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  1. #1

    VectorLevel Horror Story

    I signed up with VectorLevel in March of 2009 and was extremely happy with them while Orien was running the show. Unbeknownst to me, the company changed ownership in September '09 without informing its customers. I've been with multiple web hosts during changes in ownership, and every single one of them has informed its customers of the change in ownership and any potential policy changes. VectorLevel's site doesn't even reflect this change to this day. Call this a bad omen.

    In October of 2009, my SSH account stopped working. After contacting support, I was told that, "Yes..you don't have shell access right now." I contacted did some searching and found the Vector Level had decided to stop offering SSH access. Rather than inform its customers ahead of time, they just went ahead and disabled SSH. At this point, I should have switched hosts.

    At this point, performance was still good and I was still getting decent reliability from Vector Level. That only lasted a few more months.

    Early this year, I started experiencing frequent downtime. Over the last few months, the server I was on (oslo) crashed nearly daily. I was about to attempt to contact management (believing Orien was still in charge) when VectorLevel sent out an email:

    We expect to begin the move tomorrow, May 28, 2010, starting after 9:00 p.m. PST. We expect to have the transition completed before the weekend is over.
    "Okay" I thought, "they're finally going to fix it!" I informed my users that the site would be down for a migration on the weekend. My Basic state monitoring informed me that my site was down for several hours on the scheduled weekend. Thinking all was well and the migration was complete, I thanked my users for their understanding.

    On the morning of 5 June, I awoke to alerts that my site was down. I checked the announcements section and server status in the VectorLevel client area and discovered no information. I opened a support ticket to find out what was going on. After some back-and-forth, I was informed that they were now migrating my account to the new server.

    Four hours later (~6 hours of downtime), I opened a new ticket to inform tech support that I am receiving "invalid login" errors when attempting to access my control panel and ftp accounts. It has been nearly 24 hours since this problem began, and I am unable to fix a problem with the site (caused by the migration) without FTP or control panel access.

    Tech support always responds promptly to my tickets telling me to "Please hold on for further updates." Unfortunately, there are no further updates. At this point, I have a feeling their weekend support staff is incompetent and incapable of fixing these problems.

    Finally, I just discovered that all email is bouncing from all my domains on VectorLevel. This was likely caused by the migration as well, but I have no way of testing anything since I'm now locked out of the control panel.

    ---

    My site has now been down for approximately 36 hours. The site was brought down with no advance notification from VectorLevel, few coherent responses from support personnel, and no ETA of when it will be back up. I am still unable to FTP in to access any of my files so I am unable to even start the process of moving to a new host. All emails to all of my users are bouncing with error messages and have been all weekend.

    VectorLevel has consistently failed to communicate vital information with its customers since the change of ownership. I highly recommend VectorLevel over a year ago, but I am now forced to change my review to "absolutely avoid VectorLevel".

  2. #2
    Sorry to hear about your experience with them. I do hope you have a backup copy of your website files in case anything goes wrong. Also, have you tried requesting to speak to a higher ranked staff?
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  3. #3
    Join Date
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    Sorry to hear about your poor experience with VectorLevel. If you haven't already, I'd recommend that you pack your bags and take your business elsewhere.
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  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
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    Thanks for sharing your 'horor' experience with them, to us all.
    I know how it feels, it must be very frustrating to face a lot of downtime nearly daily and other outages/issues without early notifications.

    I hope you'll soon find better and more reliable host provider for you and your clients websites. All the best
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  5. #5
    Thanks, I will definitely be switching providers just as soon as I can.

    I don't have recent enough local backups, so I'm holding out hope that they will eventually grant me access to my own files again.

    I haven't tried speaking to a higher ranked staff. I'm not sure how to get a hold of one since they don't have a phone number to call, but I will try to locate someone and make sure they're also aware.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Nelchael View Post
    Thanks, I will definitely be switching providers just as soon as I can.

    I don't have recent enough local backups, so I'm holding out hope that they will eventually grant me access to my own files again.

    I haven't tried speaking to a higher ranked staff. I'm not sure how to get a hold of one since they don't have a phone number to call, but I will try to locate someone and make sure they're also aware.
    Good luck in retrieving your backups and finding a new host!

    I am not too sure if this information is recent enough, try calling up the number registered here: http://whois.domaintools.com/vectorlevel.com
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  7. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Jakarta
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    Yeah, I hope you can get all of your important files.
    It will be another nightmare if you can't get them all (or if you are not allowed to access them).
    Good luck and all the best to make contact with their supervisor/manager.
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  8. #8
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Smade's Inn
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    1,023
    Sorry to hear about Vectorlevel. Could you be so kind as to either supply us or privately supply your domain that was hosted with Vectorlevel to the mods via Report. I do not doubt the veracity of your review, however it is standard procedure.
    WHT is now used as the Universal Hosting Helpdesk.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Location
    Florida, U.S
    Posts
    1,738
    Sorry to hear your troubles with VectorLevel. Sometimes changing ownership is for the worst, and the clients end up suffering. There's no excuse for them not to contact their clients during maintenance/technical issues, or even after changing ownership of the company..The client has a right to know these things.
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  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Sacramento, CA
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    VectorLevel was a great host when Orien was in charge. PrecisionEffect also had a stellar reputation. However, both of these hosts changed management/ownership and their reputations suffered because of it. It's unfortunate that these once great DirectAdmin hosts have gone so downhill and taking their clients with them. There are so few great DA hosts and now with these two gone, the number dwindles even more. Medialayer is one of the few with a great rep that still exists today.
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  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by powerMonster-Scott View Post
    VectorLevel was a great host when Orien was in charge. PrecisionEffect also had a stellar reputation. However, both of these hosts changed management/ownership and their reputations suffered because of it. It's unfortunate that these once great DirectAdmin hosts have gone so downhill and taking their clients with them. There are so few great DA hosts and now with these two gone, the number dwindles even more. Medialayer is one of the few with a great rep that still exists today.
    That's what really makes me sad about all this. I'm a huge DirectAdmin fan, but it looks like I'll have to switch to a cpanel host unless I want to pay medialayer prices.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    New York City
    Posts
    5,169
    Good luck on finding a better host. Do keep us updated if you ever get a update.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Sacramento, CA
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nelchael View Post
    That's what really makes me sad about all this. I'm a huge DirectAdmin fan, but it looks like I'll have to switch to a cpanel host unless I want to pay medialayer prices.
    If you do a search, I'm sure you'll find another great DA host out there. There are a few out there that aren't as expensive as Medialayer (though their pricing is great for what you get).

    As a fellow DA-lover, I feel your pain!
    Last edited by anon-e-mouse; 06-07-2010 at 06:07 PM.

  14. #14
    After posting this I followed Jansen's advice and contacted support again asking them if I could speak to a higher-up, reminding them that I was > 36 hours without resolution.

    They replied with "I'm personally making this a top priority right now. I do not understand how your issue slipped by us, but i'm actively working on it right now."

    I'll definitely update the thread when the problem is resolved or I'm moved to a new host.

  15. #15
    Resolution:

    They fixed the problem on their end and ended up having to reset my control panel password. They also apologized in an apparently sincere manner.

    In the migration, all of my custom DNS records were destroyed. I spent the last hour or so manually recreating my CNAMES and MX records (I use google apps for most of my domains) and fixing a few small problems from the migration. Mail sent to my accounts over the weekends was permanently lost, but new mail is now being delivered to all accounts. All services appear to be fully operational again.

    Thanks to everyone for the helpful support and advice. I will be switching hosts and hope to write a more positive review in the future.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
    Posts
    10,629
    Thanks to everyone for the helpful support and advice. I will be switching hosts and hope to write a more positive review in the future.
    Thank you,

    Best of luck in your ventures.

    It was sad to see Orien leave the industry and the owners who took over the business are not very welcomed on this board.

    To what I hear.
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  17. #17
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    EU - east side
    Posts
    21,920
    It was sad to see Orien leave the industry and the owners who took over the business are not very welcomed on this board.
    Orien's moved to work for Site5 if I recall it right, so I wouldn't call that leaving the industry.

    They fixed the problem on their end and ended up having to reset my control panel password. They also apologized in an apparently sincere manner.
    While too late to restore your faith in them, it's good to see that you can now get your data an move on. You've learned, and luckily not in the most expensive possible way, the importance of having recent backups.

    Better luck in the future!

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Sacramento, CA
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    Yeah, Orien didn't leave the industry, but with school and such, he couldn't dedicate the time needed to VectorLevel that he would have liked and signed up with Site5.
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  19. #19
    Join Date
    Dec 2003
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    548
    And we're GLAD to have him!

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    Posts
    816
    Sorry to hear your website no longer thrives at VectorLevel.
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  21. #21
    Join Date
    Apr 2004
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    OP's hosting with Vector Level has been verified.
    .
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