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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Posts
    100

    asmhosting - avoid...

    http://www.asmhosting.com

    I needed a few linux shells, and these guys seemed decent. UK-hosted, ok prices, but definitely not so cheap as to be sub-standard...

    Setup went smoothly, but then a few weeks ago the shells would randomly drop their net connection. It got worse and worse, and customers were told it was a hardware issue, and that they were waiting for replacement hardware.

    Replacement hardware has arrived and been fitted, and my shells came back up for literally a few hours, and vanished again.

    Another support ticket later, they said they were transferring all shells over to one of their stable servers while they took the time to sort this one properly - something that probably should've been done as soon as the instability started, but I can't blame them because I could just as easily have demanded that they do this.

    They told me my shells would be up and running on the other box within 30 minutes, and said they'd credit me with a free month's fees because of the service.

    That was a week ago.

    The last time they answered a support ticket from me was a week ago.

    They haven't answered the message I left on their telephone answering machine.

    Their website claims 99.9% uptime. I've probably had less than 50% this month...

    They also claim a 12hr support response. 7 days > 12 hours, no?

    Of course, I've sourced my shell hosting elsewhere now, and want nothing more to do with these jokers, but I feel the need to warn others.

    What with the bitesites debacle, it might be worth people keeping an eye on who I choose for hosting, and avoiding those companies.

  2. #2
    Cheap hosting need to jam pack their server with ton of client in order to cover to cover the cost, no one want to run a negative cash flow business . So it should not be surprise that you get what you paid for.
    Sitek XEN Hosting - Reliable VPS Hosting

    CRM OnDemand - Fully Managed / Customized vTiger Hosting

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Posts
    100
    There's a difference between not getting what you paid for and them taking your money and running.

    The prices aren't particularly cheap anyway, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. Either way, they're thieves and give terrible service.

  4. #4

    Exclamation Same problem!

    I had EXACTLY the same problem with this company!

    I had a large account with them for almost a year. I had connection problems, and issues with huge downtime which cost me a lot of time and money. They have ignored all my support tickets for the past 3 months, and do not answer telephone calls, or reply to the answering machine messages I have left them.

    I have now sourced my hosting from another London based company, and they are absolutley top notch, for lower than the price I paid for ASM.

    PTS

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Posts
    1,128
    I don't think these guys even answer support tickets at all anymore.

    I had a great service for about 6 months with them, now I opened a support ticket on the 5th March, and have received no response.

    So a week ago I opened an account cancellation request, and have received no response at all.

    Are they still even taking new orders? It seems like no one is running the company anymore...

  6. #6

    Exclamation

    Quote Originally Posted by Danny_G View Post
    I don't think these guys even answer support tickets at all anymore.

    I had a great service for about 6 months with them, now I opened a support ticket on the 5th March, and have received no response.

    So a week ago I opened an account cancellation request, and have received no response at all.

    Are they still even taking new orders? It seems like no one is running the company anymore...

    No, There is no-one taking orders. They just charge you pro-rata, you pay, then nothing else happens. No-one is running the company, and the founder's personal blog never gets updated


    PTS

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Posts
    1,128
    Quote Originally Posted by PTS107 View Post
    No, There is no-one taking orders. They just charge you pro-rata, you pay, then nothing else happens. No-one is running the company, and the founder's personal blog never gets updated


    PTS
    Have you placed a new order with them?

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Chennai , India
    Posts
    4,632
    people either go for big ones or low priced. I think people have to change looking towards quality based host.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Posts
    100
    Quote Originally Posted by Biju View Post
    people either go for big ones or low priced. I think people have to change looking towards quality based host.
    As has been said though, their prices aren't low.


    From their website:

    "
    Our site and services are currently under going needed maintenance and upgrade's.
    During this time we will not be accepting any new orders, current customers services may be intermittently affected by these changes.
    We will contact anyone affected by this as the need arises.
    Regards,
    ASMHosting Staff
    24/March/2008
    Some routing issues have been corrected.
    These were caused by incorrect settings after the router replacement.
    23/March/2008
    A new Juniper router has been installed due to hardware issues.
    This should resolve any current/past connectivity issues"



    Intermittently? How about completely stopped?!


    An incorrectly setup router doesn't explain them ignoring ticket after ticket.

    They're con men, plain and simple.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Posts
    1,128
    Quote Originally Posted by WG47 View Post
    As has been said though, their prices aren't low.


    From their website:

    "
    Our site and services are currently under going needed maintenance and upgrade's.
    During this time we will not be accepting any new orders, current customers services may be intermittently affected by these changes.
    We will contact anyone affected by this as the need arises.
    Regards,
    ASMHosting Staff
    24/March/2008
    Some routing issues have been corrected.
    These were caused by incorrect settings after the router replacement.
    23/March/2008
    A new Juniper router has been installed due to hardware issues.
    This should resolve any current/past connectivity issues"



    Intermittently? How about completely stopped?!


    An incorrectly setup router doesn't explain them ignoring ticket after ticket.

    They're con men, plain and simple.
    I was paying £2.50 for a 4 process IRC shell with them for the last 6 months or so, and it was a great service, until they went AWOL.

    How does suddenly putting up a web page explaining some router fault justify a month of complete absence from all support tickets, phone answers and new orders?

    Con artists indeed, and I hope anyone considering their services finds this post first and reconsiders.

    Edit: good to see this thread is the second result when Google'ing "asmhosting"...

  11. #11
    Hi,

    While what I say is not going to make any difference to what has been said here already - and I for one am not going to try making excuses for what has happened I would like to take some time to explain some things.

    Firstly, the reasons for my "AWOL" as it was put, is due to a number of personal things that happened which were outside my control, these should not have impacted services but unfortunately when you are this size (small) it does do so and for that I can only apologize – this is likely a lack of foresight on my part in not getting more people on part time to help with the support.

    The issue with the Shell Hosting server (I'd like to point out that it was only 1 of our 4 servers that was affected and a number of customers got moved off of it) was repeated hardware failure, obviously I have missed something in moving people and issuing refunds which will be looked into over the next week.

    I decided that orders should not be taken as it will cause more issues while changes to the network and the way things are run than it solves.

    At the moment there are new people who we are bringing on to do the support tickets which should remove the issue should something like this happen again - also and just as importantly - we will have a number of people who are able to do onsite work at the datacenter for us which should mean that any hardware issues will get dealt with quickly and properly.

    While I don't expect this to change your views on things that have happened I at least hope it clears up some issues.

    I'm not here to make excuses, those are pointless as the events have happened and that is something we will now have to deal with. I'm simply here to explain why these have happened and what we are doing to improve/change them.

    Yesterday we installed a new Juniper router to replace our old router which was causing intermittent issues with connectivity, if we were a "flash in the pan" as it were we would not see fit to invest the sort of money that we are having to do to get things back to how they were - we will however have a lot of other things going on which I'll quickly outline:

    Web servers - There are some issues here (were running out of disk space & CPU is bottlenecking) so there will be some outages per account while they are moved to a new server. People will be emailed about these as and when they happen. This will be within the next 2 weeks or so.

    Shell Servers - We have to move each server’s users to newer servers, for example our somewhat aging shell 1 server is suffering somewhat due to load issues. This will be done over a long period of time and isn’t something that is going to happen in the next month or so.

    Virtual Servers - We don't have any issues here at the moment, however we will be adding some new hardware to the cluster and will be moving people to the new servers if they so which (thanks to the way openvz works this can be done seamlessly).

    Connectivity - While I feel our providers are providing us a good service there is always some way this can be improved and we are looking into a few new providers and a way to improve our USA connectivity as I feel this is lacking.

    Support - This was once good. I think this is the main issue as there turned out to not be enough hours in the day to deal with what needed dealing with. I have explained above what is being done about this and the only other thing to add is that we'll be moving away from Kayako as it is not flexible enough nor (I find) reliable enough for our use. This should hopefully be done by the end of this day (24th March) and will be linked on the front page.

    All in all, that's the situation - I don't think there is anything more that I can add other than to apologise to all those affected by things that have gone on and hope that you see that we are doing the best to rectify the situation and stop it from happening again at any point in the future.

    On a final note, we don’t offer Phone Support to customers unless they are a Colocation customer.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by alexas View Post
    Hi,

    While what I say is not going to make any difference to what has been said here already - and I for one am not going to try making excuses for what has happened I would like to take some time to explain some things.

    Firstly, the reasons for my "AWOL" as it was put, is due to a number of personal things that happened which were outside my control, these should not have impacted services but unfortunately when you are this size (small) it does do so and for that I can only apologize – this is likely a lack of foresight on my part in not getting more people on part time to help with the support.

    The issue with the Shell Hosting server (I'd like to point out that it was only 1 of our 4 servers that was affected and a number of customers got moved off of it) was repeated hardware failure, obviously I have missed something in moving people and issuing refunds which will be looked into over the next week.

    I decided that orders should not be taken as it will cause more issues while changes to the network and the way things are run than it solves.

    At the moment there are new people who we are bringing on to do the support tickets which should remove the issue should something like this happen again - also and just as importantly - we will have a number of people who are able to do onsite work at the datacenter for us which should mean that any hardware issues will get dealt with quickly and properly.

    While I don't expect this to change your views on things that have happened I at least hope it clears up some issues.

    I'm not here to make excuses, those are pointless as the events have happened and that is something we will now have to deal with. I'm simply here to explain why these have happened and what we are doing to improve/change them.

    Yesterday we installed a new Juniper router to replace our old router which was causing intermittent issues with connectivity, if we were a "flash in the pan" as it were we would not see fit to invest the sort of money that we are having to do to get things back to how they were - we will however have a lot of other things going on which I'll quickly outline:

    Web servers - There are some issues here (were running out of disk space & CPU is bottlenecking) so there will be some outages per account while they are moved to a new server. People will be emailed about these as and when they happen. This will be within the next 2 weeks or so.

    Shell Servers - We have to move each server’s users to newer servers, for example our somewhat aging shell 1 server is suffering somewhat due to load issues. This will be done over a long period of time and isn’t something that is going to happen in the next month or so.

    Virtual Servers - We don't have any issues here at the moment, however we will be adding some new hardware to the cluster and will be moving people to the new servers if they so which (thanks to the way openvz works this can be done seamlessly).

    Connectivity - While I feel our providers are providing us a good service there is always some way this can be improved and we are looking into a few new providers and a way to improve our USA connectivity as I feel this is lacking.

    Support - This was once good. I think this is the main issue as there turned out to not be enough hours in the day to deal with what needed dealing with. I have explained above what is being done about this and the only other thing to add is that we'll be moving away from Kayako as it is not flexible enough nor (I find) reliable enough for our use. This should hopefully be done by the end of this day (24th March) and will be linked on the front page.

    All in all, that's the situation - I don't think there is anything more that I can add other than to apologise to all those affected by things that have gone on and hope that you see that we are doing the best to rectify the situation and stop it from happening again at any point in the future.

    On a final note, we don’t offer Phone Support to customers unless they are a Colocation customer.
    Not excuses? Seems like it to me.

    Fair enough, personal problems do have an effect, I know that, but notification is not hard, nor time consuming.

    Simply adding a paragraph of text or sending a mass email would have taken you 5 minutes if that, and if you were incapable of doing that, you could just as easily have had another staff member do it.

    You have neglected customers of a company you clearly make money from, and I would imagine you have lost a fair amount of customers, and money, which could have easily been limited, if not avoided with a 5 minute e-mail.

    PTS

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Posts
    100
    Quote Originally Posted by alexas View Post
    Firstly, the reasons for my "AWOL" as it was put, is due to a number of personal things that happened which were outside my control, these should not have impacted services but unfortunately when you are this size (small) it does do so and for that I can only apologize – this is likely a lack of foresight on my part in not getting more people on part time to help with the support.


    *YOUR* AWOL. That doesn't explain why nobody else answered my tickets or phone calls. I've had ticket replies from at least two different people, so why did this other person not reply to my ticket?

    The issue with the Shell Hosting server (I'd like to point out that it was only 1 of our 4 servers that was affected and a number of customers got moved off of it)
    I was told at one point I'd be moved to the new server within 30 minutes. That never happened. Are you saying that this catastrophe that happened in your personal life happened within 30 minutes of you telling me that?

    At the moment there are new people who we are bringing on to do the support tickets which should remove the issue should something like this happen again - also and just as importantly - we will have a number of people who are able to do onsite work at the datacenter for us which should mean that any hardware issues will get dealt with quickly and properly.
    Glad to hear it.

    there turned out to not be enough hours in the day to deal with what needed dealing with.
    800-odd too few hours in the day, judging by the last support ticket of mine you answered.

    On a final note, we don’t offer Phone Support to customers unless they are a Colocation customer.
    Might be an idea to mention that beside the phone number on the webpage then.

  14. #14
    Not excuses? Seems like it to me.
    If you see them that way there is nothing I can do about that, I could have just left it without replying and not given any information but I don't think that's the right way to deal with this issue.

    You have neglected customers of a company you clearly make money from, and I would imagine you have lost a fair amount of customers
    A number of them yes, but on the whole most people's services were running completely fine and thus they had no issues so didn't need to have any contact. I screwed up, thats how you get punished for it.

    I was told at one point I'd be moved to the new server within 30 minutes. That never happened.
    No it simply seems that I screwed up the move of your account - another mistake on my part.

    800-odd too few hours in the day, judging by the last support ticket of mine you answered.
    I was refering to before this issue, there was only so many hours in a day that could be spent working on things.

    Might be an idea to mention that beside the phone number on the webpage then.
    There was one in the past (over 4 months ago if memory serves me correctly) but that got removed.

    I know things should have been better handled looking at them, all I can do now is explain what happened and what is being done to make sure the same things don't happen again.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Posts
    100
    Quote Originally Posted by alexas View Post
    I know things should have been better handled looking at them, all I can do now is explain what happened and what is being done to make sure the same things don't happen again.
    So we can expect refunds when?

  16. #16

    Exclamation

    Also, would you like to explain to my customers exactly why they suffered extensive downtime, meaning I had to refund THEM money, causing me not only to lose the money I paid you, but also they money I would have gained from them?

    Would you like to compensate me for that, as well?

    The ASMHosting site now says you are not accepting new orders, and are upgrading.

    Maybe ASM Hosting would like to pay me for the free upgrades I had to give out as compensation as well.


    PTS
    Last edited by PTS107; 03-24-2008 at 06:19 PM.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Posts
    1,128
    The thing is, in the amount of time it has taken ASMHositng to respond to this thread, I'm sure they could have responded to and solved the three open tickets that are still sitting in the Help Desk...

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Danny_G View Post
    The thing is, in the amount of time it has taken ASMHosting to respond to this thread, I'm sure they could have responded to and solved the three open tickets that are still sitting in the Help Desk...

    Exactly.



    PTS

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Posts
    100
    Quote Originally Posted by Danny_G View Post
    The thing is, in the amount of time it has taken ASMHositng to respond to this thread, I'm sure they could have responded to and solved the three open tickets that are still sitting in the Help Desk...
    Am I right in saying that you work(ed?) there?

    I'm sure someone with that name has answered support tickets before... You also used to have a link to them on your blog, and for some reason your domains showed up in the autocomplete for the whois site I use, so I've whois'd them before.

    If so, can you shed any more light on what actually happened?

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Posts
    1,128
    Quote Originally Posted by WG47 View Post
    Am I right in saying that you work(ed?) there?

    I'm sure someone with that name has answered support tickets before... You also used to have a link to them on your blog, and for some reason your domains showed up in the autocomplete for the whois site I use, so I've whois'd them before.

    If so, can you shed any more light on what actually happened?
    Never worked for them, never met the owner, and have never had any communication with this company aside from that I used to be a customer.

    I used to have a link on my blog out of goodwill because I was a customer, but have since removed it due to these events.

  21. #21
    There were reasons why the old system was not being dealt with. Also the fact that on the whole when I have been reply here it's been while I have been traveling to and from the datacenter to get parts or something quick to eat before I carry on fixing issues.

    Our uptime only covers connectivty and servers and is dealt with in service credits (this is covered in the Terms of Service).

    If you would be kind enough to revisit the site, there is information refering to the other replys here containted there.

    Things will be dealt with over there now, if you have any other comments/questions please put them in the correct location as outlined in the announcement.

    Also, no Danny_G has never worked for us.

  22. #22
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Posts
    100
    Quote Originally Posted by Danny_G View Post
    Never worked for them, never met the owner, and have never had any communication with this company aside from that I used to be a customer.

    I used to have a link on my blog out of goodwill because I was a customer, but have since removed it due to these events.

    Fair enough. My bad.

  23. #23
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Gloucestershire
    Posts
    51
    ASMHosting have been a resonable company with me.

    I started of with an IRCD Shell and had no down time what so ever.

    I eventually terminated my account as I decided not to have an IRCD Shell.

    Not long later I got a Shell for an eggdrop bot.

    Only this is when the router went and I lost access to my account.

    I then decided to take out an IRCD Shell and run an IRCD server and eggdrop bot. Only 1 month later I had to send loads of tickets and finally got my account when you came back my ASMHosting owner.

    I had previously volunteered to help with support tickets etc. You put my ticket on hold and said yes! Then you went awol.

    I asked again you put the ticket on hold for now.

    To be honst I cant see I'll get a reply. What do you think the odds are?

    And lastly your ticket responce time used to be within at least 2-3 hours.

    Now its longer.

    I'm still waiting for a reply to the fact my IRCD server and eggdrop bot files/folders have gone from my shell.

    Any another ticket to say I'd like to be removed from the old billing system and have all my Shells terminated.

    I'm still offering my services to you as I can see you need help.

    Like i said I dont want any thing in return I'm doing this out the goodness of my own heart.

    Not many people would do that now.

  24. #24
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Posts
    1,128
    Looks like ASMHosting aren't as back on their feet as they make themselves out to be.

    I received an invoice for a service that I requested to cancel a month ago... So I try and send an email to billing@asmhosting.com, and get the old "this email address does not exist..." bounceback. So I then try support@asmhosting.com, same thing...

    So it seems like they shut down the old helpdesk without answering outstanding tickets, and they don't have any billing or support email addresses.

    I refuse to register on their new helpdesk as I'm not a customer, although I don't think registering would make any difference anyway...

  25. #25
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Gloucestershire
    Posts
    51
    Quote Originally Posted by Danny_G View Post
    Looks like ASMHosting aren't as back on their feet as they make themselves out to be.

    I received an invoice for a service that I requested to cancel a month ago... So I try and send an email to billing@asmhosting.com, and get the old "this email address does not exist..." bounceback. So I then try support@asmhosting.com, same thing...

    So it seems like they shut down the old helpdesk without answering outstanding tickets, and they don't have any billing or support email addresses.

    I refuse to register on their new helpdesk as I'm not a customer, although I don't think registering would make any difference anyway...
    I asked to cancel my services because my IRCD software and eggdrop bot got deleted. They claimed it was nothing to do with them but how else would they go missing?

    They have failed to respond to my message to cancell and they have not launched there new website and allow new orders.

    So once again they have vanished.

    You can email Alex Smith the owner at asmith@asmhosting.com although he is unlikly to reply because he says he wont respond to emails sent you should use the help deks.

    You could add him to msn and when he comes online have a go at home.

    I'm not impressed.

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