DaKine
06-14-2006, 02:10 PM
Hi WHT,
I have finally completed my first month with RZ after stints with Site5, dotCanada, Affordable Host, Home Town Hosting, and AIT. I have only been doing this for 2 years and look where I have been......
I purchased an Advanced 1 Reseller package with RZ on a Monday. It was ready to go by Tuesday. After having the account for a few days I put in the request to have 14 of my accounts moved. I moved the rest myself. That was on a Thursday evening. I waited until the following Monday late before I asked what was going on with the move. I received a notice on Tuesday morning that all of my accounts had been moved except one. No other explanations. Puzzled, I responded and asked why the domain could not be moved. The response came back a day later that they were successful in moving all the other domains but the one domain couldn't be moved. I got onto their live Customer Service chat and started asking why I did not get an answer and why did it take so long? The answers that came back astonished me. I was asking the wrong people. I was talking to Customer Support. My issues were with Technical Support. Here is why I am not happy. On their website they state if I want my accounts moved I need to e-mail Customer Support. So I thought that is who I was supposed to deal with. From their answers which were (in my opinion) not terribly friendly they do not have access to the Tech Support Queue so all they are doing is cutting and pasting my e-mails to tech support and their answers from tech support to me. I told them that this is really a bad way of doing things and I was referrred to tech support directly and they left the live chat.
After that experience I have dealt with Tech Support only. They are quite a bit different from Customer Support. The next step I asked tech support to install the two SSL Certs for my two e-commerce customers. They requested for me to send them the cert files. Which I did. Then they asked for the .key file which came with the cert. I was confused by this because all I get from my cert is the cert and the ca-bundle file. So I asked what did they mean by the .key file because I went through an explanation that I did not receive a .key file from my cert company. All they did was repeat the same question back and forth. They wanted the .key file from the cert company. So I wrote an e-mail to my cert company and asked them for the .key files and asked me if RZ meant the key that was generated by cPanel. So I got onto live tech support chat and asked the question and they said yes that is what they wanted. So I sent them to the tech and after almost an hour he proclaimed that the key files were wrong. So I resent them and he retried them. Then he asked me to generate a new key file and send it to him. I did and within a half hour he said they were installed. The next day I tested them out and they did not work. So I opened up a new ticket to have them re-installed. They came back and told me it sounded like my browser had an issue or the cert was issued by a non conforming provider. After numerous e-mails back and forth I finally convinced them it was not my browser and the cert provider produced a conforming cert they worked on it and reinstalled them inside a half hour. The problem was solved on one site but not the other. When I reopened the ticket on the other site I asked what was wrong and they said it was a missing ca-bundle file. So I resent it to them and then they asked again for the key. And could not install it. So I generated a new key and had my cert company re-issue a new cert based on the new key and sent that to RZ and they successfully installed it. It was obvious I had an inexperienced tech who asked me to generate a new key and tried to use the cert from the old key. It took 2 days and too many e-mails to convince them to fix the issues in my opinion.
I have had similar issues the whole time with tech support until I got a hold of a tech on live chat and asked them what could I do to keep this stuff from happening. He told me what to include to make things easier for them and since then I have had fewer issues with their tech support. This has been a huge change for me since most of what they asked me to write down is much more elementary than I have ever had to do with any other host I have been with. With this in mind I have had few issues with tech support since. They respond quickly to all of my support requests. Even if they don't fix things the first time out. They always (and I do mean always) respond and have always responded in less than 15 minutes. Exception was one case where the server went down for 20 minutes. They responded after the server came back up. About a half an hour after I submitted the ticket. So since I changed my way of submitting tech support requests I have had few bad things to say about their tech support. Don't get me wrong, I still have a few issues such as not having the same tech handle the same ticket over a period of time and the new techs generally don't read what has transpired before then and that can be terribly frustrating.
As far as their server is concerned I am happier than when I was with Site5 but I feel it could be a little better. Some of this may not be their fault. So here is what has happened in the last month. The first week or two I had a problem with the server being VERY slow. After submitting tickets they corrected the issue. The problem I have with this is that I paid for an Advanced Plan where these issues are supposed to occur less than their economy plan. Since those two issues in the beginning I have not seen that problem and I have been very happy with server performance. Uptime for the server has only been 99.6-99.7%. I have sent in some tickets when the http service went down. They were short periods so by the time the tech got to it, it was back up and working correctly. The last time this occurred was on Sunday I think. And this time it was down long enough for their techs to see what was happening and they claim they fixed the issue. I have not seen a problem with this happening since last Sunday. I hope the uptime continues. The issue I am seeing that may be more related to their location (New Jersey, I'm in CA) rather than the server is an occasional SMTP timeout that I see. I use Outlook to connect to 4 different e-mail accounts I have on the server and occasionally one of the accounts times out and does not connect. It is never the same account twice in a row. And sometimes it does not occur for hours and then may occur once. An immediate retry is always successful and since the 4 accounts are on the same server I am assuming it has to do more with the Internet than with the server. It is more annoying than anything else.
Overall I have to say that my first impressions with RZ were not favorable. They have gotten better for me due to my diligence in finding out how to work better within their system. And their response to tech support tickets is superior. I seem to get more experienced techs during the day than at night. I have no proof of this, it is just that I seem to have my difficult problems resolved quicker and with less e-mails back and forth than in the evenings. My impression of them now is that they are not bad. But I feel they still have a lot of room for improvement. If I no longer have many issues with the server I am on then I can envision some clear sailing with them for the time being. And I would like to see the uptime for the server improve. One more item I do not care for. On their website they have links that say something like "E-Mail us if you want to set up xxxx service". So you click on the link and get a form to fill out with a choice of Customer Service, Sales and Tech Support. But you are not given any clue as to which to contact. If you are new with them and don't know which to contact, my advice to anyone is always contact Tech Support for everything. I accidentally sent an e-mail to Sales to setup the 24/7 support for my clients and the ticket has sat there unanswered for two days now. I had to send another ticket to tech support in order to get it initiated.
Sorry for this being so long but some details would not make sense without a long explanation. :lovewht:
I have finally completed my first month with RZ after stints with Site5, dotCanada, Affordable Host, Home Town Hosting, and AIT. I have only been doing this for 2 years and look where I have been......
I purchased an Advanced 1 Reseller package with RZ on a Monday. It was ready to go by Tuesday. After having the account for a few days I put in the request to have 14 of my accounts moved. I moved the rest myself. That was on a Thursday evening. I waited until the following Monday late before I asked what was going on with the move. I received a notice on Tuesday morning that all of my accounts had been moved except one. No other explanations. Puzzled, I responded and asked why the domain could not be moved. The response came back a day later that they were successful in moving all the other domains but the one domain couldn't be moved. I got onto their live Customer Service chat and started asking why I did not get an answer and why did it take so long? The answers that came back astonished me. I was asking the wrong people. I was talking to Customer Support. My issues were with Technical Support. Here is why I am not happy. On their website they state if I want my accounts moved I need to e-mail Customer Support. So I thought that is who I was supposed to deal with. From their answers which were (in my opinion) not terribly friendly they do not have access to the Tech Support Queue so all they are doing is cutting and pasting my e-mails to tech support and their answers from tech support to me. I told them that this is really a bad way of doing things and I was referrred to tech support directly and they left the live chat.
After that experience I have dealt with Tech Support only. They are quite a bit different from Customer Support. The next step I asked tech support to install the two SSL Certs for my two e-commerce customers. They requested for me to send them the cert files. Which I did. Then they asked for the .key file which came with the cert. I was confused by this because all I get from my cert is the cert and the ca-bundle file. So I asked what did they mean by the .key file because I went through an explanation that I did not receive a .key file from my cert company. All they did was repeat the same question back and forth. They wanted the .key file from the cert company. So I wrote an e-mail to my cert company and asked them for the .key files and asked me if RZ meant the key that was generated by cPanel. So I got onto live tech support chat and asked the question and they said yes that is what they wanted. So I sent them to the tech and after almost an hour he proclaimed that the key files were wrong. So I resent them and he retried them. Then he asked me to generate a new key file and send it to him. I did and within a half hour he said they were installed. The next day I tested them out and they did not work. So I opened up a new ticket to have them re-installed. They came back and told me it sounded like my browser had an issue or the cert was issued by a non conforming provider. After numerous e-mails back and forth I finally convinced them it was not my browser and the cert provider produced a conforming cert they worked on it and reinstalled them inside a half hour. The problem was solved on one site but not the other. When I reopened the ticket on the other site I asked what was wrong and they said it was a missing ca-bundle file. So I resent it to them and then they asked again for the key. And could not install it. So I generated a new key and had my cert company re-issue a new cert based on the new key and sent that to RZ and they successfully installed it. It was obvious I had an inexperienced tech who asked me to generate a new key and tried to use the cert from the old key. It took 2 days and too many e-mails to convince them to fix the issues in my opinion.
I have had similar issues the whole time with tech support until I got a hold of a tech on live chat and asked them what could I do to keep this stuff from happening. He told me what to include to make things easier for them and since then I have had fewer issues with their tech support. This has been a huge change for me since most of what they asked me to write down is much more elementary than I have ever had to do with any other host I have been with. With this in mind I have had few issues with tech support since. They respond quickly to all of my support requests. Even if they don't fix things the first time out. They always (and I do mean always) respond and have always responded in less than 15 minutes. Exception was one case where the server went down for 20 minutes. They responded after the server came back up. About a half an hour after I submitted the ticket. So since I changed my way of submitting tech support requests I have had few bad things to say about their tech support. Don't get me wrong, I still have a few issues such as not having the same tech handle the same ticket over a period of time and the new techs generally don't read what has transpired before then and that can be terribly frustrating.
As far as their server is concerned I am happier than when I was with Site5 but I feel it could be a little better. Some of this may not be their fault. So here is what has happened in the last month. The first week or two I had a problem with the server being VERY slow. After submitting tickets they corrected the issue. The problem I have with this is that I paid for an Advanced Plan where these issues are supposed to occur less than their economy plan. Since those two issues in the beginning I have not seen that problem and I have been very happy with server performance. Uptime for the server has only been 99.6-99.7%. I have sent in some tickets when the http service went down. They were short periods so by the time the tech got to it, it was back up and working correctly. The last time this occurred was on Sunday I think. And this time it was down long enough for their techs to see what was happening and they claim they fixed the issue. I have not seen a problem with this happening since last Sunday. I hope the uptime continues. The issue I am seeing that may be more related to their location (New Jersey, I'm in CA) rather than the server is an occasional SMTP timeout that I see. I use Outlook to connect to 4 different e-mail accounts I have on the server and occasionally one of the accounts times out and does not connect. It is never the same account twice in a row. And sometimes it does not occur for hours and then may occur once. An immediate retry is always successful and since the 4 accounts are on the same server I am assuming it has to do more with the Internet than with the server. It is more annoying than anything else.
Overall I have to say that my first impressions with RZ were not favorable. They have gotten better for me due to my diligence in finding out how to work better within their system. And their response to tech support tickets is superior. I seem to get more experienced techs during the day than at night. I have no proof of this, it is just that I seem to have my difficult problems resolved quicker and with less e-mails back and forth than in the evenings. My impression of them now is that they are not bad. But I feel they still have a lot of room for improvement. If I no longer have many issues with the server I am on then I can envision some clear sailing with them for the time being. And I would like to see the uptime for the server improve. One more item I do not care for. On their website they have links that say something like "E-Mail us if you want to set up xxxx service". So you click on the link and get a form to fill out with a choice of Customer Service, Sales and Tech Support. But you are not given any clue as to which to contact. If you are new with them and don't know which to contact, my advice to anyone is always contact Tech Support for everything. I accidentally sent an e-mail to Sales to setup the 24/7 support for my clients and the ticket has sat there unanswered for two days now. I had to send another ticket to tech support in order to get it initiated.
Sorry for this being so long but some details would not make sense without a long explanation. :lovewht: