Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Managed Hosting and Services : Terrible experience with Server4Sale stay away

[Cripto]

These Server4Sale people are NOT recommended by any extent of the imagination. They are resellers for Layered Tech, and that machine was good but the problem is their "service". Their English is not good enough to be able to give good management and support, they really don't understand many of the finer points and as a result, they make costly mistakes. They also have this "attitude", a kind of heavy-handed aproach to things. They screw up and put my sites out of commission rather often, twice in the last 10 days (one time the changed htaccess rewrite rules, and a couple of days ago they changed the A Record and the sites would not resolve). But now they want me out of the server by June 3rd, when I actually have paid for hosting until June 16th, and they wouldn't give me a refund.

I paid my bill two days ago, and today I get this email from the brash owner Mr. Majeed saying "You have till 3rd to move out from existing server" [sic]. "... make sure your data is tranfered before 3rd June". Hosting started on Februrary 19th, three days after effecting payment, so that the billing cycle indicates I have paid for the server up until June 16th. I have asked Majeed for a refund, but he refuses to answer and he simply keeps copying and pasting the same text I quoted above, it's like a psycho answer.

My fear right now is that this guy Majeed is so unreasonable and authoritarian that I have no doubt he will switch off the server by the 3rd of June, even when I have two weeks of hosting remain beyond that date. Why do I have to leave in a rush, forfeiting half a month of paid hosting, and on top of that get ripped off by his refusal to effect a refund of the unused hosting days?

In case you wonder why he is doing this, his message reads "After looking at all the tickets the ceo has decided that since we cannot provide you the quality of service you are expecting and hence causing issue for both of us" [sic]. Majeed is also not respecting the agreement at the time of getting the server, I contracted under his support4sale.com site terms of full service for $15 if and afterwards implemented a new system with different levels of support and management, and I was left with "basic". This is bait and switch, and he never answered my tickets asking why was my level of service lower than what I had hired.

The "service you are expecting" is simply that I ask they fix the mistakes they make, like changing htaccess, A records, etc. Then typically they try blaming you with very rude, mafia-type threats like "are you sure you didn't do this? If I get the log records and it was you, I'll charge you $75 an hour". And the fact is that I don't know the first thing about managing a server, I never changed or tampered with anything, never logged to telnet, etc. It got so bad that I had to hire Platinum Server Management, which was excellent, but Server4Sale did not like it one bit when they realized that Platinum was servicing their machine, so I had to cancel my subscription to the excellent Platinum. I think it was my hiring Platinum that triggered Server4Sale's full animosity toward me.

Please help me out here, I want a refund but I fear for my data, these guys act totally crazy and do not communicate. I feel is unfair for them to cancel service for no reason, and then set an artificial deadline that will deprive me of half a month of hosting I already paid for. Needless to say, stay far, far away from Majeed and Server4Sale, they are very shady. I tried paying via Paypal as I had done before, but Paypal disabled their account and they made me paid through through a bogus company selling DVDs in Pakistan selling gifts and stuff like that, they are obviously trying to cloak their operation so that PayPal thinks it's not the same banned company. By the way, the termination of service email was sent to me in reply to my asking if this company that I had sent payment was legit or not.


Again, stay far, far away from Server4Sale., they have LayeredTech's servers but their added "service" is a nightmare.

[Jame$]

Thanks for the review..

Go to LT directly with your management admins.

[Cripto]

Originally Posted by SiteManaged

Thanks for the review..

Go to LT directly with your management admins.

Thanks for your reply and advice. How do I do that? I had asked to change over to LT directly and take advantage of a server sale they have, but they refused, Server4Sale said it was not possible because the server is with them.

[Jame$]

Then just look at their current specials and take your pick:

http://layer0.layeredtech.com/showthread.php?t=3887

You'll be paying less for sure

You don't need a reselling managed provider as you found a seperate management company + you don't like them. I suggest get a new server ASAP and get out of there.

[Cripto]

They are WORSE than I thought, looks like they have retaliated after my message here and NOW ALL MY SITES ARE TOTALLY OFFLINE.

It's unbelievable, I cannot believe these people.

[steven-v]

Well, you get what you paid for. Go to rackspace.com for superb service

Originally Posted by Cripto

They are WORSE than I thought, looks like they have retaliated after my message here and NOW ALL MY SITES ARE TOTALLY OFFLINE.

It's unbelievable, I cannot believe these people.

[BrandonSCSN]

Originally Posted by steven-v

Well, you get what you paid for. Go to rackspace.com for superb service

Intersting concept. You believe that only RackSpace can provide good quality managed hosting?

[linux-tech]

How did you pay your bill? By Credit Card? If so, then I'd suggest talking to your bank. If not, well, unfortunately, you don't have a lot of options, unfortunately.

Well, you get what you paid for.

No, you don't.
Case in point:
I have a server which I pay (barely) $130/month for from TMS. The server is GREAT, the support is excellent, the network is fine. So, by your standards, I should be getting poor everything, right? Just because you're not paying $100s monthly for outrageously ridiculous support (yes, RS has ridiculous support) does not mean you're not entitled to WHAT you paid for.

Case #2:
There are PLENTY of admins out there who charge < $100/month for admin work. In many cases, yes, it is a "you get what you pay for" scenario, but in a few, it's the same thing, GREAT admin work by GREAT people. Why? Because <<< they >>> love what <<< they're >>> doing (at least some of <<< them >>> do).

The "you get what you pay for" phrase and excuse is WAY too overused here, especially by individuals who want to promote some other company who's charging 50x the normal rates.

Go to LT directly with your management admins.

Even better:
Go to a company who KNOWS what support actually is. They're out there, and they're a LOT more competent that LT. LT has about the competency level <<< of 1 >>>, sadly. Time and time again, these guys have made critical mistakes, and the last one (literally) cost a customer drive, data, and the like. Not really a good reputation there , either.

Of course if you LIKE waiting for support (not getting someone on IM, phone, etc), by all means, go with LT, wait hours (at times) for support issues, risk the individuals not knowing what they're doing there. I speak from experience on this one, these guys CAN easily screw up your system (and have for multiple clients of mine).

[Tina J]

Originally Posted by linux-tech

No, you don't.
Case in point:
I have a server which I pay (barely) $130/month for from TMS. The server is GREAT, the support is excellent, the network is fine. So, by your standards, I should be getting poor everything, right?

Agreed. We also have about 2 dozen machines with TMS (that's tailormadeservers.com) and pay around $100 each. Service, support, etc. is excellent.

Also agree on the points about LT. As many know, we had serious issues with their tech support, abuse dept and billing...also around $100 each.

--Tina

[Veus]

The thing is im not sure if $130/month is seen as cheap to some people.

Cheap providers would be $60-90/month.

SoftLayer is an example of a provider who provides good quality servers for around that price range and I would never call them a cheap provider.

[server4sale]

I was expecting this...
Not to go too far but you yourself said that you paid 2 days ago. And also mention that your billing date is 19th... ( our record indicate earlier but i will go with what you are saying ). So basically your payment was due on 19th of every month. You paid it on 27th... 10 days later??? And my billing was nice enough just to send you emails to pay. I believe if its 10 days overdue we do reserve the right to suspend it or cancel it. Am i right?

Also mind telling people here when did i sent you the notice? Was it today ?
I guess your post clearly indicated your aggressiveness.
Tell me Did i said i will NOT refund the remaining payment????? When i sent that notice my system was still showing 1 outstanding invoice. And i still gave you the time to move... and this is what we get in return.

Your server is running sites which makes the load go high as much as 200 some times. Like right now. We simply dont just REBOOT the server to make it go down. We analyze what is generating the load and tweak it. Tweaking takes time which according to YOU means server downtime... Then when the sites are up you generate another ticket saying it was down for x hour x minute.... and need explanations and all that.

When you posted here about site going down that was the case and at this very moment its the same thing
17:43:25 up 1 day, 15:51, 1 user, load average: 257.70, 81.37, 31.39
(btw we have just got another ticket and most likley while tech is on the server our beloved fellow count it as downtime). Tech logged in and tried to control it... and told the client the server is not down. ( as it was pininging and we could ssh in just high loadon apache which tech is trying to fix and guess what we got.

"You're kidding me right?

The server is down!!!!!!

The server is DOWN

READ THE FREAKING TICKET PLEASE"




Now about PSM issue....
Very simple issue is You cannot have TWO TECH TEAM WORK ON SAME TASK AT SAME TIME. People who do technical stuff do know what i mean.

Just so every one knows so far we have spent over 100 working hours on the client server. Since the day it was bought. and 60+ Hours were spent by our Level 3 admins.

If you didnt like our service why didnot you go elsewhere???
You had more then enough time to go else where WHy now????
We sent you advance notice based on the support requests you were putting in and since every time it takes tech to fic it you simply come back and yell at them instead of appretiating what they are doing to keep your server up.
Since you didnot like the services as stated in this thread too we simply ask you that we will not renew your contract any more.

Do you also mind explaining why you moved from your previous provider. Should i ask them to come here and provide a statement???

Should we keep you as our client when you ABUSE our staff. Yelling at them like they are your slaves??? I dont think any hosting company will tolerate that. For me my staff comes first. They work very hard and because of them S4S is one of the best Server companies here.

Thank You

[Cripto]

Originally Posted by server4sale

I was expecting this...
Not to go too far but you yourself said that you paid 2 days ago. And also mention that your billing date is 19th... ( our record indicate earlier but i will go with what you are saying ).

This is a prime example of how your "service" works, you don't read tickets, or in this case, posts. Look at my post, I clearly state the billing date is on the 16th (bold numbers too), and yet you see a "19".

So basically your payment was due on 19th of every month. You paid it on 27th... 10 days later??? And my billing was nice enough just to send you emails to pay. I believe if its 10 days overdue we do reserve the right to suspend it or cancel it. Am i right?

Listen Majeed, the reason why I paid ten days later is that your PayPal account was suspended... don't be cheeky... I sent you screen captures of PayPal showing that your account had been cancelled. And then, you asked me to make a payment to this bogus eDukaan.com, the Pakistani site.

Also mind telling people here when did i sent you the notice? Was it today ?
I guess your post clearly indicated your aggressiveness.
Tell me Did i said i will NOT refund the remaining payment?????

Don't play games, you were denying by omission, by not responding ANY of the tickets where I asked you about this. I did ask you four times I wanted a refund, and to this minute you have not responded to any of them. Moreover, you did not reply to any of my messages asking you to explain why do I have to leave 13 days earlier than what I have already paid for.

When i sent that notice my system was still showing 1 outstanding invoice. And i still gave you the time to move... and this is what we get in return.

You sent the notice a day and half ago, and your eDukaan accepted payment over 3 days ago, so you are not telling the truth. I can post screen captures of each of these messages. So please don't lie. And you cannot say you didn't see the payment because it was automatically added to the billing ticket, it says "eDukaan you received a payment!" something like that.

Your server is running sites which makes the load go high as much as 200 some times. Like right now. We simply dont just REBOOT the server to make it go down. We analyze what is generating the load and tweak it. Tweaking takes time which according to YOU means server downtime... Then when the sites are up you generate another ticket saying it was down for x hour x minute.... and need explanations and all that.

The funny thing is, the server was running FINE (except for your screw ups) and handling traffic extremely well, because I run Wordpress with a Cache that is extremely efficient. The load is very low. But suddenly, all kinds of problems appeared with the server within half an hour of my posting this thread here. Right now for instance, no sites are working, and Host-Tracker is saying Apache has been down for the last 30 minutes, and it's the fourth time this happens since I opened this thread here. You have some very underhanded practices, huh? You show up to answer this thread only after you make sure you screw the server nicely so as to make sure I get the message I should leave by whatever date you say

When you posted here about site going down that was the case and at this very moment its the same thing
17:43:25 up 1 day, 15:51, 1 user, load average: 257.70, 81.37, 31.39
(btw we have just got another ticket and most likley while tech is on the server our beloved fellow count it as downtime). Tech logged in and tried to control it... and told the client the server is not down. ( as it was pininging and we could ssh in just high loadon apache which tech is trying to fix and guess what we got.

"You're kidding me right?

The server is down!!!!!!

The server is DOWN

READ THE FREAKING TICKET PLEASE"

It's funny, but I tell you again: you're kidding me right? RIGHT NOW the sites are down... host tracker is saying so, and no sites are resolving. Actually, I cannot even quote Apache up time because the server is DOWN right now.

Now about PSM issue....
Very simple issue is You cannot have TWO TECH TEAM WORK ON SAME TASK AT SAME TIME. People who do technical stuff do know what i mean.

Just so every one knows so far we have spent over 100 working hours on the client server. Since the day it was bought. and 60+ Hours were spent by our Level 3 admins.

If you didnt like our service why didnot you go elsewhere???
You had more then enough time to go else where WHy now????
We sent you advance notice based on the support requests you were putting in and since every time it takes tech to fic it you simply come back and yell at them instead of appretiating what they are doing to keep your server up.
Since you didnot like the services as stated in this thread too we simply ask you that we will not renew your contract any more.

Do you also mind explaining why you moved from your previous provider. Should i ask them to come here and provide a statement???

Should we keep you as our client when you ABUSE our staff. Yelling at them like they are your slaves??? I dont think any hosting company will tolerate that. For me my staff comes first. They work very hard and because of them S4S is one of the best Server companies here.

It's not my problem that you agreed to provide a service and support that then you are not qualified to meet. I never abused anybody, Majeed, your service sucks, like since midday today the server has not been working right, and what do you want me to do? To suffer your little hosting tricks in silence? I am telling you again, right now nothing is working! I should write another ticket, because you are ignoring the last tickets I entered. But I'm sure you are familiar with the concept of karma, and trust me, you are not accumulating "good" points.

Your 'company' Server4Sale is terrible, and I'm warning everyone about your mores. So go back and fix the server, which right now is NOT working despite what you say. You are really, really cheeky saying your 'company' is "one of the best".

Folks, AVOID Server4Sale like the plague, trust me on this one.

[Cripto]

Originally Posted by linux-tech

Case in point:
I have a server which I pay (barely) $130/month for from TMS. The server is GREAT, the support is excellent, the network is fine.

Thanks Linux Tech for the reply, can you tell me where to find TMS? Sounds exactly what I need, and it's the same price I'm paying with the disgraceful Server4Sale.

[server4sale]

First of all how do you know its BOGUS???
Did you order anything on it ?? I guess you did

Now secondly all of your communication were on weekend or before that. I wasnt around and there are still a lot of tickets in the queue.
Thirdly Did you EVER use our billing system to pay? Cause it does have right paypal address.
Forthly i dont fix things. We are NOT one man company .......
All other communication will be over email from here simple. I guess i should not ask my level 3 admins to work on your servers and its stopping right now.

[Coolraul]

Well.. a couple of questions:

Cripto:

If you are getting these issues, why not just move now before the server gets shut off? I truly understand that you feel it unfair but clearly you and Server4Sale are not going to resolve this happily. At least initiate a backup quickly.

Also, did you pay late?

Server4Sale:

Why are you kicking them out early instead of just letting them finish up their complete time this month?