Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : Avoid iWeb

[PeteHoliday]

If I'm being fair, 80% of what iWeb does is excellent.

Having had trouble with other VPS providers, specifically where space was oversold and performance was lackluster, I was excited to hear about iWeb's SmartServer option. This is essentially a VPS with dedicated hardware. It is more expensive than traditional VPS services, but it was excellent.

That is, the hardware and software did exactly what they were supposed to do. Further, the management console is attractive and, for the most part, easy to use.

Unfortunately, the reason I'm here recommending against this excellent technology is iWeb's customer and technical support, my experiences with which have been awful.

Tech Support Issues
I purchased an iWeb smartserver in November of 2010. Over the course of the 9 months I was a customer, there were four server outages. Three of the occurred within the first month.

The second and third crashes happened within a week of each other. On both occasions, by the time support got around to looking at them, the servers had come back up (between one and two hours later) and the technicians didn't investigate any further than just noting that the server was back up. Because of this, I asked to be moved onto different hardware.

They agreed to do this but somehow, during the move, they corrupted the RAID array and I had to install from a backup.

The fourth incident was a failure of one of the drives in a mirrored RAID. Despite the fact that the drives were configured in this manner, when the server was brought back up, all of the data was gone and I had to install from backup again.

Essentially: every time a technician touched the hardware, they managed to wipe all of my data. Despite having backups, the timing of these two data corruptions cost hundreds of man-hours of work.

Despite extensive down-time and two incidents of technician negligence leading to data corruption, iWeb never offered a credit or refund.

Customer Support Issues
Aside from support being a bit slower to respond than I'm used to, I had no issues with them until I went to cancel. I couldn't find the cancellation option on their website, so on 8/1 I called. The tech explained how to cancel but said that he could start the process for me. I accepted, we spent a few minutes doing that, and then I went about my business.

Earlier this month I was surprised to find that I had invoices for both September AND October that iWeb is now threatening to send to collections. After several back-and-forths with their collections and billing department, I was informed that because no ticket was opened, I am liable for the invoices.

Conclusion:
I don't suspect that there's anything malicious going on there, and it could easily be that I'm just having a bad stretch of luck with them, but I have personally experienced enough negligence and incompetence there that I feel obligated to share it with WHT readers.

[GetKVM_Ash]

Sorry to hear about this situation. Is there any logs of the discussions with the tech to show you requested cancellation?

[PeteHoliday]

Originally Posted by VMPort

Sorry to hear about this situation. Is there any logs of the discussions with the tech to show you requested cancellation?

Apparently that's the problem. When the tech said he would create a ticket, he didn't. I, of course, have phone records showing that I called and talked to them, but that doesn't have the contents of the conversation in it.

I probably should have noticed that I didn't get an email saying a ticket had been created, but once he told me he was going to take care of it, I just assumed it would be taken care of.

[kpmedia]

Originally Posted by PeteHoliday

iWeb is now threatening to send to collections. After several back-and-forths with their collections and billing department, I was informed that because no ticket was opened, I am liable for the invoices.

If you were billed for something after you canceled, you're not responsible for it. If they can't get their crap together on their end, that's not your problem. The constant bungling by the techs (always wiping your data) is ample proof of incompetence.

If this was paid for by a credit card, then you can do a chargeback. If the bank sides with you, the company generally has no leg to fall on, in terms of sending you to collections.

Best wishes to you.

[reswertious-adam]

That's really awful to have such services.
You hope to have something decent for your money but what you have back ... just disappointment.

[webuyhosts]

Sorry to hear of the billing after canceling. I would try calling and opening up a ticket again. If not call you cc company to chargeback. No other choice but that

[atchoooo]

Do you have a ticket number I can refer to to get this issue resolved?