Support is slow, lacking and not very knowledgeable. They answer questions inaccurately and ignore or take over a week to answer sometimes. Don't buy a domain name there or you'll have trouble transfering it when you try to leave. Further, server is too busy to use on many occasions, and at other times just slow. They say they have an OC-192 connection... baloney!

I must admit that support is slow. Regarding the domain name issues, i dont have a clue. I was wondering why would anyone want to register domains with a host when there are so many registrar around offering cheap prices.

But for their network connectivity, i must vouch for their service. But that was for before Feb 2002 before they moved datacentre. Their network was excellent.

For you information, Weinbar has been sold. Weinbar is no longer Weinbar.

Although i don't have a site with them.. on numerous ocasions I have contacted weinbar and found them very knowledgable, friendly and great to work with....

Well, I HAD a site there and I can assure you my experience was the worst. Please tell me who bought them, so I can avoid them like the plague.

Originally posted by chrisb
Well, I HAD a site there and I can assure you my experience was the worst. Please tell me who bought them, so I can avoid them like the plague.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41847

Hi, I am currently hosted with Weinbar (Deru as it is now known) - as DJ says the service before the transfer to Deru was great, sometimes a little slow, but this was because of growing problems, they grew so suddenly, as they state in a previous post that they could no longer cope with the demand.

Now deru have taken over, people are still contacting weinbar for support and not getting a response, i have done the same and got no response, then i realised I should e-mail noc@deru.net for support and I have had excellent support from them thus far.

Their network seems to be fast, I get a ping of 150 ms from the UK which i rarely get from anyone (it takes almost 100ms to cross the ocean from america)

I had a complete systems failure due to a failing HD after it was moved to Deru, they managed to recover my data, changed the Hard disk with one of a larger size as the previous one and installed the latest version of Linux RH.

So far I have no complaints about Deru, well done guys and keep up the good work :-)

-XT

Originally posted by xtstrike
Now deru have taken over, people are still contacting weinbar for support and not getting a response, i have done the same and got no response, then i realised I should e-mail noc@deru.net for support and I have had excellent support from them thus far.

Their network seems to be fast, I get a ping of 150 ms from the UK which i rarely get from anyone (it takes almost 100ms to cross the ocean from america)

-XT

Since the support email has been changed, there should be a notice notifying its customer. I keep using that Weinbar Perl desk and no wonder support is so slooooow. Darin maybe have to check 2 place to answer support.

xtstrike, i think you are on a dedicated server. I dont have such a good experience on a shared hosting account Archie. Thus i moved on.

Hello folks,

Weinbar, the hosting company, has been acquired by us - Deru Internet. The purchase has not gone as smoothly as we had hoped but we are looking to a postive future.

Any domains we register (Deru) will always have the admin contact and billing contact set to the buyer. We will never hold back a domain that someone registers with us - if you wish to move to another host, we'll support that.

The email address support@weinbar.com was/is answered by a group of people from bobcares.com out of India. They are diligent but they are limited in what they can do - ie accounting/server reloads/etc are a bit too much to ask. They are good at getting a broken link fixed, a database reloaded, a permission adjusted, minor to medium severity issues and escalating the rest of the problems if they occur. It's good to have a dozen people available at all times of the day. It works pretty well compared to one or a couple of people answering support requests.

Bobcares has had issues in the past month with their connectivity to their business (they are in a third world country!), so could not be on top of things as much as possible - we were relying on them and didn't realize there were problems.

Any time someone acquires an ISP you have to worry about several things - one - don't screw up the billing - that will tick people off more than anything else. Two - don't create change to just create change (ie - don't change the name of the company so you can satisfy your ego - change it only if it's going to be a net positive for the customer base) - and give more service going forward than what the customer base received in the past.

So far we've done pretty good on the billing front. There have been some burps, but we caught those before they become real major issues. There are some oustanding billing issues that existed prior to the acquistions that we are having to deal with today but we are making progress there - no one enjoys getting their credit card whacked for charges they didn't incur. What happened in the past with Weinbar we can't control, but going forward our billing is 100% dead on.

We didn't want to change the name - people (witness everyone here) loved the name/company - and people still sign up for service - must be word of mouth - but given all the problems we acquired and what has transpired in the last 60 days, we have decied to change the name of the company and rebrand it from Weinbar.

And in giving more, we already do that - Some people just loved the prior service, and detested it. No one can make everyone happy - and that includes us. But we know we can give more. In general, we do have better bandwidth - there is no way that 4 FULL oc12's and a few oc3's isn't as good *overall* or *better* than the fractional ds3 Weinbar was on - sure some customers may like the old connecitivity better, but in general people are saying it's like night and day compared to a few months ago. Some people that read these boards (hi esnipe) have issues and we are actively working on those - we can't satisfy 100% of the people, but we sure can satisfy 99% of the people - we'll accept that ratio.

We are not a one man shop, so we have more people answering phones, emails, and concerns. We have 24x7 *onsite* customer support. No more waiting for the tech girl to arrive at the colo. Sure, someone has to tell the techs what to do, but at least they are there and not 20+ minutes away.

If you want service/bandwidth and want to pay for quality, we are definately a place for you to come.

Darin

Weinbar had a DS-3? On their site, Mike Weinstein said they had an OC-192. You just confirmed some more untruths. Yes, it's probably best you change the name, and try as much as possible to dis-associate yourself from the previous company. Good Luck to you.

I just verified - Fourthstage had an oc3 with about a 10 megabit committment. So please replace fractional ds3 above with fractional oc3.

Weinbar was the majority of that traffic.

Darin

Why then did it take 5 days before a mySQL problem was sorted out and even THEN there were still issues with it?

It's all very well replying to a support request within 2-3 hours saying "we will look into it, please be patient" - but then taking days and days to actually fix the problem

Changing a company name sometimes is not the best thing to do. I know Weinbar had plenty of upset customers. I once had a ded server with Weinbar, I canceled in less than 2 months because of a multitude of issues, but more importantly because of its lack of customer service.

I believe Darin is doing the right thing. More than likely there are thousands of customers that are not aware of this entire situation and that don't have bad experiences with the name. Changing the name will create confusion and an image of instability, which could translate into cancellations.

Good luck Darin!