Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : Frustrated by BurstNET. Need advice.

[oonth]

I ordered two servers from burstnet three days ago.

I was very thrilled when they said they could rush my order within 24hours. And I was floored when I received my boxes hours after ordering.

From there, it's been all downhill.

(1) They installed the wrong hard drive on one of the boxes.
(2) They corrected the hard drive with the correct one. But they created partitions that we did not ask for. Result: reinstall, again.
(3) We found the LAN connection between our two boxes off. We asked them to see and they got back that the cable was disconnected. Scared, we asked them to tell us WHY this would randomly happen. At no point did they apologize. Rather, the support staff simply seems to go back and forth putting the responsibility of the problem from one department to another.(kinda like "we dont know but i'll fwd to networking staff")
(4) This is where it really hit the fan. We ordered hardware ddos protection. I opened a ticket in afternoon yesterday asking them if it had been setup. Our server has been under syn floods which a hardware ddos system should help mitigate. The support staff took over 3 hours and a voicemail before responding.

Since then, the support staff has not yet been able to tell me anything about the ddos hardware. According to them the networking dept. is responsible for that. And by the time the support staff gave up, the networking dept. had gone home(evening yesterday). The support staff said I might not hear back until 9am today.

Frustrated I told them to cancel my server and provide me a refund if they cannot fix the problems by 10am. It's 11am and I have not heard a thing from them.

I opened another ticket few minutes ago about getting a refund. They quickly responded to it saying support has zero to do with billing and that I should contact billing. They also said billing won't be in until Monday.

I spent every penny I had on these servers. Is my only option to wait till Monday before I can get them to give me a refund and find another host?

In either case, I am super disappointed by BurstNET support's incompetence and response times.

[cristibighea]

Billing and sales don't usually work on weekends on a lot of companies, so you may have to wait until Monday. From what I know Burst is pretty good, so perhaps you were just really unlucky.

[oonth]

Originally Posted by cristibighea

Billing and sales don't usually work on weekends on a lot of companies, so you may have to wait until Monday. From what I know Burst is pretty good, so perhaps you were just really unlucky.

I guess so too. I only went to them after reading the recent positive reviews here. And dealing with their sales person was awesome.

Their tech/networking staff though is a whole different experience. It's gut wrenching to spend 3 days just to get what you ordered. Note I have not even started seeking any real support--beyond just getting what I ordered.

I just got contacted by my sales contact who is trying to help me resolve the issues.

[BurstJoeM]

Sir,

My apologies for the problems your having. In addressing your issues regarding DDoS protection. We offer 2 levels of DDoS service, Network Level (Standard) and Server Level (Premium). All services we provide come with the Network level. The Server level protection uses the same equipment but with a dedicated profile containing policies based on your traffic pattern. The server level protection require 72hours to setup and requires your system to be up and running with traffic (it’s hard to build policies with nothing to learn from). I apologize that this was not communicated to you sooner. During that time, your system is covered by the network level service. I currently see a couple of tickets regarding requests for the server level service to be completed but nothing stating that your under DDoS attack. If you have the ticket numbers, please PM me and I will work with your to resolve the issue.

We recently began offering the server level protection and have been working through a couple of issues with our ordering and provisioning system. While I don’t want to make excuses, this is not par for the course.

As far as your other issues, I will inform our Customer Service Manager of your plight.

Regards,

[oonth]

Joe, it's been 72 hours since my order. Our site is sending traffic to our burstnet boxes. Just thought I'd make that clear here.

Also, you say no where do you see anything about us being under ddos. This is untrue. You can see in the ticket titled "ddos":

We are being ddos'd. Our server is down. We need help ASAP. This is why we got ddos and managed service.

Thank you.

And from your own tech:

I've tried a few iptables formulas, but it doesn't seem to be having much of an affect on the incoming connections. From a netstat list, it looks very much like a botnet or such attacking your httpd process as there are a large amount of them running. I'm going to see if APF or such will help in this case. Otherwise, I'll need to forward this back to our networking department to look into further.

I'll take it up on pm/support thread from here in good faith that my issues will be resolved.

[XFactorServers]

Yeah, something seems fishy here. I have to say you should do alot of research before ordering anyones ddos protection.

[BurstNET]

Originally Posted by XFactorServers

Yeah, something seems fishy here. I have to say you should do alot of research before ordering anyones ddos protection.

Nothing fishy here...our DDOS protection offering is legit...We use Cisco Guard gear, just like many of the other big industry players. The system does take about 72 hours AFTER configuration to analyze traffic before it starts blocking. It is not just push a button and it is live, it has to monitor traffic first to learn
what is legit and what should be blocked. This is an add-on service that our Networking Dept has to specifically configure, but basic network-wide protection is supplied to all clientele.
.
.

[oonth]

Originally Posted by BurstNET

Nothing fishy here...our DDOS protection offering is legit...We use Cisco Guard gear, just like many of the other big industry players. The system does take about 72 hours AFTER configuration to analyze traffic before it starts blocking. It is not just push a button and it is live, it has to monitor traffic first to learn
what is legit and what should be blocked. This is an add-on service that our Networking Dept has to specifically configure, but basic network-wide protection is supplied to all clientele.
.
.

Problem in my case seems to be that you guys forgot all about my order of DDOS protection. Only this morning, 3 days after my order and after expressing extreme frustration and after getting my sales contact (Benji; awesome guy btw) involved did my ddos protection get set up.

Overall if you read my experience, you will see a consistent problem with your support/networking folks messing up. I hope this is an anomaly and not representative of your service. I'll be finding out in coming days and months.

[BurstNET]

Originally Posted by oonth

Problem in my case seems to be that you guys forgot all about my order of DDOS protection. Only this morning, 3 days after my order and after expressing extreme frustration and after getting my sales contact (Benji; awesome guy btw) involved did my ddos protection get set up.

Overall if you read my experience, you will see a consistent problem with your support/networking folks messing up. I hope this is an anomaly and not representative of your service. I'll be finding out in coming days and months.

Yes, this is not normal, and we have located the source of the delay. We recently upgraded some internal systems, and it appears to have broke a fuction that controls notifications to our staff of pending order items that need to be fulfilled. Our programmers are working on correcting this currently...

[forumtalk]

Good thing about this story is "2 guys from burst responding to you now" how about that, May be you can give them a time before ask refund

[oonth]

Originally Posted by forumtalk

Good thing about this story is "2 guys from burst responding to you now" how about that, May be you can give them a time before ask refund

I don't know what's worse. No one responding or someone responding only to say 10hrs later that the people who can help won't be available for another 12hours Things only started to improve after my awesome account manager(Benji) chimed in--almost 24hours after my original ticket.

Hopefully they've got me covered now. I'll find out tomorrow when the ddos hardware will supposedly kick in.

I've a suggestion for BurstNET which I'll PM him. I believe it would prevent a lot of the issues.

[plumsauce]

Originally Posted by oonth

I've a suggestion for BurstNET which I'll PM him. I believe it would prevent a lot of the issues.

You might add the suggestion that irrespective of any problems with the automated process, that the human responders ought to correct a problem upon failure of the automated process.

The human brain, when allowed to operate, is far superior to any logic you can build into a system.

[BurstNET]

Originally Posted by plumsauce

You might add the suggestion that irrespective of any problems with the automated process, that the human responders ought to correct a problem upon failure of the automated process.

Not if the human responders are unaware of the problem. Sometimes you don't know a problem exists until you are made aware of a issue from a client.
.
.

[webbysitedesign]

Yes i agree that Sometimes you don't know a problem exists until you are made aware of a issue from a client.

But an excellent company like Burst.net must not take any chances

[Cassius]

Your server underwent a DDoS/syn flood less than 2 days after being set up?