Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : A horror story about dell host

[inbuco]

We decided to go with dellhost.com only to find that this was one our biggest mistakes ever.

First off, we were very surprised to find out how simple it was to setup an account. No contracts, nothing to sign, just pay and everything is setup in 24 hours or so we thought.

First off, we decided to go with the higher system offered by dell so we went with the Database D-3500 system and along with that came a free D-3000 system, great - we thought.

I guess it was no surprise to us that because of the cost, support was very lacking. In order to get anything installed, we would have to pay $175.00 per installation no matter how small so we decided to install mysql and stuff on our own, luckily they were nice enough to install BIND for us, however, Red Hat 7.0 was not installed as we had wanted.

The servers were setup the next day as planned but while working on the D-3000 server, we noticed that it didn't have 75% of the to be installed memory and was very slow. It turns out that dellhost.com gave us the lower end D-2950. When we contacted them, the nice, kind and friendly people seem to vanish only to be transfer to dell computer sales after an hour on the phone. Once we finally got a live person, dell told us that they didn't offer web hosting.

After about another hour, we found that the reason for dell computers confusion was simply that dell host is really not dell host at all. It's simply outsourced to Interliant and has very little to do with dell host.

After the third hour on the phone, we were told that we would have to send an email to support and that they would handle the issue in a week.

I decided to contact our sales person and he apologize profusely and had a new server setup the very next day.
When the new server finally came online, it turned out to be the same D-2950 series, the very one that we were trying to get away from.

Of course this wasn't the last straw.

We had installed portsentry on the D-3500 server in order to prevent any attacks because it seemed as we were getting lots of traffic that made no sense. Only 1 hour later, the server was taken offline. It seems that Interliant (Dell Host) needs to have full access to the server and would not allow us to block their monitoring. Of course since we were never informed of any monitoring from dell or interliant, we had no way of knowing not to block that traffic.

As if all this wasn't bad enough, just one hour later, we found out that their was already a hacker on the system. No, it wasn't a lack of security on the part of portsentry or our company but it seems that even before we were given login information to the server, that their was already a hacker inside the system installing bots, scanner, egg droppers and a few hacking utilities. Dell or Interliant were never able to explain this.

Of course at this point, the boss had decided to go elsewhere so I sent letters to sales@dellhost.com, customerservice@dellhost.com, billing@dellhost.com and support@dellhost.com and as well as to faxes along with several voice messages.

The next day when I called to confirm, I was told that no cancellation was ever received and that I had to contact cancellations@dellhost.com and wait 2 to 3 weeks for a response and yes, we did complain about that but with no luck. Even tried to get through to Mr. Dell himself but that was a failed attempt.

I guess that we could have done something different but I am not sure what. I just hope that others take our warnings.

[cbaker17]

Thats crazy and very hard to believe, the last host to pull something like that would be dell I owuld think.

[inbuco]

May it was an off day, maybe the boss was out for the week but facts are facts. I highly doubt that we were the only ones to ever go through this. Yes, it's dell but that's what we thought. Imagine our surprise.

[tim2]

I was close to start hosting there when they where pretty new but fortuantely they won´t allow adult, happy me

[Duster]

If they truly outsource to Interliant, it's not really Dell at all. It's Interliant with the Dell name. Sears does the same thing with many of their services, as do many other companies in many different fields.

I have a friend who's had a server with them for a bit over 6 months now. Apparently, the dedicated server support people are not generally available and cannot be reached. Fortunately for him, he's got another friend who can do most anything with servers and handles any problems he might have. (That same friend is fixing a problem for me at present.)

It looks to me as if Dell is using their name to leverage a share of the hosting business by aligning themselves with Interliant. They should probably stick to what they do best and directly administer, making hardware.

[webfors]

Wow, this comes as surprise to me. I just finished having a long conversation with a friend who works at Dell Canada regarding Dellhost and how it's a major step for Dell, etc....

Didn't realize that they just outsourced it. This would have dramatically changed the conversation. I am less impressed with them now.

[inbuco]

Please don't get me wrong.

I think that dell is a great company when it comes to their computers but they clearly dropped the ball on this one.

I hope that dell does something about this becuase it's a terrible thing for another company to destroy the dell name but as it stands I would highly recommend against dell or at least dellhost through interliant.

[BC]

Duster is correct, as Dell outsources its hosting needs to Interliant. There were a few threads over at ScriptKeeper a few months back about DellHost, and one of the posters made a very good point : just because a company like Dell succeeds in PCs doesn't mean it will succeed in another area.

Unfortunately this seems to have become the case for Dell, as the threads over at ScriptKeeper have become quite negative about DellHost's problems.

[Duster]

Ths seems to be another case of a company that should stick with what it does best.

There are a number of Internet access providers that got into hosting as well. Thus far, to the best of my knowledge, none have distinguished themselves at hosting, even though it is closer to their primary business than selling computers, as Dell does.

With all the talk about the web and site hosting in the last few years, it seems Dell is interested in leveraging their name to get a piece of it. Essentially, though, they are just resellers for Interliant, although they supply the hardware.

That means, among other things, that we should forget about the Dell reputation and service as we would get neither at Dellhost. It is Interliant's service we should be concerned with, as that is where the work gets done (or not, as the case may be).

I found out about Dellhost last year just as I was ordering my dedicated server, and could have gone with them. This discussion, and what I learned from my friend who told me about them, include reasons why I'm glad I stayed with my original choice.

Dell? No deal!.