We are a software development company located in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada and we outsource a large portion of our hosting. With the exception of Oracle hosting which we do internally, all of our hosting business is outsourced. Primarily we require Nt hosting accounts, e-mail and database connectivity for our clients.

I have several concerns regarding Pwebtech. I hope some of you can shed some light on my concerns, and provide me with some feedback.

I have been Pegasus for just over one month; my initial opinion was "fantastic". I even sent Jason a congrats letter on July 5, 2001 at 3:34 p.m. which he replied to 32 minutes later.

Now, I have had some concerns and issues regarding service which I don't feel were adequately answered by his technical support. My network admin also was treated rudely on the phone, and in e-mail (below). I have sent Jason my complaints 3 times via e-mail (high priority) and I have not had any reply.

Unsure how to approach this, I phoned today and asked to speak to Jason. He answered the phone and I expressed concern about not receiving any response responding to my complaints. He explained that they have been short staffed lately and have had some recent staffing problems. I asked why *he* had not replied to my four e-mails and he explained that he gets several hundred e-mails per day and cannot possibly answer them all.

Explaining that I would like him to review my e-mail and reply, he suggested that I sent it to Josh at nt support. I explained that my complaint was with Josh at nt support and I would prefer if he replied. He replied that he has complete faith in Josh, and Josh has done a wonderful job with the nt side of the business. That was pretty much the end of the conversation. Needless to say, I felt worse after the call.

I currently have 3 open tickets with Pwebtech which have been opened for between 5 and 12 days.

I have moved 3 of my 21 accounts to Pwebtech. I have been more than happy with the service, uptime, x-fer speeds and availability. I have grave concerns about moving the remainder of my accounts if I cannot get answers.

Here are my questions?

1. Should I find it pecular that my e-mail of compliments gets answers in 32 minutes, and my compaint does not get answered in 3 weeks? Perhaps I am just a cynic.
2. Should I need to discuss my complaint about Josh with Josh. I copied nt support in on my e-mail two of the four times I mailed Jason. Nt support was aware of my concerns and have still not address them which is why I pursued the issue with Jason.
3. Should I accept that some of my concerns have not been addressed for over three weeks?
4. Is there better out there? I have been with several other companies including Verio at the high end and Readyhosting... I have experience problems with all of them.
5. Should my Nt tech accept e-mail from Josh as detailed below. Perhaps it came off harsher that it was meant, or perhaps my tech read to much into it.
6. Am I expecting too much? I don't think I expect more than I deliver. Perhaps it is too much.

Thanks for all feedback in advance.

Regards,


Richard Madison
President
Light Speed Technologies

Here is a copy of my most recent e-mail:

******************

Jason,

This is my third request at information. My fourth request will be through webhostingtalk forums. You always seem to have a fast and effective answer if laundry is aired in public.

Regards,



Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: Madison, Richard (Contractor -LST, Sudbury)
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 4:05 PM
To: 'jason@pwebtech.com'
Subject: FW: Service and Support
Importance: High

Jason,

I am still waiting on a response. Please acknowledge.

Thanks,



Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: Madison, Richard (Contractor -LST, Sudbury)
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 12:07 AM
To: 'jason@pwebtech.com'
Cc: 'mfillator@lightspeedtech.com'
Subject: Service and Support
Importance: High

Jason,

I have been with your Pegasus for approximately 10 days as a reseller. I have the following domain with you: lightspeedtech.com, lakingtoyota.com and northernnissan.com.

I have several issues and several comments to make about your services.

1. Out of the three accounts I have setup, two have been setup incorrectly (Issue 24979 - lightspeedtech.com could not ftp when started, Issue 25103 - lakingtoyota.com did not have e-mail when started.) This does not instill a great deal of confidence as to pegasus' ability to setup accounts.

2. I think it may be a bit misleading to say there is a control panel for Windows NT accounts. "The only control panels you have are your mail and logs administration pages" is a quote from Issue 24979. In hosting circles, I think the phrase "control panels" generally refers to more than this.
3. I think it is misleading to have the following hours on your click121.com callback page "Sunday 12 : 00 - 20 : 00" as per e-mail Issue 25108 - "We are generally not in here on Sundays." Last Saturday evening I have the e-mail issue with lakingtoyota.com and although you were not available, it made me feel good that Sunday at noon, somebody would call me. Instead, I got a call from your service which sent me to your voice mail... Very disappointing.
4. I have tried over 5 times to "chat with us" during business hours only to receive the following message "Sorry, currently there are no Web Agents on-line. Please refer to our regular working hours and try again later. "
5. I am not sure if I have been billed yet. You have my credit card number on file, but I have yet to receive and invoice, leaving me in the dark as to the billing status.
6. My biggest issue revolves around an e-mail thread that my Network Administrator had with one of your techs. You may read the thread below.
(a) My users cannot change their own passwords. This is a big issue. Your tech suggests since "you are the administrator, you probably should have a copy of their password." I think, my Admin should not be burdened with changing user passwords. Is this the control panel I have heard about? I changed my password and it took over 24 hours to change. The fact that your NT support could not explain why is disturbing.
(b) I would like to think that Pegasus Employees do not have access to my user e-mail passwords. I certainly have policy whereas my Admin can change a users password, but is not privy to it.
(c) This e-mail, as well as several phone calls from my Admin have seem to be less than polite. I would hope that this is the exception, not the norm.

==== START OF EMAIL THREAD ====
-----Original Message-----
From: Josh via RT [mailto:nttech@pwebtech.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 1:44 PM
To: Fillos@sympatico.ca
Subject: [tracker.pwebtech.com #25210] (nttech) password maintenance
tools

To begin with, if they are on your staff and you are the administrator,
you probably should have a copy of their password.

Secondly, we as pegasus employees ARE authorized to have access to
passwords.

We enter your password when your account is set up. We deal with it day
in and day out, its nothing special to us beyond work. But what we are
doing regarding this issue is to go ahead and contact smartmax to find out why
you might not be able to change your own passwords.

This may take a little time to track down, but we will find the
solution.

Josh

Fillos@sympatico.ca wrote (Tue, Jul 10 2001 16:36:42):
> Josh,
> Here is the issue Josh, I need to allow my users to be able to
> change their own passwords. If you change them, they won't be private
> (no offence intended) and I will then have another job to administer,
> there are a great many users in question here.
> Currently I can only change the password used to access the
> remote tools. My mailbox is mfillator@lightspeedtech.com. My current
> password is mfillator - same as the user name. I would like you attempt
> to change my password to mikeee and then be able to access my e-mail. If
> you are successful, could you please tell me how?
> Thanks for your help,
> Mike
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Josh via RT [mailto:nttech@pwebtech.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 2:12 PM
> To: Fillos@sympatico.ca
> Subject: [tracker.pwebtech.com #25210] (nttech) password maintenance
> tools
>
> We did not do any upgrades to our mail server monday. In fact no
> upgrades have been done to that server in a couple months.
>
> People change their password all the time via the web based admin on the
> ntmail server. What e-mail addresses are you trying to change the
> password for? I'll change them for you.
>
> Josh
>
> Fillos@sympatico.ca wrote (Mon, Jul 9 2001 21:57:08):
>
> > Dear sirs,
>
> > I understand that you upgraded you e-mail server today (Monday). Has
> > anyone since successfully changed their password? I was unsuccessful
> > using the ntmail.pwebtech.com /remote tools. I tried first by logging in
> > as myself, then as the postmaster. Both attempts were unsuccessful. I
> > also tried to change a client’s password using the remote tools logged
> > in as him. This attempt was unsuccessful as well. Each time the app
> > reported a successful change, but the old password was the one needed
> > to access the message store.
> >
> > Thank you ion advance for your prompt response,
> > Mike Fillator,
>
> > Light Speed Technologies
> > this message was all MIME format
>
==== END OF EMAIL THREAD ====

Please respond,


Richard Madison
President
Light Speed Technologies
****************

It was bound to happen once in a while, we can't please everyone. But as I explained to you on the phone, We had some staffing issues over the last few weeks, adn everyone has been working doubly hard to help with the load. Those issues have been resolved. And yes I have COMPLETE FAITH in JOSH, and I understand why he might have been a little short with you. Maybe the fact that he and our other senior admins have been working 12 to 16 hour days for a while? But none the less, I don't deal with virtual hosting, I don't make decisions in that area, Josh is as high as people get when it comes to NT, he makes all the decisions, and handles all operations of our NT side. And you hung up on me, not the other way around. Josh has been with Pegasus since almost the begining and has been a pillar of this company.


Josh does not visit these boards at all. Give him a call or email directly, josh@pwebtech.com 1-888-734-9320.

And yes I get hundreds of emails a day, granted a good portion of them are mailing lists i.e security focus, qmail, apache, etc.. etc.. as well as a great many other emails.

So please contact josh, so he can resolve your issues. I will tell him to expect your call. sometime tomorrow since he leaves at 4pm now. Steve is on duty right now in NT, I am sure he can help you as well.

lightspeed, you can not expect someone to admin your servers for you. You are on colo right? As far as NT users changing their password, this has been something that has been know, and happens at every host. It in no way involves pwebtech. I've worked with a company in the past who did 2000/nt hosting, and we did infact have to keep a copy of all the passwords. There really isn't a good windows control panel. Try hosting control, but it really isn't very good :-(


One last thing, i would never mark your emails urgent, everytime i see that big red dot in my mailbox it makes me want to grind me teeth. I'm sure it has to get frustration to have a mailbox full of mail and somebody marks theirs as urgent...:D

Best Wishes

Jason,

That is excellent response time.

And you hung up on me, not the other way around.

I never said that anyone hung up on anyone else, rather that "That was pretty much the end of the conversation. " The concern was that I had no resolutions, not that the phone call was ended abruptly or not.

What I would have liked from Pwebtech was the following:
1. A solution to the issues addressed in the original complaint.
2. The ability to issue concerns regarding an employee of Pwebtech to their superior. I understand that you have "COMPLETE FAITH in JOSH" and I think that is fantastic. But when a customer complains to you about him, perhaps you should review the complaint and discuss it with the customer rather than making the customer discuss the complaint with the offending party.
3. A reply without having to resort to posting negative feedback in an industry forum. I understand that your time is important. My time is no less important. I have spent over 5 hours trying to resolve these issues. I don't understand why it has to be so difficult.
4. An apology from Jason for not replying to 3 prior e-mails. Or in nttech's case, 2 prior e-mails.

Am I asking too much?

Regards,


Richard Madison
President
Light Speed Technologies

I *think* he's a reseller, and doesn't colocate. What control panel do they use? Plesk?


I have been with your Pegasus for approximately 10 days as a reseller.

As I said we were all extremely over worked and over-tired from working as hard as we have been working over the past two -three weeks, that is one reason why you email was not repsonded to and that is the reason why Josh was maybe a little short. Again to resolve your issues and open tickets contact josh or steve. Steve is in the office right now and will be more than happy to help you.

And yes I am sorry for not replying but the as mentioned previously we have been extremely busy and were understaffed due to unavoidable employee issues. All is back to normal now. It is not difficult to resolve just call steve, simple problem solved. I am saying the same things I said to you on the phone. There is nothing more I can say.

Originally posted by ckizer
lightspeed, you can not expect someone to admin your servers for you. You are on colo right? As far as NT users changing their password, this has been something that has been know, and happens at every host. It in no way involves pwebtech. I've worked with a company in the past who did 2000/nt hosting, and we did infact have to keep a copy of all the passwords. There really isn't a good windows control panel. Try hosting control, but it really isn't very good :-(


One last thing, i would never mark your emails urgent, everytime i see that big red dot in my mailbox it makes me want to grind me teeth. I'm sure it has to get frustration to have a mailbox full of mail and somebody marks theirs as urgent...:D

Best Wishes

Thank you for your feedback. We are not on colo. We simply resell virtual hosting packages at this time. My clients *users* cannot administer their own e-mail password. I have no problem keeping a single password for each client (i.e. the postmaster account or administrator account) but I do not think that I should have to keep a password for every user for every client I have. Understand that on these 3 small accounts with Pwebtech that equates to over 50 passwords. Should I be responsible each and every time a user needs to change their e-mail password?

My understanding of mailmax is that clients should be able to modify their own passwords. I would guess that it is an issue with configuration at Pwebtech. Regardless, we were sent an e-mail explaining that this problem would be looked into and we would receive a reply back. This has not happened.

I think mailmax is fine for controlling userid's and passwords. There seems to be an issue with the amount of time it takes for a password to get changed. Perhaps between 12 and 48 hours.

I would like to think that e-mail is not disregarded when marked as urgent. I understand that everyone has a different threshold for what should or should not be urgent. In my mind, this complaint was of a high urgency. As a customer of Pwebtech, they should have considered it a complaint of high urgency. My goal was to make it easier for the recipient to notice in the event they get 300 mails per day.

Regards,

Richard Madison
President
Light Speed Technologies

Richard, there is nothing more for me to say on this issue, You want this resolved please call steve 1-888-734-9320 or you can call josh tomorrow. Have a nice day.

Richard (Lightspeed),

I am a firm believer in the customer is always right. However there is something you should know. A helpful customer is always more right. Meaning, make it easy for a tech to help you. In reading your post, it looks like you hit poor Josh with support issues from all different departments. I see billing issues, company policy issues as well as tech issues. What tech has time to read a book? let alone answer other departments issues?

My advice, is to next time prioritize your issue. Hit support with the main issue. Then once that is addressed, move to your less prioritized issues. I am in no way stating your approach is wrong, I am just pointing out a way to help get better service from over worked admins.

Originally posted by jayglate
...
And yes I am sorry for not replying but the as mentioned previously we have been extremely busy and were understaffed due to unavoidable employee issues. All is back to normal now. It is not difficult to resolve just call steve, simple problem solved. I am saying the same things I said to you on the phone. There is nothing more I can say. [/B]

Jason,

Thank you for the apology. But I think the big picture is being missed here:
- Why is the responsibility on me to get these issues resolved? You have open tickets regarding a clients problems... Are my 3 e-mails not enough? I would like to think my tickets would get addressed without having to contact Steve or Josh or yourself.

I still am not sure if I have been billed or not.

I am still waiting for a solution for the original issues in the complaint. Why must I spend more than the 5 hours I have already spent trying to track down these issues? I have signed up, paid my money (I think?) and feel I have not been treated reasonably.

I am also in the unfortuate position of having to spend another 8-16 hours of my time if I choose to switch hosts for these 3 clients.

All in all it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. How unfortunate.

Regards,


Richard Madison
President
Light Speed Technologies

In my mind, this complaint was of a high urgency. As a customer of Pwebtech, they should have considered it a complaint of high urgency. My goal was to make it easier for the recipient to notice in the event they get 300 mails per day.

What if all 300 did what you did? I am sure a customer with downed e--mail would not be happy knowing another customer labels his support issue high urgency when e-mail works just fine.

This is the #1 reason we removed the ability for customers to choose priority. 99% think their issue is high/urgent priority.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
...
I am a firm believer in the customer is always right. However there is something you should know. A helpful customer is always more right. Meaning, make it easy for a tech to help you. In reading your post, it looks like you hit poor Josh with support issues from all different departments. I see billing issues, company policy issues as well as tech issues. What tech has time to read a book? let alone answer other departments issues?

My advice, is to next time prioritize your issue. ...

UmBillyCord,

Thank you for your suggestion. I understand completely what you are saying.

This e-mail was meant as a synopsis for Jason as to issues I had with Pwebtech. I was not implying that they needed to all be solved by a single tech. It was meant to bring these issues to his attention. It was very similar to the format I used when I listed all of the compliments I had for their sales department (see below).

Perhaps I should consider your approach the next time I have a complaint.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

Regards,


Richard Madison
President
Light Speed Technologies

Here is a copy of my first e-mail to Jason:
*******
Jason,

I read on the Webhosting Talk boards that you are the bossman at Pegasus. Here is some feedback on your services which I put to the test today.

1. I tried your "call me back" button. I was promised a callback in 2 minutes. 2 minutes later, someone from sales called me back. I was very pleased.

2. One of my techs called your toll free number to gauge response time. A tech answered the phone. No electronic attendant, no annoying voicemail. I was very pleased.

3. I have had 3 e-mail threads with your sales department. One with Steve and 2 with feh. Both answered all of my questions promptly. I was very pleased.

I currently have about 20 hosting accounts with readyhosting and verio. ... content deleted by RM ...
I am looking to move my 5 readyhosting accounts in the next week. I have applied for a reseller account with Pegasus.

If the level of service continues to live up to what I have experienced so far, the 5 accounts will be moved this week.

Tell your sales and support staff that they are doing a great job and buy them a coffee.

Regards,


Richard Madison
President
Light Speed Technologies

*****

Billing issues billing@pwebtech.com

NT issues: nttech@pwebtech.com

Those are you routes to yoru issues to.

On a seperate note: Anything with the titel traker.pwebtech.com in it is no longer valid as that upgrade failed and crashed and burned and we had to downgrade to the older version. All emails in that system have been lost which is maybe why nobody has gotten back to you.

And reading over tracer #25210 I don't see anytihng wrong with what josh was saying at all. You seemed to be the one that was short with him. None the less, I am threw discussing this issue here. If you have further concerns the above emails to the deperatments, should be your next route to get your problems resolved equickly.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord

What if all 300 did what you did? I am sure a customer with downed e--mail would not be happy knowing another customer labels his support issue high urgency when e-mail works just fine.
...

UmBillyCord,

Again, thank you for the positive feedback. I am not trying to defend my actions of marking my issue as a high priority, but rather explain the reasoning.

I understand that if all 300 did what I did, there may be focus taken away from the real issues.

When I decide whether or not to mark e-mail urgent, I put myself in the recipients place. Would I, as recipient, consider this urgent? This was not simply an issue of something not working. Had it been such an issue, it would have been directed to technical support. I have addressed a series of other issues to technical support at pwebtech that were not of the urgent nature. This was a case of having a customer complain about 6 issues on the same reseller account. Perhaps bringing to Jason's attention that things may be slipping. Or maybe a heads up so he could look into it. My concerns arose after 7 days when I still had not received a reply.

Regards,


Richard Madison
President
Light Speed Technologies

Aloha

well in another thread I had a prob with nttech not responding to multiple emails never a response for over a week
I finally called in and got a tech that was not very friendly and the first one had no clue about NT (understandable) but again support in my book not very good.

I think maybe they are offering a good product just kinda hard to say I have heard more people stick up for them and a few had probs.
I think there is a bit of not taking care of cutomers?

on my emails
Jay mentioned that there ticket system was down well if there is no double check on the system this is a flaw to me(hope they get a way to cover that in future). I did cancel my account.
so I am not sure what to think
I think maybe some people skills are needed ???
good product good pricing seems to be a good network.
maybe when something goes wrong just dont get the well I have said my part and it is closed.

not a negative not a positive here
just stating my feelings
as acidents do happen and Jay was great to deal with
so I would still recomend them
just wanted to add that as it might have sounded negative

Lightspeed,
I commend you on your politeness and for being level headed in this thread. Its not often you see a client with a three week old support ticket be so kind and patient. You guys should give him a break. Anyway best of luck to both parties with resolving this one.

Lightspeed , I agree with Jag on this one.

Good Job with your patience, I commend you, support is support, until the problem is resolved its a unsatisified customer...

Thats how I see it...


Joe

Still,

"Maybe the fact that he and our other senior admins have been working 12 to 16 hour days for a while?"

is not a very good excuse for not answering e-mails it is?

I know how it is to work that much but if that is needed you might want to hire more people at least until you aren't that busy ay longer...

I am not sure if you read the whole thread, but I stated that we are past those issues now.

I have to admit, I just signed up for a server with Pwebtech not only because of the price, but because of the patience Jason and Ed have shown me.

Basically, since Christmas I have been pestering Jason about offers etc and he has always answered any questions I ask without getting ticked off at me :)

--James

and also, i must add that I think Pwebtech has gotten a pretty good reputation around here for the guys like Jason on these boards

Jason: I was just stating that it shouldn't be used as an excuse. All companies will experience this once in a while but as you said you are past it and it seems you have handled it well and everyone is pleased :)

I also have a server with Pwebtech.com Jay has been very fast to answer any of my questions.