Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : [review] Hostrefugee - great when they're around?

[liquidfractal]

So this is sort of a review, sort of a rebuke, but really just a relation of my current experiences with HostRefugee.

First off, I want to say that by and large my experience with HR has been fantastic, and particularly with Vince, who has always been willing to help me with custom modifications to my account which enable me to run certain software. Generally speaking, the service and support I've received from them has been excellent and I am very satisfied with my account.

However...lately, I have had requests for help with / had questions with my site which have gone completely unanswered (going on over a week now). This has happened once or twice before - usually having to do with server problems, my inability to access email, excessive server loads, etc. But this has only happened once, maybe twice.

In the past week or so, I've submitted several requests and they have all gone unanswered. My account is fully paid (in advance, in fact, as I took up a special offer), so I don't think it's a status issue. One of my requests is for my PHP5 memory_limit to be put at its default (128MB) so I can install some important software. This, too, is waiting in queue.

But now it's like everyone at HR has dropped off the face of the earth. Their support ticket system works, but no one is answering. I emailed the support dept a little while back - no answer. I have posted a "Where is everyone?" thread on their client Forums...nothing. Part of the reason why I'm posting this is so that Vince (or someone...ANYone at HR!!) will actually respond to me??!

Please understand that I am NOT bashing HR - like I said and will continue to say, on the whole they are excellent and responsive to client needs. But this incident is a shocking and completely unexpected lapse of service and customer support, which even has me wondering if there's a tech glitch that is preventing my messages from getting through? I don't even know...I can't PM Vince, since I'm a newbie here and I don't have the requisite access to the PM system.

So, if you're reading this Vince, or anyone at HR...helloooo?

[liquidfractal]

For any of you who might be interested...

Just now I spent the last 5+min. trying to log in to my CPanel. When I finally got to the main page and checked the Server Status the Server Load reads 79.25.

There have been a couple of instances when this has happened (which essentially freezes my website), and it's when the server load reads 50+ (like now) that I have contacted HR with support tickets that have been consistently unanswered.

If everyone's on vacation, then shouldn't their clients have been notified? Either way, it's hard to remain confident about my website when things like this are happening...

[IGXHost]

Have their server loads always been this high? Perhaps they're suffering from an attack which can be quite common in some cases but minor attacks are often mitigated within a reasonable amount of time. The response time is unacceptable though. Perhaps its time to move?

[railto]

Hi, would you mind supplying the mods with a hosted domain by reporting your thread so that they can verify that the domain is held with hostrefugee.

i had a quick look about here and have seen some very good reviews, would love to find out what is going on here

[liquidfractal]

Hi Mark,
I just did. And I, too, would love to know what the deal is - but no one has gotten back to me yet!

For anyone who is curious, my domain is liquidfractal.org. Not very big right now, but I have plans....

The domain is registered on namecheap through HR (if I remember correctly - I have several domain names), but the account is certainly with hostrefugee.

I also want people to know that I am more than ready to accept extenuating circumstances - up until this point I would happily second the great reviews. But the lack of responsiveness is beginning to irk me, all the more so because it is COMPLETELY atypical of the service I've had so far.

[jweeb]

Just curious.. your domain name whois shows that the technical person belongs to 1&1.. is there a link between HostRefugee and 1&1? Or is it because you have not changed the records.

[liquidfractal]

jweeb: sorry...forgot to mention that. My original account was with 1&1 before I switched over to HR. I switched over my site, but since 1&1 registered the domain, touching that wouldnt' affect my site one way or the other, so the domain name stayed where it was. The nameservers are HR's, though.

And in response to igxhost (sorry...not enough posts to quote apparently!): the server load is usually excellent....which is about .30-2.x. However, there have been periods where server loads, as I outlined before, have been extremely high. When this happens, I have to wait several minutes to get into my CPanel, and then when I get the status and refresh the page, I can see it slowly go down.

As to what causes this (some other account running hog-scripts or whatever) - I have submitted query support tickets which have gone unanswered.

[anon-e-mouse]

Originally Posted by liquidfractal

For anyone who is curious, my domain is liquidfractal.org. Not very big right now, but I have plans....

Thanks for the verification

[liquidfractal]

I'm actually curious if there are any other hostrefugee clients here who might be reading this thread? I'm wondering if I am the only one who is being...what, ignored? Missed? I seem to be the only one posting on the company forums, although naturally I have no idea how many support tickets they're getting.

Just a few mins. ago I tried to get to my email and there was a server load of 25.21 when I finally got in...it must have been higher while my access was blocked. It DOES eventually go down, and I'd be willing to deal with it (temporarily) if I were given some meaningful context to all this crap....sigh.

I'd even be willing to deal with the fact that they all went on vacation and forgot to notify their clients...but has Hostrefugee turned into the Internet's Mary Celeste?

[iHubNet-Matt]

Thanks for sharing your experiences. Sorry to hear your troubles. Vince is an active member here. But recently I have seen very less appearances of him and it seems he has last posted here on 05-10-2009. I am also very eager to know what is happening there. Hope everything will be running smooth again for you and Vince.
Best of luck.

[JLHC]

Since you have 5 posts now, I will suggest you to contact Vince through PM as well as another means of contact. Is he online at any of the IMs?

[liquidfractal]

Originally Posted by JLHC

Since you have 5 posts now, I will suggest you to contact Vince through PM as well as another means of contact. Is he online at any of the IMs?

I've added him to my MSN, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. But I've PMed him, so hopefully I will get the explanation I deserve from either Vince or someone at HostRefugee.

I will repeat, though, that I find it interesting that no one else, so far as I know, seems to notice (or mind) the lapse...the numbers in my support tickets are non-sequential, so I assume others have submitted support tickets as well; are those getting answered? The plot thickens....so far I've:

- emailed the support dept.
- posted on the client forums
- submitted support tickets on the ClientExec system
- added Vince to MSN
- PMed him here and posted on WHT.

And as far as I know I have been a model client - if I've done anything to piss people off there, I have yet to hear about it!

[JLHC]

Originally Posted by liquidfractal

I've added him to my MSN, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. But I've PMed him, so hopefully I will get the explanation I deserve from either Vince or someone at HostRefugee.

I will repeat, though, that I find it interesting that no one else, so far as I know, seems to notice (or mind) the lapse...the numbers in my support tickets are non-sequential, so I assume others have submitted support tickets as well; are those getting answered? The plot thickens....so far I've:

- emailed the support dept.
- posted on the client forums
- submitted support tickets on the ClientExec system
- added Vince to MSN
- PMed him here and posted on WHT.

And as far as I know I have been a model client - if I've done anything to piss people off there, I have yet to hear about it!

Well their clients may not participate in WHT which is why you do not see any who reply here. Their client base of around 300+ domains hosted does not seem to be large enough which is why you may not see any clients here or being active here in WHT.

[liquidfractal]

Hmm....is there any way of finding out who HR's other clients are? I don't assume the client Forums are any real indicator, since they're pretty dead (in fact, there's a spammer who somehow managed to register and spam there - I even brought THAT to Vince's attention and nothing's been done about it!).

But maybe I'll PM some of the people there and see what they say.

[MasterLL]

I'm one of their clients and very surprised about the sudden disappearance since I also put in a support ticket (just a basic question actually about hosting) about two days ago.

It just seems extremely weird to me that the "disappearance" suddenly happened when there are quite a few times I write to support and get my questions answered pretty quick.

I hope nothing bad happened to Vince and the others.. but if worse comes to worse, it'll be a sad day to move again (since they helped me move out from my previous server a few years ago, yea I've been their client for a long while now).

According to Vince's profile, last time he was on WHT was June 13, 2009 but no activity.

So hopefully he'll reply or something soon though, there's only two weeks left...