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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Pennsylvania
    Posts
    778

    Thumbs down SeeksAdmin took our money and ran

    Last year I hired SeeksAdmin to help with a misbehaving Xen node. They were paid promptly and started the job, but never finished and have since stopped responding to my requests. When I asked them to come back and finish the job they simply ignored us. I have repeatedly asked them to either finish the job or issue a refund, but they have stopped responding to my tickets, including complaints sent to their feedback@ and sales@ addresses.

    I hoped to have this matter resolved as a simple technical glitch on their end. Instead I had to find someone else to do the work. Unfortunately their actions have left me with no recourse other than to post a negative review.

    To give some background, we hired Seeks Admin to assist with a Xen node that was giving us problems. Specifically, whenever we updated and booted into the new Xen kernel, the system acted as if we booted into a regular non-Xen kernel. We checked, re-checked, and triple-checked, and confirmed that we were indeed booting into the Xen kernel, but Xen simply would not go. I decided to bring in some external help, and after reading SeeksAdmin reviews I decided to go with them.

    On October 17 2013, I emailed asking for a quote. I never received a response. Sometimes emails get lost, so I emailed again on October 20 2013. Still no response. In hindsight I should have taken this as a warning and gone elsewhere. On October 31 2013 I contacted them through live chat and asked for an update. SeeksAdmin apologized and responded to my inquiry.

    We negotiated a rate and paid the invoice immediately via PayPal. We scheduled a service window between midnight and 6am on November 11 2013 so we could minimize downtime and provide advance notice to our customers. Because this node was giving us trouble, I also booked a hotel room and drove up to the DC (about two hours from Harrisburg) so I could be on-site if needed. I figured with their remote knowledge and my on-site hands, there was nothing we wouldn't be able to resolve.

    I noticed that by 5am, they had not yet logged into the server. I updated the ticket asking if they had started yet, and received a response stating that they had missed the service window but would be happy to try again 30 days from now. Remember this part: they offered to try again in 30 days. I'll come back to this in a moment.

    I asked that they begin the update ASAP. They logged in and started working shortly after. After a few hours, they were unable to get Xen running under the new Xen kernel. The server would boot into the new Xen kernel, but Xen would not start. Everything else worked. Their tech stated that they would require KVM to diagnose the issue. SSH was working at this point, and I was never told that KVM was a requirement. Because we were now 8 hours past the start of the maintenance window, I told the tech that they would have to return to the old Xen kernel and try again later. I told him that we will attempt to procure a KVM module (this is an older Intel server board that did not have IPMI, and we didn't have a floating KVM at the time) and it would be at least a week until I was ready to try again.

    So, the story so far: They started five hours late (and wouldn't have started at all if I hadn't bugged them), the issue still wasn't fixed 8 hours after they were supposed to start, and after they realized they couldn't fix the issue they changed their requirements to include a KVM. At this point, I was forced to revert to the old kernel to bring our VPSes back online.

    On November 13 2013 I opened a separate ticket to complain about the level of service we received. Asif Ali replied and apologized. He also promised to personally handle our upgrade on our next scheduled maintenance window. That was the last update I received from SeeksAdmin.

    Due to other concerns (migrating to a new datacenter, migrating to a new shared hosting platform, mitigating a DDOS, other client commitments, and general holiday delays) we needed some extra time to get ready. On December 27 2013 I updated Asif's ticket and asked if a maintenance window starting at 12:01am on January 11 2014 would work for them. Nobody responded, and a few days later my ticket was closed.

    On December 31 I re-opened the ticket asking them to confirm that the requested maintenance window was convenient for them. Once again, my ticket was closed without a response.

    On January 6 2014 I re-opened the ticket and complained that they were closing my tickets without responding. Thinking that maybe my ticket was flagged to an employee who no longer worked there or some other technical glitch was occurring, I also emailed their feedback@ address and asked them to review these tickets. They never responded to my feedback email. And again, they closed my ticket without a response.

    On January 10 2014 I re-opened the ticket and, in the interest of resolving everything amicably, asked if a later maintenance window (January 25) would be more convenient for them. And once again, they closed my ticket without responding.

    The "ticket closed" notice was the last response I ever received from SeeksAdmin.

    Earlier I pointed out that they wanted to push the maintenance window forward 30 days. I'm sure everyone here knows that PayPal will not issue chargebacks requested more than 45 days after payment is tendered under any circumstances. SeeksAdmin knows this as well. Is it a coincidence that they attempted to push my job back to one day before the chargeback window closed? If it is, then it's certainly an interesting one.

    At this point, SeeksAdmin took our money and ran. They attempted to fix the issue, and when they couldn't, they changed the terms of the order to suddenly require a KVM, then stopped responding to our communications altogether. Had we known a KVM was required at the outset, we would have either ensured one was available or found a different provider to work with. If their conduct doesn't constitute breach of contact, I don't know what is.

    There is no excuse for simply ignoring a customer like this, especially when attempt at rendering the promised service failed because of a requirement not disclosed by SeeksAdmin before payment was made. If there was any valid reason why they were unable or unwilling to finish the job, they had ample opportunity to respond to any of my multiple ticket updates or my subsequent emails to their feedback@ or sales@ addresses. Instead, they chose to ignore us.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
    Location
    South Africa
    Posts
    2,158
    Nicely detailed review. Have you had everything fixed as of now though (through this other source)?
    █ █ █

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Calgary, Alberta
    Posts
    688
    Disappointing to read about a provider doing that kind of service.

    If your still having an issue, I can highly recommend Steven from Rack911.com, give him a shout and he will work his magic!

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Posts
    188
    I dont recommend Rack911.com, and I will explain in my next post...

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Big Apple (I Love NY)
    Posts
    1,106
    Dave, drop me a line directly with your ticket # to steven@seeksadmin.com. I'm mobile (stuck in rush hour) at the moment but will properly review everything in roughly two hours. I'm sorry to hear about your issues and can assure you we live by our money back guarantee. I'll be reviewing this the moment I reach a PC.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Location
    Scotland, UK
    Posts
    2,681
    To be honest this just sounds like the typical service you get from many of the companies around these parts when they don't know the solution to the issue you are encountering.

    Your concerns about needing the KVM when SSH was available are sound, you should have questioned this more.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Pennsylvania
    Posts
    778
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven.C View Post
    Dave, drop me a line directly with your ticket # to steven@seeksadmin.com. I'm mobile (stuck in rush hour) at the moment but will properly review everything in roughly two hours. I'm sorry to hear about your issues and can assure you we live by our money back guarantee. I'll be reviewing this the moment I reach a PC.
    Email was sent last night. No response yet. You should also be able to locate the tickets and emails via my company name and the dates provided.

    Quote Originally Posted by Scott.Mc View Post
    Your concerns about needing the KVM when SSH was available are sound, you should have questioned this more.
    I did, and this was their response:

    Quote Originally Posted by SeeksAdmin
    Typically, updating Xen kernel takes ~15 minutes; however, in your system Xen would not run on both the old & new. Your message log wasn't showing any erros related to the Xen daemon, which is why we requested KVM to monitor boot logs. (KVM allows access to bios, but also boot logs & file system errors.)

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Big Apple (I Love NY)
    Posts
    1,106
    Quote Originally Posted by FRH Dave View Post
    Email was sent last night. No response yet. You should also be able to locate the tickets and emails via my company name and the dates provided.
    Hey Dave, your email came in late Friday night I was not still on shift - you should have my reply in your inbox. Drop a line if I've left any of your concerns unaddressed.

    For any other concerned party reading this, the ball was certainly dropped here with Dave's ticket. We had quite the hectic holiday season and a few issues, which lead to delays in sales & management response - while support is 24/7 and well covered, there are a limited amount of managers and escalations around Christmas & New Years took some time.

    We certainly did not push back maintenance to coincide with PayPal's limits (maintenance dates were requested by the client) and we absolutely live by our money back guarantee for new accounts.

    Enjoy your weekend all!
    SeeksAdmin .:. Linux & Windows Server Management
    24/7 Coverage | 30 Day Guarantee | Fast Response Times
    Quality Outsourced Customer Support Services
    █ Drop Me A Line For Special Offers

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Pennsylvania
    Posts
    778
    This afternoon I received a refund from SeeksAdmin for the full amount in question. While it's good to see them admitting their error and refunding my money, it's disappointing that I had to resort to posting publicly in order to make this happen, especially after I tried contacting them through both their feedback email account and their sales system.

    Thus concludes my SeeksAdmin review. Better luck next vendor I guess.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Aug 2009
    Location
    Montreal
    Posts
    1,697
    Quote Originally Posted by FRH Dave View Post
    Thus concludes my SeeksAdmin review. Better luck next vendor I guess.
    I would recommend Rack911 and AdminGeekz.
    CrocWeb Cloud - High Availability Cloud Website Hosting
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  11. #11
    I too will not recommend them. I had signed up for Windows administration basic plan. First month was very good in the second month I started getting late replies. and in the third month there were no replies. I contacted them many times via email and also on chat their representative Troy Jones every time advised me to contact them via mail and said that management will look into it and reply but I never got any reply from anybody even after several emails and several chats.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    3,455
    To be honest, how in the world would they resolve an issue which requires hardware booting into the kernel without a KVM in the first place? Maybe you did not explained the issue correctly but if you did, they should had known in advanced they need to look at the server in fully for this type of issues, including boot time.

    Now, Iīm interested to know how much you paid for this? Since this type of services is usually what you will get with a cheap service and you cannot expect much. Actually they worked for free in this case since the hours you lost, they lost as well, even if they never resolved it.

    At least they should be honest and say "This is out of our league and we cannot resolve this or have enough experience".

    It seems they just took your job without even having the experience to deal with the problem since its not the typical Linux server problem. Hardware problems can be very tricky to solve for example, more if you are remotely.

    Glad to see you have a refund, but if I send emails to a company (presales) and they donīt respond, that is a huge red flag that you should not go with them ever.

    If your first impression is bad, its the universe sending you a message , donīt go with them or anyone else. Its very sloppy not to reply emails in a proper time frame (24, 48, 72 hours or at least reply in the week), it means they are actually not working in that as their main business, just as a hobby or they are understaffed. If they are understaffed they probably have to many things in their hand and if they cannot hire more persons then its just bad business management, it means they donīt charge enough to hire more people.

    Sure they could have email delivery problems, but what kind of server experts would they be in this case if they cannot properly configure their own email server...

    What ever the case is, what kind of impression will you get from any company that does not respond your emails...in my case a bad one.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    3,455
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven.C View Post
    Dave, drop me a line directly with your ticket # to steven@seeksadmin.com. I'm mobile (stuck in rush hour) at the moment but will properly review everything in roughly two hours. I'm sorry to hear about your issues and can assure you we live by our money back guarantee. I'll be reviewing this the moment I reach a PC.
    What does the money back guarantee mean?

    You donīt charge if an issue is not solved? Even if you worked in it?

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Big Apple (I Love NY)
    Posts
    1,106
    Quote Originally Posted by newmem View Post
    I too will not recommend them. I had signed up for Windows administration basic plan. First month was very good in the second month I started getting late replies. and in the third month there were no replies. I contacted them many times via email and also on chat their representative Troy Jones every time advised me to contact them via mail and said that management will look into it and reply but I never got any reply from anybody even after several emails and several chats.
    I'm sorry to hear you were unsatisfied with the service. I cannot match your name or experience directly to an account; however, feel free to drop me an email and I'll certainly have a look into your account for you.
    SeeksAdmin .:. Linux & Windows Server Management
    24/7 Coverage | 30 Day Guarantee | Fast Response Times
    Quality Outsourced Customer Support Services
    █ Drop Me A Line For Special Offers

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Big Apple (I Love NY)
    Posts
    1,106
    Quote Originally Posted by nibb View Post
    What does the money back guarantee mean?

    You donīt charge if an issue is not solved? Even if you worked in it?
    Thank you for your feedback & speculation in this thread. Our money back guarantee is very clearly detailed on our website & terms of service. The shorter of the first 30 days of service or the first 3x user generates support tickets of a new account (non-previous SA client) an account qualifies for a full refund no questions asked (other than how can we do better) if unsatisfied.
    SeeksAdmin .:. Linux & Windows Server Management
    24/7 Coverage | 30 Day Guarantee | Fast Response Times
    Quality Outsourced Customer Support Services
    █ Drop Me A Line For Special Offers

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    3,455
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven.C View Post
    Thank you for your feedback & speculation in this thread. Our money back guarantee is very clearly detailed on our website & terms of service. The shorter of the first 30 days of service or the first 3x user generates support tickets of a new account (non-previous SA client) an account qualifies for a full refund no questions asked (other than how can we do better) if unsatisfied.
    Yes sorry about the speculation but I was just being honest of the impression I get from any company if they donīt reply emails and I have to hunt them down to actually give them money.

    Thanks for the clarification on the guarantee.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Big Apple (I Love NY)
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    1,106
    Quote Originally Posted by nibb View Post
    Yes sorry about the speculation but I was just being honest of the impression I get from any company if they donīt reply emails and I have to hunt them down to actually give them money.

    Thanks for the clarification on the guarantee.
    No worries, I do not disagree at all. We're working on our sales response times; however, current clients will be our priority before taking on new work. That being said, we are indeed working on getting all sales inquiries down to under 12 hours max.
    SeeksAdmin .:. Linux & Windows Server Management
    24/7 Coverage | 30 Day Guarantee | Fast Response Times
    Quality Outsourced Customer Support Services
    █ Drop Me A Line For Special Offers

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