I am leaving ResellersPanel, because their service is inadequate. I have decided to log my experience here (kind of like a blog). Here is the first email that I sent to them in regards to leaving and collecting my data. Hopefully they will understand my email and there wont be a second post here.

--------------To ResellersPanel

I replied to the last response you gave to me twice.

Before that, you replied (twice more) but did not give me a decent answer as to why my account was suspended.

Not only was my account suspended, but I have been having a lot of difficulty with FTP and SFTP, because you have some pretty severe limitations.

Apart from all that, the server is constantly slow, and to be perfectly honest I really don't think your company cares much about it.

I am not one to cry over spilt milk. I am an extremely patient person and I always do my utmost best to communicate a problem if I have one -- however, I must say that out of the many emails I have sent to ResellersPanel regarding problems, not once have I received a decent reply or a solution to my problems.

Therefore, not out of anger or out of spite, but through sheer necessity, I must move my accounts to another company, because quite frankly I just cannot put up with the dead end replies, lack of help, poor service and second class system any longer.

Now I have a new problem. I am trying to move my accounts to another server, but of course the reseller account that I am leasing from you is timing out. So it looks like I am going to face great difficulty moving my websites to a more suitable and professional location.

I am unable to bulk move accounts and I am unable to move accounts one by one. Your connection is just too sluggish for the server to manage.

Now let me explain something. I have been kind up until now. I have been patient and I have been polite. But let me assure you that if I cannot retrieve my data in a satisfactory manner, there is going to be trouble.

Now I kindly suggest you look into the connections for this server and open it up so that I can retrieve my data.

Thank you.

Len

P.S. Considering that your company does not receive emails when I send them the first or second time, I am going to send this email three times. I hope that you will receive the email.

P.P.S. Please, please don't test my patience here. I am not even close to being in the mood. Please cooperate and I will be out of your hair real soon -- without a hassle. I highly recommend that you deal with this email with all your efficiency and with all of your concern. I will not accept anything less. Many thanks.

I suggest you run backup on the server during quiet time (you find out when)
Then download the backup, upload to new host, then restore.
That way you are sure that you have the backup and have a copy on your pc.
Good luck.

P.S. Considering that your company does not receive emails when I send them the first or second time, I am going to send this email three times. I hope that you will receive the email.Isn't there a helpdesk that you could use? That should ensure your responses make it to their system.

Dear Mr. Len,

I have checked three of your domains, your reseller domain and two domains hosted within your cPanel plan with us. At the moment, the A records for the two name servers set for all three of the domains point to IPs that are not on our server and were never part of our IP set. Furthermore, two of the domains resolve through a third IP, which is not on our servers and is not a part of our IP set either. Currently, the third domain does not resolve at my end at all. The WHOIS records of all three domains indicate that they have been recently updated (Dec. 21, 2007). Considering your wish to change your hosting provider, this is understandable, but prevents me from testing to confirm, if there were actually issues with the FTP connection to the server, when one of these domains was used as host prior to the change.

However, I cannot agree with the accusations in your post after thoroughly examining the email communication between you and our company. From what I have seen in this communication, there were three points with regard to which you have expressed disapproval with our services.

First, you have notified us about some discrepancies in the file paths on the server. Our support technicians have explained to you that these were the default paths created during the cPanel installation and we could not modify them unless we would modify the cPanel application itself. As you probably know cPanel is proprietary commercial software and modifications to it would be in violation of its license agreement and the copyright laws.

Second, you have expressed your disapproval with the way the SSL certificate was set on the hosting server. I would like to explain two things. First, we use self-signed SSL certificates for the login pages of our cPanel servers, which use the same encryption strength typically used by commercial SSL certificates, but obviously since they are self-signed, they are not signed by any recognized SSL certificate issuance authority. Second, SSL certificates are generated on a domain basis, in other words the certificate that is generated, for instance for www.example.com will not be valid for another domain, it will not be valid even for example.com, the same domain without a www prefix. Naturally, a certificate that is issued for the hosting server domain would not be valid for your reseller domain. You were therefore advised by our support technicians that you could, if you wanted, of course, obtain a commercial SSL certificate issued by a recognized certificate issuance authority and use it for login purposes to your cPanel/WHM account. Our technicians have also mentioned that you could log into your cPanel/WHM account through an unencrypted HTTP connection, but this option is strongly discouraged, since this way your login information would be transferred through the Internet in insecure unencrypted form.

Third, two weeks ago (on Dec 7, 2007) you have complained about problems with the FTP access to your cPanel account. Our technicians have checked and have established that there were no server side issues with either the server or the FTP service on it. They have also kindly requested you to provide them with a trace route results to the domains you had trouble connecting to as well as with the logs of the FTP application that you had used. This information was necessary to establish whether the issues you have experienced were not with your Internet connection, somewhere on the route to the server, with the FTP application that you were using or your computer. As far as I can see from the e-mail correspondence that I have checked, you have never provided the requested information. Considering this, I cannot justify your complaint regarding poor service or lack of help, as you have decided not to provide the information necessary to assist you.

Also, in your email communication with us, several times you refer to live chat conversations you have with our representatives. The live chat tool that we offer on our site is not intended for technical issues, but for pre-sales and general questions only and this is clearly indicated on our site. Nevertheless, our live chat operators always strive to help as much as they can even when it refers to technical issues. Furthermore, in your email correspondence with us you were advised to request technical support via the ticket system built into your billing account with us, instead of replying by email. When a support ticket is opened, all replies in it by the reseller or the support staff are recorded into our database. This way we can avoid misunderstandings and miscommunication that can happen in email communication, due to the fact that email messages might get lost occasionally.

As for the reasons one of the hosting accounts under your reseller account was suspended, you say that you were never provided with an explanation why the account was suspended, which is not quite right. On the contrary, when the account was suspended, an email was sent to you with the explanation that the account was suspended for spamvertizing - advertising of a website through unsolicited email. On your request for further details you were provided with a copy of the email message against, which the complaint was made. I have checked the email message in question and as far as I can see it advertises a for-reward chain letter scheme of some sort, which might be legal, but is of dubious nature, to say the least and is definitely against our Terms and Conditions of service. Further, you further claim that you have only sent the message to people on your contact list, stating that they were your personal friends or acquaintances. However, let me assure you that we do not suspend accounts for spamvertizing or any other forms of spam at sheer whim. We do so only on the account that we receive a valid complaint. In this case, the abuse report came from our data center. The data center staff has forwarded us a report from SpamCop, a well know and respected anti-spam organization. As far as I know, SpamCop does not send spam reports at whim either. Similar to us, they react on based on valid Internet user complaints. For them to issue such a report it would mean that there was at least one user (and maybe more) on your contact list, whose permission to send them advertising material via email you have not obtained properly and who has made a complaint with regard to this to SpamCop.

Last, but not least, you say that you have remained calm and polite throughout all your communication with us, but using entire paragraphs in capital case is far from good netiquette and suggestions to poke our system administrators in the eye with something sharp, even, if made figuratively, are far from politeness, good manners and even civilized behavior.

I realize that our customer services might not be perfect at all times and there is always room for improvement, but I am really disappointed when customers accuse my colleagues from the Support Team unfairly, which could also create the wrong impression in potential future customers of our company

Best regards,
Milen
ResellersPanel Forum Moderator

It is good to see some one to come up and explain things.
But as you said, he might have already moved to his new host. I am not sure whether these things were explained to him earlier, but if a reply like this was sent to him, may be he wouldn't have moved.

[...]and suggestions to poke our system administrators in the eye with something sharp, even, if made figuratively, are far from politeness, good manners and even civilized behavior.
Did he really suggest that? Ouch, creditability for the OP just went out the door.

Like I always say, there are three sides to a story, their side, your side, and the truth...and it's good to get both sides a maybe even the third side.

Ok, Milen. You shouldn't have done that. There's a response coming -- but I don't have the time right at this moment.

Ok, Milen. You shouldn't have done that. There's a response coming -- but I don't have the time right at this moment.

I don't understand why people do this. Why not just post it all at once. I always lose interest when people say "watch this space - response coming soon".

I've lost interest already :mad:

I don't understand why people do this. Why not just post it all at once. I always lose interest when people say "watch this space - response coming soon".

I've lost interest already :mad:

I didn't say watch this space, or response coming soon. I said I am busy right at the moment, but I wanted Milen to know that a response is coming, because much of what he said is false and some of what he said is blatant lies (which is really unprofessional) -- and apart from all that, his entire post was set out to discredit myself, personally -- as opposed to trying to resolve anything.

Therefore, I can't simply end this thread in the way I was going to -- which was to post the last communication I had with ResellersPanel, which I am not discontent with, at which point I would have also stated that my sites are moved now and that that's the end of all that.

However, that's not a possibility now, because Milen has interfered with that process, and has drawn a sword in a situation that was pretty much resolved. While I am here responding to you, I may as well do what I was going to do before Milen intervened.

I received another communication from ResellersPanel (my last communication):


Hello,

Thank you for your downright remarks and explanation of the situation
you have faced so far using our services. We regret to hear you will be
leaving us but more than everything we respect your decision and we will
do our best to assist you on the matter in the best manner possible.

Now, regarding the connection speed, please allow me to clarify on
something that happened to be quite a common issue. Basically, all our
servers used to be on 100Mbps network connectivity and as of few months,
the connections speed has been increased to 1Gbps. There are no limits
set neither per connection/IP not per upload/download. In theory, you
can download/upload as fast as your ISP package allows. Sometimes
clients complain that the (upload/download) speed to the server is slow,
although they have "a very fast broadband connection".
In general, there are two cases when a client might experience
download\upload speed issues:

Case one – as stated above the connection from each server to the main
network switch is now 1Gbps. After the main network switch the network
connectivity remains 1Gbps(this is what actually goes/comes out/in
from/to the datacenter and hence to the server itself. The
upload\download speed can be low occasionally due to high server load,
too many connections, floods, etc. However, such instances are temporary
and if a client says that he\she has experienced such issues for several
days or weeks, the most likely reason for this is the client’s Internet
connection. For instance, many ISPs offer high download speeds, but the
upload speed is only 1/10 of the download speed. Additionally, poor
quality of the client’s connection line can lead connectivity speed issues.

Case two – The ISPs can place a true guarantee only for the connection
between the ISP and the customer. From the ISP’s network to the rest of
the Internet there cannot be any real guarantees. In other words, ISPs
cannot truly guarantee that the speed of the client’s connection will be
such-and-such, since the networks between the ISP’s own network and a
specific server are not under the ISP’s control. Truly guaranteed
channels (10Mbps upload/download, for instance) are possible only if
certain (typically explicitly specified in writing) conditions are met
and only to certain hosts. The prices of such services are typically way
above the budget of the average Internet user and are usually charged
based on traffic, pass through the respective ATM/FrameRelay networks
and generally the average Internet user has no access to such connection
lines.

This means, that if there are no issues, described in case one, at any
given moment or issues with the network connectivity inside the Data
Center itself, then the problem lies somewhere between the client and
the Data Center, i.e. the client’s ISP and the Data Center.

In other words, if there is no load on the server at the specific
moment, there is no flood or other similar issues, the reason for the
slow server access times is somewhere between the client and the Data
Center and the hosting servers have nothing to do with it.

And now regarding the actual account transfers, please advice how are
you trying to download the data from the server. I see you have over 60
cPanel accounts on the server. Are you trying to download all the
files/folders one by one via FTP/SFTP or you are using the recommended
way - generate a full cpanel backup for each account and then download
that full backup which is a single .tar.gz files which consist of all
files, folders, emails, databases, settings for the given accounts.
Latter on, when you need to restore that account on another server, it
will be just a matter of few clicks. This is really the way to go about
that. And the only limitation, if I can even call it that way, is that
the other company must support cpanel/WHM. Please provide as much
details as possible regarding the issue you are having right now, so I
can assist in the best possible way. Thank you in advance.

Looking forward to your reply.

Regards,
Matt


Now basically, I don't care much about all the 100Mps this and 1Gbps that Matt was going on about, because the fact of the matter is that ResellerPanel have some SERIOUS connectivity problems, and I'll say that until I am blue in the face. I was with them almost two months, and I experienced hundreds of FTP time-outs, lagging, trashed sessions, 15 and 20 second forum hangings because of slow MySQL -- you name it. I was about ready to pull my hair out.

But none of that is here nor there in regards to the response Matt gave me, because the only part I was happy to see -- which also prompted a mental note that I am officially OK with the situation was:


We regret to hear you will be
leaving us but more than everything we respect your decision and we will
do our best to assist you on the matter in the best manner possible.


The rest of the email didn't matter to me. All I am interested in is a decent service and ResellersPanel wasn't providing it. So I decided to move.

That would have been that, but now Milen has show up here swinging -- so I am going now to collect the correspondence and explain to Web Hosting Talk members that Milen is lying, exaggerating and stooping to personal attacks, rather than sticking with the facts.

I might be a little blunt sometimes, and I might eventually run out of patience. Sometimes I even use CAPS in communication when I've said something several times without resolution. But one thing I do not do is stoop to personal attacks right off the bat (although they may come later) and I do not out and out LIE!

Now if you give me a moment, I need to go and prepare my response to Milen. I'll try not to leave you hanging too long.

I don't see the host pushing you aside as you make it sound. It sounds like they are taking the extra step to help you understand common issues.

Your end - my end.. blah ..who knows. It's not a direct connection. Have you tried running a traceroute to see if any other problems exists?

Feel free to contact me privately if you would like another set of hands.

The only thing wrong with the hosts was response was the following:

First, you have notified us about some discrepancies in the file paths on the server. Our support technicians have explained to you that these were the default paths created during the cPanel installation and we could not modify them unless we would modify the cPanel application itself. As you probably know cPanel is proprietary commercial software and modifications to it would be in violation of its license agreement and the copyright laws.


Modifying a path is in no way shape or form a violation of cPanel's license agreement and would have no bearing on any copyright law.

Having said that, The OP sounds like he is over-reacting and simply trying to throw mud in the hosts face.

If you want to come to WHM and post about a bad experience back it up with some actual data. It is very possible that the connectivity issues that you are experiencing are simply a product of the route between your computer and the host. If you do not provide examples of the core issue we can pretty much chalk this up to your lack of reasonable communication with your service provider. Yelling at people about how bad your going to hurt their reputation is the kind of thing that I would expect from a teenager. Grow up and move on before you make more of a jerk out of yourself....

The only thing wrong with the hosts was response was the following:



Modifying a path is in no way shape or form a violation of cPanel's license agreement and would have no bearing on any copyright law.

Having said that, The OP sounds like he is over-reacting and simply trying to throw mud in the hosts face.

If you want to come to WHM and post about a bad experience back it up with some actual data. It is very possible that the connectivity issues that you are experiencing are simply a product of the route between your computer and the host. If you do not provide examples of the core issue we can pretty much chalk this up to your lack of reasonable communication with your service provider. Yelling at people about how bad your going to hurt their reputation is the kind of things that I would expect from a teenager. Grow up and move on before you make more of a jerk out of yourself....

Indeed, but how many paths are you willing to change or symlink? Would it not be easier to work with the client to explain the configurations and make the adjustments accordingly? Maybe I'm not seeing the full picture in your post ( no harm intended)

I think the main problem the OP is facing is migrating his accounts. I'm not on one side of fence, but see it as plead for help to make the move.

I agree with you Chris. I was just stating that it is not against licensing or copyright to make that change.

I certainly would not change my infrastructure solely based on a request from 1 customer.

I agree with you Chris. I was just stating that it is not against licensing or copyright to make that change.

I certainly would not change my infrastructure solely based on a request from 1 customer.

Your absolutely right about that, but still a paying client is not expected to be knowledgeable to diagnose network/routing/latency issues. I don't see the host attempting to assist in diagnosing the actual problem. I'm not judging or picking sides. I'm just trying to giving a hand if needed.

Merry Christmas ;)

I have checked three of your domains, your reseller domain and two domains hosted within your cPanel plan with us. At the moment, the A records for the two name servers set for all three of the domains point to IPs that are not on our server and were never part of our IP set.

That would be correct, because I have ordered a new account with KnownHost. I have already set my nameservers for that account and I have also adjusted the DNS for all of my domains to point to that server. Apart from three that I missed, because the domains are registered with Godaddy and not throughout my own domain reseller account -- which I temporarily forgot about. However, the DNS those three domains have also been amended now. At this point do not have a single domain pointing to your servers.

Furthermore, two of the domains resolve through a third IP, which is not on our servers and is not a part of our IP set either.

That would be correct, as I also have other providers. I move things around from time to time and do not always remove the account from previous locations in case I need them as a backup.

Currently, the third domain does not resolve at my end at all. The WHOIS records of all three domains indicate that they have been recently updated (Dec. 21, 2007). Considering your wish to change your hosting provider, this is understandable, but prevents me from testing to confirm, if there were actually issues with the FTP connection to the server, when one of these domains was used as host prior to the change.

I fail to understand why your first three paragraphs try to address DNS issues. I don't recall ever having a DNS issue. However, you state yourself: "Considering your wish to change your hosting provider, this is understandable..". So what's the point here? I have over 60 domains, and the vast majority (I think about 53 of them, not including subdomains) were hosted by your company and are still on your servers. You do realize I have more than three domains don't you?

However, I cannot agree with the accusations in your post after thoroughly examining the email communication between you and our company. From what I have seen in this communication, there were three points with regard to which you have expressed disapproval with our services.

You are absolutely correct about this. As a matter of fact, "disapproval with our services" is a complete understatement.

First, you have notified us about some discrepancies in the file paths on the server. Our support technicians have explained to you that these were the default paths created during the cPanel installation and we could not modify them unless we would modify the cPanel application itself. As you probably know cPanel is proprietary commercial software and modifications to it would be in violation of its license agreement and the copyright laws.

I never had any issues with file paths on the server. What I was trying to convey to your technicians is that you are redirecting all WHM and cPanel accounts to a secure URL of the private domain. Now, this in effect is going to cause a non-secure connection page to appear. The ONLY way for me to get out of that situation would be to purchase a certificate to match my domain. However, I do not want to purchase a certificate and I do not require a certificate as I am not conducting any private transactions from my servers. So in effect ResellersPanel is forcing their customers to purchase a certificate.

Now, after accepting the invalid certificate (which does not match your client domain), you are redirecting your clients to your own server, which the certificate "does" work with. So you see, it is not "file paths" I have issues with. All I asked for was for you not to associate my reseller account with a secure URL. I mean that is by no means a big ask -- considering that my reseller domain does NOT have a certificate and that I did NOT want to purchase one and you do NOT provide one.

Now as far as I can see, this still makes perfect and reasonable sense to me. You are running your system WRONG, and I'll tell you that until I turn blue in the face. I STILL highly recommend you have a talk with your technicians, because I know for a fact that I am not the only person complaining about this. I couldn't possibly be the only person complaining about this.

After much communication, your technicians did nothing to even acknowledge that what I was saying was indeed true. They merely (and as you also said above) tried to "explain to me". I understood their explanations, but that doesn't change the fact that they're wrong. Maybe you need new technicians?

This situation is another situation that went: Unresolved

My last communication with you on this subject was:


I am afraid that there is nothing that could be done about the redirection.
This is the way our system administrators have configured our servers.

Best Regards,
Kevin


In which I responded:


Ok -- then you need to go and find them and poke them in the eye with something sharp.

Send them this message.

It shouldn't work that way.

It's wrong.

No other company does it that way.

See my other (long) email which I just sent and send that to them too.

Tell them to get with the program.


In which Kevin Responded:


I would have to kindly ask you to avoid using this type of
"communication" with capital letters and curses.

Best Regards,
Kevin


And my last communication on the matter was:


I was just trying to lighten the situation.

I don't truly believe you should hurt anyone with sharp objects.



I later followed my response up with another *nudge*


So this is your final response?


I got the following response from Vince:


I'm afraid that we can not do nothing much in this case.

Let us know if we can do anything else for you.



This situation was left: unresolved


Second, you have expressed your disapproval with the way the SSL certificate was set on the hosting server. I would like to explain two things. First, we use self-signed SSL certificates for the login pages of our cPanel servers, which use the same encryption strength typically used by commercial SSL certificates, but obviously since they are self-signed, they are not signed by any recognized SSL certificate issuance authority.

Not only that, but you have assigned them to domains that they're not even suposed to be used for.

Second, SSL certificates are generated on a domain basis, in other words the certificate that is generated, for instance for www.example.com will not be valid for another domain, it will not be valid even for example.com, the same domain without a www prefix. Naturally, a certificate that is issued for the hosting server domain would not be valid for your reseller domain. You were therefore advised by our support technicians that you could, if you wanted, of course, obtain a commercial SSL certificate issued by a recognized certificate issuance authority and use it for login purposes to your cPanel/WHM account.

This is unnaceptible.

I want to access WHM through mydomain.com/whm
I want to access cPanel through mydomain.com/cpanel

This is the way everyone else does it, and I have never seen a company force the use of certificates on cPanel accounts in my life. This should be OPTIONAL -- and every other provide I've ever dealt with treats it as such. I do not want a secure certificate, then you are in no position to force me to or insist that I purchase one.


Our technicians have also mentioned that you could log into your cPanel/WHM account through an unencrypted HTTP connection, but this option is strongly discouraged, since this way your login information would be transferred through the Internet in insecure unencrypted form.

Yes, your technicials gave me an IP address and a port number -- which still totally reject as being a solution, consudering that I do not want your SSL certificate attached with my domains in the first place. Also, I am running a network 12 page websites and some SMF forums -- I am not a part of a NASA conspiracy to withold Alien and UFO evidence from the free world.

Third, two weeks ago (on Dec 7, 2007) you have complained about problems with the FTP access to your cPanel account. Our technicians have checked and have established that there were no server side issues with either the server or the FTP service on it.


I disagree with what your technicians told, me which is why I kept insisting that there is a problem. I also wholeheartedly believed and still believe that the problem lies with your network/structure/arrangement. I can't be sure exactly WHAT the problem is, because I am not one of your technicians. However, Let me assure you, as I stated to your technicians that I am a web developer by profession. I have access to dozens of servers. I was not experiencing difficulties with any of them, and my connectivity problems were not due to lack of experience or understanding of how to connect to the server.

I did a traceroute and ping, a dozen times before I even contacted you. The pings and traceroutes were absolutely fine. I have enough experience with providers, servers and hosts, after working on websites for the better part of a decade to know, right off the bat that if I am going to contact a provider about connectivity issues, the FIRST thing they'll do is ask for a traceroute.


I can even give you a traceroute right now, from my location:

Traceroute from Telstra, Australia's largest Telecommunications Provider (http://www.telstra.net/cgi-bin/trace?69.80.229.149)


traceroute to 69.80.229.149 (69.80.229.149), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 vlan250.lon-service6.Melbourne.telstra.net (203.50.2.177) 0.273 ms 0.3 ms 0.402 ms
2 Bundle-POS1.exi-core1.Melbourne.telstra.net (203.50.6.14) 0.502 ms 0.384 ms 0.404 ms
3 Bundle-Ether2.chw-core2.Sydney.telstra.net (203.50.6.1) 14.841 ms 14.727 ms 14.938 ms
4 Port-Channel2.oxf-core1.Sydney.telstra.net (203.50.6.2) 14.909 ms 14.89 ms *
5 10GigabitEthernet2-2.syd-core03.Sydney.reach.com (203.50.13.30) 28.426 ms 210.131 ms 211.144 ms
6 i-4-2.sydp-core01.net.reach.com (202.84.249.13) 15.126 ms 15.225 ms 15.177 ms
7 i-0-0.wil-core03.net.reach.com (202.84.143.209) 169.711 ms 169.676 ms 169.609 ms
8 static.net.reach.com (202.84.251.234) 174.39 ms 174.366 ms 174.293 ms
9 ge-6-20.car3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.68.111.133) 212.347 ms 271.487 ms 227.521 ms
10 ae-32-52.ebr2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.68.102.62) 175.412 ms 180.238 ms 180.575 ms
11 ae-3.ebr3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.132.78) 211.825 ms 215.944 ms 216.413 ms
12 ae-73-73.csw2.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.136.158) 212.707 ms 209.649 ms 216.553 ms
13 ae-2-79.edge3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.68.19.72) 207.879 ms 207.785 ms 207.34 ms
14 CWIE-LLC.edge3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.71.198.30) 211.534 ms 212.329 ms 212.168 ms
15 69.80.229.149 (69.80.229.149) 204.358 ms 204.279 ms 204.413 ms


Now as you can see, there is no significant delay. So why then do my FTP sessions keep crashing? Why is it that I am not having the same problems with other providers? Why is it that I have never in my life had such immense connectivity problems with other providers? Sure, I've had problems before. Things happen. Sometimes providers have problems -- earthquakes happen, sea cables break etc, but they're usually resolved one way or another and usually don't last too long. I STILL cannot get a decent FTP connection with your servers before it crashes or dies or what ever.

What your technicians need to do is try to work out what the problem is, and not simply assume it is a client problem and give long explanations of how FTP works. It is tremendously annoying to be constantly complaining about a problem and get spiels of how stuff works in place of a solution. What's worse than that is that I have actually LEFT now and you are STILL flapping your gums about how connectivity works. I have an idea. How about looking seriously into the problem? I assure you it is an in-house problem. I have been through everything, for almost two months and I cannot come to any conclusion other than it's your setup.

I do not believe that the connection issues are caused by any networks. I believe that the servere sluggishness, which is so bad I can't even hold an FTP connection for long is caused by your setup.

The FTP problem, slow server speed, SQL hanging and general sluggishness across the board is still: unresolved

They have also kindly requested you to provide them with a trace route results to the domains you had trouble connecting to as well as with the logs of the FTP application that you had used. This information was necessary to establish whether the issues you have experienced were not with your Internet connection, somewhere on the route to the server, with the FTP application that you were using or your computer. As far as I can see from the e-mail correspondence that I have checked, you have never provided the requested information. Considering this, I cannot justify your complaint regarding poor service or lack of help, as you have decided not to provide the information necessary to assist you.


I was sick and tiredd of being second guessed. I simply staed that the traceroute was fine -- and it was. All you had to do was believe me on that so that you can get stuck into fixing the problem.

Also, in your email communication with us, several times you refer to live chat conversations you have with our representatives. The live chat tool that we offer on our site is not intended for technical issues, but for pre-sales and general questions only and this is clearly indicated on our site. Nevertheless, our live chat operators always strive to help as much as they can even when it refers to technical issues.

Your website says that the chat can be used for "General and presales questions". I used the chat when I had a general question. I never used the chat deep and meaningfuls regarding technical support.

Furthermore, in your email correspondence with us you were advised to request technical support via the ticket system built into your billing account with us, instead of replying by email. When a support ticket is opened, all replies in it by the reseller or the support staff are recorded into our database. This way we can avoid misunderstandings and miscommunication that can happen in email communication, due to the fact that email messages might get lost occasionally.

I did use the billing namager for support emails, but once the ticket has bene created it is assigned an ID Number, and I figured that if I respond via email, that the ID would be utilized to update the support ticket system. That's how support email systems usually work.

In such a case, that will serve as another recommendation: Get a better support ticket system.

As for the reasons one of the hosting accounts under your reseller account was suspended, you say that you were never provided with an explanation why the account was suspended, which is not quite right.

That's exactly right. Here's the justification I received:


Today we have been forced to suspend one of the hosting accounts under
your reseller username *aesapcom*. The reason is Violation of our Terms of
Service. More information about the case is listed below:

Suspended Account: *chain*
Reason for suspension: *Spamvertize*
Suspension Count: *1*
Server: *supremepanel5.com*

Please contact our support staff in order to receive instructions on how
to proceed and eventually have this account unblocked. If you have any
additional questions regarding this action, never hesitate to ask.

NOTE! In case of 3rd suspension of the account, it will not be unsuspended
and you will probably be asked to remove the account. Our support staff
will assist you in this.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.


I was shattered that you turned the account off, and I just wanted to have it back on before I went into semantics. So I made the following response (via email, because I was contacted via EMAIL, and there was no ticket number provided, as with all correspondence with ResellersPanel).


Can you please unsuspend this account?

I sent an email to my personal contacts and acquaintances from the forum.

But I am not about to argue with you over this, I'll just say I wont send
any more emails from the site -- please put the site back up as soon as
possible.

I'll have to move the account -- but for now, please turn it back on -- it
is important that you do.

I "WILL NOT" send any emails, I just need the account running again and I'll
get back to you about the rules.


Then I got the following response from Gabriel:


Please note that we will unsuspended it now, but if this happens again,
the account will be suspended permanently.


Now this is when I started to sit up in my chair. I felt that this was dead-ended, rude and I still didn't know WHY the account was turned off. I can't run a website if people are just going to go around turning stuff off. So I sent the following response.


Ok, in my first email I just wanted ethe account put back up.

What I want to know now that it's running is -- exactly, what was the
problem that will cause the account to be supsended permanently?

You did not specify the problem.


Response from Gabriel



The reason for the next suspention of the account to turn into permanent
suspention is the specific of the service abuse that originates from this
account, and more precisely:
Spamvertised web site: http://www.internetchainlettertest.com/
For even more precise details, please refer below:



Now basically what Gabriel provided was simply the header which was sent back via a gmail account, which was apparently rejected. I wont list the whole header here, because it is very long. But basically there was no formal "complaint" -- at least not one that I have been made aware of.

Additionally, I had the following message in the footer of the email that I sent out:


P.S. I have sent this email to my entire contact list, which I exported from Outlook. If you couldn't care less about my experiment and don't want to
know anything more about it, just send me a note and I'll make sure you do not receive any more updates.


I have since received only one such request from anyone. As I said, the emails I sent the email to were to friends and acquaintances that I KNOW and many of which I have known for almost a decade, and most of them for years. I know a lot of people, and if I want to email them I will. There's no law against that.

This is the last "effort" (if you could call it that) for any explanation as to the reason why my account was turned off. All I got was a cut and paste email header from some email account. There was absolutely no attempt to resolve the situation, at which point I thought to myself -- well if they're just going to turn things off and on when they see fit, and not only that THREATEN to do it again and not provide any justifiable reason or rational response for their actions I have to get out of Dodge!

It's not bad enough that I had a heap of other issues that were still unresolved, but now I have to put up with accounts being turned off and on and no reasoning or decent communication on the matter provided? So I went in search of another host (you'll see my thread here on Web Hosting Talk), where I indicated that I was looking for a new host. I canceled the billing agreement with ResellersPanel, so that they could not charge me again.

So now ResellersPanel figured out how to find my email and contact me:


We are writing in relation to your cPanel account with username *enixmnet*

Our billing system statistics show that the status of your subscription
payment agreement is Canceled.

We'd appreciate your time in informing us whether you'd like to keep using
the account or have it canceled
on our end.


So instead of helping me with my problems above, Gabriel sends me the above message. To be honest, I saw this as a veiled threat. This is the email that prompted me to create the "Leaving a Host: Documentation" thread here. After the past treatment, not resolving issues, and turning my account off -- I figured that's the very next thing ResellersPanel will do. Turn the account off AGAIN. You did it while I was paying, so why wouldn't you do it again when I canceled the billing agreement? So I sent the following response:


What I would like you to do is respond to my previous email in regards to
why you turned my my account off. I still have not received a satisfactory
explanation, and therefore I cannot determine exactly what the problem is
that cause you to turn my account off.

Also, I do not have an account with enixmnet

I do not like to keep billing agreements. If I am still using your service
during the next billing cycle, I will pay manually.

I am currently paid, and therefore you have no reason to cancel my account.


Gabriel responds:


I am sorry for the inconvenience with this e-mail. It is an automatic
notification and it gave some problems. Since you are gong to pay from
your end, please make sure to keep the due dates and apply payments before
them.

As for the e-mail you are asking, please note that we did not receive any
e-mail asking for any account, so please send it once again, so we can
investigate the issue.


My response can be seen by reading the first post in this thread. That "was" my response, and I decided to log it here.


On the contrary, when the account was suspended, an email was sent to you with the explanation that the account was suspended for spamvertizing - advertising of a website through unsolicited email.

Yeah a cut and paste email header. Great thanks. Don't pull a muscle.

On your request for further details you were provided with a copy of the email message against, which the complaint was made.

No it wasn't.

I have checked the email message in question and as far as I can see it advertises a for-reward chain letter scheme of some sort, which might be legal, but is of dubious nature, to say the least and is definitely against our Terms and Conditions of service.

What the website is, is a "refer a friend" script. That's all it is. Practically half the websites online use a refer a friend script. It is absolutely NOT illegal in any state, territory, country or continent that I am aware of. Just because the website is called: Internet Chain Letter Test, it doesn't give you the right to turn it off. You can't go around turning peoples accounts off because you've read their emails and feel that its dubious. You can't turn peoples websites off because you don't like the name of the website either. What I did was absolutely LEGAL, and I'll do it again. Like I said, and I am not exaggerating my any means -- ALL the website is, is a "refer a friend" script uploaded to a website, which has been called a "Chain Letter" simply for marketing purposes, to catch people's eye. It is not a traditional chain letter. It does not promise anyone any money. It also explains how to NOT receive emails from me again, of my acquaintances do not want to know about my website -- and out of about 200 people, only ONE contacted me with two words: "Please remove".

Further, you further claim that you have only sent the message to people on your contact list, stating that they were your personal friends or acquaintances.

That's EXACTLY what I said!

However, let me assure you that we do not suspend accounts for spamvertizing or any other forms of spam at sheer whim.

Yes you do.

We do so only on the account that we receive a valid complaint. In this case, the abuse report came from our data center.

So you ban peoples accounts because "your" datacenter sends you a complaint?

The data center staff has forwarded us a report from SpamCop, a well know and respected anti-spam organization. As far as I know, SpamCop does not send spam reports at whim either.

Why are you mentioning this on a public forum? I asked for a DECENT REASON FOUR TIMES AND NEVER GOT ONE!

Now what I want you to do is forward that report to me, if it exists -- which it probably doesn't be cause you're talking through your ***.

Similar to us, they react on based on valid Internet user complaints. For them to issue such a report it would mean that there was at least one user (and maybe more) on your contact list, whose permission to send them advertising material via email you have not obtained properly and who has made a complaint with regard to this to SpamCop.

Proof please. That's all I ask.

Last, but not least, you say that you have remained calm and polite throughout all your communication with us, but using entire paragraphs in capital case is far from good netiquette and suggestions to poke our system administrators in the eye with something sharp, even, if made figuratively, are far from politeness, good manners and even civilized behavior.

Look mate -- what ever. Get over it. I was patient for months and I put up with the height of incompetence with your company. ResellersPanel deserved every capital letter. What's wrong with capital letters anyway? Did your support staff come over to you crying and sniffling, for you to ask: "what's wrong?" ..and the they said: "It's Leonard.. He.. He used capital letters again!", before throwing their arms around you and crying into your understanding embrace? I can just see you now, holding them, and petting their heads.

It's capital letters mate. Like I said. Get over it.

I realize that our customer services might not be perfect at all times and there is always room for improvement, but I am really disappointed when customers accuse my colleagues from the Support Team unfairly, which could also create the wrong impression in potential future customers of our company

I speak the truth mate -- maybe you should try the same.

Also, if you're concerend about future customers, maybe you should listen to the ones you have.

LOL Caps!!!!


MrLen:

200+ MS is a high amount of latency, You should expect some lag.

I can even give you a traceroute right now, from my location:

Traceroute from Telstra, Australia's largest Telecommunications Provider


traceroute to 69.80.229.149 (69.80.229.149), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 vlan250.lon-service6.Melbourne.telstra.net (203.50.2.177) 0.273 ms 0.3 ms 0.402 ms
2 Bundle-POS1.exi-core1.Melbourne.telstra.net (203.50.6.14) 0.502 ms 0.384 ms 0.404 ms
3 Bundle-Ether2.chw-core2.Sydney.telstra.net (203.50.6.1) 14.841 ms 14.727 ms 14.938 ms
4 Port-Channel2.oxf-core1.Sydney.telstra.net (203.50.6.2) 14.909 ms 14.89 ms *
5 10GigabitEthernet2-2.syd-core03.Sydney.reach.com (203.50.13.30) 28.426 ms 210.131 ms 211.144 ms
6 i-4-2.sydp-core01.net.reach.com (202.84.249.13) 15.126 ms 15.225 ms 15.177 ms
7 i-0-0.wil-core03.net.reach.com (202.84.143.209) 169.711 ms 169.676 ms 169.609 ms
8 static.net.reach.com (202.84.251.234) 174.39 ms 174.366 ms 174.293 ms
9 ge-6-20.car3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.68.111.133) 212.347 ms 271.487 ms 227.521 ms
10 ae-32-52.ebr2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.68.102.62) 175.412 ms 180.238 ms 180.575 ms
11 ae-3.ebr3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.132.78) 211.825 ms 215.944 ms 216.413 ms
12 ae-73-73.csw2.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.136.158) 212.707 ms 209.649 ms 216.553 ms
13 ae-2-79.edge3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.68.19.72) 207.879 ms 207.785 ms 207.34 ms
14 CWIE-LLC.edge3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.71.198.30) 211.534 ms 212.329 ms 212.168 ms
15 69.80.229.149 (69.80.229.149) 204.358 ms 204.279 ms 204.413 ms

LOL Caps!!!!


MrLen:

200+ MS is a high amount of latency, You should expect some lag.

I just did a traceroute to my new server which is hosted at KnownHost -- and it is pretty much the same:



traceroute to 72.249.87.54 (72.249.87.54), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 vlan250.lon-service6.Melbourne.telstra.net (203.50.2.177) 0.236 ms 0.228 ms 0.257 ms
2 Bundle-POS1.exi-core1.Melbourne.telstra.net (203.50.6.14) 0.503 ms 0.448 ms 0.406 ms
3 Bundle-Ether2.chw-core2.Sydney.telstra.net (203.50.6.1) 14.838 ms 14.803 ms 14.793 ms
4 Port-Channel2.oxf-core1.Sydney.telstra.net (203.50.6.2) 14.909 ms 14.881 ms 14.963 ms
5 10GigabitEthernet6-0.syd-core04.Sydney.reach.com (203.50.13.34) 15.371 ms 15.346 ms 15.39 ms
6 i-4-1.sydp-core02.net.reach.com (202.84.144.249) 15.387 ms 15.264 ms 15.162 ms
7 i-9-0.sydp-core01.net.reach.com (202.84.221.89) 15.128 ms 15.116 ms 15.175 ms
8 i-14-0.wil-core03.net.reach.com (202.84.143.246) 169.706 ms 169.726 ms 169.61 ms
9 i-1-2.wil04.net.reach.com (202.84.251.154) 174.387 ms 174.422 ms 174.314 ms
10 ge-6-21.car3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.68.111.137) 174.432 ms 174.412 ms 174.433 ms
11 ae-31-51.ebr1.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.68.102.30) 185.211 ms 184.828 ms 180.283 ms
12 ae-1-100.ebr2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.69.132.6) 179.361 ms 185.568 ms 180.723 ms
13 ae-3.ebr3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.132.78) 208.754 ms 216.002 ms 216.553 ms
14 ae-73-73.csw2.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.136.158) 209.186 ms 207.364 ms 212.168 ms
15 ae-21-79.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.68.19.67) 208.449 ms 207.839 ms 207.917 ms
16 COLO4-DALLA.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net (8.9.232.74) 208.32 ms 208.291 ms 208.216 ms
17 ge-1-2.core2.colo4dallas.net (206.123.64.30) 204.219 ms 201.573 ms 201.345 ms
18 vz35-tx.privatesystems.net (72.249.47.215) 203.78 ms 203.335 ms 203.391 ms
19 72.249.87.54 (72.249.87.54) 203.489 ms 203.917 ms 203.391 ms


Verify Here (http://www.telstra.net/cgi-bin/trace?72.249.87.54)

However, for the first time in two months I am working on my websites with no issues. WinSCP hasn't timed out or crashed once all day. It took me 1 hour to download a 20MB backup from the old host and 10 minutes to uplaod it to the new host -- and ISP "upload" times are always slower than "download" times. That only goes to show how much of a problem there is. Plus, there was not a single timeout, crash, trash or abort during the upload. The backup sailed onto the server and almost gave me (forgive me, but) a wood.

Also, keep in mind, I am in "Australia" (not Texas). I do understand that sometimes there are occurrences in the world that cause me to have problems with various locations. Believe me -- if anyone understands that it's me. I'm well versed.

Nevertheless, in spite of all the above, 20+ time-outs to download 1 20MB file is pretty bad. 15 and 20 second forum hangs is NOT caused by 200ms latency.

As a mater of fact, the MySQL was performing SO poorly that many times the forum would time out before a new post could make it to MySQL.

Now look at this. A site I am working on right now: http://www.aesap.com -- Look how fast it loads -- it's instant. I have NO connection problems whatsoever. The forum is loading in a second or two (as it should, because there's no one on the site).

I am now actually able to get something done. Keep in mind also, that I have been complaining about these problems to ResellerPanel not for an afternoon or a day -- but weeks. Many weeks. I never once got acknowledgment that the problem is with ResellersPanel setup, and I'll swear until the cows come home that is IS their setup.

Whether it's overloaded servers, ill-configured servers, attempts at securing the server -- I have no idea. But what annoys me is that all I ever got was spiels and rebuttals and explanations of how FTP works. Things that don't help.

A perfect example of this type of communication is Milen's first three paragraphs going on about DNS in this thread. Who ever said anything about DNS? That's what I am saying. That's what I am talking about. This is what I've been putting up with.

I would have been happy to just let all this slide once I was off the server, but no -- Mr Milen Rebuttal Sir had to show up and try to make out that they tried to help me when they didn't do a THING except make excuses rebuttals. Not a thing. Nothing!

Well.. 0.78/GB is budget hosting no matter how you look at it.

Glad you found a better provider for your situation.

"My 15 minutes is up."

Indeed. Closed.