Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : Another FDC Horror Story

[neoshell]

Well I've finally divorced myself of the hag that is FDC and want to tell an abbreviated version of my story and offer an idea to those still suffering.....

We started off with 1 server on the 5mb plan. First months BW was pretty mediocre but the techs were very apologetic and promised that ongoing work woud solve the issue. We were given a slide in our billing date to make up for the "network card replacement" (FDC SPecial #1 - almost every client has thier NIC replaced at least once to excuse network issues). We decided to upgrade to the then 139 a month 10mb plan which over the weekend we upgraded changed to a "BG4" 10-mb burstable. Ok, whatever. We dealt with rocky performace and a long fight for another month and just as we say to hell with it - for a month our speed was excellent. FDC praise and partys in the forum - the new uplinks and traffic shapers work now, hooray.

We needed another server and given the performance of server #1 we brought another onboard, paid 200 to upgrade the hard drive and paid for cPanel which was no longer included.

10 days waiting for cPanel license to activate. All that time we were told it was cPanels fault. Any compensation for the downtime waiting? yeah right, NO.

Server finally comes up and performs for 2 weeks, OK, 10 days then BOOM. 2-20 kbps outbound on both servers. Tickets are put in, the , "youve been compromised" reformat (FDC special #2) - we had almost the entire FDC ip range in host deny from all the port scanning and intrusion attempts INSIDE the network. We ask a tech to verify our speed issues, they do (FDC#3) wget to 2 fast sources, demonstrate that inbound speed suddenly is excellent for them and show an "out of the network" ftp push at 5mbps..........
(Pull bash history, find IP, trace, yeah...inside FDC network.......)

SO, time to pay for server #2, (I can upload at 50kbps from home so, hell no, cancel. ) Get confirmation email of cancellation and the next day, were billed anyway. (It took a month to get a refund of that charge, right at Christmas time too ). COuld we at least have the hard drive we bought moved to the other server? Yes for a 35 dollar service charge.....prob not bad but given a bad HD was left in the machine after our last reformat we didnt want to risk it.

Server number 1 is paid up for a month still so we submit tickets, (FDC#2) "you've been compromised" reformat again - good thing i backup my sites daily and after testing - 50kbps top speed. Wow a 10mb BG4 mukti-honed 50kbps server. If i had some flat html laying around to serve I guess it would work.

Time for (FDC#4) - a bad fiber cable is causing 90% of the clients to have bad speed. OK replace the cable, evidently its more complicated than that. "We should have it fixed by the day after your next billing date" No thats cool I've had enough. Cancel #1

Yes, people warned us (indirectly via WHT) not to go with FDC. But a lot of people posted how great they were too. Do what you will but I know theres quite a few people holding worthless FDC servers right now who are probably too embarressed to admit it.

If you paid by paypal and your not getting the network performace you paid for by all means, file a complaint for fraud. Paypal will side with a buyer 9 times out of 10 and if enough people complain.....FDC will have thier paypal account locked up like a swiss bank. Thier webpage promises in black and white a certain level of performance and if they can't deliver it for the price they ask, thats thier problem. TOS are not bulletproof or there would be no contract law......

[smallbox]

You know the funny thing about this story, you actually ordered a second server there, and now you are trashing FDC at WHT, friends had warned you, you'll find overwhelming negative comments about FDC here, and finally, there isn't really anything promised like you said on FDC webpage at all. People still keep going with FDC only for one reason, no overusage charge, it sounds great, but if you ever be able to push over 5Mbits, of course you'll never be charged with overusage. Sorry for your horrible story.

[Nex7]

I look at their site, and I can't see what I could have sworn they used to have -- didn't FDC used to say "unmetered (maximum of 2100GB/month possible)" or something to that effect?

Based on what I've heard and the fact that they used to say that leads me to believe that they basically intentionally oversell a line - they'll put a 100mbit pipe up and stick 15 (or more?) 10mbit-limited servers on it. I find that shady, but since they cost less than basically anyone else for an unmetered pipe, its sort of expected, even if I don't really like it.

Having said that, one of my clients and I decided to go with them for his site - it has been running for 2 months now on one of their $149/month AMD packages, and has yet to have a problem of any kind, hardware or network (or software, but that would be my doing huh?). I couldn't tell you what the sustainable throughput max is on the box as I certainly don't test it, but I can tell you the website it is running will push > 500kbps at peak times, and doesn't appear to be limited at all by network congestion, the 500kbps is what it legitamitely is generating, and it doesn't appear to have any problems getting that out.

I can say that when I set up and hardened this box, and when I've done updates, I've seen download speeds as high as 1.3 Mbps for various file downloads; and the client's site, which is a busy site, has had nothing but praise for its speed.

I probably just jinxed the whole thing by praising FDC, but there you have it - my one box with them has not had a problem to date of any sort, network or otherwise, and while I certainly wouldn't say the thing is capable of sustained speeds > 2Mbps, I'm fairly sure I can safely say it could handle up to 2Mbps any given day of the week - and considering its $149/month, that's about right, right?

[ceridius]

Thanks for the tip folks , I know to steer clear of this FDC company. Kudos WHT is a great forum

[music]

FYI "ceridius" http://www.ceridius.com site is down.

[IGobyTerry]

Originally posted by music
FYI "ceridius" http://www.ceridius.com site is down.

It's pointed to localhost

[neoshell]

Originally posted by smallbox
You know the funny thing about this story, you actually ordered a second server there, and now you are trashing FDC at WHT, friends had warned you, you'll find overwhelming negative comments about FDC here, and finally, there isn't really anything promised like you said on FDC webpage at all. People still keep going with FDC only for one reason, no overusage charge, it sounds great, but if you ever be able to push over 5Mbits, of course you'll never be charged with overusage. Sorry for your horrible story.

Look at the response here to see exactly what I saw so many months ago...1 negative and 1 positive response. There always seemed to be someone rushing in to defend FDC and tell how great thier own service was. I don't deal in dedicated servers so why bash FDC ? As for whats on thier webpage compared to what was on it back when I leased from them? Well I can tell you the page has changed since then but even so:
Heres teh exact plan we gave up on:

AMD XP 2400+ (actual speed 2ghz)
512MB RAM
120GB HDD 7200RPM

- 100Mbit port
- 10Mbit unmetered connection
- XO, YIPES, Cogent backbones
- BGP4 routing protocol
- FREE IPs (arin rules)
- UN-METERED bandwidth
- no overage fees
- setup within 8 hours

Sure looks like BG4 routing 10MB unmetered to me. 2kbps isnt 10mbps no matter where you went to school, even our blazing top speed of 50kbps doesnt qualify. Its also suspect when people take things out of context to support an arguement. I never said friends warned me of anything. Only WHT and the 50 / 50 positive negative to go on back then. Its my God given right to come in here and tell my story about the service I recieved so I'm doing so. It just amazes me that there are people who will continue to pick on the consumer when the business fails to provide the level of service it advertises. Theres no excuse for that. If you offered Gig E for 10 bucks you damn well better deliver or face the consequences. People can say, wow you were stupid enough to believe it all day long, doesnt excuse the deception one bit. If your with FDC sooner or later It'll be your turn, I know people in this forum who supported them when I was a client who left around the same time I did.....

[ChrisTech]

I dropped FDC back in august due to low speeds, even though I was 'moved' to 2 different switches. Mainly a site for file downloads, but when you can't push out much more than 40k, whats the point?

[sghost]

Is this fdcservers.net or fdcservers.com ? Anyone can clarify ? Reason is that both are from different companies.

[ericdude]

I just cancelled my FDC server also. They always have a new excuse why their network is performing like ****. But it's because they overload their switches plain and simple. There are a couple people in the same datacenter with their own private switches that aren't overloaded and speeds are excellent for them.

Maybe speeds will get better when everyone leaves FDC.

sghost, this is about fdcservers.net

[IRCCo Jeff]

I can imagine the difficulty of providing a decent service with prices as low as theirs. Personally, this would be an indicator.

[Nex7]

Far as I can tell, based on how they sell their servers, every day is like gambling. You may or may not still have good service. My client has been lucky for 2 months now - I've been waiting for the day the service goes to hell, and have a plan ready to go to move him to a server at another company, but so far, so good, after 2 months, so I felt it was worth pointing out that you CAN get ok quality from FDC, there's just basically no gaurantee, its just a draw of the cards and your draw isn't permanent.

I'm willing to wager the reason he still has good speeds after 2 months is simply that the switch he's on either has the same clients it has had for the past 2 months, or any new clients being added aren't pigs - some day one will cancel and they'll put a new guy on who immediately starts running at 10mbit, and then another, and then another, and then I'll be moving him to another datacenter.