I feel it neccessary that I should share my recent wonderful experience with Acrolive. I think WHT is about sharing experiences and other's can take it for what its worth so I wanted to partake in the sharing. I apologize that this post is quite lenthly but I wanted to capture the pure emotion as detailed and accurate as I possibly could. Now everyone gather around, take a seat cross legged, its story time! :D

On August 18th I decided I wanted to implement some rather specific bandwidth related scripts/features on my FreeBSD server. These couple server administration tasks were a little difficult and scary for myself so I decided to outsource these tasks and maybe pick up some server monitoring as well. I looked through WHT and found that Acrolive.com didn't have any poor reviews (very little of anything) and decided to try them. I emailed them with my specifics and I got a response back from the
owner of Acrolive (Chris) stating:

"Our server management option is great for that! We can do most any admin task that you will need to be done. We have techs 24/7 that can help with almost anything you would ever need.

The monthly fee for server management is $55. That includes any type of admin task that you request.

If you have any other questions, please let us know."

I thought, wow, only $55. I would have paid more but if that's what they charge, then that's what they charge. So I signed up. I got an email I believe the same day I signed up, the email was from Chris again. Chris stated that my account was assigned
to a certain individual and he would be starting in 2 hours. If I could give a brief description of what I needed he could get started on my account. I was very impressed at this point. I thought, he could work on my server tonight and we could get these scripts going by the next few days. Weeeeee. I sent off the description of my needs and I was a happy camper at this point. After waiting up for awhile, I never did recieve an email from Allen that night (the individual assigned to my account). Never heard anything from them the next day, so that next night I emailed Chris with a friendly checkup for an ETA when Allen would be starting on my server. He replied and stated that one of my requests were rather complex and they spent hours that day figuring the best way to go about it. He would get Allen to email me and get me up to speed on what is happening with everything. So that was fair enough, it was a pretty complicated task and that's why I had it outsourced to admins who would know better on how to do it. That next night Allen sent me an email saying he would need some info, and that he was going to start on the 2nd task first as it was the easier one. I replied and gave him all the info he needed, root info, server info/login etc. From here is where it all
went downhill.

The next day Allen and I were emailing back and forth. He was apparently having trouble connecting to my server through SSH for some reason. He stated it would just sit there and never prompt for a login. I had probably 8-10 different people test ssh at that time and no one
had any issues with connecting to the server. I had lots of customers on that server and if they had problems connecting I would think I would be the first to hear about it. This apparent "issue" lasted for 4 days or so "so far". For curiousity I checked the auth logs and there
was someone who did connect and login to the account I gave them. I emailed Chris and let him know that I'm not sure what the problem could be, but someone did login to your account and su'ed to root sucessfully. Allen sent me a little email later and replied with:

"The information that you have found from the log file is correct and i would like to update you that tht ip address doesnot belong to our network. It was used to test the connectivity since we were having issues in getting in from our network. Unfortunately we cannot login from there since that is against our customers policy where tht is ip is binded to the server.

Aug 22 04:04:59 arrakis sshd[5212]: Accepted keyboard-interactive/pam for acrolive from *.*.*.* port 4423 ssh2

The ip address *.*.*.* doesnot belong to our network . As of now we have issues with our upstream provider . It seems to be because of the bandwidth clog issue , the cursor gets stuck at the shell prompt without even requesting for root user / passwd.

This is expected to be resolved shortly and i shall be able to proceed with the task. I shall keep you updated.

Apologise for this inconvenience."

To me it seemed weird that if it was against customer policy to be using that IP to ssh outside of the network that it wouldn't have been done in the first place. Either way, fair enough. They were having network issues, it happens. Take note: This network issue would have
started on on August 21st. I decided to just wait it out and let them do whatever they need to do. I waited for about 5 days more (the 30th) and sent an email to Chris letting him know my frustration in a nice, professional manner. September 1st came around and
I got an email from Allen saying that he had finished part of my request but it appeared as though Apache was not running and he needed it for the script. I thought, "That's weird. It was working a few minutes ago." I logged in and Apache was running fine. The conf file was in
/usr/local/apache/conf. I didn't know what the issue was. It was at this time that I had realized I outsourced a task that I didn't feel comfortable with doing, to someone who didn't know how to ps aux | grep httpd. Or even find / -name "httpd.conf". I replied back to Allen stating
that Apache was running fine and the location of the config file. Didn't hear anything back from Allen. A few days later Chris emailed me asking what was left on my server. I had informed him at this point, I didn't believe anything had been completed, Allen was still in the middle
of doing the bandwidth script when he couldn't find Apache. I sent the requirements to Chris again as he requested. I waited again for about 5 days until the 8th of September. At this point I took a step back and realized that in about 3 weeks, nothing had been done on my server, it
appeared as though I had an imcompetent admin assigned to my account, and it was simply just taking too long for whatever reason. I sent an email to sales@acrolive.com and cc'ed Chris for my request to cancel with a request for a full refund. I thought it was only fair as a client that
since nothing had been completed in 3 weeks, I just wanted to cancel and get my money back. That was on the 8th of September and I've heard nothing from either Chris, no refund or the request to cancel. I waited 3 more days and then went to Paysystems.com and cancelled my recurring
transaction myself as to stop the billing. They also have a "request a refund" button at Paysystems so I requested that. Still no reply in 3 or 4 days from that request either.

My thoughts on this? :rolleyes:

Even though I had sent a pre-sales request before I ordered to make sure they could do my task and receieved a reply back from Chris (the owner) stating that yes, they could do any admin task I requested and its perfect for what I need! They had problems with my specific admin task and were simply stalling until they figured something out. I mean, what kind of "bandwidth clog" network issue causes their employees from connecting to a server through SSH for almost two weeks (11 days). Even after all this, it really doesn't matter. I was annoyed with the entire situation but there was no harm done, only time lost. I would have never suggested the company to anyone, but I would have walked away content if they had apologized and refunded me my money but now it's apparent they've decided to keep my money and ignore my cancellation/refund request(s). At least for about a week now with no reply. That's just poor business ethics.

Take this for what you will, it's just my experience. Give me some feedback though! :eek:

Good story rvrsl. You have far more patience than I do. I would have been going after the refund in week 1.

Well, yeah thanks. I don't think I was unfair in anyway to them. I was patient, nice and professional throughout the entire situation. I'm not sure what brought on them wanting to keep my money or ignore my cancellation requests after the whole deal. Aw well, I guess only time will tell.

It is so refreshing to see a professionally handled post, where one clearly states the problem, the events and the timeline, but there is no cursing, there are no theatrics, no namecalling, and no immature attacks. This gives your post so much more credibility than 90% we read here. You remained professional throughout your relationship and it is clear the service you required was not provided although you gave more than enough opportunities.

Again, a good, informative post.

True Incognito. He stated his case very well and didn't have to use one of these :angry: once.

hahaha. Well, I can't pretend I wasn't looking at the pretty flame smily. Having an experience like this can be frustrating. I actually almost didn't post in fear of "ruining their business" but decided to go for it. I've taken quite a bit in from the posts on WHT and there was nothing in relation to Acrolive at all so I wanted to at least share what happened in my experience with them.

:spiny:

It could be just the opposite. Maybe by pointing out their flaws on a public forum, they will act on it and improve their service.

You indeed did good buddy. If it was I, on the other hand. I would've tracked those sons of bitches down and beat their heads with a racoon.

Hopefully that's how it goes. Oh, and refund my money as well! :)

Sorry about how things turned out for you.

At the very worst, at least you can say you had a $55 lesson in life :D

Or that he contributed $55 to the on the job training for Allen.

With paysystem if you ask for a refund dont you get a refund within 7 days or something like that?

I'm not sure exactly how it works. Right now it's in the step 2 stage where I wait for the seller to reply. I guess we shall see.

I agree with Incognito.
rsvl, I read your post entirely because it is written in a non-agressive manner and you've just helped me decide never to use their services.

Great job,
-Chris.

Just to sum up the end result of this situation, Paysystems has decided to refund me the total amount of $55.00. I never did hear from Acrolive again though. No confirmation of my cancellation or an apology. Nothing.

Now the only thing to do is start the hunt for a new server management outsource. Recommendations?

:P