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To be honest I think your expectations are too high for what is effectively budget hosting. Even in huge companies with massive support like Rackspace can take up to an hour to respond to big issues, so you really should be tempering expectations for a plan you're likely paying $7 a month for; bearing in mind there are likely only a handful of support people, and when downtime happens you're probably not the only person raising a ticket.
Also, wouldn't you prefer that they actually fix the issue, as opposed to responding to all the 'VPS down, WTF?' tickets first?
Especially huge companies often provide lousy support. Thats not an excuse for smaller ones to do the same.
This is an unmanaged service and we are not talking here about a how do I configure my phpmyadmin
but about the most basic aspect of the service, availability.
Of course the priority is not to let it happen in the first place and then to fix it. But also to inform your customers as early as possible. This can be done in different ways. Simply keeping quiet though will make the customers enquiry of course.
So, apart from happening in the first place I see the primary problem in the lack of communication. And even later, once the customer actually established the contact it was the, unfortunately very typical, support ping-pong.
I'm not even mad when my normal priority question is answered in 2 days. I only expect fast responses on high priority tickets. Even from premium providers.
Now it depends how you define "normal" priority.
Will you give us more info or are you using this thread as blackmail for your provider? I don't see a real question, nor good answers.
@neroux said:
I think you should probably contact providers before buying to see what they consider 'normal' priority and see if it matches your expectations. Otherwise I have a feeling you're always going to be a bit disappointed.
You could have done the same thing, which is why he was trying to help.
Please provide us with the name of the provider you're having these issues with.
The question was in reference to ztec's statement he doesnt even mind two days.
While I believe two days are generally unacceptable, I fully agree that tickets either not related to the support terms at all or coming with a minor priority can take up to several hours without any problem.
We have someone on call 24/7.
Does this mean we reply all tickets instantly ? No.
For the extended downtime (more than 10 min or so) we publish the issue in the forum along with causes if they are known even if it is a single node. For shorter amounts, it is usually a DDoS which is mitigated faster or some abuser which was shutdown in less time.
Some tickets stay for days until uncle manages to answer them and they are from his friends usually or someone who needs a big dedicated or a custom setup involving complicated issues and changes in the network. There are also silly tickets, someone who cannot look at our offer to read where the servers are located, or at the web pages in case they need further assurance and will probably be a burden on support and not worth to bother with for an Eur a month.
We also do not promise 24/7 support tho someone is on all the time to watch things, but this does not mean billing works around the clock or in holidays, or we will fix botched installations done without following the steps in the tutorials because our tutorials are wrong and others are better.
Threats and name calling also add more time to the ticket or it gets closed directly, no need to threaten us. If you think we do something illegal, it is your duty to call the authorities, informing us about your future actions will simply help us escape the just punishment for the crimes you think we committed. Same, if we offer such a bad service, please cancel the service and ask for a refund, you cannot hope it will be better just because of threats or name calling, can you ?
There are also honest mistakes. Some ticket can be overlooked for a reason or another can start reply but some emergency happen and forget we didnt reply, s..t happens, we are only human
However you cannot expect the moon, if the services work as advertised, we consider our job is done, we do like to help people on top of that, but within reason and only the polite people that can be bothered to read our replies and follow the steps we outlined in linked tutorials or in the ticket.
Fix it, you broke it, wont get you many points with us, nor threats with bad reviews and calling the authorities, however if someone did a mistake and needs some help and admits it, we will do a lot more than what we have to do by contract no matter if for 50 cents a month or for 100 Eur, it is for someone who needs help and trusts us to do it.
@Maounique these appear to be absolutely reasonable policies
Cancel your service with "the provider" due to unacceptable downtime. Done.
So what is the point of this thread? So you didn't get a timely response? Really if you are not going to name drop or go into detail why write this?
24/7 support doesn't mean answering any possible question or performing audits. Support is meant to cover that which is supported and investigating downtime in your preferred time frame is not necessary support. You are not asking for help, you are asking them to perform their own duty which does not effect the present state of your services.
To be clear, a node audit request is not a support request. The service is running, you don't need help with it, you don't need support. You need an audit. You'll wait for it.
Thats an interesting definition.
Bluntly put, not only do they not provide the service (by downtime), but they also do not pro-actively inform the customers whatsoever. And later once those customers have to find out themselves, they - according to you - should not even be entitled to enquiry about the reason why their paid service did not work .....
Call it whatever you want. If a provider is not able to tell why a service went down, there ought to be something rotten in the state of Denmark ....
You don't even know it was downtime or their fault in any way. You'll wait and find out, then you can judge.
Apart from the fact the machine was down for 40 minutes and rebooted then? Plus the usual "abuser" excuse?
I'd strongly recommend reading the threads before commenting on or even judging yourself.