It's been a month since I asked Aletia Hosting (http://www.aletiahosting.com) to cancel my account. Yes, you read right - a month. And guess what? They still haven't cancelled my account. What am I supposed to do?! I've received a couple of replies to my initial email about the account termination, but they were all BS, like, "The guy doing the cancellations is really busy right now." One guy asked me for my order number, but that was on February 22nd. I haven't heard from them again. I send them emails periodically, but I get no response. What do I do? (I'm signed up on their annual cycle, so I can't just not pay them. The hosting is paid for until July.) I don't want to log into PaySystems (http://www.paysystems.com) and just cancel my account because I won't receive any of my money back... and I want my money back. Including the money for this month, because I requested cancellation on February 13th.

I have just contacted PaySystems. Maybe they'll help me out... :\

The ultimate decision is doing a chargeback.

This indeed is very strange, as far as im aware, aletia hosting has got a very good reputation on this board.

Send another message to them, i also trust you were polite in cancelling your account?

I don't want to judge Aletia, but are they doing fine? I've seen some complaints latley.

I forget who said it first, but, "They're living of their past."

It hasn't been good for the past few months. It all started when support stopped replying altogether. Then when they did come back, I noticed that there were only 2 support people, one of them new. Not sure what happened to the rest of them.

I signed up with them a while back, then switched within a few weeks after numerous outages they were having. I still check back every once in a while and know a few people who are with them, and their problems still continue it looks like. A lot of their servers are way overloaded as evident by load averages well into the red on some servers, and I've read numerous reports about people even running out of disk space on some servers.

And their support isn't anywhere near what it's used to be... Read some posts on their discussion boards and you'll see posts regarding all of the above issues.

Best of luck,

David

Originally posted by xtstrike
This indeed is very strange, as far as im aware, aletia hosting has got a very good reputation on this board.That is, they used to have a very good reputation. In the beginning, their support was superb, but lately it has all been spiraling downwards.


Originally posted by xtstrike
Send another message to them, i also trust you were polite in cancelling your account? I am always very polite... but I think in the last email I sent, I wasn't as polite. I'm sure you wouldn't be, either, after waiting for over a month for something as simple as an account termination.


Originally posted by Kyle Babich
I forget who said it first, but, "They're living of their past."True, true...


Originally posted by MxHub
The ultimate decision is doing a chargeback.That is correct, the ultimate decision. That would be my last resort...

hmm, maybe its time to retract my statement, i sent a message to their ICQ and to one of their e-mail addresses and told them about this thread, no response yet.

I will wait until tomorrow midday to admit i might be wrong on aletia hosting.

Aletia seems to be having major growing pains, only complicated further by not being able to get thier priorities in line.

You know how good news travels, and bad news travels faster and further than this, a lot of times even more furious.

Personally, I think Ron will recover from this. I dont intend to leave until the mast is below the water (for thats where I will be clinging to).

snoooky~

Ron rocks. he's the best. I think i'm going to stick it out. I can't seem to find another host that offers NetPBM and Imagemagick as well. I'll rough it.

However, the business sites are moving. ;)

I think Aletia will resolve its growing pains like Hostrocket. So i'll wait.

Kewl Clio,

comforting to hear your convidence level is there too.

snoooky~

Originally posted by Kyle Babich
I forget who said it first, but, "They're living of their past."


I did!

Hi allie,

Email me directly at mark@aletia.com with your account details (domain name, machine name and order number) and I'll personally look into this issue for you.

Mark

There we go, I have also had an e-mail from Mark, maybe this incident was an unfortunate oversight.

-XT

Originally posted by Mark Vockler
Hi allie,

Email me directly at mark@aletia.com with your account details (domain name, machine name and order number) and I'll personally look into this issue for you.

Mark Thank you.

Dont have a 2-thumbs up or Mark would be getting it for sure... no puns intended at all! :)

I knew it was only a matter of time, before the water got low enough to tread through again. I expect great things from these guys in the future (sorry gals, too!)

I would look for things to really settle out for a bit now, I am sure they need a break from it all. Here again, is the cost of doing business.

Anyway, glad to see you are getting things resolved allie. :)

And cudos for xtstrike for stepping up to the plate to offer assistance! That is what places like this do best, IMHO ;)

:)
snoooky~

I have to come in and defend Aletia a bit. I've been with them since May (I think, somewhere around then) and I haven't really had any problems with my account. Infact, it's been great. Two nights ago I send in a Low Priority inquiry, not even a problem and got a response in 5 minutes. I emailed again the my inquiry was resolved in a half an hour of my opening the first ticket. The server that I'm on really has downtime (before they restarted it a couple of weeks ago it was up for something like 95 days). The load averages are around 1-2. It just works for me.

There are lots of people who have to have Aletia (indeed, this applies to almost all hosts) babysit them. They email asking what the path to perl is and other questions that they could easily find the answer to if they took a minute to look. These people then like to yell about Aletia not babysitting them 24/7 for $10/month. I'm not saying this is anyone who posted in this thread (i'm sure it's not) but I've seen a lot of it at Aletia's forums and some here.

That said, Aletia does still have problems. Their biggest is communication. This was hampered earlier by a help desk program that broke down on them. They have since created a new help desk program to remedy that. Since then, at least for me, communication has improved but it's not there yet.

People are hearing about the compliants, I want to give another side...that of people happily hosted by Aletia because there are lots of us.

Anywho, in the interest of full disclosure I am a Mod at AletiaForums <http://www.aletiaforums.com/>. However I do not work for Aletia, I do not recieve any compensation.

The forum is actually one of the biggest boons to Aletia. If you go there, you will see lots of posts complaining. It is bad that they have to be posted...but it's also good because Aletia doesn't delete posts. Not one post (that I have seen and I was the second person to post there) has been deleted.

Hey Dogma! didn't know you were here. :) bravo on the little speech of yours. :)

btw, i have made several inquiries in the past week regarding Aletia's current status and all replies were made prompt. :) They are doing their best. And they're growing yes, but they're also getting better.

http://www.aletiaforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3350

Originally posted by clio
Hey Dogma! didn't know you were here. :) bravo on the little speech of yours. :)

btw, i have made several inquiries in the past week regarding Aletia's current status and all replies were made prompt. :) They are doing their best. And they're growing yes, but they're also getting better.


Hey Clio and Dogma! It's an Aletia mod party! Woooo!

I think Aletia is just experiencing, as Ron (aka Superman) put it, "growing pains." There were a rough few days but things are definately getting better. I expect a full recovery very soon. I remember, like Clio pointed out, the exact same thing happening to HostRocket.



Mark!! I thought you disappeared :) Are you still kicking it in Australia? :D

Jeremy

Originally posted by clio
Hey Dogma! didn't know you were here. :) bravo on the little speech of yours. :)
:bows:

Yes, finally a forum where I have more posts than you do!! Go me!

I used to come here 5 times a day, then I didn't, now I kinda am.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37164

I'm responding to the original post, not any of the replies.





I've just gone back to check -- my "please cancel" ticket, opened on the 15th, is still sitting there "waiting for customer support." So you're not the only one trying to close accounts and not getting any response.

Aboyd,
Try contacting mark@aletia.com for resolution to your troubles.

Best of Luck
snoooky~

To add my words about Aletia....

I signed up in Sep 2001, didn't have many questions, and no problems, but any questions were answered very quickly.

In the last few weeks I've had a few problems, not major, but it did take a fair bit longer to deal with. I guess I have been concerned, but my site was operational so I didn't put a high priority on my problems. If the current situation became the norm I may think about changing, but at this point I'll wait out the growing pains:-)

Just to followup. I'm still waiting. Since the 15th. And I have contacted Mark.

I WAS A HAPPY CUSTOMER AT ALETIA TOO FOR THE FIRST 2 MONTHS!

I though i came to the right place after many researches and yes there were good for first 2 months... after this it turned into what people call "*****"


.. but no.. this hosting company is ran by 3 people i think.. or 20 people that offer support of 10mins a day and take the rest of the day off.

First of all there downtimes are pretty much 2-3times a day or if u get a lucky week, 3 downtimes of 2mins.

There support is ... errr did i say support? i met ticketsupport with no one watching it. Simple, their isnt support at all.

Took me 1 week to cancle my accout. Sent a total of 5 tickets.

I had to go on the forums to get attention to cancle my accout and had to even throw in a threat kinda.

When a customer wants to cancle their accout, they should'nt play with us for an extra week or month. They should just do it stright away.

Dogma -

funny how you come and defend them... u say u get support in 10mins.. is it u are an mod and get super treatement of them at their 10min working time befor they take the rest of the day or are u getting payed to say this?

You saying that like 50 people have simple problems that why support isnt answering them.. thats pretty lame for not supporting. BUT THE TRUTH IS 80% of them people problems are signing up and their domain dont work, control panel, cant create subdomains and few other ones that are impossible to fix, only admins can fix these kinda problems.

I think i smell some ass licking or pay to lick.




But hey dont take my word for it.. go to their forum and check it out the people with problems and complaining and begging their bums off for a little support.

Edit: well they deleted the big thread about their customers asking for support or iam blind and it dissapeer and dont say i lied, there must be atleast 500 of aletias customer that read or past that thread too.. it was like 5 pages long of people asking for support, but there are still loads of complaints around.

If aletia puts some SUPRIZE extra charges to their customers billing, then from their on, they should be called *****ing JNR but now they are still a hosting company on the edge of losing customers.

Anways i got my accout cancle by them.. iam so happy.

I think you summed it up, Vinh. Aletia is a mere shadow of what it once was. A few friends who I knew that were with them, trying to give them the benefit of the doubt for the past few months, have recently jumped ship last week also, and have since found a new host.

Good luck with your new host!

David

NetPBM is a simple set of binaries that is easy to install by uploading to *anywhere* on your webserver, you don't need root access or anything special. I don't know much about ImageMagick, but alwayswebhosting.com offers it as well.

Originally posted by clio
I can't seem to find another host that offers NetPBM and Imagemagick as well.

Originally posted by Yarkatonafus
NetPBM is a simple set of binaries that is easy to install by uploading to *anywhere* on your webserver, you don't need root access or anything special. I don't know much about ImageMagick, but alwayswebhosting.com offers it as well.

Agreed, it's something that you'll find in - from what I've seen - quite a lot of webhosts. Site5 sure has it. Moved there from Aletia about a month ago and the contrast was a very pleasant surprise.

Just wanted to add my own experience here. I've had one site hosted with aletia for...at least 6 months and another for the last 2 months. I've also referred 3 people there. And so far I have no complaints. Both of my sites are on different servers and neither of them is a "problem" server, so I've experienced very little downtime. I've also received excellent support many times. Right now there seems to be problems on one or two of their servers - but all the rest are virtually problem free.

Originally posted by Dogma


If you go there, you will see lots of posts complaining. It is bad that they have to be posted...but it's also good because Aletia doesn't delete posts. Not one post (that I have seen and I was the second person to post there) has been deleted.

100% LIE!! my posts have been erased before. they really don't like the word 'S H I T' too much. i told one guy that i didn't like his domain name and my post was deleted. in its place was a 'warning' from a moderator. tipper gore works for them.

Originally posted by Ang
Right now there seems to be problems on one or two of their servers - but all the rest are virtually problem free.

one or two??? just about all of the servers have had MAJOR problems over the past several months. they are horrible right now.

Just yesterday, more than 3 servers at Aletia were down for 3-4 hours. Not even ONE e-mail or response post at their forums from the support staff. Wonder if they wish to continue with the hosting business ...

Well, i'll just add my two cents.

My experience with Aletia has been mixed. Most of the time, the service has been great. I've only been there a month. But last week, for about 4/5 days straight, my server, Kiwi, went down for atleast 2 hours each day. It was completely frustrating.

I know it is shared hosting. But I pay $20 a month, I expect atleast a fair amount of uptime, not 2 hour downtimes each day for 5 days, and little notice was given about it. Yesterday, I saw users of Scorpion openly cry, their server went down for 13 1/2 hours. It took Aletia 9 hours to even make a post in the announcements about the server being down, supposedly caused by a bad motherboard.

Aletia is suffering from three big problems.

1. Too many customer for Too little servers - Take a look at many of the server info pages on nocdns, load averages are constantly in the red, and partitions are always full. Servers go down constantly.
2. Lack of Communication - Support fails to inform the public what is going on. A perfect example was yesterday, it took them 9 hours to even acknowledge that a server was down. That just downright sad.
3. Under Staffed - Can be related to number 2, but this is more to deal with tickets. There are long waits for tickets, even under the new system. Legitimate tickets, not the stupid "My CGI script isn't working", have a look at aletia's forums to see the amount of people who catch their arse to cancel an account.

Right now, I cannot recommend Aletia. I am on the verge of moving. If Kiwi gives anymore problems, I'm not bothering to request being moved to another machine, I'm going to get a different host. If anyone still decides to go with Aletia, if you happen to get any of the following machines, request to be moved immediately, Kiwi, Scorpion, Eagle, Hammster and Puma.

Well I have to put in my two cents here. I have been with Aletia since Nov 01, things were great until about the new year and then problems started to arise.

This morning I had no site and no email, currently I have email, ftp but no site. No word from the ticket I opened, actually I didn't even get a ticket number.

In February I contacted who I thought was sales requesting to open another account (I didn't want to add it as a sudomain to my current account) but only if I could be on eagle as it was having hardly any problems. I got someone who had NO clue what she was talking about and I reiterated what I wanted and she said she'd pass onto sales. Well I used the sales email to begin with! I never ever heard back from sales. Thank goodness else I would have two crappy accounts at aletia instead of one.

In the beginning of March they upgraded perl and a piece of it was missing. I opened a ticket. I got a response last week. Yes, last week with words of "I think it is okay now".

Currently over at the forums it seems almost all servers are down or doing something wonky and no post from aletia at all to tell us what is up.

I do not recommend Aletia to anyone, in fact I will be moving soon. I can take some downtime. I'm not one of those handholders that dogma seems to think runs rampant at aletia, but enough is enough.

I have been with quite a few hosts: communitech (only moved because the reseller was closing her doors and I didn't want to go with her choice of person to take over), addr (no complaints, quick support. I only moved because of USD exchange and email (I dont like only two emails and then alias's), nomonthlyfees.com (moving because of the $70US a year now they want instead of $35), catalog.com (hey! it works for what I want), aletia (run, run fast) and currenly opened an account with binaryblocks.ca for another site of mine.

My two cents CAD :)

In my previous post, I said if Kiwi gave anymore problems, I would leave.

Well today was unbelievable. The email on almost every machine went down for about 17 hours. All email was being bounced back, unless they were being sent from an email address between machines on the same NOC. But the part that has driven me over the edge is that it took Aletia 16 hours to acknowledge the problem. I urge anyone even considering Aletia to forget about it, its quite sad.