Vendor Performance


ReadyHosting couldn't migrate all their customers to their new servers, so they dumped them on M&A Technologies. Here is a log of interactions from most recent to oldest. Also you can see another customer's log at Craig White's website
Date
 Change
01.18.2007
  Email and FTP logins rejected, but Control Panel still working. That afternoon it mysteriously started working again. The frequent instabilities and horrible support have prompted me to switch vendors. As of today I've begun the process of transferring the domain, hosting, and email.
11.14.2006
 
  • FTP login is being rejected. If I use the correct password, the login hangs and eventually states "Connection closed by remote host." If I purposely type in a wrong password it states "530 Login incorrect." So why is the correct password being rejected? The next day it mysteriously started working again.
  • No response on trouble tickets logged yesterday.
  • 11.14.2006
      All pages using ASP are taking 10+ minutes to load. Problem ended about 09:50.
    11.13.2006
     
  • Help Ticket system has an option for email notification when there's a status update. But after a tech had put "ball in my court" there was still no email four hours later. Late they said they fixed it, but on 11/16 I verified that it's still broken.
  • "Unknown Error - System Down - Please try again at a later time." when I attempt to activate the custom 404 page. They said they fixed it and I retried, but it's still broken. On 11/16 they just manually configured it since they couldn't get it working.
  • "Error retrieving space used data" on control panel. I've checked back several times today and it's still not updated. They said they fixed it but it still breaks intermitently.
  • [Not vendor's fault: Hidden proxy was blocking port for access traffic statistics.]
  • How does a file FTP'd at 14:51 EST get timestamped with 20:48? The web server is in Wisconsin, so it shouldn't be more than an hour's difference. There tech support says nothing's wrong, but look at this command-line FPT session:
    • C:\>prompt $t$g
      15:10:13.78> ftp ftp.craiggiven.com
      Connected to ftp.craiggiven.com.
      220 Welcome to the FTP server. Please login.
      User (ftp.craiggiven.com:(none)): XXXXXXXXXXXXX
      331 Password required for XXXXXXXXXX.
      Password:
      230 User XXXXXXXXXX logged in.
      ftp> put 404.html
      200 PORT command successful
      150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for 404.html
      226-Transfer complete.
      226 File passed ClamAV virus scanner containing 76703 patterns.
      ftp: 3910 bytes sent in 0.00Seconds 3910000.00Kbytes/sec.
      ftp> dir 404.html
      200 PORT command successful
      150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list
      -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3834 Nov 13 20:07 404.html
      226 Transfer complete.
      ftp: 65 bytes received in 0.05Seconds 1.38Kbytes/sec.
      ftp>
    11.12.2006
      Sunday afternoon, all ASP-driven pages stopped working from what appears to be a crash on the ReadyHosting servers. Monday morning I checked and the ENTIRE website is gone. I cannot open a help ticket either, since my login is rejected. So I call ReadyHosting by phone but they cannot find any evidence that I'm their customer. We tried lookups via name, domain name, login name, customer number, account number, etc. I've been a customer since 2002 and now there's no trace of me on their system?! After being put on hold, they say I must contact MAcomp.com to get this resolved. When I access their web site, the link to their Control Panel stalls for a long time before returning the error "Server Error: The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request. JRun closed connection." So I'm not even able to get a login prompt, let alone open a help ticket or to verify if I'm still a "customer." I call their phone line and leave a message, but they don't even open until 10:00 EST. I called about 11:30 and they said nothing was wrong on their end, and it must have been a router on the internet, but I find that hard to swallow since FTP and Mail Server were accessible. While talking to the tech, I retried and everything seems to be working now.
    11.03.2006
      Traffic statistic tracking went down on 10/29 until 11/03!
    08.12.2006
      From the hosting vendor M&A Technology (purchasers of ReadyHosting): "If your website is up but you are missing content or are seeing old content, we have restored all the content that we have access to currently. We apologize that in some cases we do not have the most recent copies of your content. PLease if you have a backup of your own upload it up to your website...."

    It appears that their backups were TWO MONTHS old, since the most recent file was dated 06/02.

    08.10.2006
      From the hosting vendor M&A Technology (purchasers of ReadyHosting): "At approximately 2:00 CST today Thursday 10, 2006 a major interruption in the legacy readyhosting network services occurred. At first we thought this was a fiber cut or hardware failure, but as we later came to find out this was purposely done by the upstream providers of the legacy readyhosting network due to a large unpaid balance by the former owner of Ready Hosting. We have been working to restore service with the upstream providers and have been unable to come to an agreement. At this time our engineers and all other employees are working to restore your hosting services to normal on the M & A network. We are having to restore from backups and due to the sudden nature of this problem, this will take some time. At this point we hope to have basic website functionality restored by early Friday morning with mail and other services shortly following." We understand this is a major inconvenience and are doing everything in our power to solve this issue as quickly as possible. Our employees are dedicated to getting your services restored to normal and will not rest until every customer is satisfied.
    05.12.2006
      Vendor changed mail delivery mechanism from CDONTS to CDO without notification. LAST YEAR we received a warning that this was going to change, but the promised notice of when the migration was starting and ending was never received. Consequently from the time I fixed it and when they broke it is unknown.
    01.03.2006
      My website, email, and my vendor's website is DOWN! It happened between 16:21 EST on 1/2 and 10:30 on 1/3. As of 10:51 all ReadyHosting.com customers are still down.
    11.15.2004
      Since 11.13 or earlier, email has been down. Emails with attachments are not received at all, and all not downloaded (e.g., in the Sent folder) were lost.
    07.11.2004
      My default home page was defaced by the ANIMASK HACK TEAM at 07:49 CST. About 21:30 I discovered the damage and quickly repaired the one page that had been compromised. A search showed that the hackers probably used a security vunerability of a PHP extension (PHPNuke?) to create these pages (index.html, default.htm, and index.php). I called tech support the next day, and they had already been notified (probably by other victimized customers) and patched the security hole. Side note: currently, my site does not use any PHP.
    02.17.2004
      Today and yesterday iMail web client has been unstable. Many actions (open an email, delete a email, write an email, etc.) cause the web-client to logout -- at least it takes you to the login screen and the back button doesn't work. Also, accessing the POP3 account via Sprint BCS is being rejected although POP3 access via MS Outlook is working. It didn't work on 02.18, but by the late afternoon on 02.19 it was accessible again (the instability of the web client, however, still persists but not as frequently).
    02.16.2004
      FTP server is unavailable Monday evening at 23:32 when I'm trying to do a site update. A Ping test shows all attempts time-out. I point my browser to my web site, but it's unavailable (and un-Ping'able as is the mail server). I check ReadyHosting.com and find that their own site is unreachable. I checked another customer's site: it was unreachable as well.
    02.10.2004
      Ticket 238924 closed by Syed Ahmed without being resolved! Reopened 02/12 as 239429: The time stamp is STILL wrong (3 DAYS LATER) for files FTP'd to web server. Multiple tries from multiple computers at different times still resulted in the exact same timestamp of 00:00. I've been FTP'ing files daily this week, and it was last working on 02/09. Everything FTP'd today (02/12) has a time of 00:00 although the upload times ranged from 17:50 to 18:20 EST!

    This is a major problem because the bad timestamps causes visitors to the website to use their cached pages rather than the browser knowing to use the updated page! Deleting the local cache didn't work either! It appears that ReadyHosting's web server is caching the pages at their end, so visitors have NO way to access updated pages!

    Brian Mason: "[A]bout that time stamp issue, basically network said won't be able to fix it at this time, so tell him we have already informed network and they'll take a look but currently they are working on other major projects so this issue won't be addressed right away if you would like I can move you to a different server"

    02/12/2004 When can I expect it to be fixed? I FTP'd a file today at 13:43 02/14 EST and your web server gave it a timestamp of 05:13 04/13 (Yesterday). What about a refund of my payment prorated for the number of days this remains broken?

    02.16.2004 Without responding, they changed the status to "completed" again. I tested to verify that it was still broken: FTP 02/16 @ 17:00 EST given a time stamp of 02/14 @ 19:51 (two days ago!) Just minutes later, another test at 17:28 received a timestamp of 02/16 @ 00:00!

    01.26.2004
      Website, email, FPT, and statistics are all down between 10:04 and 16:59 (including www.ReadyHosting.com itself, and www.CraigWhite.net -- an acquaintance who also hosts via ReadyHosting). Their "Network Status" page predicts intermittent service for the next 12 hours. But I'm still seeing slow response times on the 27th (more than 16 hours later), so it may be awhile before things are back to normal. To be fair, this is still within tolerances for their guaranteed 99.9% uptime (365 days x 24 hours x 0.1% = 8.76 hours). Note that the guarantee only applies to outages that are "under out control."
    01.05.2004
      Permission to create email disabled (via SEND method of CDONT object). Fixed shortly after trouble ticket opened.
    10.30.2003
      Unable to access my statistics for a short bit.
    07.28.2003
      All ASP pages are returning a "HTTP Error 500-13 - Server too busy" error, although HTML pages render. Logs show that the problem started about 21:41 CST last night. The vendor must have seen the problem in there log files and rebooted the server because everything began working again at 10:55 CST.
    07.22.2003
      For the past couple of weeks I've been unable to send email (receiving worked fine) using MS Outlook 2002 to the SMTP server. I worked around the problem by using the web-based email client provided by ReadyHosting. I had intended to open a case, but their support web page gave an error every time you tried to open a trouble ticket. By the time I got around to committing myself to use the phone instead (having the time to sit on hold if needed), the two problems both vanished.
    06.13.2003
      Their mail server crashed. They do not back up their mail servers so all email for all my email accounts was lost. Also lost were the address book entries, auto-forward configuration, and all preference settings. (Per trouble-ticket 176012)
    05.02.2003
      All ASP pages are returning a 10060 error (Connection timeout), although HTML pages rendered. Logs show that the problem started about 02:21 EST this morning. I called vendor at 10:06 EST and they rebooted the server and everything began working again at 10:35 EST.
    05.01.2003
      All ASP pages are returning a 10060 error (Connection timeout), although HTML pages rendered. Logs show that the problem started about 08:54 EST this morning. I opened technical support ticket 163144, but after waiting 260 minutes (4.3 hours) without a response, I decided to call and have the case expedited. I was only on hold for 4 minutes before speaking with a technician. He put me on hold for 11 minutes while he looked into the problem. They rebooted my server and everything began working again at 14:00 EST. They are going to have the network administrator to examine this problem (see notes for 04.28.2003)
    04.28.2003
      All ASP pages are returning a 500-13 error (server too busy), although HTML pages rendered. Logs show that the problem started about 05:30 EST this morning. I opened technical support ticket 162069 at 11:34 EST. After waiting more than two hours I decided to call and have the case expedited. I was 5th in the queue so the wait wasn't terrible (about 5 to 10 minutes). They rebooted my server and everything began working again.
    02.20.2003
      I've asked for quite a few MIME types to be added. And also asked for one of them to be deleted a couple of days later. The turn-around was same or next day! Their email confirmations on service requests is a great feature, too.
    11.18.2002
      Quick turn around on adding a MIME type to the server! This was above and beyond the call of duty, so I was grateful for their cooperation, and they were prompt to boot.
    06.12.2002
      Trouble ticket 71173: The host server's clock occasionally fluctuates by several hours. This has been an irritation ignored before, because if often goes away by the next day. A professional organization would have a time server, or use the NET TIME command to synchronize a server upon reboot, or use software like TARDIS to keep their servers accurate. Accurate server time is important: My FTP software uses timestamps to identify which files need updating. Also some ASP pages display "LastUpdated" attributes of file objects to visitors. When the server's time is wrong, these items are wrong or don't work. In this case the time difference is an impossible -5:07 hours off (it puts the server in the Pacific Ocean), when it really should be just 1:00 (Kenosha, WI is CST). By the time a technician opened the trouble ticket (not a long wait), it had "fixed itself."
    05.01.2002
      It's been quiet for several months. I haven't seen any problems that can be attributed to the vendor. Response time is quite snappy, and the odd times things are sluggish could easily be attributed to the connection on my end.
    02.20.2002
      Fought numerous busy signals before making it through. I was on hold for 24 minutes. Total phone time: 40 minutes.
    • I noticed yesterday that the custom 404 error page had stopped working. She reset it (originally set up on 02/13/2002).
    • Also mentioned that two support tickets on their web site still showed open and gave her their numbers again (see 02/13) so they could be closed.
    • Also scripts/hello.cgi test not working: are permissions for scripts set up? She checked and said they didn't appear to be set up, so she did that, but it still didn't work. After checking again, they found that a setting was using an underscore instead of a dash (cgi_bin instead of scripts). She changed it and all worked correctly.
    • Then I asked if they had the DBI and DBI:ODBC modules for PERL activated. They have database support for MS Access via the /database directory and ASP. I want to use an Access database, but use PERL to talk to it (via Perl's Datbase Interface). She checked with someone and said "it shouldn't matter."
    02.13.2002
      Fought numerous busy signals before making it through. I was on hold for 1 hour and 9 minutes. Total phone time: 2 hours 5 minutes.
    • My web site isn't accessible via the domain name AGAIN! Using email or their web-based trouble ticket system is being ignored, so I've called for service. A PING shows that their domain name server is resolving names to the wrong IP addresses. She was unable to fix because too many other people were in their DNS tool concurrently. She eventually recreated the entire account and I had to rebuild the entire web site. After an initial "You are not authorized to view this page HTTP Error 403 - Forbidden" she was able to configure my account to work. The web site is available at the domain name after FIVE days of waiting. The DNS fix also corrected the problem with statistics being inaccessible.
    • She also set up my custom 404 page (requested on 02/12).
    • Gave her all three support ticket numbers of 02/12 so they can be closed
    02.12.2002
      Emails are being ignored, so I used their web-based support system to open three tickets.
    • DNS resolving FTP, HTTP, etc. to wrong IP.
    • I can no longer access web site statistics
    • Request for custom 404 page submitted
    02.11.2002
      Fought numerous busy signals before making it through. I was on hold for 1 hour and 15 minutes. My domain and email is still unviewable after 96+ hours (their "Welcome" email said to contact sales immediately via email if unviewable after 36+ hours). He was able to fix and it was immediately viewable. I asked why it only took a minute to get this fixed via phone but emails were ignored. He said they'd been hacked last week, which resulted in a flood of customer emails. They were working 12 hour shifts repairing damage and he didn't think they'd all get answered.
    02.11.2002
      Fought numerous busy signals before making it through. Since I called sales, there was no hold time. Per their instructions I notified sales that my domain (and email) was not viewable after 36 hours (actually after 90 hours). She delegated to a technician who would contact me (they never did).
    02.09.2002
      Email sales department per their instructions: My domain (and email) is not viewable after 36-hour deadline (44+ hours). cc'd to tech support as well as sales. Never received a response.
    02.08.2002
      Experienced multiple time-outs, disconnects, and no-connects when trying to FTP to web site (it worked fine yesterday). Connection was attempted from multiple computers and included both broad-band and dial-up connections, so the problem is on their end. I tried to open a support ticket on their web site, but their own site is inaccessible. Other web and FTP sites could be accessed without any problems. I tried over 20 times to get through their phone line but it was always busy.
    02.07.2002
      Attempted to sign-up with ReadyHosting using their web page. Their site is defective and at the very end of the sign-up process I got a "corrupt template" error. I had to call their sales dept. to see if it had been processed. Set up was done manually over the phone. Be aware that their $99 fee doesn't include the initial registration of a domain — only a transfer. Registration renewals are included after the first year.

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