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At what point do you tell a provider they have no support and trash them in public?
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At what point do you tell a provider they have no support and trash them in public?

Advice and insight requested. Last November purchased a black Friday special 2 GB RAM KVM that for the most part has been sitting unused. Loaded an application on it six months ago and never got around to do intended testing. On the initial configuration Debian 8 was offered which is what I selected. Found an interesting application that I want to put through its paces so I decided to wipe the system and reinstall. On the user panel after clicking the reinstall OS button I find that no Debian OS is offered. So I sent an email to the technical support group for this VPS hosting provider asking if it would be possible Ubuntu 16 or 18, or Debian 8 or 9. Minimal install is just fine.

It is now been 10 hours without any reply at all. Two hours after the initial email I decided to use the VNC option and found on the pulldown for the CD-ROM that it would boot to the Debian ISO. It’s not on the reinstall page, but was listed as a boot option on the cdROM pulldown menu.

Great! So I rebooted and went through the config options all the way up to guided disk partitioning. The system started formatting and got to 33% where it apparently has frozen. Over an hour later it still at 33%. Clearly there is a problem. So I outlined this process in another email to technical support. It has now been over eight hours without any reply from the technical support department. In its current state I can’t do anything. The original Debian option does not appear on the reinstall choices, and I’ve heard nothing in any way shape or form from the technical support department even though my tickets were marked high priority. Tried repeating above actions and it locked up again at 33% formatting.

I find it laughable on their Facebook and Twitter pages how they stress how concerned they are with customer support. Yet I can’t seem to get a single reply within a 10 hour window. So here are my questions for advice.

For an unresponsive KVM VPS support ticket marked high priority, how long is a reasonable wait?
I really have better things to do with my time but I’m really frustrated by their complete and utter failure to respond. The provider was active on low-end box last November but I haven’t seen much from them since that time. So if Atif Kahn CEO of trunk space hosting has the gonads to respond and explain why I can’t reinstall a boot iso, or why their technical support has been unresponsive for over 10 hours I would love to hear his reasoning.

This is my story and my experience. It is my opinion that if you were doing anything critical it should not be hosted by a company who responds so slowly and has yet to respond at all!

If on the other hand this group feel 10 hours without a response is reasonable, I'll still call TrunkSpace Hosting very poor as I have many other KVM's from several other providers that are active with on LEB that have proven professional and responsive.** Virmach is one firm I would recommend without question. Five star service -- they are amazing!**
I cannot say enough positive things about Virmach. A few other are not bad.
So Atif Kahn, your move!

Comments

  • FrankZFrankZ Veteran
    edited June 2019

    Serious answer. IMHO for a low end special, you need to be able to wait at least a day before getting pissed off.

    EDIT: This seems to be a reoccurring issue. Maybe you could adjust expectations?
    https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/141956/what-is-considered-reasonable-downtime
    https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/132232/virmach-must-be-joking-dont-know-what-debian-9-iso-is

    Thanked by 1uptime
  • sanvitsanvit Member

    Depending on their time zone, it may be night or the weekends for the provider. Depending on what you pay, I'd say no support on weekends is reasonable (YMMV ofc.). Have you tried hard-resetting the VM?

  • I would agree except I can't get past not a single Debian based ISO is offered on the re-install page option. Heck, it came with Debian 8. No Ubuntu ISO's at all either. If a deb option was there I would have rebuilt and moved on. To not even offer a minimal deb based install they need to be trashed on just that principal. Me no likey RPM.

    They set themselves up to fail.

  • sanvitsanvit Member

    @techwiz44 said:
    I would agree except I can't get past not a single Debian based ISO is offered on the re-install page option. Heck, it came with Debian 8. No Ubuntu ISO's at all either. If a deb option was there I would have rebuilt and moved on. To not even offer a minimal deb based install they need to be trashed on just that principal. Me no likey RPM.

    They set themselves up to fail.

    Have you ticketed the provider about the ISO? For me, explicitly requesting and ISO had faster response time (most likely because it's easier than other support tickets..?) than normal support tickets.

  • Yes, that's the first thing I did. A decent ISO selection on reinstall would have solved the whole issue.

  • HostEONSHostEONS Member, Patron Provider

    10 hours is actually too long, but still if it's a low end VPS, i think you should give them abut 24 hours as a lot of low end providers are one man show

  • donlidonli Member
    edited June 2019

    You bought a VPS from someone that had it in their trunk ?

    Thanked by 2Wolf lazyt
  • NomadNomad Member

    Even if it's not a one man show, not all providers are suppose to keep support staff 7/24. Some companies doesn't even respond in weekends.

    Wait more.

  • You didn't say thx when asking for Debian, that's your issue.

  • TheLinuxBugTheLinuxBug Member
    edited June 2019

    If this is a KVM do the following:

    Install Centos from their template, boot the server, cd /boot

    Go find the netboot installer files for Debian and then wget the 'initrd.gz' over the existing initrd file and 'linux' over the vmlinuz file. Reboot with the console vnc open, you will be in Debian installer on next boot. Install server.

    Debian. Thnx.

    Not giving excuses for them, just suggesting something that may help you get off the ground and use your server in the meantime.

    my 2 cents.

    Cheers!

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    At the point you feel you are absolutely sure you have been patient and fair because sadly otherwise that means you will be the one that gets trashed in public.

    Thanked by 1uptime
  • Why would you do anything critical from lowend black Friday promo

  • @cybertech said:
    Why would you do anything critical from lowend black Friday promo

    ^^^^^ this.
    LEB offers are for the patient people that want to run personal projects, at best. It is NOT for anything critical.

    Thanked by 1uptime
  • Well I finally got a response 14 hours later. Synopsis: sorry but were blaming this on software issues with our provisioning system. They acknowledge that they were aware of these problems but never got around to fixing it. They even offered a refund. Going forward at least there is communication.

    From my perspective it’s not about the money, and for those of you think I’m being unreasonable know this: all I needed was an acknowledgment of my initial support ticket within eight hours. That is my cut off for being reasonable.

    In the IT business everyone knows that over time equipment breaks and updates don’t always go as smoothly as we would like. A simple reply indicating that they are aware of the issue and will provide further updates would be enough for me to feel as though they are worthy of my business. I’m not asking for a complete resolution of the issue, I’m asking for an acknowledgment that there IS an issue.

    Even an auto responder would be preferred over dead silence. For those of you would poor comprehension skills, I’m saying that all I needed was a reply to my support ticket. The reply would not have to indicate the problem was fixed, of course that be great; but a simple reply that we have received your ticket beats the daylights out of no reply at all.

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