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Is a 4-5 day waiting period for a ticket response acceptable?
I have an open ticket regarding an iptables problem with one of my VPS providers, it has taken them 4 to 5 days to respond the last couple of times (still haven't responded to my last reply 4 days ago). Is this normal?
Ordinarily I wouldn't care, but as it stands iptables on my VPS is broken (doesn't work at all now - originally, on Jan 20th, it was just a module that was not functioning, but as of Feb 2nd completely broken) so I have kept the VPS shutdown.
Normal for un-managed ultra-cheap VPS?
Comments
No..
They just withdrew paypal funds for an invoice that was paid over a week ago too (after switching over to some new billing system). Strange thing is I thought I had cancelled the automatic recurring payments in paypal a few weeks after signing up with them last year...hmmm I'll have to check with pp to see how that happened.
Sounds like a horrible provider. If my VPS didn't work as expected and I couldn't get it fixed quickly.. (5 days lost out of your paid 30?) id die.
Gutshotz,
If this is a un-managed ultra-cheap VPS they may be helping you outside of what they would normally support and therefore you are getting slower support.
IPTables is generally VPS side.
Not the modules side if OpenVZ..
No, it is not right, dump them.
Otherwise you will just waste more time then it is worth.
Assuming your time has value to you....
I was going to dump them when I got my first notice of renewal, but then they finally dumped their VirtPanel and moved to Solus which provided an API that I use in my setup script.
I have been using this VPS only for rough testing purposes and don't rely on it at all, so initially I wasn't too concerned and didn't really waste any time at all on it. But then I read the thread here where most responses seem to indicate that they would be getting ticket RESOLUTION within 24-48 hours, not just a ticket response. All my other VPSes (BuyVM, RamNode, WLS, and INIS) have responded, and resolved any problems, within hours.
As for 'helping me outside of what they would normally support', NO definitely not. Their first response was that they hadn't even changed their ipt configuration on the server. Then after I wasted some time testing the exact same rule set on other VPSes (with identical setup), and went through my git logs to see if I had made any changes, I narrowed the original problem down to their not enabling the 'state' module. When I pointed this out, they started trying to fix it, which ultimately resulted in the current state - not working at all.
Normally, I would'nt be bothered, and would just continue with whatever deficiency/lack of feature it resulted in. But the last thing I want is to leave my VPS open to possible abuse which may reflect (be blamed) on me - so I shut it down for now and won't do any testing on it that would require it being 'up' for more than an hour at a time.
I'll see how long it takes them to fix their double billing before I consider cancelling and requesting a refund (since effectively I have had 0 days of a fully functional VPS since being charged for renewal...
whos the provider ?
Absolutely not. Thats a disgrace,
I have had the same experience as gunshotz, even with providers that aren't on LET/LEB. I think the longest it has taken to get a ticket answered was around 12 hours and that was to get some iptables modules loaded for my ovz box.
Use colocrossing they're good. Or try O'City they're fantastic.
I was going to wait a little while, to give the provider a little more time to respond, but I forgot that it says you're supposed to include the name since this is the 'Providers' category, so its in the tags
But now I'm getting CloudFlare 502 errors trying to access their client area
Time for a break, will check later...
Just checked my email, and they've refunded the extra payment, and have acknowledged the iptables follow-up, so maybe they just overlooked the ticket - I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Hopefully they will be able to resolve the iptables glitches.
offtopic: if iptables control is important, i stay away from ovz
I just always was under the impression a firewall was a standard part of securing your server. Are you saying an OpenVZ VPS firewall is useless, and only the rules on the actual, non virtualized, server have any real effect on security, so I shouldn't bother with iptables?
Not exactly. You can run iptables on ovz fine, but sometimes the host does not have some of the kernel modules required for things like recent or conntrack loaded. I ran into that with BlueVM (and SecureDragon) but submitting a ticket and asking them to load those modules got everything working.
no that's rubbish, 4 days is too long.
@gutshotz no problem. Sounds like it is something they should have fixed, or at least given you updates.
this. but in my experience, after submitting a ticket, host declined to load the module needed. if you are on kvm, you can add whatever module you want. the whole kitchen sink
no need to give them time to respond; there have been larger claims levied here in the recent past; this is a non-issue.
help the community by reporting the bad providers; thats one of the reasons LET exists.
whats with all the secrecy ?
No secrecy, as I said it was already in the tags I added - BitAccel.
ontopic: my expectation of leb is reply to support within 24hours. i dont see any reason why a host cant reply within 24hrs
@Corey
Thanks for all of your concern, and thanks to all of the providers that are trying to take my customer
- that's noted. Thanks for tagging me @jarland I probably wouldn't have seen this otherwise.
There is a lot more going on @ bitaccel than meets the eye with restructuring. I am still moving all of the containers into solusvm MANUALLY after having many issues with virtpanel that couldn't be resolved. This takes up a lot of my time - but I only have one server left to import! On top of this - we are switching billing and having everyone's products due on the same date. There were some glitches with some SQL I ran to change due dates as WHMCS doesn't have this feature and as a result there are a lot of billing tickets being opened (you opened one as well @gutshotz). I have also been optimizing the main website server (those 502's you were seeing) because WHMCS was being slow with the lowendbox bootstrap configuration.
I am answering tickets by PRIORITY. Solusvm imports, and billing are taking priority right now. I know exactly what I need to do to get your iptables running properly and will get this done soon. We didn't change any iptables rules for you until you opened the ticket and I decided to not disagree with you and instead just fix it for you - I fixed it wrong the first time, I need to go back and set every single module one by one on your container.
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It would have been nice if you could have just let your customers know that you are still in transition, rather than allow 4 days pass without any response.
So are you saying that I did something that somehow disabled the 'state' module on iptables - as this was the problem, which I figured out? Seems kind of odd that my setup only started having problems immediately after your departure from Virtpanel, especially since I had NOT MADE ANY CHANGES to my iptables rules which worked fine before. But how nice of you to 'not disagree with me and just fix it'.
I'm sorry, but reading the above you seem to be be placing the blame for my VPS problems on me, or maybe I read it wrong...just after wasting that time because I thought just maybe nothing did change on your side, and not being aware of your switch over until I tried accessing VirtPanel one night and couldn't ... even more of my time wasted trying to trouble-shoot before opening up a ticket - giving the provider the benefit of the doubt by assuming it was an error on my side and not wanting to waste your time creating a ticket for an unmanaged VPS...
It's not that weird virtpanel basically controls the node and if you go in behind it, you'll just get your changes reverted unless you beg them for an off switch. This is true for just about everything that panel does. Switching back to solus means gaining a lot of control back but it only takes a month of not doing it to forget some of the iptables modules to enable. I get that you're upset and you have every right to be, the only reason I'm saying this is that I've done what @Corey is doing now only me and Ryan did it all together in one night and only had 2 nodes.
@Corey welcome to hell but it's better once it's done. Probably should've waited to do the billing after, you're not gonna sleep for a while lol. If the bulk of complaints against you are direct or indirect results of what I know is one hell of a task, you're doing well. Props for that.
Which only confirms that it was something out of my control, and therefore a valid support request. What set me off was the tone of Cory's response which came across as him doing a favour for a client that screwed something up on his VPS. Not to mention the extended wait for a response, and the fact I went out of my way not to denigrate the provider. Plus no advance notice, or even update, that follow-up work is being done on his equipment - in fact the only mention has been here (no 'system status' email), so I assume that other clients may be going through the same thing not realizing there is work being done behind the scenes.
I just wanted to update this. BitAccel has fixed their iptables problem, and all is working now with the original ruleset.
As mentioned here, 4-5 days is quite unacceptable, but I'm giving BA a pass on this one, and will see how things go in the future. Corey, if you do read this, all of this could have been avoided if you had just mentioned the problems you were having, keeping your customers informed goes a long way...
I once went over a week without response from a VPS provider re: an extremely simple support request. Incredibly frustrating at the time. Suffice to say I was quick to abandon them in return once my patience ran out. I still wonder why they didn't 'simply' ask me to leave if they didn't want to provide support instead of letting the situation drag on awkwardly in silence like it did. Bless them!
Does not the Lord preach Patience and Forgiveness?