Over the last couple of weeks ive been pondering something over and over in my head, and i cant seem to come up with a good answer.

Many of you host with cogent hosts or other cheap hosts, and these hosts seem to not care a darn about your uptime, business, or satisfaction. For instance, a couple of weeks ago a host pulls all their servers out of one data center and moves them to another across the street. The dont give a single notice to a single customer and they dont answer the phones, return voicemails, or emails. Yet while some customers were dissappointed, no one really seemed pissed off. I see many threads like that.

But then you get to a reputable host, and if they have even a ounce of downtime they have a 150 post thread about how mad their customers are.

So my question to you is why do you as customers not care that your provider doesnt give a crap about you, is it just because you know your paying a very low price and dont expect good service? Or what...

It kinda drives me batty, because most of the large hosts are reputable and work day and night to make sure customers are well informed, many of us spend thousands of dollars staffing our NOCs so you the customer can call in 24.7 and get help. But one of these budget hosts come along, and they provide crummy service all day long, and yet no one really cares....

Dazed and Confused in Kansas...

Well . . . . . .

If I get a stale french fry at McDonalds; I'm not likely to say anything.
But, if I encounter something seemingly as trivial at the Ritz, I'm likely to voice concern.

Charles

I think you need to step back a second and look at it all objectively. Yes, the host you referred to made a mistake in not properly notifying, but the downtime was minimal. And one looks at the long term record of hosts. There are a couple of Colo's I use who provide outstanding service, virtually no down time, and are among the lowest priced. One is cogent, one isn't. And, many have had excellent service with cogent providers. So, it's not fair to lump them all together. In this business $100/month on a server can be a great savings and $200 is of course twice as good.

Just as there are low priced centers and providers who provide poor service, there are also many expensive ones who do as well. Sometimes you get what you pay for, but that cliche is not universally true.

It is your choice whether you want to compete with the cogent providers or not. Frankly, with your good reputation, I would imagine that if you offered cogent at competitive prices you would gain considerable customers from the others. And, by no means am I saying your pricing isn't reasonable. However, one weighs your SuperMicro vs similar deals on cogent at 1/2 the price and, yes, you have good providers, yes you have SCSI Hot Swap, yes you provide good service....but still price can not be totally excluded from the equation.

However, on the other hand, if you are able to maintain your quality reputation and customers are willing to pay for it, then you have a much better business model than most. However, don't disparage those who have built a different model.

As to WHT participants being too forgiving to some and too unforgiving to others. That is definitely true. However, I think most often it comes back to how often the circumstances are repeated and how the host handles the apology and guarantee. I do think this board is used much too frequently for support issues and am discouraged by the frequency we see instant "what happened....are they down..." type messages. On the other hand, I don't feel your "provide crummy service all day long and no one really cares" statement is appropriate either. There is no evidence that applies to the host you are referring to in this post.

Last, I am very careful about disparaging others here, because I recognize that sometime...given enough time...I will be in their shoes. I just hope that I handle it in the professional manner some have done (such as Matt of Site5). But, try as we might, none of us are completely immune from the variety of problems that can strike.

To some degree I think you are right Charles. When you know you aren't paying top dollar, you are a bit more understanding when things don't quite go right. When I go into a McDonald's, I expect the table to have crumbs on it and bring a few damp napkins before I even start looking for a place to sit. If it was a fancy-schmancy restaurant, I'd be standing up and calling the waiter over.

Hi Incognito,

They are looking for cheap... not high quality. They have fun sites that aren't their livelyhoods, and they aren't loosing money when they go down.

Those people are looking for a host they can afford on their allowence.... There are hundreds of thousands of school kids with sites, and some get large, and some real busy.

If the host charges for extra space or bandwidth, they can't afford them. If it goes down once in a while.. oh well,, it will be back some time, and they are no worse for the wear.

However, if they had a business site, small, medeum or large,,, they would soon realize that they are loosing money from those downtimes, and look for a more stable host. When that host goes down...... they WILL complain! They are loosing money, and in most cases, that is their livelyhoods.

So, someone looking to host a business site should know or will soon find out, not to look for unlimited anything. (last time I checked, I couldn't steach my hard drives as they fill)

They expect what they pay for...

Tim L :cool: