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Unrealistic Support Expectations Here
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Unrealistic Support Expectations Here

sureiamsureiam Member
edited May 2019 in General

Labor is generally the most expensive part of any business. (especially if they are based out of Europe or the States). I think anyone here paying LET prices for their server/VM should expect slower and minimal support.

I see this complaint too frequently here. For example people paying $15-$30 yearly and expect immediate support in doing every little thing (like setting up emails/domain/DNS), or people expecting their VPS to be built essentially for them and maintained.

If your paying LowEndTalk prices for your VPS solutions don't expect premium service, your suppose to be experienced enough to offset their expense on support.

The only support requests I generally make are due to billing (changing plans, modifying plans, etc) or things that can't be changed from a panel (like IP or VPS location). I have tickets with vendors actually that are 2-3 weeks old (like requesting an additional feature), I bump them once a week or month and give them a chance to get back to them when they aren't busy.

But I get so frustrated everytime I see a good vendor/provider here that I have positive experience with getting bashed because of "slow support". Now of course some of them are warranted but that feels rare to me from my experience vs what is written. With that said I feel like those are the people that are asking to enable Let's Encrypt when it's clearly in the Cpanel. Or to reinstall their VPS when it's clearly possible from the panel/VNC, or probably even worse to do basic stuff like setting up the Firewall or a LAMP setup.

If you want premium support pay retail pricing. But if you're getting a VPS that's normally charged $5 a month for $30 a year then you must expect to give up the hand holding!

/Rant

«1

Comments

  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    The end is nigh.

    Thanked by 1NobodyInteresting
  • SkanderSkander Member

    Fully agreed. But I guess a disclaimer from the provider's part would be nice. There is nothing wrong with setting expectations.

    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • donlidonli Member

    @Skander said:
    Fully agreed. But I guess a disclaimer from the provider's part would be nice. There is nothing wrong with setting expectations.

    VirMach did sell bargain "no support" VPSs, but apparently it did not go well.

    Thanked by 1uptime
  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker
    edited May 2019

    @sureiam said:
    ... if you're getting a VPS that's normally charged $5 a month for $30 a year then you must expect to give up the hand holding!

    Yes and no. One shouldn't need to give up "hand holding" - but one should give up the expectation of quick reaction time.

    Edit: @AlwaysSkint (thanks) reminded me that "support" needs to be defined: My understanding is that support (with an unmanaged VPS) means "to make and keep it working" and to provide basic services like mounting an ISO if the user can't do that her/himself.

    And "to make and keep" it working I mean the product, not a lack of knowledge on the users side.

  • deankdeank Member, Troll
    edited May 2019

    @donli said:

    @Skander said:
    Fully agreed. But I guess a disclaimer from the provider's part would be nice. There is nothing wrong with setting expectations.

    VirMach did sell bargain "no support" VPSs, but apparently it did not go well.

    Yeah, I recall that now. They did clearly state that no support would be given but people still whined about not getting support.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    Providers shouldn't be afraid to "fire" their clients. If the client is too expensive to take care of it's perfectly reasonable to cancel and refund them (as long as your TOS allows it of course) rather than keeping them when you can't meet their needs and giving them a bad experience.

  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    People don't take rejections too well.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    @deank said:
    People don't take rejections too well.

    I know this all to well. We've had clients that would rather spam our help desk with nonsense rather than take a refund. In the end they always get pissed that I refunded them and they're forced to go spend real money for fully managed services. Some even leave bad reviews because we refunded them without letting them have a say in it. :lol:

    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • AlwaysSkintAlwaysSkint Member
    edited May 2019

    For unmanaged VPS/dedicated my expectations are:
    Hardware & network (including rDNS) - full support in terms of outage & (reasonable) performance.
    ISO installs - supported either via Ticket or a control panel.
    Anything else is a bonus.
    Timescales don't really come into it except for being 'efficient'. Anything more than a few days represents a bad experience, apart from when a delay with explanation is communicated.

    EDIT: Oh, and the service should be as advertised (which isn't always the case!).

    Just my take on it.

    Thanked by 2jsg chocolateshirt
  • @KuJoe said:

    @deank said:
    People don't take rejections too well.

    I know this all to well. We've had clients that would rather spam our help desk with nonsense rather than take a refund. In the end they always get pissed that I refunded them and they're forced to go spend real money for fully managed services. Some even leave bad reviews because we refunded them without letting them have a say in it. :lol:

    You shouldn't just leave them like that, the world is cruel enough as it is.
    You should tell them something like:
    "Although you can't be our customer anymore, we still love you and you'll always have a special place in our hearts. To us, you always were like the customer we never wanted to have. Hopefully soon your journey and wandering ends and you end up finding whatever you were looking for, perhaps even yourself.
    Love, Your beloved Host"

  • MikeAMikeA Member, Patron Provider

    Hello,

    Please take iperf and MTR.

    Thanks,

    Thanked by 1Gatto
  • poissonpoisson Member

    Beggars can't be choosers.

    If you want to be fussy, don't be a beggar. #hardtruth

  • loydloyd Member
    edited May 2019

    If client asks something out of work scope, I offer them estimated price of the extra work. Cheap clients walk away, and rest agree to the new scope and price. If your unmanaged clients demand managed service, offer them one.

    Thanked by 2BeardyUnixGuy KuJoe
  • But $15 is too expensive

    Thanked by 2poisson Gatto
  • sanvitsanvit Member
    edited May 2019

    @cybertech said:
    But $15 is too expensive

    Anything over free is expensive

    Thanked by 1default
  • donlidonli Member

    @cybertech said:
    But $15 is too expensive

    $ 7.

  • @donli said:

    @cybertech said:
    But $15 is too expensive

    $ 7.

    $3.50

  • FalzoFalzo Member

    while I totally agree that expectation management isn't a strong suit around here, quite some providers do label themselves as "quality, premium, fastest, best, 24/7, etc." - so don't cry if customers take your word for it, regardless the price ;-)

    Thanked by 2emgh vimalware
  • defaultdefault Veteran

    Thanked by 1taubin
  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    @loyd said:
    If client asks something out of work scope, I offer them estimated price of the extra work. Cheap clients walk away, and rest agree to the new scope and price. If your unmanaged clients demand managed service, offer them one.

    They want it for free though. We list our fees in our TOS and giving them the option for managed support at any cost isn't an option for a lot of clients in this market.

  • emghemgh Member

    @KuJoe said:

    @loyd said:
    If client asks something out of work scope, I offer them estimated price of the extra work. Cheap clients walk away, and rest agree to the new scope and price. If your unmanaged clients demand managed service, offer them one.

    They want it for free though. We list our fees in our TOS and giving them the option for managed support at any cost isn't an option for a lot of clients in this market.

    Your link to Wyvern is broken in your signature.

  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    Everyone's broken on LET.

    Links to sanity are always broken.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    @emgh said:

    @KuJoe said:

    @loyd said:
    If client asks something out of work scope, I offer them estimated price of the extra work. Cheap clients walk away, and rest agree to the new scope and price. If your unmanaged clients demand managed service, offer them one.

    They want it for free though. We list our fees in our TOS and giving them the option for managed support at any cost isn't an option for a lot of clients in this market.

    Your link to Wyvern is broken in your signature.

    Thanks for the heads up, I just replaced our website a few hours ago with a new design and forgot to fix that. :blush:

    Thanked by 1emgh
  • defaultdefault Veteran

    @deank said:
    Everyone's broken on LET.

    Links to sanity are always broken.

    I am not broken. Never. I am wise, I am sane, I am beautiful, I can stand up like a splendid tree against the winds.

    Thanked by 2Janevski uptime
  • There's a difference between a non urgent feature request ( while the server is operational) and your service failing to be provisioned properly from the get go. Or the node is getting abused and service is practically inoperable.

    Whether you're paying $30/mo or $30/year, the server is useless when it's down. There's no point me putting hours of time into a server that goes down several times a year for hours to days at a time. The one time it goes down and I have no ETA from support, means I need to revert to the backup or setup another server from backup, that might just be ready by the time the original problem is resolved... so support responses are very important with dealing with down servers.

    Support people are salary, not paid per ticket. Dealing with a support request from a $30/year service may in fact fix the same issue affecting the $30/mo servers, and every one benefits.

    In the end, be mindful of the request. Non critical issues shouldn't be filed as high priority. Service inoperable should be, whether you paid $12/year or $12/mo.

    Lastly, unless timestamp tickets are posted, both the OP and provider lie on ticket response times (close to 100% of the time). I've seen here where the timestamps were posted, but the provider kept intentionally repeating a lower response time to discredit the OP's original complaint. That fucking pissed me off. Intentionally lying right next to evidence to discredit a valid complaint just makes you a piece of shit. And yes, this was from a popular provider.

    Support is a money losing side of your business (in all businesses). But it's meant to retain and gain customers through excellent support operations. Great support breeds loyal customers.

    Thanked by 1corbpie
  • NeoonNeoon Community Contributor, Veteran

    Everything is realistic, it depends on your perspective.

  • sureiamsureiam Member

    @TimboJones said:

    Obviously if a server is down or is getting very low speeds and bad performance that's something you should open a ticket about and complain.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    TimboJones said: support responses are very important with dealing with down servers

    As a client I 100% agree with you and would love ticket responses when my service is down, but as a provider I'm not going to stop fixing the problem to reply to tickets. I personally wish that more clients would check their e-mail, our announcements, or our Twitter before opening a support ticket when there's an outage since I'm more likely to send out a "it's down, we're working on it" message from my phone to Twitter or WHMCS than I am to reply to tickets coming in at random intervals while I'm in the data center balancing my laptop on a crash cart while typing commands into a console. :lol:

  • corbpiecorbpie Member

    TimboJones said: I've seen here where the timestamps were posted, but the provider kept intentionally repeating a lower response time to discredit the OP's original complaint

    Yeah i remember that

  • poissonpoisson Member

    Like I always say, if support is so damn important, pay extra with a provider that has an army of support reps on demand 24/7. Nine out of ten customer complaints on LET, especially with be better LET providers, are genuinely BS because the people who complain almost certainly did not read TOS before signing up.

    Beggars can't be choosers. Choosers don't beg. Your ego is not anyone else's problem.

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