Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : connectswitch

[elas]

Hello,

I am using connectswitch for over 2 months, I can say their support sucks when they have a problem they don't inform what is going on.

Yesterday they had a downtime of over 24 hours for my vps. The problem is they lost their support system too you couldn't contact them if you didn't know wht and the magic e-mail of 'Sam'.

After he big downtime the vps was up, I did some updates to my vps and today I suddenly found my vps is running a few days back seems like they restored an older backup and of course I lost any changes I did.

I am trying to contact but I get non delivery messages:


This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

pipe to |/home/mycs/public_html/support/cli/index.php
generated by support@MyCS.co.uk
local delivery failed


Nobody informed me that they will restore an older backup in their node and every change will be lost.

Connectswitch seems good if it's up running but if they face any problem you are out of luck and in big trouble.

[Cirtex]

Try contacting them via their helpdesk through manual submission, sometimes email piping issues do occur but I'm sure they'll get it resolved quickly.

Best of luck on getting your issues resolved!

Cheers

[elas]

Thanks I found a way to submit a ticket. The problem is that they didn't warn anyone that they will restore an older backup.

Anyway if I am going to wait when they will reply and if they are going to fix it, I can do it myself. This takes too much time.

[net]

That is why, it is important to make your own backup also.

[elas]

Yes it's important I have a backup but the problem is that this happened when I needed some sleep like every human and this problem caused my customers a headache. The should have sent a notice to all customers that they will restore an older backup.

[dennyjames]

When I have had the odd issue in the past support was always ok and I got an answer and a result pretty quick. They have had a major hardware issue as posted in another thread already and their support has been less during this, maybe they have been flat out trying to restore everything? I appreciate everyone needs to know what is going on at all times but perhaps that is not always practical, especially for smaller hosts like CS. They do try their best and look after their clients and when equipment or datacenters are not letting them down they provide a decent, low cost service. As a satisfied customer I am trying to show both sides of the fence, not just the one that flames them when something (not down to them directly) goes wrong.

[Kohrar]

Elas, Just out of curiosity, where is your VPS located? How old is the backup they used to restore your VPS?

Edit: Haven't been browsing WHT for the past few days, only saw that they had a big downtime. Funny how I wasn't even aware of it, but since I use it only as a offsite backup server, uptime is not too big of a problem for me.

[SwitchCentral]

Hello

Right then.

Please email me at sam.smith (at) connectswitch.com and you will be given backups.

Im 100% Sure you are able to locate my direct email address on the forum some where. Why not send me a email if you are unable to locate the support desk at the moment?

[Shoel]

Since you copy&pasted the same answer here, I'll quote what I said in a different thread regarding this matter.

Originally Posted by Shoel

With all due respect Sam, a customer should not have to search through a 3rd party forum in order to dig up a working support address. I myself tried half a dozen 'likely' support addresses without being able to get through. Including the address you have listed as contact/support address at PayPal.

The lack of communication throughout the outage and the problem with not having any alternative contact method to your support system when it was down - is definately something you should be able to take critisim for, instead of trying to blame it on the customer for not being able to find an email address here.

Your main website was available throughout large parts of the outage - so you could, and should have added information there about what was going on and how we could get in touch. That information is there now, but it was not there for the duration of the 40-48h (?) outage.

I'm not trying to lynch you for this or anything, everyone does mistakes - but I think being a little more humble would do you good in this case.

For the record I would like to underline that apart from the outage this weekend (caused by a disk failure) and the lack of communication assosiated with that - I have not had any issues with ConnectSwitch. Initial setup was fast, and my backup was up-to-date, with no data lost from what I can see. I believe this is the case for the majority of the customers affected by this incident, and we are being compensated for the inconvenience.

[elas]

Originally Posted by Kohrar

Elas, Just out of curiosity, where is your VPS located? How old is the backup they used to restore your VPS?

The ip address is in 94.229.* range. The backup is 3 days old. They first restored a backup that everything was ok but for unknown reason (corrupted for some vps customers maybe? ) the restored an older one without informing the customers.

Lack of communication is a big problem. I have restored the data I need myself anyway I never got any reply to the ticket I have submitted.

On the other hand CS is working very nice when it's up and running.

[wansecurity]

We host all of our support systems on a completely separate network. We've been very fortunate in the last 10 years to have no major disasters. In the last 4 years we've had a total of 6.25 hours of downtime 6 of which was scheduled maintenance on two separate occasions to replace UPSs, breakers, and other power-related issues. We do the best we can to make sure that our clients can get a hold of us any time 24 * 7 * 365. We also offer phone support as well, and guarantee callbacks within 30 minutes. We believe that support is the most important aspect of hosting a person's or organizations server(s). It's very important to let the customers know what's going on so they can see the progress of the recovery. We've found that the best way to do this is by having a notifications page that clients can visit if there is an issue. Nothing's worse really than having to sit there with no knowledge of what's happening with your system.

[BatMark]

Whilst the problems continue into the 3rd day - I think it's imperative that CS learn to communicate - otherwise they will lose even more customers. I'd like to think that their business has potential - but I've already started a VPS host with someone else, just so that I can hang on to my customers.

I will stick with CS for the time being, but if they continue to disregard the importance of communication (just one client mail list - and 1 minute to compose, and send, would have gone a long way) then I will not only have to stop using them, but also warn others of the risks involved.

Unlike many, I have been using a variety of hosting services for over 12 years - and have experience a variety of scenarios. But I have never, ever known any business simply fail to communicate. And I've never had to suffer such a long period of service disruption.

Why am I not telling them this directly? Simple - I've realized that I don't get responses to emails - despite the snidey remark made by Sam from CS to another person, at another thread at this site. Anyway, with no response - how can I be certain that they are even receiving my messages?

Anyway Sam, if you are reading this, the onus is on you to advise your customers of a problem - not suggest they try and contact you directly via email. You've not replied to any of mine over the last 3 days - but I guess you are busy, trying to sort things out. Maybe in future you can delegate some communications procedure through someone else.

As a constructive suggestion, why not have a page / mini site, host elsewhere (independent of any related failures) where you can display a status page, and an explanation / summary of any disruption, and expected restoration.

And finally..

CS may want to either change the wording on their home page, or revise their procedures to reflect their promise..

"should you encounter a problem, our knowledgable team of support techicians are ready to promptly respond. "

-------------------------

P.S. The correct spellings are knowledgeable and technicians

[BatMark]

Well we are now into day 5 of major problems - and since the support ticketing system has become functional, I submitted a support request, and just over five hours later, got a response - which was a request for a copy of the original account details sent on sign-up. However, they weren't received, and had to be requested through support ticketing - although it looks as if that data is inaccessible too.

So I have sent as much info as possible, and explained that I am still unable to access my vm CP. I'm also unable to post on any email accounts (SMTP), and have no webmail access.

Another 19hrs later, and still no response. Not too surprising, as I've yet to receive a response to the several emails sent days ago - so I can only assume that CS also have problems with their email/settings.

In fact the only reason I'm posting here, is in some hope that CS will read this and resolve the problems. Five days is a very long time to have all of these problems - and sadly I've just lost a client that has been with me for the last 6 years, who heavily depended on the webmail facility :-(

[BatMark]

Another 4hrs later - and still no response or resolve. Is it just me? I'm now having to deal with another very unhappy client - but at least they'll get an email reply from me in under 10 minutes.

[dotHostel]

My VPS is down for many hours by now.

I just checked HyperVM and it says:

"The VM () Doesn't Exist on localhost. If you have migrated the vps, you can manually change the server in the database using the below, Or restore from backup. "