff members started working on Mailenable once Parallels told them to check Email software, if there was no virus on the VPS. You just can't go on to replace Softwares on server with certain assumptions, Some steps need to be followed for such complicated technical problems.

We monitor all our servers and we take steps as soon as we see any sort of trouble with hardware node. You can additional signup for our free monitoring service available at Free Server Monitoring

**maxmanners** · #8 (**permalink**) 22-05-2009, 17:57

Hi
What is going wrong this week, first the email down for two days now the 8+ websites on the server were down today as detailed below.

1TripCamera.com
Time: Fri May 22 10:38:08 EDT 2009
Total Time on Error: 1 hour, 30 minutes, 43 seconds

**eUKShane** · #9 (**permalink**) 23-05-2009, 02:11

Hello,

The node on which your VPS is hosted is having Windows 2003 SP1 OS template which is having few drawbacks, so we have migrated all VPses on new hardware node having latest hardware configuration and Windows 2003 SP2 with all Microsoft's Security Updates and Hotfixes.

Microsoft claim performance improvements for SQL throughput. SP2 also introduces SNP (Scalable Networking pack), which increases network and application performance by freeing up CPU cycles and by using processor resources more efficiently.

If you use IPSEC, then Service Pack 2 improves Server and Domain Isolation by reducing the number of IPsec filter sets that needs to be managed from potentially hundreds of filters, to as few as 2 filters. If you are not using IPsec, then this may encourage you to deploy it ! The MMC will upgrade from MMC v 2.0 to MMC 3.0.

The procedure for migration is :

- Stop existing VPS
- Migrate the data
- Then run "vzcfgt" script and start the VPS

This procedure takes 25-30 minutes (also depends on the size of the VPS). We have faced some issues while migrating so we have rebooted the hardware node once.

Anyhow we have to do this migration because we were receiving complaints from other VPS customers and also we were not able to run latest Virtuozzo updates. Now you will find Virtuozzo 4 (latest Virtuozzo version) and Windows SP2 installed on your VPS.

We can understand that you have faced some downtime because of this migration but please believe, our aim was just to provide you with a permanent solution.

**denezzar** · #10 (**permalink**) 31-05-2009, 16:36

Would have to say no in my honest opinion.

I am having to raise constant tickets over the poor performance of my domain. I upgraded from shared hosting and the service has not improved at all! I am furious that I paid to upgrade to a VPS and yet performance is just as awful with my php and sql.

Defintely looking for a new hosting company and I hope I'm in the minority of having problems but either way eukhost I'm still a paying customer.

Rock · #11 (**permalink**) 01-06-2009, 02:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by denezzar

Would have to say no in my honest opinion.

I am having to raise constant tickets over the poor performance of my domain. I upgraded from shared hosting and the service has not improved at all! I am furious that I paid to upgrade to a VPS and yet performance is just as awful with my php and sql.

Defintely looking for a new hosting company and I hope I'm in the minority of having problems but either way eukhost I'm still a paying customer.

The problem was sorted out in the ticket itself. Please let us know if you continue to face any other problems.

**Andrewdyson** · #12 (**permalink**) 08-06-2009, 09:03

My experiences with eUKHost.

Fantastic Support
Understanding Support
Fast Response
Fast servers (I am on Unix)
No downtime
Email servers secure
And Great value for money

Well Done eUKHost
Andrew

**compserv** · #13 (**permalink**) 08-06-2009, 09:27

I have to agree with Andrew. Only difference is I'm on Windows (Shared Hosting). Support have always seemed to go out of their way to be helpful, even at times on things that I wouldn't consider to be an eUKHost problem.

Perhaps I'm just naive, but if I buy a hosting service I would expect that the supplier provide the hardware and software, and it's up to me to learn how to use it. But the support here has always, for me anyway, gone beyond that.

My one criticism of these forums is that there are times when I don't know if it's eUK support or other users answering my questions. Perhaps having eUKHost in brackets after all staff names would clear that up.

Roger

**Ryan** · #14 (**permalink**) 08-06-2009, 10:55

Many Thanks for your valuable feedback Andrew and Roger

Almost all of our support staff members on forum use the prefix 'eUK' in their usernames to indicate that they are eUKhost staff members. They also use custom 'user title' which is displayed just under the username in order to differentiate.

**compserv** · #15 (**permalink**) 08-06-2009, 10:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryan

Many Thanks for your valuable feedback Andrew and Roger

Almost all of our support staff members on forum use the prefix 'eUK' in their usernames to indicate that they are eUKhost staff members. They also use custom 'user title' which is displayed just under the username in order to differentiate.

Ryan, does that mean you have system administrators and moderators who are not on staff, for example Rock and Jennifer?

**Ryan** · #16 (**permalink**) 08-06-2009, 13:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by compserv

Ryan, does that mean you have system administrators and moderators who are not on staff, for example Rock and Jennifer?

Rock and Jennifer are indeed eUKhost staff members. That is the reason I mentioned 'Almost all staff members' and not 'All staff members' have 'eUK' prefix attached to their usernames. We will however take your suggestion into consideration and hopefully implement this asap.

**eUKhost.com** · #17 (**permalink**) 08-06-2009, 14:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by compserv

Ryan, does that mean you have system administrators and moderators who are not on staff, for example Rock and Jennifer?

Hi Roger,

I have set (eUKhost.com) in title of all registered staff members on this forum. I hope that will help other customers as well.

**compserv** · #18 (**permalink**) 08-06-2009, 14:41

Thanks for that. Personally I just find it nice to know if a post is in an official capacity or another community member being helpful. Not that I have anything against community support of course

.

Roger

**eUKhost.com** · #19 (**permalink**) 08-06-2009, 16:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by compserv

Thanks for that. Personally I just find it nice to know if a post is in an official capacity or another community member being helpful. Not that I have anything against community support of course

.

Roger

You are absolutely right.

Some of our regular forum members give better answers and that is the best part of our forum. It makes difference when someone replies to a thread just because they love this forum.