Hello everyone..

I was reading with interest the valentines day sale threads, and it appears as though nocster support is in kind of a melt down at this point.. I submitted a ticket (214209) on tuesday this week for some reverse delegation on some IP address blocks that I have. It's now sunday, and all I see on the ticket is:

Request Reassigned
Request Reassigned

I've also updated the ticket to see if they have any ETA or anything on it, with no response... When I tried to talk to BurstNET on aim I get this:

[11:36] <me>: Hello there..
[11:37] BurstNET: hello
[11:37] <me>: I was wondering if you could give me an update on ticket number 214209
[11:37] BurstNET: hold on
[11:53] <me>: Did you find anything at this point?
[12:10] <me>: So it's been a half an hour since you told me to hold on. Anything?
[12:15] BurstNET: i am the only one here right now
[12:16] BurstNET: and i am working on alot of emergency down servers
[12:17] <me>: Understood - this is a lower priority ticket, but this has been open for 5 days now. When can I expect the request to be completed?

That's it - I didn't want to have to wait another half an hour for another response, so I gave up..

This is a fantastically long wait for what amounts to a few lines of config in their nameservers. I know they can do it, as they have in the past. I also understand that this isn't a critical ticket for them with all of the issues that down servers that are being reported here.. (bad nics, bad hardware, bad cpanel installs, missing servers from the valentines day sales, etc etc etc).

But I don't think it's wrong to want to get an ETA, or even a "we're working on it, please be patient" or even "Your request is unimportant in the grand scheme of things - you know that - we'll get to it when we get to it". But to get nothing at all??

(sigh)

-David

Couple of days ago I had an open ticket with no response for over 24 hrs. I wouldn't call it low priority either--I couldn't get a ping response to the server. I gave up on the ticket and got hold of keith (mainarea's suggestion)--he took care of technical and billing problems immediately. But as of late last night I can't ping my server again. I've opened another ticket, but not a lot of confidence in that... :(

your best option is to contact keith again.

Altco,

Why should that be even necessary?? Seriously, think about what's happening here....

The company provides various layers of support:
1) Tickets
2) Aim
3) Their phone number for emergencies

And the only real way to get a response is to contact an employee on the side?? How messed up is that?

Just venting...
-David

Agree with both of you. Contacting one of their ringers on the side is the best way to get results. But it's messed up--if everybody starts looking to keith to solve their problems he's gonna go into hiding...

Well,

They have a few more days on this, then we're going to start seriously shopping around. We don't want to move - we have too much setup where we are right now to make it easy. Nocster had such a good rep here when I started, and things late last year/early this year were going so smoothly. Then the every other day latency/outages started happening, and now this.. We cannot continue to go with a service that does not provide support. What happens if our server goes down for some reason? Is it going to cost us a day or two in downtime? A week? We cannot work that way.

-David

Companies have their ups and downs. The idea of contacting keith is to give him more points on a salary raise or similar. It is obvious that their AIM / TELEPHONE / TICKETS are very disorganized. Maybe contact SEAN directly?

Hmm while I can confirm the response was a little slow around Valentines day, to date all of my support tickets have been answered in a matter of hours and any tech issues I've had were also resolved promptly....they even fixed a few problems I didn't even notice myself.

Over all I'd have to say their support has been pretty good.

I wish I had your luck donna....

:)

-David

Same here....

I do not send in tickets till graveyard hours, and Han/Salman/Sandi (tech & billing) were prompt replying, even replying back to them they would issue re-replies within 30 minutes.

Perhaps it's because I hit them up in the dead hours... but there's rarely times I have high reply times unless I send personal emails (ie, Sean, Salman) and not to support/billing/whatever@, which is understandable as people aren't online 24/7.

Hmm depends on how you word your request probably, although not all of my support requests have been "reader friendly" I try not to get on them to badly. And I try to explain the problem to the best of my ability in polite terms rather than just screaming at them to "fix it". All in all they do their best.

Only once did I have what I would call a slow reply and that was around Valentine's Day. And even then Sean himself emailed me to say that he would get the support ppl to answer me as soon as he could (which he did).

But overall I think that theirs going to be a lot of ppl who don't get responses with what they consider a reasonable amount of time. Simply because of the range of locations. Some ppl might submit a ticket in the middle of the day expecting a quick reply while for the Datacenter boys it's actually the middle of the night and there's not many staff there.

But in the end nobody knows for sure, maybe I get quick answers because I'm a woman :P

Angelx,

I don't think it's because of location. This particular ticket has been waiting 5 days. Surely that's enough time for someone to come in and look at it? Besides, they're in the same time zone I'm in, so I don't think that's the issue...

So far, I've talked with salman and eric and they've both been great - but the issue is still open as this requires a specific person to do this request, apparently. Whomever was using the 'burstnet' aim logon earlier showed that he doesn't care for my business, period. It would've taken them perhaps 10 seconds to tell me that they're busy, but instead chose to ignore me.

-David

We are currently getting caught up with most support issues, and are almost back to levels that people liked prior to the last sale. This will be improving further, as we have just hired a bunch new support/sysadmin employees (with more coming soon as well...)...which started last week and this week. Our goal is to get tickets answered as they are coming in, rather than sitting waiting to be answered. This will cut down on all calls and AIM requests.

Please be patient. Response time will improve tremendously in the imediate future to the point that we far surpass the excellant level of service we were providing prior to the last sale.


Sean R.
BurstNET
System Administration

Sean,

So no response to the original posting, what of being ignored by AIM id "BurstNET" as I and others have reported?

One of the first things that I learned in regards to support is "A customers perception is a customers reality". In this case, my perception is that "BurstNET" cares little about the customers of the service, the money they spend, their continued subscribership, or any additional sales that could be received by said customers. That's my reality, Sean. At the very least, put an auto-response in the messaging client, not tell people to "hold on" and then dissapear.

In either case, I got a pretty good idea of how long it'll take from salman/eric..

-David

There is no way to tell what or why that happened on AIM. AIM was not meant to be a supoprt tool, but we use it for one out of a matter of convenience for our clients. Only one person can staff the BurstNET screen name at any one time. If that person has to go do something else, reboot a server, etc...then it may look like they are ignoring you, when in all reality they are not even at their desk. If we could find a solution where multiple people could answer the same screen name at the same time and be able to know what has and has not ben answered yet then that would be wonderful. As of this date, I don't think such a solution exists.

Also, all too many times, there is 30-40 AIM windows open at one time. One support rep CANNOT answer all those inquiries at once, so if they don't respond, you can understand why.

We do the best we can for AIM, but it is not a perfect solution. And we cannot just not use it, even though we have considered this, because too many international clients rely on it currently, and phones would be ringing out of control without it.


Sean R.
BurstNET
System Administration

Hello,

Sean.. where the nocster forums.. that you said will be available "shortly".

Why dont you create an irc server where multiple persons can help and also customers?

When will reboots have priority? I mean.. waiting hours for a reboot isnt normal...

best regards,

Forums possibly tonight, definately by tomorrow.

We are working on streamining a few things right now, especially reboots.
You'll see some changes in this coming week regarding such...email notification on alot of things will be sent out.

Sean R.
BurstNET
System Administration

thanks for the reply!

keep up the good work.

best regards,

Hi Sean, thanks for the reply to the email I sent about prices.

Just one question, are those email notices gonna include info about equipment upgrades etc like the other night? Half my ppl are still pissed at me for not giving them any warning about that.

Prior warning would be great to have so we can warn our customers about in advance and save our tech staff (and ourselves) a lot of verbal abuse and potential lost business.

I'm up to 8 days (and still counting) on a simple ticket. I've called, emailed and aim'd multiple times. I'm looking forward to being able to use/trust my new server.:D

I just wanted to comment on what Sean was saying about using AIM for support. Here at Jatol we use AIM, MSIM, Y!, and ICQ as additional support means, and for the most part it has worked out very well. However some times we have seen a few people ask how come we are not always on the IMs and we have had to explain basically the same thing he said, it is an additional means of support and was never meant to replace our helpdesk or our forums.
We have also taken to getting each one of our employees seperate IM ids, this way more than one of us can provide support online via IMs at the same time rather than have one person hit with 200 issues and the others get only one or two, this seems to spread it out a little. Perhaps Nocster could try something like that, maybe BurstNET1, BurstNET2, etc. More buddies to add to your IM lists, but heck, if it meant better support, I am sure most would not complain.

Originally posted by snikle
I just wanted to comment on what Sean was saying about using AIM for support. Here at Jatol we use AIM, MSIM, Y!, and ICQ as additional support means, and for the most part it has worked out very well. However some times we have seen a few people ask how come we are not always on the IMs and we have had to explain basically the same thing he said, it is an additional means of support and was never meant to replace our helpdesk or our forums.
We have also taken to getting each one of our employees seperate IM ids, this way more than one of us can provide support online via IMs at the same time rather than have one person hit with 200 issues and the others get only one or two, this seems to spread it out a little. Perhaps Nocster could try something like that, maybe BurstNET1, BurstNET2, etc. More buddies to add to your IM lists, but heck, if it meant better support, I am sure most would not complain.

They already have 10-15 AIM screennames.

I have 12 of them on my AIM list.

They just Fixed my server...Praise the Lord!

<update>
Well, it's officially 7 days since I entered a ticket into burst's ticketing system with no response. I've talked to them on AIM this weekend, and was told that it was assigned to someone who would be in on Monday. It's still sitting there with no status change.
</update>

-David

<< thedavid >>

Send me your ticket number, and I'll get this completed for you:
sean@burst.net

Sean R.
BurstNET
System Administration

Originally posted by BurstNET

Send me your ticket number...


Sent.

-David

I opened another ticket (previous two tickets disappeared into the void...) on my problem yesterday and copied Sean. Got a reply from Salman within 12 hrs. (still not sure problem is permanently solved). Seems to me the ticket system works only if you also get the attention of key personnel via phone, direct email, this forum... Personally I'd still prefer using tickets if it worked--nice to lay out all the info without repeating yourself.

Bglkk,

I definitely think that more attention needs to be paid to the ticketing system. From their site:

"BurstNET™ offers NOCSTER clientele support 24/7/365 via email, web based ticket system, ICQ, AOL Instant Messanger, & website java chat... Phone support is currently not offered on the NOCSTER product line, in order to keep the costs down."

If I put a ticket in and then update it to see if any more information is available, nothing happens. I don't think anybody gets notified of updated tickets or anything else, as I've received no response in the ticketing system with either the original request or the updated status request.

Additionally, Sean states "AIM was not meant to be a supoprt tool". So we're completely, 100% reliant on this ticketing system that isn't really doing anything.

I'm frustrated. Clients are asking me about getting the things mentioned in the ticket done, and its obvious that I have no power or influence in how fast this gets resolved.

-David

David:

Last night when Salman responded to my ticket, I got an email notification too. But that hasn't always happened. I remember once or twice I found a reply (not often, mind you) after refreshing the request window.

After 12 hrs. of glorious ping responses, my server cut out again this aft. I'm spinning the big ticket wheel again...

We were very tempted to go with a Nocster server based on pretty good reviews here on wht around January. After it took them well over 36 hours to reply to a sales inquiry, and then over 24 hours to reply to ANY email we sent regarding the set up of the server, we ended up canceling the order. We had never gotten the information on the supposed set up, however, a few weeks later we received a bill for the server! Needless to say, I don't think we will even get a Nocster server unless we see drastic changes in their support.

Hope things turn around for them, I hear they were at one time a very respected company.

Bglkk,

I went and checked the ticket just to be sure, and nobody's touched it. Nobody's emailed me or contacted me in any way about it. I also wrote the customer service manager this morning to see if there's anything that they can tell me, and I got a response back from him saying that he'd look into it, and respond on the ticket. I'm still waiting for a response.

I just don't understand what's so difficult about replying to me. It seems as though the only way to get attention is to talk about it in public at WHT.

-David

David:

Sounds like you got their attention at least. I just now got a polite response from Ruth in Billing to a request I made on Feb. 24. Unfortunately her solution doesn't match what keith had helped me to resolve earlier...

snikle:

I went with nocster after reading many good reviews too. Now I keep hearing about how things are gonna get better, but that's been a small comfort so far... In three days it'll be a month since I ordered, and my server is still unpingable for long periods of time. I've also been through delayed delivery, cpanel "License File Expired" errors (two separate occasions), and support tickets with no reply. I know they have many satisfied customers, but my own experience is a great deal of lost time, frustration, and diminished good will with my client. Kinda hard to keep the faith, you know?

<Final Update>

Received an email recently from herb at burst. The issue has been resolved. Tests show that the reverse delegation I requested has been staged, and all looks good. Just wanted everyone to know of the happy ending and not that it never got resolved.

</Final Update>

-David