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  1. #1
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    Vortech - False Advertising 24x7 Phone Support

    I have been a Vortech customer for almost two years. What initially drew me to Vortech was that they offered 24x7 Live support. Before I went with their service I tested the claim and found the support to be very good. This live support continued for the first few months.

    VORTECH NO LONGER ANSWERS THEIR PHONE. This is not just a recent experience. This has been true for at least 6 months. There have been times when I have tried to call customer support many times (during normal business hours) during a week and I receive this contradictory answering machine message that says (paraphrasing), "Thank you for calling Vortech... We are available 24x7.. Currently we are NOT available. Leave a msg.". I have not spoken with anyone via phone at Vortech for at least 6 months - I have never gotten anything other than an answering machine message.

    Their home page says these exact words: "Real Live 24 Hour Support: 407-323-5634"

    I posted this topic in Vortech's forum last week and after the topic became very active , in a few days the admin responded by saying in effect that they have responsive email support and that cannot be considered "dead" support". They feel that if their email support comes from REAL people that they can advertise real live support with a phone number. Doesn't make any sense to me. I tried to give Vortech an opportunity to simply correct the problem by submitting my posts in their private forums - but those were deleted. I feel it is only fair that those in this forum are informed about this discrepancy between their advertising and actual service.

    I have been private messaging a Vortech admin about this. We will see if the claim gets removed from their site. My preference though would be that they keep it there and start offering live phone support again. That was the reason I signed up with them in the first place.

    I don' t want this to be a comprehensive attack on Vortech, but am keeping my complaint very specific to this live phone support issue. They do answer emails in a timely fashion. If you are a prospective customer and live phone support is not important to you, then this will not apply. If live phone support is important to you, then this message is to let you know that Vortech does not provide it, even though their website claims that they do.

    WebProsMo
    Last edited by webprosmo; 11-27-2006 at 05:14 PM.

  2. #2
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    Good to hear. In my past experiences with various hosts, I have noticed that some (not going to mention any names) claim they offer 24/7 phone support but if you try to test it, it goes to voice mail every single time. If I was going to call and leave a voice message, I might as well just have saved my breath and sent in a ticket.

    WebProsMo, I know where you're going. Hopefully your host really does something about this soon.
    ServerTag Technologies - Everything you need for hosting activity
    A Canadian company providing top notch site hosting, servers and colocation services

  3. #3
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    Going to make this short and simple..

    1. Yes the site says 24/7 live support, tickets are still considered live support we still have real techs answering you. So I am not sure what else you could call that.

    2. Yes it shows a number there, yes we still answer the phone in support from 7am until 11pm yes we notified customers of the cut back in time for phone support.

    3. No we have not changed the web site, we have been a bit busy. Sorry. Would you rather us work on our site or yours. I think that answers itself.

    4. Should we change the front yes, have we had time no. We have also done just about ZERO ad's over the past 3 months because we really don't want to take on new customers because of the huge changes that are going to come with our H-Sphere upgrade.

    5. Do we have issues sure, but we have always been very honest about them and up front and do everything we can to fix them. I could see this being an issue had we not posted it or notified customers and here it is black and white so really this post is point less http://forum.vortechhosting.com/showthread-t_11040.html

    6. Also yes we still offer phone support, just because you don't get an answer does not mean we no longer offer phone support. I removed the 5 threads about it because as I stated in the first one we do offer phone support but it does tend to get a bit busy. Also we may offer 24/7 support again here soon we shall see.


    Thanks and have a good night I will not reply any more about this here as it's really a pointless thread for a customer that has been here for 2 years and the post was from 01-24-2006, 02:00 PM.. Good lord people.
    Last edited by Vortech; 11-27-2006 at 10:25 PM.

  4. #4
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    1. When the words "Real" "Live" "24 Hour" and the PHONE NUMBER are in the same sentence along with a picture of someone talking on the phone - yes, it does shout very loudly 24 Hour PHONE SUPPORT.

    2. I'd have no problem with support hours from 7AM - 11 PM.. In fact, that would be wonderful - IF you'd answer the phone. But you DON'T. How can you possibly claim that you do when I have only gotten a message everytime I have tried to call in the last 6 months (and my biz partner has had the same experience from his location). Maybe I have just been very unlucky even when calling many times within the same day.

    3. Being a web designer myself I know how difficult it can be to find time to work on your own site. However, this issue has been existing for many months (since Jan you say). How long does it take to change text on a website?

    4. Same as above. The change could have been made in the amount of time it took for you to respond to this post.

    5. Your notification says this, "We have made scheduling and staff changes to ensure the largest number of Vortech Technicians will be available during these peak support hours" .. Where are these techs? How come I can never reach them during the times you say they are available???

    6. I understand you are busy and I know you're working hard to keep everything running - I appreciate that. Can I make a request? Instead of hiring more techs to fill a 24/7 time period.. How about hiring more techs and make sure the 7 AM - 11PM time period is honored, and change the advertising to fit? I think if you did that the complaining would cease and frustrated customers would become happy again.

    To those reading this post I wish to be clear that I am narrowing my response to the live phone support issue. We have experienced other issues with Vortech, but they have been resolved in a timely fashion. We have been through many reseller providers (and still are with a few) and most have had serious issues that were slow to be resolved. Behind every hosting company are people and I feel Vortech's people are doing their best. Now if I can just get them to answer the phone when I have an issue

  5. #5
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    I need to also add that in #6 it appears you are insinuating that I opened five threads and was a fanatical pest. Let me clear that up.. I posted only two threads - if you deleted five then the other three were from other customers.
    Last edited by webprosmo; 11-28-2006 at 12:34 AM.

  6. #6

    Vortech Hosting

    Here's the deal - real - and raw... take whatever you want from it:
    -----
    I have been (and still am) a Vortech customer for 4 years.

    Reseller accounts let me focus on what I prefer to do... build web sites.
    Companies like Vortech are supposed to work in the background - in the dark - invisible to your clients.

    I am the person my clients contact when they need help.

    I am the person who receives and cashes the check - when payment is due.

    If the issue is "server related" - I call the hosting company - get an answer - then call the client - and provide an answer as if I was the one "fixing the problem".

    Companies like Vortech are suppose to make me "look more professional".

    This is all fine and dandy - and works really well - if the hosting company keeps your websites up and running.

    Things get really, really bad when your sites go down - and stay down.

    Your customers call you - not Vortech... and if the hosting company will not pick up the telephone / answer tech support emails - what are you suppose to tell your client ?
    ------

    I found Vortech 4 years ago - because I was having serious issues with my (then) current provider (Intermedia.net).

    In 4 years - Vortech has experienced 2 extremely bad issues... the 2nd issue being progressively worse than the 1st issue - and the 1st - making my issues with Intermedia.net - appear to be baby's play.

    About 2 years ago:

    Access to all of my sites, and my customers sites died.

    Everything was down for 1 week... and I mean everything.

    No website (www), no mail, no ftp... 404 Errors left and right.

    Tech Support was non-existent. No one picked up the phones.

    I even tried to "bypass" the system - by calling Billing and Sales.

    All phones went unanswered.

    Emails to Tech Support went unanswered for days - and days - and days.

    The few times that I received tech support replies (days after I had asked for help) - they stated "the problem was this" - or "the problem was that". Vortech always blamed the problem on something or someone else.

    In all honesty... Vortech did even know what the problem really was. They just winged it - and eventually stumbled across a fix.

    I never received credit for the downtime - or for the frustration I (and my customers) went through.

    And - let me mention - I lost over 20 clients because of this issue.

    And I was not the only one. Hundreds of other resellers went through the exact same problem.

    I participated heavily on Vortechs support forums... and after "passing through hell" (down-time with the incident)... I came across a couple new clients - who had complained about "this company" or "that company"... and I knew "this company" and "that company"... where Vortech clients.

    Why do I know this ? Because they partipated in the Vortech support forums also.
    My new customers never knew that "this company" or "that company" was doing
    their best... and the "real" problem was with Vortech.

    Anyways - to continue....

    Around 11/15/2006... Vortech had incident # 2.

    You might as well read every I said above - because that's the exact same way Vortech responded to incident #2.

    All calls to Tech Support, Sales, and Billing went unanswered... the phone line went unanswered.

    Emails to tech support went days... and days... and days - unanswered.

    When they finally answered the emails - the response would range from "it's your fault" to "it's your ISP's fault" to "it's the spammers fault"... etc, etc, etc.

    Remember the term - SSDD - same sh!t - different day.

    All my sites - and hundreds of other resellers sites were down to over 2 weeks.

    Concerning the number of tech support personnel... what Vortech stated in "their response" - the issue was'nt the number of tech support personnel they hired - the problem was "Vortech refused to pick up the telephones". They didn't have a solution - and they didn't know what to tell they customers.

    Customers ? Incident #2 cost me 32 clients.
    ----
    I still have a reseller account with Vortech... why ? because of what you get for the buck.

    Most of the time - Vortech works great - but when problems occur - sh!t hits the fan.

    In times of crisis - don't count on Vortech (as a company) or Vortech tech support to be helpful.

    I've tried many, many different hosts... HostGator.com, Intermedia.net, CFX Hosting.com to name a couple - and trust me when I say - they are all the same.
    The problems at Vortech - exist with HostGator, Intermedia, and CFX... and I'm sure they exist at many other "low budget" hosting companies.

    Now... I pay extra money - and have 2 reseller accounts - with 2 different hosting companies. One is the "real" account - one is the "backup" account.

    When a problem arises - a simple DNS change - and 12 hours - fixes the problem.

    To sum it up:

    In general - Vortech service (as with HostGator, and others) is actually pretty good.

    In general - Vortech tech support really sucks.

    Remember - you get what you pay for.



    Try calling them: 407-323-5634 - option 2.

    tell me if you hear something like (this is not verbatim)
    "vortech is here for you 24 hours a day... at this time - no one is available to answer your call".

    This message is months old... and it doesn't really matter if you the is at 2pm - on a wednesday afternoon.
    Last edited by DinoInAtlanta; 12-03-2006 at 11:28 PM.

  7. #7
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    Dec 2004
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vortech
    Yes the site says 24/7 live support, tickets are still considered live support we still have real techs answering you.
    tickets are not live support IMHO. The world "live" means real-time, which should be used primarily with chat or phone support. when a host states 24x7 live support, one assumes that they are available 24x7 over chat or phone.

  8. #8
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    Dec 2000
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    Indianapolis, IN
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    Well I was not going to reply but since it's good news I guess I might as well.


    TO DinoInAtlanta:
    1. Man is that a long post. Sorry I had to say it.
    2. I do understand the phone support issue and that is going to be fixed I hope fully this week.
    3. We have interviews with about 20 techs tomorrow alone, we are going to bring in extra staff to start helping more on the phones.
    4. We may also bring back 24/7 phone support
    5. We may also expand billing as well to include 3 people rather then 2 at this current time.

    I hope we can turn the support issue around for you. I am not sure why your site would have been down for weeks or how your site was affected this week we have not had many web server issues it's been more mail issues then anything. I have also never seen an outage for 7 days and I can't think of one that was network or server wide that lasted 7 days in 6 years. Thats a long time and sounds to more user related or isolated then something wide spread. Not saying it is but I am sure I would have heard something or worked on it if a server was down for 7 days I hear first thing if somethings down more than hour, all techs call me after the first hour of down time no if ands or butts about it. Either way I hope we can make the service better and I am sure we can.


    TO Yash-JH:
    Yea it may but 99% of the time our ticket support is just as fast as chat. That is if you don't have 200,000 plus IPs attacking 3 mail servers.

  9. #9
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    Dino,

    You said what I was afraid to say (seeing the "hot headed" reaction from Brad in this forum with other clients). But yes, I too have had some major problems with Vortech that hurt us very badly ( I think around the same times that you mentioned), the most recent being these last two weeks with our customers using the mail7 server. We lost two clients (that could not be reclaimed even when we told them we would move them to our other server). Vortech can be very frustrating and you are correct when you say we get what we pay for. One of the main reasons we have not switched from vortech is because they are on hsphere and our other servers are using cpanel. To migrate from hsphere is a manual process and everytime we go through a problem, we get frustrated of course (the worse was some time last year when many of our client sites had files from other unrelated clients from other resellers replacing our clients files), the problem does get resolved and then we just cross our fingers hoping for the best - and things go good for a while - then a major problem crops up again. Like you said its the nature of budget resellers.

    But to keep the original post.. If Vortech would at least answer the phone when there is a problem, it wouldn't be quite so bad.. But they just don't.

  10. #10
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    Apparently, I was typing my reply while Vortech was anwering. Good to hear phone support is actually being addressed. Will keep our fingers crossed on this one when the next issue rolls around.

  11. #11
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    Well since you were typing as I was I guess I will let that "hot head" comment slide this time..

  12. #12
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    and I'll take it back and forget that I said it Sorry, just before I made my first reply in this thread I had bumped into another thread between you and another client that made me a little cautious. But I'm human too and I know we all have our days. A little forgiveness is a good thing - so thanks for the pass. I'll let it rest, everything's back to normal at Vortech right now - so we're good.

  13. #13
    The problem is still not fixed.

    After 2 weeks - we are still having issues.

    The issues have been with Mail 7, Mail 8, Mail 9, and Mail 10.

    Continues 421 Service Not Available - (bounced message due to spamming IP address).

    Vortech simply rotates the spammed IP address - with another spammed IP address.

    ...and they still refuse to pick up the telephones (during business hours).

    I have now lost 35 customers.

    I am not the only Vortech reseller who has lost clients.

    The bleeding continues.

  14. #14
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    Not sure why you are still having mail issues and mail7 - mail9 have been fine for days. I have no idea what your talking about maybe a ticket number or have you even opened on?

    As for phones they will get better and fast. 2 new techs added today, live chat added today and will be up and running 100% with all techs in 24 hours.


    I can't tell what your issue is as the error "421 Service Not Available" has nothing to do with the issues mail7 - mail9 even had and what does spam IPs have to do with it. If you want your problem fixed and have opened a ticket send me an email with the ticket number I would be happy to help. You can even email me from this forum.

  15. #15
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    All I can say is, "Thank goodness for WHT". These good responses from Vortech were not what I was getting when I posted in the Vortech forums (all I got there was defensiveness and deleting of my posts). At the expense of appearing to brag (which I am not), I feel now that the time and effort posting for days has been worth it.

    With my luck I'll never need to call Vortech again, so this new improvement won't matter.. Oh.. that's good luck.. Nevermind

  16. #16
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    More good news as well. We are also going to hire another sales person, Craig has done it for the 6 years but being an owner him self, he is also rather busy. So now we will also have more people manning the sales line..

    We are making some big changes all in the customers favor. It's coming it's coming along with some upgrades and as well.

  17. #17
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    5 months later and apparently things have not improved in the area of so-called 24x7 phone support. I tried reaching Vortech 3x today (late morning, early and late afternoon) - no luck Answering machine with option to hit 0 for operator which throws me back to the beginning of the auto-attendant.. Then I tried sales to see if would have any luck with that extension - answering machine. However, I did get through to Vortech about a month ago. So maybe Vortech has improved from zero phone support to "sometimes" support. But still definitely not 24x7 or even standard business hours. Just thought I post a follow-up on where things are after the big discussion last year.

  18. #18
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    Nothing has changed. OMG where have you been you sure you got the right Vortech here?

    Let me give you the list of things we changed.

    1. New Phone System IP Based
    2. 24/7 Techs in the office AGAIN.
    3. 24/7 Phone and Live Chat support.
    4. Added Live Chat since this post as started.
    5. Added the 24/7 in house techs.
    5. Replaced the agging phone system for a newer one for less dropped calls and cost.
    6. Added an 800 FREE for you to call us.
    7. Revamped the office and moved the office this past week
    8. This gave us to right time rid of our old system to move to a 47" LCD screen so techs can better red when a service is up or down.
    9. We added another new tech on site just TODAY!
    10. We support asp.net 2.0 working on php 5.0 now.
    11. We got upgraded to the latest stable and biggest jump in H-sphere we ever had.
    12... Nothing has changed has it?


    Ok I think thats my short list.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vortech View Post
    Nothing has changed. OMG where have you been you sure you got the right Vortech here?

    Let me give you the list of things we changed.

    1. New Phone System IP Based
    2. 24/7 Techs in the office AGAIN.
    3. 24/7 Phone and Live Chat support.
    4. Added Live Chat since this post as started.
    5. Added the 24/7 in house techs.
    5. Replaced the agging phone system for a newer one for less dropped calls and cost.
    6. Added an 800 FREE for you to call us.
    7. Revamped the office and moved the office this past week
    8. This gave us to right time rid of our old system to move to a 47" LCD screen so techs can better red when a service is up or down.
    9. We added another new tech on site just TODAY!
    10. We support asp.net 2.0 working on php 5.0 now.
    11. We got upgraded to the latest stable and biggest jump in H-sphere we ever had.
    12... Nothing has changed has it?


    Ok I think thats my short list.
    Kind of a strange response to a client thats obviously trying to get some support. Sounds like more of a plug for yourself.
    HostCaters.com - Quality Web Hosting - Under A Gig! - Since 1999

  20. #20
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    The post was about our issues all of them addressed in this thread and in my post and thing we even did that customers never asked for like a 800 number etc. We wan to go past what the customer wants and make it better at least thats our goal. If it sounds like a plug oh well it's just the truth..

  21. #21
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    I know this may sound a little facetious, but maybe your employees have been distracted by all the new technology upgrades and have forgotten the importance of answering the phone?

    All of these upgrades sound fantastic, but nothing beats good old-fashioned phone support from real live people who you can actually talk too. Your upgraded system did not provide support to a customer in need today who attempted to reach you three times throughout the day.

    I'm not angry with Vortech, it's a fair service at a fair price. It's just that all of my frustrations from last year resurfaced when I spent so much time on this issue of poor phone support (with a promised resolution) only to find that five months later I still cannot reach Vortech via phone (during standard business hours).

    I don't care about the list of new features as much as I just want PHONE support at those "once in a while" times when I need it.

  22. #22
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    Thats why I keep ading new techs removing ones that don't cut it. Trust me I have been reading everything everyone says here and there I know what needs to get better..

  23. #23

    Waiting for support...

    Vortech,

    I need support, i'm waiting more than 24 hours to solve an issue.

    I can't connect mssql using PHP and your support say code is bad. But I'd send a message showing isn't a code problem.

    Maybe you need to install some dll, give permissions or check php.ini

    Who's your windows expert?

    ticket: JOG-884618

  24. #24
    Vortech ? They are **hidden fee**centre

    They charge $10 for just to get database backup file, and $10~$60 to restore it for their reseller plan, gee~~

  25. #25
    Now I remember where I recognise the Vortech name from. Months ago, I submitted a DMCA notification to them to report a website on their servers illegally breaching my copyright.

    All I got back was a curt reply saying there was no breach. All subsequent attempts to contact them failed.

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