I have been defending Burst to some degree about having their dirty laundry out on the line but I guess the posts are justified .

I ordered a server on Tuesday morning and was told 14 - 48hrs until it goes online , it is now Saturday and I still do not have a server . I emailed support yesterday at 9:00 am asking when the server would go online , received a tracker right away but after 6 hours still no response . I ICQed at 3:00 pm asking if this was the type of support I should expect ? Over 6 hrs during normal business hrs ? Got an immediate response saying " yes , depends on load ".
Not the answer I was looking for but truthful I guess .
They said they have a LOT of customers ........but I can get a priority ticket for $125 above normal charges .
I said "you guys are two days late setting up my server and want to charge me $125 to tell me why in a timely fashion ? "
There was no response after that ? (I copied the ICQ to CMA)
It is now Satuday morning , 24hrs after the ticket was put in and still no response . I cancelled my order a few minutes ago .

I tried to give Burst the benefit of the doubt , Sean claimed things were much better , but I am not seeing it .
I would not be here slamming if there was just a little communication , I was not in an huge hurry but the lack of communication pisses me off and I have to wonder , when I put a couple hundred customers on a burst server and they are screaming at me because the server is down , am I going to get the same level of communication from Burst ? I can't take that chance .

Sorry Sean , but I gave you guys ample time to handle this properly and got nothing .

I have same problem :-(

Ordered Server Friday June 8th, told server would be delayed due to parts on order, should be up Wed or Wed Night. I wasn't happy, nothing like selling stuff ya don't have. OK, no problem, I can wait. I'm very patient. Well it's now Saturday June 16th, NO communication from company, NO server.

I called them on Thursday, they said it should be online that evening.

Friday, no server . I called again and received message machine and left message, nothing returned. At least communicate guys, give me a definate time or I'm gone.

Friday opened a ticket online too, nothing from these guys as of yet ! They have processed order for money but I have NO product, this is a No No.

The biggest problem I have here is the LACK of communication. We all know crap happens and I can accept that but to not let us know whats going on is my biggest gripe.

Sean was quick to accept an offer from us and we appreciate that but there needs to be some follow up here and support. If they are that busy right now, then I see growing pains coming soon again with connection and this worries me!!

I wasn't in a real big hurry until they screwed me out of a week , now I'm scrambling to find another server ....

Yes, I hate the fact we have lost so much time too.. Have they charged your Credit Card already like they have with us?

Yeah they charged it on Wednesday , (funny , billing seems to be very responsive ? ) I 'll give em three days next week to issue the credit before I call my bank . I issue refunds to my customers inside of 3 days I don't see why Burst can't .

Wow, what a rolling heat.

Are you guys this :angry: normally?

If your colo provider delays email respond within 1-2 days or cannot solve your problem, will you get angry like this?

If they have a valid reason and work with you to solve the problem, will you be understandable.

I am curious because I am planning to sell dedicated server service.

Its about the broken agreements and lack of communication . I signed up believing I would have a server in 24 hrs per a post by Sean . I signed up and that changed to 48 hrs , no problem , I can wait an extra day . Then the communication stopped . Now its 5 days and no communication . I agree sh** happens , especially in this business but failure to communicate what is going on is inexcusable . So to answer the question , yeah , I'm going to be plenty pissed off when my server is down and 200 pissed off customers are screaming at me while my upstream provider is ignoring me . You mean to tell me you would n't be angry ? I 'm just lucky I found this out before I put a couple hundred customers there .

Exuse Me?

I think 8 day wait for a 48 hour server is plenty patient! Another thing, I offer customer support right now on a daily basis. NO communication is the worst thing I can do to customers. I have found if you keep them informed 9 times out of 10 they will be understanding to your problems.

I'm not talking about waiting for customers to send in a ticket to ask why things haven't happened as expected and then have them wait 24 to 48 hours for an answer. We send communication to customers if anything unusual interferes with their order (ex: delays, out of inventory, etc.) as expected that would upset them or cause concern. If we make an expected date or day of delivery,we send notice if we CANNOT deliver the goods and they are usually understanding but NO communication is the biggest SIN!


Originally posted by Asia
Wow, what a rolling heat.

Are you guys this :angry: normally?

If your colo provider delays email respond within 1-2 days or cannot solve your problem, will you get angry like this?

If they have a valid reason and work with you to solve the problem, will you be understandable.

I am curious because I am planning to sell dedicated server service. :angry:

I apologize for any delays in setting up servers this week.
Our main supplier, Ingram Micro (largest computer parts distributor in the US), has been out of stock on rackmount cases and processors for some time now. We ordered from an alternative supplier, and parts arrived Friday. We have been working hard since Friday afternoon to build all machines, and get them to our clients in the order in which the client's orders were placed.
We should be caught up by this evening on all orders.
Please bear with us...

Sean R.
BurstNET

Their main concern was lack of communication and not delayed delivery.

In any business, a lot of the time, people think that it's sometimes a negative thing to give people bad news when something isn't completed on the schedule agreed to or told to the client of when it would be -- and would rather break the news with some good news. However, this just seems like one of many examples of how sometimes bad news is better than no news -- as much as it might seem appropriate and/or better to just wait another day to just get it completed and say "Sorry for the delay, but the server's up" and get a happy response to the task being completed at least. However, that it's actually better to simply give them the bad news first and say "Sorry for the delay, it _might_ come in tomorrow and if so, we'll have it up that night".. and hope you don't have to say the same thing the next day. An uncomfortable position for all involved, and embarassing, but definitely just keeping people informed is a must.

I've heard that Sean is working 24/7 at the NOC , setting up the servers :). I understand all your frustrations and this could easily be explained that BurstNet is growing extremely fast. I couldn't blame them :p

Guys, give them a chance and everything should be ok :)
if you guys need some temp. space , i'm more than happy to accommodate your site in our BurstNET server until your server is up and runnin.

ps: the ppl. at Burst told us that Sean's been working day/night NON stop? Sean get some :sleeping:

Thanks but I'll wait and see what happens , the big issue here is the lack of comm not really the problems Sean is battling . Tim is right a little bad news is much easier to take than no news .

For dedicated server and/or colocation, do people usually pay monthly or annually? :D

Originally posted by Asia
For dedicated server and/or colocation, do people usually pay monthly or annually? :D

I'm thinking this should probably be a new thread. :stickout

Originally posted by MrGoodHost
.........

ok ,I'd say wait ...it should be ready anytime soon :)

Originally posted by Planet Z


I'm thinking this should probably be a new thread. :stickout

:D :beer:

Support is a little slow but have been told this should improve with new staff, have to say it has but could be better.

I also have to agree with others, it is not the bad news that is the problem it is the lack of communication. All they have to do is say there is a problem, bad news is better than no news.

I am giving them a chance as i believe things will get better, but hey guys just reply to emails and you will hear less in this forum.

The server is available tonight! BUT.. It appears that it was not setup correctly for us and we'll have to pull a ticket ..

They were suppose to have DNS servers setup for us but they are NOT. There is nothing in the Zone files. They are however listed in the "Edit Setup" screen in WHM.

They were suppose to have a few web accounts setup for us and they were NOT.

If I hit list accounts, it shows our main server account but nothing comes up when I use the edit function, just empty selection boxes?

What to do here? Can this be acomplished easily?

Arrgg!!

Update: I did get a message from Sean stating the above shortages at about the same time I typed this message, he's up late too! We'll see if we can get this resolved tonight?

:) got the server eh ? :)

btw:We didNot ask them to setup our DNS or add the initial accounts simply bec. I/we want to set it up ourselves.
Brad, you can do this and its not that much of a hassle.
The WHM gurus(i think there are a lot of them here using WHM-CPanel stuff,as for me i'm new to this WHM setup but never contacted support@Burst, reason is that I'll learn faster if i do it my way :p) on this board should be able to help you out should you encounter any probs. configuring your servers DNS.

I don't have a problem with this but I've wasted hours tonight already trying to find something that fits my situation and still not sure here. Yes, it's probably simple but right now it's confusing, the doc is worthless.

Do I need to setup a default account and settings for the main domain even though they already have an IP assigned and a primary user name for the main server that I can login on?

If I list the accounts, it shows one listing for apollo.myname.com which was suppose to be my server name yet the paper they sent me says host.myname.com is the server name, and in WHM it says host.myname.com is the Host name, how confusing is this, hahaha.. If I'm correct, this should be apollo.myname.com in all areas and this is what the server would be running as, why then does the WHM say for the host name (The value of this attribute cannot be modified) and it says host.myname.com.

I cannot modify this account from the panel, it will not let me.. So, there are NO accounts. Do I need to add an account for the main server now with quotas and assign another IP address to it and then do the DNS Zone stuff?

Don't the DNS servers also need to be assigned separate IP's from the Main IP address too?

This should probably be a new thread .. Yikes







Originally posted by elijah
:) got the server eh ? :)

btw:We didn't ask them to setup our DNS or add the initial accounts simply bec. I/we want to set it up ourselves.
Brad, you can do this and its not that much of a hassle.
The WHM gurus(i think there are a lot of them here using WHM-CPanel stuff,as for me i'm new to this WHM setup but never contacted support@Burst, reason is that I'll learn faster if i do it my way :p) on this board should be able to help you out should you encounter any probs. configuring your servers DNS.

lol
how is burst doing these days?

Your answer: *L*

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=13122

node9: And you have been a BurstNET client when? ...since you have so much knowledge of our company, our infrastructure, and the support we provide.

Sean R.
BurstNET

Sean,

You have many clients.

How can you tell if a person is not one of your clients?

:D

Originally posted by BurstNET
node9: And you have been a BurstNET client when? ...since you have so much knowledge of our company, our infrastructure, and the support we provide.

Sean R.
BurstNET

Because I know this individual.
He has never been a client, and insists on making such statements about our company still.
This is not even close to the first time he has done this.

Someone with legitimate gripes posting such a thing is fine, as long as they are/have been an actual client....But this guy has another agenda.


Sean R.
BurstNET

buddy
I have talked to your sales support before, and your tech support, they seemed to be CLUELESS about things i was asking them

based on what I have seen, you have very poor support, and that was like a month or two ago, and now, today.... June 17th, I still see your communcation/support sucks.

node9:
Yes, we remember your call...I was standing right there when that call came in. You asked totally ludicrous questions, that no sales rep should be expected to answer, then didn't even let our rep answer you or transfer you to another rep that could answer you, and then hung up in our sales reps face. As far as we are concerned you were just calling as a setup, and to cause problems. The whole call last about 60 seconds, and as far as we are concerned it was a prank call.

Sean R.
BurstNET

(I posted this in the wrong thread, did anyone notice, heh)

I'm just going to butt in here... it seems much of the Burst threads I've seen have one thing in common: Expectations not being met. Now, this could be due to people having high expectations, or it could be due to Sean and Burst creating these expectations, I really don't know. Maybe I'm just totally off here.

When I see, "My server hasn't been set up yet...", etc., it leads me to believe that they were told that the server would be set up by a certain date, and it wasn't. Maybe a day or two late, no biggie, but when you expect it to be set up Tuesday, and it isn't set up until Thursday, people freak out. Those people who post here may have seen an ad posted and then post their experience(s).

When my client wants something, I tell them it will be done by next week, then I try to get it done in 4 days. They are happy because I exceeded their expectations. I knew I could get it done in 4 or 5 days, but if I told them that, then they'd expect it in 4 or 5 days and start bugging me the 3rd day.

What does this have to do with this thread? Well, not much really just a general comment. Maybe this helps, maybe not, but just a tangent about some of the posts in this thread and ones that have been posted recently.

I agree Chicken... or atleast tell them it's a possible 1-2 days but up to blah blah... then you'll get the nagging like normal, but not these posts.

Originally posted by Chicken
When my client wants something, I tell them it will be done by next week, then I try to get it done in 4 days. They are happy because I exceeded their expectations. I knew I could get it done in 4 or 5 days, but if I told them that, then they'd expect it in 4 or 5 days and start bugging me the 3rd day.

Yes.
The Scottie fron Star Trek approach.

"It'll take at least 72 hours to fix the warp drives Cap'n"
and of course, he does it in 12 hours and is considered a miracle worker.

We quote 8 to 12 hours to set up new hosting accounts and most are done within an hour or so.
Its a good policy which keeps people on your side.

Gordon

The motto I like the most (albeit not my personal one): "Consistently set low standards and fail to meet them". :stickout

Originally posted by BurstNET
node9:
Yes, we remember your call...I was standing right there when that call came in. You asked totally ludicrous questions, that no sales rep should be expected to answer, then didn't even let our rep answer you or transfer you to another rep that could answer you, and then hung up in our sales reps face. As far as we are concerned you were just calling as a setup, and to cause problems. The whole call last about 60 seconds, and as far as we are concerned it was a prank call.

Sean R.
BurstNET


Just what were the questions that he asked?

To Whom it May Concern(Sean R.):

I have spent a while reading all of the threads and posts about BurstNET's lack of service and communication with their customers. In every single thread, I find Sean making comments to defend his company. It is expected that a defense of any company would occur if it were being flamed and were I Sean I would probbly do the same. BUT, this does show that he is spending a LOT of his time on the boards scouring through the threads to type responses. Although I myself make NO CLAIS AT EVER HOSTING A SERVER ON BURST, from all of the posts by unsatisyed customers, I can conclude that the time that Sean spends on this board and other could be better used to better his company.
Fustration with these threads on Sean's part are not without reason but he seems hostile overall. Of all of his posts, 1/2 seem like he was completely enrages and the rest are dead cold and hostile. While I understand that some customers are just troublemakers(no offense, there are just those types of people out there), most are not and most are just angry customers trying to vent their fury. For Sean and BurstNET, I suggest that you back off on the recruitment of new customers utnil you can balance off the client/support ratio to an acceptable level. For the angry customers, I suggest you guys find a good server elsewhere until BurstNET becomes stablized and move back if their conition is acceptable but do not resort to constantly flaming a company.
I hope that good hosting companies will eventually reconize their follies and flaws and make their best effort to fix those problems. If not, problems may esclate into a major loss of customers of the fate of PageCreators.net/Trinity Hosting.

<< BUT, this does show that he is spending a LOT of his time on the boards scouring through the threads to type responses. Although I myself make NO CLAIS AT EVER HOSTING A SERVER ON BURST, from all of the posts by unsatisyed customers, I can conclude that the time that Sean spends on this board and other could be better used to better his company. >>

BurstNET currently has more staff that ever, and is more caught up on tech support issues that we ever have been in the past. As far as we are concerned we are doing a pretty darn good job handling support for all of our new clients. Regardless, my job description at BurstNET includes handling much of the public relations (including public forums), NOT high end system administration support (which is what the few still open support issues are currently...which I cannot answer, nor could answer in the few minutes it takes me to respond to these posts...).
You wouldn't ask an accountant to to handle sales calls....it's not their job...nor anything they could even handle.
Besides, I really don't spend that much time responding to these tickets...I do a siple search a few times a day for mention of BurstNET, and then I respond 1-2-3 to these posts. If I have a little free time I may look for other relevany posts to respond to. However, I am not a Tim Greer....that types a four page document for every reponse (Tim's free plug...:-)....

Sean R.
BurstNET

Wow, that was fast.........

I really think that hiring someone else to do this for you and doing more micromangement of your company would work better in the long run.

I apoligize for any premature conclusions on my part if anyone found them offense. I also apoligize for my typos that I am prone to make.

Sean, from what you have said and from what I have read, you have been working around the clock to build new servers and to upgrade your systems, then how come you have so much time @ your computer? This question is not meant to offend you, it is merely a curious inquiry.

I wish you luck on your reform of Burst and I hope that you will pace yourself in future expansions in case you should manage to outpace your customer support or server capacity.

>> Wow, that was fast.........

WebHostingTalk send's out emails when someone responds to a post we have previously reponded to.
This response happens to go into our ticket system here, so if I am in the middle of answering tickets, we see the WTH email right aways....

>> I really think that hiring someone else to do this for you and doing more micromangement of your company would work better in the long run.

BurstNET pays me to do several things...including basic sysadmin tech support, high end sales, hardware ordering, aserver setups, and public relations. What difference does it make if they switch me to tech support, or hire some one else to do tech support?...the point being there is plently of staff to handle the tech support load.
Besides, I am better positioned where I am to handle multiple facets of the business, and that is what I am on staff for here....

>> Sean, from what you have said and from what I have read, you have been working around the clock to build new servers and to upgrade your systems, then how come you have so much time @ your computer? This question is not meant to offend you, it is merely a curious inquiry.

Well, you can only build servers when the parts are in stock....ALOT of our delays, actually the majority of them, are due to not being able to keep hardware in stock fast enough...not because of us setting the server up too slowly when the parts are in stock...
Some of us do work 36 hours straight though, after large hardware shipments arrive, to build servers.
Regardless, building servers is only part of my job...

>> I wish you luck on your reform of Burst and I hope that you will pace yourself in future expansions in case you should manage to outpace your customer support or server capacity.

We are not doing any "reform" of BurstNET. BurstNET is a perfectly stable and viable company as is, and always has been. The only thing we needed was to hire more system administration staff to keep up with new server sales...and that we have done, and are continuing to do. We are not changing anything about the way we run our company however, as we have been succesfully doing it for many years now in this manner. We do continue to better ourself by adding new features and services, to meet client requests/demands....

Sean R.
BurstNET

Geez...... You talk like a politician (Did burst hire you just for that quality?)

And you twisted the meaning of my words (once again).

By Fast Reply, I meant you replyed to my post fast.

My other comments were aimed at the revelance of the discussion of these boards as a threat to Burst's reputation and the high importance that Burst apparently places on these boards.

I retract the reform comment I made but even you have to admit that your customer support was pretty dismal (according to MANY posts by other) a little while back and that is the reason you are hiring more staff to help with the increase of clients. While it may not necessarily be a reform, it is surely an attempt to improve the quality of your services.

I have no idea of the quality of your current service but I do urge you guys to be truthful to the clients/customers and do not run untruthful or unethical scams or advertising campaigns.

Have a Nice Day!

>> Geez...... You talk like a politician (Did burst hire you just for that quality?)

Heh....now that is amusing...
Thanx though :-)...that to me, means I a doing this facet of my job properly ...

>> My other comments were aimed at the revelance of the discussion of these boards as a threat to Burst's reputation and the high importance that Burst apparently places on these boards.

We monitor almost every discussion board we can find...
If there were articles or other mention of BurstNET somewhere, we would monitor that as well.
We have to keep control of anything incorrect or inacurate posted abuot or firm.
Most huge corporations do this as well in other industries, but due to the quatity of posts about them, they are unable to respond to them alll..and resort to only the most important issues.
A companies reputation is very important.
Besides, everytime we post something, it is a form of advertisement one way or another...

>> I retract the reform comment I made but even you have to admit that your customer support was pretty dismal (according to MANY posts by other) a little while back and that is the reason you are hiring more staff to help with the increase of clients. While it may not necessarily be a reform, it is surely an attempt to improve the quality of your services.

Yes, we will admit we had some technical problems in the past, but not not rehash everything all over again, I will simply state that not everything was under our control...and we were at the mercy of "another" provider. Since the opening of our new data center, we have been providing excellent service with our network..to the point people are actually raving about our uptime and speed.
As far as support staff, yes, were were very under-staffed at one point. This was mostly over a year ago to two years ago, when we bought out True Hosting, and some other smaller companies. We also at that point were one of the most popular virtual hosting companies on the forums...and we were just getting swamped with orders...and it took it's toll on us. BUT, we survived that, learned from our mistakes, and were ready this second time around. With the building of our new NOC, we came prepared to hire all the needed staff, and ready to act quickly should the support load require more employees.
Most posts about BurstNET being short on staff occured a long time ago, and are no longer relevant today. Some individuals just insist on rehashing these issues, and making it look like this is still the issue. The interesting part is that 90% of the BurstNET staff was not even employeed here back then. BurstNET currently has 15 employees...compared to when we had only 3-4 when these posts were mostly made.

The point is that every company experiences growth pains....it is completely normal.
We feel we are doing a pretty darn good job dealing with such, considering the enormous growth we are currently enduring.

Sean R
BurstNET








I have no idea of the quality of your current service but I do urge you guys to be truthful to the clients/customers and do not run
untruthful or unethical scams or advertising campaigns.

Have a Nice Day!

Hi Sean:

Just curious: do you own part/all of Burst?

I do not own any percentage of the company, but I do have a direct interest in the company due to certain terms of my contract upon sale of the company. I am one of the original employees of BurstNET and have been here since the company entered the web hosting business. Our CEO, S. Matthew Arcus, is the majority stockholder of BurstNET...but I think there are others involved now due to recent funding we have received...but I am not sure exact details.


Sean R.
BurstNET

Originally posted by BurstNET
I do not own any percentage of the company, but I do have a direct interest in the company due to certain terms of my contract upon sale of the company.

Hmmm, okay. There are plans to sell Burst in the near future?

Sean,
Would you mind providing a rough figure for the total amount of clients/customers you have in Shared/Dedicated/Co-Location? I would like to get a feel for the size of your current operations. Thanks!

MrGoodHost,

Please keep everyone informed on how you like your new server with burstnet as we need updates from real clients.


:puke:

I bailed out of Burst 10 days ago and signed up with VO . I am very pleased with VO so far , excellent communication and support tickets get answered very quickly . Server was setup with no issues , just a very good experience so far .
I have to give Burst credit they did give me a refund within three days of cancelling my server order .

I am happy so far. I have rarely needed support, but as I get more servers I may...
Although their connection is fast, I like redundancy, so am waiting for the 2nd connection to their NOC, then I will probably get some more servers there. So far the one I have is doing well.

Look for more from me in the future on this subject.
:cool:

Regards
AH

Alareach,

If you don't mind me asking what is your web address of your site with burst?

Or anyone else that uses burst can you give me your web address?

Thanks

Originally posted by Matrix
Or anyone else that uses burst can you give me your web address?



if you can provide a *very* good reason to ask for our servers url, i will be glad to give you the url :)

elijah,

Simple reason is because I want to see how fast the sites are running that are on bursts servers.

Originally posted by Matrix
elijah,

Simple reason is because I want to see how fast the sites are running that are on bursts servers.

Fair enough :) there's not much to this site though but it is hosted on our burst dedicated machine poof*gone :D

*ps: due to the -sort of- commercial nature of the site , i will remove it once you let me know that you've checked it out*

Elijah, it was asked for specifically. You do not have to remove it unless you want to for personal reasons, just F.Y.I.

Also, it is nice to see that people are discussing things normally. I have to admit when I saw these two threads at the top, I warmed up the admin menu :D expecting to have to do something. *whew*

Originally posted by Chicken
Elijah, it was asked for specifically. You do not have to remove it unless you want to for personal reasons, just F.Y.I.

I'll just remove it after .. :)


Also, it is nice to see that people are discussing things normally. I have to admit when I saw these two threads at the top, I warmed up the admin menu :D expecting to have to do something. *whew*

I agree, we should all get along :beer:

You people are lucky, eh just 8 days delay in setting up a server? What about us who sent $6,000 June the 15th and we are still waiting for them (5 machines) to be ready? Calling our American supplyer many times a day (probably bothering him) without any answer.
Customers are pressuring us and we are completely puzzled.
Italy is far away and don't know how to act.
:(

Good luck everybody

Please note the above comment is not directed at BurstNET....as we do not have any pending 5-server orders at this time...these are from another provider globe is referring to...

Sean R.
BurstNET

Yes it's not directed to you. Although we might have something to say about you also.
That comment was meant to a different company we here don't want to mention because we want to give them a further chance.

A question about co-location: how can we get documents to proof we are the owner of server we are using? Nobody sent us any document where is written we own the servers we've paied.

thank you

Originally posted by elijah
*ps: due to the -sort of- commercial nature of the site , i will remove it once you let me know that you've checked it out*


Got it.......Thanks.