I am a reseller for two different companies. I won't mention any names. They can tell who they are, there is no need to bring up names in this forum.

My problem is I can't get any support. I send emails, I post to their support forums and still no response and no solutions.

I guess I will have to seriously consider whether to:

a. Continue hosting at all.
b. Get a dedicated server.
c. Build my own box and colocate.
d. What?

This is really bothering me. Both companies promised the world when I was checking them out and seem to have disappeared now that I have signed up. I don't ask the world. Just that what they say they have works.

Enough whining. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Colocate, dedicated, a better reseller plan with support?

Thanks,

John

John, welcome and sorry to hear about your troubles. First, it is ok to name names since there might be another person who is about to sign up for the two reseller programs you have and it isn't a bad thing to share your experiences with them.

If you are handy with server admin, then you could build your box (assuming you are handy with this also), though I'd say leasing a server might be a better choice under many circumstances. Support will also be an issue there as well.

Better reseller plans, well hmmm. What type of packages do you offer now, and on what type of system(s)? Are your current hosts Alabanza based? Etc., etc., etc.

I am curious about who the companies are myself since I am about to start reselling and had it narrowed down to two companies. I hope it is not the two I have it narrowed down to. :)

I honestly do not want the responsibility of my own box right now. I would prefer being strapped to my computer promoting my new business and building my reputation than monitoring a server, which is why finding the right host has been a tough decision for me.

One is Alabanza based the other is ultraspeed.

Most of my accounts are with beahost.com. I buy in bulk so maybe they feel like they don't owe me any support. Their billing is totally hosed up and they can't seem to fix the problem even though I send them an email every week. I am afraid that they are going to cutoff the accounts that aren't being billed. I just started with the second company and really would like to give them a chance to fix this problem. I really had high hopes for them and was ready to move all my clients over, but right now, I am sorry I signed up. Fortunately, I only have 2 clients over there so leaving wouldn't be a major problem.

I thought I had researched the second provider trying to avoid the problems I am having with my original provider. I asked specific questions, especially pertaining to one particular account who has special needs. They indicated that this account wouldn't be a problem.

As far as building computers, I do that for a hobby, and haven't bought a store made computer since the mid 80s. I am constantly upgrading mine (the cover remains off all the time for wasy access) so I feel confident that I can build a reliable server. I am lacking in the admin area, but can rectify that easily.

I offer packages from 10MB up to 300MB. Most of my clients prefer the 300MB plan. The smaller plans are loss leaders for me.

Thanks for letting me vent.

John

Well you may want to shift the beahost clients to hostmatters.com (Alabanza based, good reviews, and this board knows them well). As for Ultraspeed, maybe we're sending them too much. I always recommend them, but I don't want to overburden them. This would be the first post I've read about a bad experience, so either give them a little time to work things out, or errrr... just resell for a host like hostmatters. There are plenty of Alabanza based hosts on this board, so recommending one over another isn't easy. All of them seem to have very nice people backing their services.

There was even a who's on Alabanza post here recently, which should give you an idea of who is here (from Alabanza), at least.

I don't deal directly with ultraspeed. I am reselling for someone who leases a server from ultraspeed. The problems I am having I believe are admin related and not hardware or network related.

Due to my pricing, reselling under a discounted arrangement would be difficult. But, maybe I might get better support.

John

All is well. It was an admin problem and was fixed and everyone is happy again.

This is sure tough being caught in the middle!

I read something about a "virtual dedicated" account. Anyone know of this? Apparently you get root access but are still a reseller. Might be what I need.

Thanks for all the input,

John

Well you can check out hosts such as vservers.com where you get what you described. To me the price is a bit steep for what you get, but unless things have changed, their support is touted often.

Originally posted by wsdhnet
All is well. It was an admin problem and was fixed and everyone is happy again.

John So does that mean all is well with both, or just one? I'm curious as I had spoken with Mark (over at beahost.com) and there was a few things that rang alarm bells.

No changes at beahost. I don't know what is going on there. Eventually, I will move all my acounts away from beahost. Before I do that, I want to be sure that the move will be the last one.

John

Whew :)
Don't scare me like that :)

I didn't remember you as a customer (lol)

Glad things got sorted out , as for chickens note, not getting over-loaded one bit, still looking for an additional sysops though :)

This is something that is the bane of the business. I absolutly hate non-support. That is why i did what the author of this thread is talking about but i went a step futher. I insist on support 24/7 I dont care when or what day. If there is a problem on our network we better be working on it before a customers ever calls. This has been a pledge and I have heard all the talk from other companies saying that this type of support is too expensive and it will kill the bottom line. Well they are wrong. What kills the bottom line and what will kill yours if you decide to become a host with your own network or box IS NO support. The easiest way to lose a customer is to not support them. the easiest way to keep them is to contact them talk to them and to support them until it hurts. Thats the way we do business. I consider every box on my network or at my ( I own it) data center as mine. I wouldn't stand for MY box being down so why should my customers? They shouldn't. Period!

I'm sure all the people who have sites wouldn't argue those points Jon! I think the lack of support sometimes stems from this commonly being a part time job for many hosts. Also, some people want support instantly, while others are satisfied with 24 hour support. It all depends on the client. Some are satisfied no matter WHAT you do. Blah.

John, don't be serious because ,

1. price does matter to your customers .
2.you get what you pay for.


I know beahost / linuxwebhost 's ugly like you. But why bother if it is not website down problem's . I just moved all accouts off them due to network problem and finally know it is Alabanza that went down. I come to Below10host and the price increased with support. I'm not quite sure if this decision worth me or not.?

i think ( maybe) you misunderstood me. Of course price matters. What i was saying is As a colo facility, I can not afford NOT to give support 24/7. That is our model and we are aggressivly supporting it. The too expensive comment in my other post was in reference to " I dont think it is too expensive to offer support" I thik it is too expensive NOT to offer support. At our company we do not charge the customer for this support. It comes with every account

So I gave good support to my customers too.

Pros : My customers told their friends , "Hey , good support here, Let's move everything to this place" . Then I got more new customers , most came from old customer's referral.

Cons : These people know each other. So after one began to ask everything without reading well before and got a good answer , others will ask too. How you can do if you were asked twice a days like this "Hi, handyman, I uploaded but pictures did not show, Please help look (and correct) for me" ?


Result : I have no time to develop new products .

John...

I have a solution to your delima with beahost/linuxwebhost... That is who I currently resell for... If you notice about a month or so ago... support really dropped and sucked... The main reason, the original owner sold of the (webhostingventures a.k.a Alabanza) The guy had so many servers with alabanza they or he wanted a buyout and it happened... Hence the increased features and degredation of support (alabanza didn't loose anything by giving themselves more features to use, but didn't beef up support for their direct resell approach) The reason I know this is mark the guy who is in charge of bulk reselling told me the linuxwebhost/beahost accounts were for the most part thrown in his lap... I had major problems when the change over took place... I threatened to leave and no response... I asked to speak with James (the old owner) as we had done before, to which I was told he doesn't have time, not well he isn't here anymore...
So in creeps creativity....
Threats don't work... well lets just piss them off the easy way...

I took to my to me email program and typed out:
Here is me problem which I have had, and have reported to you several times but you have ignored.... I will re-email you every 5 minutes and continue to email you every 5 minutes until I get a response... I then in the bcc field the email addresses for sales, support, and billing... 5 times. and emailed it for a total of 15 minutes (3) times...

I got an immediate response from support saying we are extremely sorry for not responding to you sooner, if you can give me your phone number I will call you right now to resolve the issue... (something they never did before, and this was at 11:30 PM when they are supposedly closed...) I told here it was to late to call that night but would like a call between 7:30 and 8 the next day... or the attack would insue again... needless to say I got prompt response at 7:30-35 the next day with apologies out the wazoo... so my advice get event hit them were it hurts the resources on the servers...

Since then I haven't had one problem with support replying to my requests...

I have pulled all my accounts and am very happy where I am. I have more control and get much better service. I feel like my business makes a difference to my current provider. The prices are a little bit higher, but I am willing to pay for the extra benefits.

Thanks,

John K.

reading the response here i wonder what will happen if you ( N2N) have another problem. I understand you threatening to email bomb the company you depend on support from did get you the response you wanted but at what cost? Not money i am talking about here. What impression does the hosting company have of you as a customer. Or if you had a customer that did the same thing, and you called them back to fix the problem they were complaining about only to be told it was too late and call back tomorrow. It would seem to me that the problem wasnt that important to you and certainly not warranting the type of action taken. How would you feel about a customer that did that to you. At what point would you decide the customer was not worth the trouble? Just a thought

I think that support is so very important as I have mentioned before but it does cut both ways. I know at our company we work with the customer and we expect the customer to work with us. No good comes out of working against eachother. We consider it a priority to help our customers be sucessful. When it degenerates to the type of situation you mentioned everybody loses.

To be honest if I did to one of my customers what they did to me I would not expect anything different. If I ignored a customer for about two to three weeks (I mean completely ignored), and new that they had a sizeable investment staked in me, and basically had them locked in because of a deal I offered them, why wouldn't the customer try and retaliate some way. And by no means was this my first solution... I tried everyway under the sun first. As far as telling them it was too late it was. I only expected a response that we recongize the error or we are looking into it now... etc... The tech only wanted to take care of the problem verbally, I explained that if she just took care of the problem and reply the next day it would have been fine... but she insisted phone. To be honest I really didn't think the email bomb was going to work because like I said for two to three weeks I got no responses. The only reason I knew the company still existed was some of my other sites were still running. If I decided that customers weren't worth it before long I would be out of business (especially if I was the fault for the problem with the customer, I do mean that lack of communication and not the technical I needed fixed). I agree you must work with your customers and not against them, it is only good business since. But you have to have communication to have good customer service. If recieved responses from them saying that they were working on it at any point before that email I would have gladly replied thank you please notify me when you are done. Even if it was a few seconds before I sent any of the email. The only reason I retained the customer that was involved is because of a line of communication between us, and they knew that problem was not me, but my provider. However I felt that my customer would only wait so long without results. Resulting to savagery is not something I like to do or enjoy, it is a last resort, COMMUNICATION AND SUPPORT are first and foremost in everything we do.

Addressed to the thread starter:

Sir, please make it clear when you begin to trash our good name, that in fact, you are a reseller of one of our clients.

All of our clients receive only the best support from me, Daniel and the rest of the team; as ALL our customers will testify.

As you are not actually hosted with Ultraspeed, perhaps you could post the name of the company you hosted with - as you should be aware, that when we are made aware of a serious issue with a box the response by my team is always immediate.

In addition, in remark to Chicken's comment, we are by no means overloaded - we are taking on an additional admin purely to allow our current ones more development time on our PHM product (first version to be released next week), and to fill the gap between 2am- 6am EST when we currently have one member of staff on his shift.


[Edited by Jordan on 11-16-2000 at 02:55 AM]

I don't deal directly with ultraspeed. I am reselling for someone who leases a server from ultraspeed. The problems I am having I believe are admin related and not hardware or network related.


He said exactly that nearthe beginning of the thread (see quote above) so I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Gordon

Ultraspeed. If you go back and read all of the posts you will see the I stated the problem was not hardware nor network related. Giving the name of my current host would serve no purpose. I am extremely happy with Ultraspeed as well as my host. All of the support issues have been worked out to my complete and total satisfaction and anyone who emails me separately is refered enthusiastically.

I have had emails from Daniel and I believe him to be one who cares about his business and therefore MUST care about his customers. Anyone working for him will also have that attitude.

If one hosting company learns that supporting your resellers and/or customers is paramount in this business then my point will have beeen made. I have been a reseller for a short time, but have had hosting accounts since 1996. I have seen a LOT OF BAD hosts which drove me to start my own company. My number one concern is support for my customers. You can ask anyone of them and they will say that anytime they have a question regarding the server, their websites, CGI programs or even marketing advice, I am there to help them out.

Thanks,
John Kennedy

Originally posted by Jordan
In addition, in remark to Chicken's comment, we are by no means overloaded...

Yeah, Daniel took care of this question as well :) ...

Originally posted by DanielP
as for chickens note, not getting over-loaded one bit, still looking for an additional sysops though :)

Good to hear it!