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  1. #1
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    W2 Interactive - Are they responding to anyone's tickets?

    I've had a low use server with them for about five months or so. They have always been slow to resolve tickets, but considering their budget price, I have accepted that. However, in the last couples months, and worse in the last couple weeks, tickets just go ignored.

    In February I start receiving alerts that a hard drive might be failing. They asked me to run SMART and other tests, which I did, and then just stopped responding to the ticket. I've bumped the ticket a few times and then after over two months, sent a ticket to customer service, and just had a curt "they will respond in the original ticket". It's now been weeks since then (months since the ticket was open, and still nothing.

    Nearly two weeks ago, the my Cpanel license expired. I put in a ticket, and then got a curt "did you notice you haven't paid this in months", which of course I replied I hadn't noticed, because every other host I have been with me BILLED me for the services. I don't check every invoice that's on autopay to see if the host is screwing up their billing.

    Anyway, I told them to charge my existing account or tell me how they wanted it caught up, and I would do so immediately (they charge a ridiculous amount for Cpanel license compared to most). They sent me an invoice, I paid it within hours. I bumped the ticket and said so. A tech told me he was rebooting the server and as soon as it was up, he needed to login and it would be working, and asked for the login credentials (they were already in the ticket, but I added them again anyway).

    That was Monday the 16th, and even though I have asked for updates/ETA's in the ticket several times, there has been no more reply in the ticket and the Cpanel license is still expired.

    Finally, over the weekend, I sent a ticket to the CEO (they have a tell the CEO how we're doing type thing), explaining the problems and the next morning I got an email (maybe it was a concidence and went to everyone) warning how putting in multiple tickets would result in $25 charges.

    Am I just having bad luck, or is this par for the course with these guys?

    I understand discount level service, but this is ridiculous. I have an expired Cpanel license. I have a hard drive that 'might' be failing. I am getting no responses to my ticket and don't know of any way to get an update, as their phones are for sales calls only. They have closed/deleted the ticket I sent to customer service and the CEO inbox, so I don't even have the option of bumping those for clarification, and have been told that any further tickets create checking on the weeks and months old open tickets (presumably to customer service) will incur a $25 fee.
    Last edited by tnedator; 05-26-2011 at 11:28 PM.
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  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by tnedator View Post
    Finally, over the weekend, I sent a ticket to the CEO (they have a tell the CEO how we're doing type thing), explaining the problems and the next morning I got an email (maybe it was a concidence and went to everyone) warning how putting in multiple tickets would result in $25 charges.
    It's not surprising, it's another Lyron company. All his previous ventures crash and burn after a few months.

  3. #3
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    tnedator,

    If you look closely at WHT or use the search button located on top, you will see there's a LOT more complains than yours alone. You're very lucky that you have something to fall back on. Better than quite a few others who had no services for their money paid at all.
    Aaron Ong
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  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by aodat2 View Post
    tnedator,

    If you look closely at WHT or use the search button located on top, you will see there's a LOT more complains than yours alone. You're very lucky that you have something to fall back on. Better than quite a few others who had no services for their money paid at all.
    I've done some searches and I was quite surprised by not seeing many stories like mine. Some complaining about waiting a long time to get their server online after initial order, I think another talking about having a server down for a couple weeks, but at the same time, I read quite few threads/posts praising W2. So, either I've just had bad luck. They've gotten much worse in the last couple weeks (doesn't explain my 4 month old "failing hard drive" ticket). Or, something else is going on.
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  5. #5
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    I have no idea but W2 seems to be having more bad than good over here. I've not really seen any good coming from W2Interactive for a very long time. I've only seen or heard the bad. Totally no reviews of people doing good with them.

    If you still have your stuff, I do recommend that you make a backup of your stuff and be ready to go coz they do really seem kinda shady when it comes to doing business. Nobody avoids tickets for 4 months, not even a single person startup company. Plus threatening a customer with a $25 charge if they open multiple tickets is just totally wrong.

    My customer sent me 3 emails today of the same nature. 1 sent via his phone, 2 via his computer. All about the same thing. I closed 2 of them and only told him to refrain from doing so. The reason he did that was because there seems to be a problem with his computer so he tried his phone. Now, I don't know what would W2Interactive do in such a case but if they really did give you a $25 charge on this, what would you feel/do?

    My advice - Be careful about such companies!
    Aaron Ong
    Dedicated Servers - 100TB Servers - 100Mbps Unmetered Servers - Web Hosting - CDN Network
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  6. #6
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    I paid them $700 in March to use an AMD Hexcore server for a year. On monday of this week it failed. By Wednesday it was still down, no response to PING, destination host unreachable. My trouble ticket received canned responses like "We are looking into this for you".

    When I received a mass email from Lyron Foster offering refunds for dissatisfied customers later on Wednesday I took him up on the offer.

    I have not received any refund yet, but it has only been two days so far.

    I think W2 Servers is every bit as reliable as a chocolate teapot.

    I'm going to try DataShack instead.
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  7. #7
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    I have seen a lot of posts regarding their slow responses or no responses to tickets. Although I have not seen anyone waiting as long as you have. There was also a post that had an email from Lyron Foster stating that they would issue refunds on services that were paid yearly. You may wan t to pursue that route.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Xenos View Post
    I have seen a lot of posts regarding their slow responses or no responses to tickets. Although I have not seen anyone waiting as long as you have. There was also a post that had an email from Lyron Foster stating that they would issue refunds on services that were paid yearly. You may wan t to pursue that route.
    I opted to pay a $75 service fee and pay monthly, so the refund (if any would even apply) would be negligible.

    I like the low priced service, and as a result expect service less than traditionally priced managed solutions. However, if they advertise as managed, they shouldn't go weeks or months without resolving tickets.

    I guess I'll see what happens in the next few days or week and then decide how to proceed.
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  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by srider View Post
    I paid them $700 in March to use an AMD Hexcore server for a year. On monday of this week it failed. By Wednesday it was still down, no response to PING, destination host unreachable. My trouble ticket received canned responses like "We are looking into this for you".
    Yikes! How did you pay? PayPal, Credit Card?

  10. #10
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    There are some people posting in this and other threads with negative experience that amounts to "I have heard" and "it seems". I remind you to read the rules of the forum, they apply to everyone equally. First hand experience only.

    I understand people who have had past experiences warning people but some of the other posters have just "heard stuff". Not cool.

    For the record. We (my company not WHT) decided to get a couple of vps for backup / dns / offsite monitoring services. The thinking was if for $24 we get a few months of use out of it, it was worth it.

    Setup was instant for the Linux ones and windows took a week. Support has been fast at times (usually late at night) but not so fast at other times but we haven't had ANY issues with performance or downtime with any of them and we are in 3 different locations with them. We are not using it for anything heavy but they have been up the entire time and speeds are reasonably good.

    I am not saying people shouldn't be careful with a new company with low prices but if you set your expectations, take backups you should be ok based on our almost 2 months with them now. There are things that concern me about the long term viability of the service but I have addressed them via support ticket and they are resolving them to my satisfaction so far.

    We didn't do any dedicated servers with them just VPS so I can't comment on dedicated.

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick View Post
    Yikes! How did you pay? PayPal, Credit Card?
    A credit card. Fortunately it expires next month so they will not be able to renew the charges for the services they are not providing.
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  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Coolraul View Post
    I am not saying people shouldn't be careful with a new company with low prices but if you set your expectations, take backups you should be ok based on our almost 2 months with them now. There are things that concern me about the long term viability of the service but I have addressed them via support ticket and they are resolving them to my satisfaction so far.
    The thing is, all of Lyron's ventures started out this way. They come out with amazing prices, provide wonderful support then over time the quality drops, then people start getting angry, then the company becomes less responsive and eventually people are left high and dry wondering what the hell happened.

    While I don't have any experience with W2 Servers, I do with a previous venture owned by their CEO and I'm still waiting for an explanation about that. Many people were burned back then, the history of Lyron's companies are well documented on WHT. Regardless if I have first hand experience with W2 Servers or not, I feel more than compelled to do the right thing and bring these "discrepancies" to light.

    What these people have done is effectively saying, well we had a prior business and it went belly up, lots of people were burned, some lost money, some lost data, we never apologized or explained what happened. It was widely speculated back then they they knew their days were numbered yet continued to fulfill orders.

    Lyron is trying to play the victim here, but if that were the case why hasn't he come back to WHT to explain what happened? A simple apology, a simple explanation... but no, he's too proud for that! This is NOT OK behavior. People should not be allowed to start a business, let it go to hell, screw over dozens+ of people, disappear without ANY explanation and come back like nothing happened.

    When sh.t like this happens, it affects my business and it affects yours! These customers who have been screwed over by W2 Servers might say, never again will they go through a reseller for servers. Never again will they trust a managed provider. Some of them are going to go direct and bypass the middle man, others will probably never learn. This is all potentially taking money from all of our pockets, and that's why I'm so passionate about these idiots messing around and using WHT as ground zero to advertise.

  13. #13
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    I agree with you completely Patrick.

    Not only has W2's service been slow but they've now apparently lost my data. The Chicago node I was on was apparently having disk issues and W2 was aware of that "for months now" yet it was still running without fixes. About 4 days ago, my VPS went down. I sent in a ticket and received no response regarding the issue for about 2 days. At the end of the day, I find that the data on the node "most likely won't be restorable". They give me two options: transfer to another node or get a refund.

    I know that I shouldn't expect much from a budget VPS but I'd expect them to at least keep my data.
    Joseph Le
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  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick View Post
    The thing is, all of Lyron's ventures started out this way. They come out with amazing prices, provide wonderful support then over time the quality drops, then people start getting angry, then the company becomes less responsive and eventually people are left high and dry wondering what the hell happened.

    While I don't have any experience with W2 Servers, I do with a previous venture owned by their CEO and I'm still waiting for an explanation about that. Many people were burned back then, the history of Lyron's companies are well documented on WHT. Regardless if I have first hand experience with W2 Servers or not, I feel more than compelled to do the right thing and bring these "discrepancies" to light.

    What these people have done is effectively saying, well we had a prior business and it went belly up, lots of people were burned, some lost money, some lost data, we never apologized or explained what happened. It was widely speculated back then they they knew their days were numbered yet continued to fulfill orders.

    Lyron is trying to play the victim here, but if that were the case why hasn't he come back to WHT to explain what happened? A simple apology, a simple explanation... but no, he's too proud for that! This is NOT OK behavior. People should not be allowed to start a business, let it go to hell, screw over dozens+ of people, disappear without ANY explanation and come back like nothing happened.

    When sh.t like this happens, it affects my business and it affects yours! These customers who have been screwed over by W2 Servers might say, never again will they go through a reseller for servers. Never again will they trust a managed provider. Some of them are going to go direct and bypass the middle man, others will probably never learn. This is all potentially taking money from all of our pockets, and that's why I'm so passionate about these idiots messing around and using WHT as ground zero to advertise.
    I understand your point and your experience in the past is highly relevant. Trust me I read each of your posts so I knew what the risks were.

    My comments are more of those that have no experience other than what they have read and are regurgitating it.

    I have to believe in the ability of people to learn from past mistakes I guess. I have made my share of mistakes.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by JosephL View Post
    I agree with you completely Patrick.

    Not only has W2's service been slow but they've now apparently lost my data. The Chicago node I was on was apparently having disk issues and W2 was aware of that "for months now" yet it was still running without fixes. About 4 days ago, my VPS went down. I sent in a ticket and received no response regarding the issue for about 2 days. At the end of the day, I find that the data on the node "most likely won't be restorable". They give me two options: transfer to another node or get a refund.

    I know that I shouldn't expect much from a budget VPS but I'd expect them to at least keep my data.
    No offense but drives fail. I feel for you it always sucks to have downtime but backups are always your responsibility.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by Coolraul View Post
    No offense but drives fail. I feel for you it always sucks to have downtime but backups are always your responsibility.
    Oh, I do have backups every night and those are what I'm running on right now. I'm just disappointed that they did not take action even when they knew about the issues a few months back.
    Joseph Le
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  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Coolraul View Post
    There are some people posting in this and other threads with negative experience that amounts to "I have heard" and "it seems". I remind you to read the rules of the forum, they apply to everyone equally. First hand experience only.

    I understand people who have had past experiences warning people but some of the other posters have just "heard stuff". Not cool.
    I am a past customer of W2servers and have first hand experience to leave valuable comments. I can give you the ip's I had, but doubt that will be very useful to verify my claims at this point.

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Coolraul View Post
    No offense but drives fail. I feel for you it always sucks to have downtime but backups are always your responsibility.
    Yes, drives fail. In my case, I created this ticke on February 5th:

    I received this cpanel alert:

    ===========================

    S.M.A.R.T Errors on /dev/sda
    From Command: /usr/sbin/smartctl -q errorsonly -H -l selftest -l error /dev/sda
    ATA Error Count: 1
    Error 1 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 10208 hours (425 days + 8 hours)
    ----END /dev/sda--
    and then the next day

    Also, here's another warning I received overnight.

    S.M.A.R.T Errors on /dev/sda
    From Command: /usr/sbin/smartctl -q errorsonly -H -l selftest -l error /dev/sda
    ATA Error Count: 5
    Error 5 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 10226 hours (426 days + 2 hours)
    Error 4 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 10225 hours (426 days + 1 hours)
    Error 3 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 10225 hours (426 days + 1 hours)
    Error 2 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 10225 hours (426 days + 1 hours)
    Error 1 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 10208 hours (425 days + 8 hours)
    ----END /dev/sda--
    They asked me to run some tests (rather than them doing it), which I did, but didn't get the results they said I should. We went back and forth for another day or so, with them saying they would investigate it, and then nothing. I wound up traveling for business and forgot about it and then bumped the ticket April 14th and didn't get any response until the 25th, when someone asked me if it was ever taken care of for me, which was obvious from the ticket that it hadn't been.

    On May 12th I opened a new ticket and referred to the old one. The next day, I got an apology and was told it would be handled in my original ticket. I requested updates on the 13th and 14th, and then on the 16th, I received an apology and was sked if the problem had been resolved yet...

    The same day I responded that it wasn't. Then today, I have again posted in the ticket asking for a response and resolution.

    So, yes, hard drives fail, but if you ignore for nearly four months error alerts that might indicate a drive is failing, you greatly increase the chance that a clients data is going to get lost and unscheduled downtime will occur.
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  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick View Post
    The thing is, all of Lyron's ventures started out this way. They come out with amazing prices, provide wonderful support then over time the quality drops, then people start getting angry, then the company becomes less responsive and eventually people are left high and dry wondering what the hell happened.
    I apologize if this is a little off the topic at hand but why do you think that is?

    Without going into to much speculation of course. Under capitalization? Poor management? Under pricing his growth?

    As a business man I enjoy studying the failures just as much as the successes. We can all learn from both.
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  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by DataShack View Post
    Without going into to much speculation of course. Under capitalization? Poor management? Under pricing his growth
    If I were a betting men, I would wager on growing too fast and not being able to have the resources to keep things operating within an efficient manner. Trouble tickets were probably stacking up, requests for support were taking longer than expected, people were getting angry with the level of service and cancelling or doing charge backs, they (allegedly) lost access to their PayPal account and here we are...

    With such tight margins they had to be cutting corners, whether its outsourcing with inept technical support representatives who were more or less unable to fix the important problems or using low quality hardware components, eventually something had to give. They clearly had a sizable customer base and the reviews for W2 Servers were not bad in the beginning, but as the months went on you could tell something was happening. Hardware failures, services not being delivered, technical support taking hours or even longer for things to be handled... customers who want the world for nothing, it all adds up and usually means trouble for a relatively new company.

    I mean think about it... FULLY MANAGED DEDICATED SERVERS FOR $25? C'mon... there's no way in hell that's sustainable. Unmanaged, sure - without a doubt, but FULLY MANAGED?!

  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by DataShack View Post
    I apologize if this is a little off the topic at hand but why do you think that is?

    Without going into to much speculation of course. Under capitalization? Poor management? Under pricing his growth?

    As a business man I enjoy studying the failures just as much as the successes. We can all learn from both.
    It's not a failure but it's on the right way to be.
    We received an email saying that they reached their yearly goal in two months.
    When you read that you know.
    And as a customer you see.
    At the begining a ticket was reply in less than one hour. Today, they reply for an urgent ticket in more than 2 days.
    It's always very interresting to see those company begening like rocket and finishing in flames.
    Since one month now i have a daily backup of all my sites waiting for the no ping day.
    Too big to fail... not yet.

  22. #22
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    I tried the managed $25 server while they were still MyLinuxGeek. As soon as the server was deployed, I decided to see what kind of management $25 got me. I sent them a simple request to install APF. It took several hours and 3 support techs to install it. Pretty obvious they were not qualified for the job.

  23. #23

    Thumbs down

    Well, I have a $600+ dedicated with them less than 2 months old. At this moment, server has been down for more than 36 hours. Ticket are being ignored. At this point I have no idea why my server is down or how much time it will take to resolve. In top of that, couple e-mails from CEO basically saying they are doing bad because the service is "Ultra cheap".

    I just requested a cancellation and refund (fingers crossed) due to lack of appropriate support and simply because I cannot trust them any more.

  24. #24
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    I wonder if things have changed since January for them:

    "I don't see any actual customers speaking negatively about us or our services. However, If there are customers that have complaints, please feel free to contact me directly. I will be happy to personally resolve any issues."

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1016626

  25. #25

    too bad

    I am also in the CHICAGO node, they LOST my data, and the worst part is that I paid for a backup service more than a month ago and it still no active, so I LOST MY WEBSITES.

    Once again, I had backups for sites, but in the same server, and I was waiting to the backup service for backing up the whole server.

    I am from Argentina, and I don't know what to do, they don't answer my tickets, and they give me a phone to leave messages but without asnwer too.

    Could someone guide me about what can I do? I spent more than 3 months working on 2 new sites that I had there.

    Also they say "It's likely the data wont be restorable."
    My english is not perfect, but I believe that they are saying that IT can be restored?? I am right?

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