Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : NYNOC Exit Review - Read Before Purchasing

[bigks]

As many of you may have already read my initial review or the New York NOC I wanted to leave an additional exit review of the company and share a personal recommendation.
It started a little over a month ago when I jumped VPS providers and initially purchase 2 VPS plans . Initially the boxes were rock solid. I could get to my websites, admin area, and have support tickets responded to in a timely manner. Roughly a week later I ended up moving another site to it’s own VPS . This is when I noticied my first issues. CONSTANT ERROR MESSAGES stating the backend was down and to please restart it. I would launch a support ticket, roughly 2 hours later the backend would be rebooted and I could once again access the admin panel and do what I needed to. Like clockwork when I would try to login again later to my admin panel I would be hit again with the backend was down (hypervm would be in a constant refresh). Sometimes my sites would remain online and sometimes they would go down too. This got frustrating but was bearable (I thought). Within a few days I see a BIGGER problem arise. I woke up one morning to find error alerts coming in and realizing 2 VPS’s had been offline for hours on end. I again launch another support ticket for the backend to be rebooted. I get a response everything is ok so I go about my day. I later receive an e-mail stating all of my sites were showing a mysql connect error and panic. Come to find out they had corrupted this time when the backend went down, I repair and optimize and everything is ok. VERY next day I wake up and check my nightly logs to make sure the nightly backup was loaded onto my home server. I don’t see it and find I received an e-mail from lxadmin stating it could not backup the database. Once again…..corrupted. This has been going on since that time frame on almost a daily basis. The backups are iffy if they will come in since when the backend gets overloaded and crashes in the middle of the night, it immediately corrupts all db’s on the VPS. I could understand 1 VPS doing this…..but 3? Come on….
Now comes Thanksgiving, my boxes go down for roughly 5 hours before reboot and once again I have to repair them on a blackberry with ssh since I am away (never fun to type that on a bb). I am back online and go about my day…….then…..Friday. My box goes down at 5pm…..I send in a support ticket to have it rebooted. The next morning at 11am it finally gets turned back on and I get a response that it must have been on my end since everything looks ok from there (granted 3 monitoring services were all showing it down). Once again…..corrupted. I rebuild and think the SLA was 99.9% so I send in a nice message to ask about it. Here is the response:
Posted: 11/29/2008 12:33
Hey Guys.
Since one of the VPS accounts was down for 17 hours do I qualify for the 99.9% SLA?
(3 Monitoring Services show the outage happened at 5:34PM last night and I have recovery notifications for this morning at 11:16AM)
Thanks
----------------------------
IP Address: 71.76.239.xx Andy
StaffPosted: 11/30/2008 20:49 Hi Ryan,
Unfortunately our SLA applies to network uptime and not power or hardware related.
I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
-------------------------------
The New York NOC Inc.
www.thenynoc.com
Visit our new forums! http://thenynoc.com/forums/
So……99.9% SLA does not cover if no one is in the datacenter to reboot the box because it is off-line…..I thought SLA’s covered your box being on-line, am I wrong?
So now after too many corruptions to count, support taking longer and longer in between responses I am left looking over my books. Last year alone between Thanksgiving and the following Sunday I brought in roughly $2300 dollars in sales. This year for the past 4 days I have brought in $10…… I have had some longtime recurring customers so I asked them for any feedback on what we could do to earn there business again. Out of 40+ people all but one stated that if I could fix the sites downtime they would return (the other responses was of course to lower prices). Second suggestion they had was to fix my e-mails from ending up in their spam box. Yes I was sold ALL dirty ip’s which had all been blacklisted. Some major isp’s worked with me and allowed me in…(some)
Before I get flammed for choosing these guys, they truly were great up front so obviously I got fooled. I have no doubt they are great for some people but I simply can not drive my business into the ground because I went cheap and in the end got what I deserved. I moved to futurehost today and almost **** myself when a response ticket was answered in under a minute (kinda scary for a low priority ticket).
With this said, before you consider NewYorkNoc simply ask yourself if your business or site is important to you, if you can afford to lose business, and if you want constant downtime along with mysql corruptions daily. I am not saying they are the worst as they were helpful at first. Just EXPECT that when the deal is that good, you are being oversold. There is no other explanation in my books.
To sum this up:
Uptime: 3 out of 10 (there were up sometimes)
Customer Service: 2 out of 10 (would have given higher I did not have to repeatedly e-mail over the backend issues)
Price: 10 out of 10 (admit it, the price point these guys have is good)
Value: 1 out of 10 (I made a bad choice, I lost a ton of money in business and now have to work hard to recover my losses and rebuild relationships)
Recommend to others: 2 out of 10 (why 2? This place might be good for offsite backup maybe?)
This review is NOT out of spite due to my recent downtime. This review is merely my opinion and personal experiences and not written to bash NYNOC. If your happy with them then you are doing well. If you are considering them…….I urge you to think elsewhere. All my data is off the VPS and I am running before the backend crashes again corrupted my DB’s. SLA with this company is a joke IMO.
Hope this helps someone out there.
Ryan

[bigks]

HOLY CRUD! Did anyone see they are now running the $10 VPS special with 512 of ram for only $5 on there homepage http://www.thenynoc.com/. Did everyone jump ship at once?

[Salsero]

Hello,
Before everyone reads this thinking "Wow, they sure have fooled everyone", consider the following:
1) There was a major power issue at the facility in NY which was the cause for the downtime on Thanksgiving. We have no control over their power breakers or anything else in the facility that isn't our equipment for that matter. Therefore, we have to wait on them to get issues like this fixed. Our uptime guarantee only applies to our network and not power or hardware failures. This is clearly stated in our SLA.
In addition, we post all issues on our announcements page for all of our clients to see. If you or other clients fail to check that page, we cannot be held responsible for that.
No we did not fool anyone and we do continue to provide the best service we possibly can.
As I mentioned, please keep in mind that issues such as this are out of our control.

[Salsero]

HOLY CRUD! Did anyone see they are now running the $10 VPS special with 512 of ram for only $5 on there homepage http://www.thenynoc.com/. Did everyone jump ship at once?

We have a couple plans with 512MB. The Super VPS and the Super VPS #2. The plans were so popular that we decided to put them on our homepage.

I fail to see what the big deal is here.

[bigks]

Andy, I checked the off-site page over 20 times during those 17 hours with no update. It only stated the problems were fixed from the previous problem and that power had been restored. If the problem was fixed why was I still offline for 17 hours and not given the ability to use your guaranteed SLA? If it's down, it's down. I could attempt to login to hypervm but it only refreshed meaning of course the backend was down and once it was brought on-line, the db was corrupted again.
you know I have always been nice, polite, and not pushy.....I simply can not tell people my experience was ok.....it wasn't

[Salsero]

I did not say the offsite status page. I mentioned the announcements page that is accessible from within the client area.
It clearly says maintenance was being performed and downtime will vary throughout the day.
In any case, I am not one for arguing and hate to see you leave however that is your choice of action.
Take care in whichever host you choose to go to now.
Thank you

[bigks]

Wow, I tried to file a claim against there SLA with PayPal.....
I guess they have done this before as they escalated it and paypal closed the case in under 5 minutes. Moral of the story, I got screwed for $35 in hosting fees. I am changing my opinion to these guys are pros at this type of work.....pros....
I am not being childish but this isn't right. Does anything think a BBB complaint and letter to AG in there state would do any good or just waste my time?

[Salsero]

You chose not to read our SLA when you signed up with us apparently.
Then when there was a power issue at the facility, you decided to ask for a credit when we clearly do not honor any power sla.
You then proceeded to request cancellation of all packages and file disputes for the full fees involved with each package. Yes, we are going to escalate it to paypal to decide the course of action when you are so adamant on getting money back for service that was provided throughout the month.
Thank you

[bigks]

You know how many problems I had, you know my data was getting corrupted. Are you to admit to everyone here that this is the service you provide? Downtime and Data Corruption? I mean please explain how this is service and how it does not constitute a refund. Being fair I am open to listen.......

[Salsero]

I'm not sure how you are coming to these assumptions here. Having been in business for over 4 years now surely shows people that we are not providing any type of shady service to people/companies.
Is it our fault that the facility had a power issue? No, it is not as we did not design the facility nor do we control the outcome of resolution to issues that arise.

[bigks]

Andy, I have had corruption issues and back end issues for over 3 weeks so please do not blame this on a one time incident. You know it is a fact I wrote you numerous times over this and you replied back everything a-ok on your end with no corruption to the node. I simply do not understand how I have used hosting providers for years and your service is the first to corrupt all DB's on the box each time the backend crashes. This is my question man, was it just me having the problems or was everyone having issues?

[Salsero]

It was just you who had issues and I am not lying here. Just because hypervm failed to load on the node does not mean it automatically causes corruption of individual vps's. Other providers who run Hypervm on their vps's could chime in here and back me up on this.
Whatever issues you had could have been related to your OS or whatever you were running. I honestly do not know since the super vps plans are unmanaged and it was never looked into (in terms of looking at your vps issues specifically).

[bigks]

Andy, I moved over from lxadmin (which I have been using for over year) and I have never seen a backend go down before your services. I have never seen DB corruption until I used your services (all DB's). You have always been polite and I want to believe you but something is definitely screwed up on the node without a doubt. How can it run fine at other providers (same scripts and data) but once it hits your servers it all of a sudden has issues with hypervm? You may not be lying about having knowledge I was the only one with problems but you may just not be informed by your current customers that they too had problems. Regardless....I had a bad box, paid my bills on-time, had nothing but problems, and in the end am out cash for your services and loss of sales. I am the one screwed here bro, not you.

[Salsero]

I do not have an answer for you as no other customer has complained of such issues.
I am sorry you had a bad experience using our service and wish you luck with your next provider.

[bigks]

Andy, no offense and nothing personal but if your company is unwilling to refund over the matter the least I can do is post this around the web so others can read and let them draw upon their own conclusion prior to buying. You know what I have said is factual as you have support tickets showing it. Like I said you have always been polite but at the same time we disagree on the problem that happened and a resolution. If I am not at least getting a prorated refund I can at least stop others from making the same mistake and having there sites experience the same issues. If a hosting provider can not provide uptime or even access to an admin panel in a VPS then how are they truly getting what they are paying for. That would be like selling a car that runs on hydrogen and then telling the consumer the nearest refill station is only 1000 miles away.
Take care man, I hope you can treat other customers better.