utcrazy said:
I can't reccomend LT. I've been with too many providers in the past, and they are one of the worst. They randmly unplug servers for fun, and tell you to screw off when you need support. Terrible service, not reccomended.
Yes!
I did a deal with utcrazy a few days ago for my reseller and shared clients. I thought it was a reasonably fair deal and I must say, if it hadn't been for LT, utcrazy would have benefitted nicely from it and I would be a happy guy today.
On Friday, utcrazy went on a weekend break, which was cool. He asked if I would keep an eye on things and I agreed and he provided me with root access to his server, which I thought was really trusting of him, since he doesn't know me.
Anyways, Friday night, Saturday morning (Saturday evening Irish time), apache failed on the server, thus making all sites invisible. I tried everything to get apache restarted and couldn't. Tried in WHM and in Shell. No good. It just wouldn't start. That's when the real problems began. All the resellers and some of the shared clients came to me on MSN wondering WTF was up with their accounts. I explained that Apache was down and I was doing my best to get it sorted.
To cut a long story short, I went to bed at 5am Sunday Morning (Irish Time) and when I woke about 4 hours later, I emailed LT and explained what happened.
Their Reply:
Hello,
We will need your correct Server ID to locate your system.
Your Server ID was included in the Welcome email you received when your server was deployed. It is also included on every invoice. It is a 4 or 5 digit number. Without this number we are unable to physically locate your system in our data center.
Note: The IP address of your server is insufficient. Any number containing the words "Barton", "Semperon", "Opteron", "Xeon" or other processor type is NOT your server ID. This is the name of the product package you ordered from us and does not uniquely identify YOUR server.
For your protection and ours, you MUST include the following in all support requests:
Your Client ID
Your Server ID
Your support request must come from a previously authorized email address.
Now, I said, "Ok that's fair enough. They have a tight security policy."
So after some hours, I emailed again and explained that the authorised owner was out of town and that all they had to do was restart Apache. Again, I got a similar reply saying "We are not authorised to touch the servers". Like, let's be honest here. Why the hell are they there for then?
So basically, in a polite manner I told them how rediculous it was and that the clients are being totally forgotten here.
The reply to this was:
Hello,
The statements presented are exactly the type of social engineering my staff is trained to avoid. Please understand, we have no idea who you are or if you are authorized to administer this server.
This IP address is responding to ping and ssh. We can do nothing further without authorization.
Thank you,
John Braeking
Support Manager
Layered Technologies
I emailed and apologised for expressing my true and heartfelt opinion of their service and left it at that.
So basically, what I am saying is this. If you value your finances, and value your clients or potential clients,
Do Not Go There!
As a result of this downtime of over 24 hours, the clients found other services to host them and the deal with myself and utcrazy had to be reversed.
If you are serious about web hosting and providing a good service and competing in the market, spend some money on a decent box.