New order delays

[aws]

My client ordered a 256 account on Sunday that has yet to be configured (now approaching 72 hours).

I understand that sometimes there are delays when new hardware is needed, but on the website it says we should expect 24 hour turnaround on a new account. At the very least, there should be a disclaimer about longer delays and a notification if its going to take more than 24 hours with an ETA.

The delay has been something of an embarassment to me. I recommended unixshell because of my prior experience here, and it reflects poorly on my choice to have unixshell ignore the customer for so long.

Also according to the billing information we are paying for the time when the server is not available yet. Will the billing cycle be reset when the server is actually delivered?

I am sorry to be such a nusiance, and I know customer support is the least fun part of running a hosting company, but for a non-technical customer its the most important thing. For the record I think unixshell is a great service, but the order process needs a little bit of help.

[matta]

I think I know of who you refer and I actually JUST answered the ticket before checking for new posts here.

Due to the problems with vm8 (check outages & maintenance forum) I am giving new setups the option of waiting or taking the risk of being placed on the server. I am expecting vm9 today or tomorrow. It's built, but still awaiting the drives.

(and yes, we always reset the renew date to 30 days in the future if setup time ever exceeds 24 hours).

[aws]

I must be starting work too early. :) Thank you for the response.

-Andy.

[mattd]

Any update on this? I ordered a 96 today... no rush really :)

Thanks

mattd

[mattd]

Need to ask this again...

Any update as to when the new box will be up?

Thanks

mattd

[matta]

It is having the operting system installed on it right now.

[mattd]

Excellent. Any ETA on when new accounts will have access?

[matta]

I'm would estimate by this evening (EST). This assumes no hardware problems, which it seems we've been experiencing more often with the brand new hardware.

[mfyahya]

[QUOTE=aws]
I understand that sometimes there are delays when new hardware is needed, but on the website it says we should expect 24 hour turnaround on a new account. [/QUOTE]

I sent an order about 12 hours ago. I didn't see the 24hr turnround on the site. I might have missed it during the ordering process. When I got the invoice in my email I thought the server was already available. It would be nice if the email mentioned the 24hour start up delay

I just went back and searched the site.. now I see a message announcing a delay of 3 to 6 days! Did this just come up?

[high_voltage]

I'm glad I checked the forums :)

I signed up for a 256 server on Sunday also, and have sent a couple of messages to support in relation to this order.

AS yet I haven't had a reply from Support, and was getting worried, as I also noticed the 24 hour provisioning time stated on the web site.

Am glad to know that this server will be up and running soon, as I didn't really want to go searching for an alternative host.

Keep up the great work guys, and Support, you might try communicating with your customers a bit more about delays :)

[matta]

We have VM9 up.. but it is having the same problem that VM8 is. Very odd problem, but now we have a host that we can reboot/reinstall whenever so it's being worked on. It does push the setup times back until tonight/tomorrow. though.

[aws]

Seriously.

I think we should sacrifice an unused CPU or something. ;)

[mattd]

My suggestion, seeing as you guys are growing, would be to maybe have one of these things built BEFORE you sell accounts on them. Not too happy about the huge delay, but I am VERY interested in this service so I am willing to wait. I think the initial investment to have at least one machine waiting in the wings, AT LEAST for a backup machine in case you lose a machine would probably be something your company should pursue.

My $.02.

Thanks

mattd

[matta]

We do normally... it just so happens we've had this problem on the last 2 servers built. Normally vm8 would still be free and vm9 would be sitting there ready to be installed.

[mattd]

Any update on this? I was gonna send a "Where's my account" ticket, but that'd cost me $10 on a $20 investment that I've had zero return on. Pot odds aren't that good.

Didn't know we were playing poker here....

mattd

[richyc]

An update would be welcome, we've got 2x 96 orders pending now (3 days without a response) and would like to promote it to a few more customers - but it's not looking that good...

[mattb]

I ordered a new account 5 days ago and have not heard a word on that - or my 4 day old ticket asking where my account was. The charges did clear my bank withing 24 hours though. So not all parts are broken I guess. An update would be appreciated. I am eagerly awaiting my account so I can try out this service. Willing to hang on a little longer. Will start shopping for someone else if things aren't fixed soon though.

[high_voltage]

Greetings,

What is the status of this issue?

I now placed this order one week ago, and I still don't have a definite time on when the service will be available.

I know you are having difficulties, and probably a lot of people messaging you to get status updates, but I think we would all just like a final answer, or better yet a working VPS.

I have also now opened 3 tickets with support to try and get a status update on this issue, none of which have been responded to, I hope you don't charge $10 for tickets that you don't even reply to.

A number of us here on the forums are experienced Linux admins, maybe you should throw the difficulty out on to the forum, so any of us that have run in to this issue before can offer you a solution.

I hate to sound like one of those bitching and complaining users, god knows I have to deal with enough of them on a daily basis, but I'm just getting a little frustrated, and the lack of communication from unixshell support is not making me any less grumpy :).

I'll finish my rant here, and hopefully this issue will all be resolved soon.

Sorry again for the complaints, I just felt the need to vent some of my frustration.

[matta]

Sorry, I addressed this earlier. What is happening is we have many pending accounts right now (ballpark -- around 30) and each of them is now submitting multiple (ie. 3) support tickets and it's getting to be than I can handle and sorting through them is also a problem as issues not related to setup delays are not getting answered due to the sheer volume.

As stated in this thread and the VM8 downtime thread on these 2 new servers there is a problem where the RAID controller loses communication with the drives during a rebuild and the array is always in degraded mode. I have sent the diagnosis output to the manufacturer directly along with our hardware vendor. The manufacturer says the error is due to communication being lost (ie. bad cable or not enough power). The hardware vendor says the cables are from the manufacturer directly and the power supplies are 460W which is more than enough. This was hoped to be fixed by Friday, but now we need to wait until the weekend is over for new hardware to try swapping out.

We normally DO have more than enough capacity, we have both vm8 and vm9 setup, but with this problem. vm8 is at 35% capacity and vm9 is at 0%. If this problem did not exist we could easily have everything setup.

The bottom line is I will not put customers on a server with a degraded RAID array. Trust me, it's better to wait than to lose all data on your account.

[Al7zen]

i Hope this problem end soon , and i have a question what about the days that left on waiting the server ! you will count them from the month ! , because as you said we will wait until this weekend is over, so only 3 weeks left on the account :)

[jonf]

What is happening is we have many pending accounts right now (ballpark -- around 30) and each of them is now submitting multiple (ie. 3) support tickets and it's getting to be than I can handle and sorting through them is also a problem as issues not related to setup delays are not getting answered due to the sheer volume.

I think the problem is that these people are not getting ANY response to their inquiry (at least I have not received any response in 4-5 days). Not everyone checks the forums. A message with a link to this thread might save you some headache with individuals submitting multiple inquiries.

Take it from someone who had had their own bad experience: not responding to customer inquiry is a very good way to loose business. As a small business owner myself, I understand that things happen that are beyond your control, but keeping the customers in the dark is not the way I like to run a business (granted, my business is in software services/consulting, not providing server resources).

Fortuantely, you have a support case system with an audit trail. My learning experience lies with a voice mail system that decided to delete a message (most likely my fat fingering the keys) and my forgetting to respond. I've since changed the way I listen to my voice mail (i.e. don't check mail while on the road unless I have a way to record the info -- especially when there are 5-6 vmail messages pending).

Jon

Note: If I had the ability to do so, I would close my own ticket to the sales department trying to find out what is going on (save you some time). I only stumbled across this thread after opening my request (I was inquiring why my 24 hour wait was turning into 48).

[matta]

I was about to do that actually, we have a few things are are attempting today though. First is a swap of all 4 drives and updating the BIOS on the motherboard. If worse comes to worse today I am going to reinstall vm9 using Linux software RAID. I know it's not the best solution, but we will still remain hotswap capabilities and the RAID-5 processing on the Opteron chips is actually very fast. vm1 is using software RAID and that runs like a champ.

[matta]

Just to clarify a few things to those who will end up reading this:

1) All services will have their renew date reset to 30 days in the future of when you receive your welcome letter.
2) Normally this does not happen. It just happened to be a string of 2 bad servers.
3) I will now always be ordering servers 2 at a time and will have a hotspare built and racked in event of a disaster.
4) When everyone finally gets setup i'm confident you'll find the wait is worth it, so far everyone seems to really like our service.
5) Even though unixshell# is not geared around support, normally responses are much quicker. We are just so bombarded at this time and have almost 100 open tickets. On average it is always less than 10 and that is why it is slow right now.

[mattd]

Thanks for the update. Much appreciated.

[high_voltage]

Thanks for the update, the progress info is most appreciated.

As was mentioned by myself and a couple of other posters, all we need to keep us happy is info on what is going on.

I apologize for submitting 3 tickets, but if I had received an answer to my first one, I wouldn't have had to open more.

I am sure many other people waiting on new servers are in the same position as this.

Maybe if you run in to delays in the future, you should start a thread in the forum, and then on the first support message from customers, refer them to that thread for future updates.

This just keeps your customers informed, and we feel much happier if we know what is happening, rather than just getting ignored.

After years of dealing with customers, I have learned that a customer would rather hear bad news, rather than no news at all.

The extended billing time is also very much appreciated.

Cheers

[richyc]

Yes! We've just received our login details! Many thanks guys!

[Al7zen]

yeah same here thanks for the hard work :)

[matta]

Thanks! We did finally get it working with the RAID controller, but had to swap out all 4 disks. Things on vm9 may be slow for a bit, it went from empty to 80% capacity in an hour so i'm noticing many OS reloads going on at a time. After everyone has setup their servers it should perform very good.

[mattd]

I noticed the wait was very high, so you're correct... Hopefully it will settle down :)

Everything else is great so far.

Thanks

[aws]

I was about to do some more setup work on my new vm9 account but now it seems to be down -- no ssh, no ping to the IP (207.210.65.98), no teknic control panel... more hardware problems or is it just my account?

[mattd]

How do we know which box we are on ? I can't seem to get to mine either.

[martynw]

Same problem here... I think we're all on the new VM9 server. Hopefully it's just maintenance. I was just wondering how we would be notified about that. Will we receive email anouncements about scheduled or unexpected maintenance? I'm only installing and configuring right now, but it's meant to be a production server...

[matta]

http://www.unixshell.com/forum/showthread.php?t=338

[aws]

on the main teknic control panel screen it says what server you are on.

[mattd]

Yup, I can see that now... Got so excited when I got me email that I just built the machine and got right on it without looking over the webpage :)

I just have to say, Opterons rule. This thing is fast. It is VERY cool that you get all the CPU that no one else is using.

This was WELL worth the wait.

Thanks for your service matta....

[Al7zen]

Opteron Rulez :P

[mfyahya]

I signed up on June 23, and no account yet. As someone mentioned earlier in this thread, it would be nice if the staff would send an email, even an automated one, explaining the delay.
If I hadn't come to this forum and read this thread, I'd have left days ago. I'm not happy as it is right now.

[matta]

You were most definitely missed in the queue, please submit a ticket to sale and i'll get you setup.

[mfyahya]

[QUOTE=matta]You were most definitely missed in the queue, please submit a ticket to sale and i'll get you setup.[/QUOTE]

I hope I won't be charged $10 for submitting this ticket

[matta]

No, the ticket fee is only if we need to actually login to your server and fix something not related to our default image.