One Mans Blog
Specialization is for Insects.
Posted on Jul 29, 2007 - 11:59pm by John P. in News, Web Links, Wordpress
I know there are quite a few regular HTMLHelp.com users that frequent the blog here, so I just wanted to provide an update on the unbelievably pathetic service we are currently receiving from ValueWeb, aka Hostway.
We were notified about a month ago via e-mail that ValueWeb intended to physically take our two servers and move them to another data center about two hours away. But they claimed:
“We plan to have the back up service back online by 8pm EDT on July 28th.”
As worrisome as this sounded, we decided to stick it out with them because they estimated that the outage would be 12-15 hours. The amount of time it would take to migrate to another provider would have been more than this, so I suppose it basically just wasn’t going to be a big enough deal to change.
Flash forward to this weekend, and it’s looking like maybe we should have jumped ship. HTMLHelp.com has been down for more than two days - going on three.
Going on our third day of outage, the worst thing is that the people from Hostway - ValueWeb have gone completely silent. They are not answering their technical support number, nor are they replying to e-mail. In addition to this, they are only sporadically updating their phone recordings - and they have not sent a single update e-mail during the entire event.
Oh, and we aren’t the only ones. There are hundreds (possibly thousands) of other affected customers. There is even a whole thread about it on the ValueWeb forums here - which they’ll probably come along and delete as soon as they get a clue about it. People have been told that there are between 1,300-3,000 affected servers - of which two run HTMLHelp.com.
It is also comical that their Server Status tool is reporting that there are no outages!
Now, I don’t know how they intend to handle this, but their SLAs for hardware issues claim they’ll basically credit you 10% of your monthly fee for every hour of outage beyond 2 - up to one month’s fees. So at this point they owe us for an entire month, but in order to get the refund you have to report it on this Web site… which - yep, you guessed it - is down!
Oh, and their support Web site, http://support.valueweb.net/, also down.
EDIT: Here is some contact information from Hoovers for those who need it:
| Lucas Roh President and CEO |
John Lee VP Global Marketing |
Ho Lee Dir. Product Mgmt |
Donald Eldert CFO |
Bruce Fortelka Controller |
Hostway Corporation
1 N. State St.
Ste. 1200
Chicago IL 60602
United States
Main Phone: 312-236-2125
Main Fax: 312-236-1958
 |
Get OMB via e-mail:
|
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It is another outage at hostway today the 22nd of Aug. Our sites rely on them to do business and we are totally stuck with no one to ask for help. None of their websites looks to be up. What are they upto now ?
Another outage for me as well…oh and no email message! Funny how they can send you junk to get more money but no outage notices. I had been recommending them as a “reliable” host. Not the best and not the worst….. I may have to re-evaluate my position.
Yes, Hostway are down again today and i get this email from support:
We are currently experiencing some peering problems with one of our network connectivity providers.
Our network engineers are currently working on the issue however we have no current estimated time of fix.
We can only apologise about the inconvenience this may be causing you and we expect a speedy resolution.
We appreciate your patience while we deal with this issue.
I have a number of sites with them and my clients get annoyed at me… have no control over this. Called our head office to talk to them but response is very poor… they cant even give a time estimate. The volume of business my clients have lost it un thinkable. Also I will loose creadibility.
Ahhhh
Well…looks like any form of customer support from Valueweb/Affinity/Gate is gone. They no longer answer their phones. The emails never get answered. And the outages keep coming. I dont get it. I’m STILL waiting for my block of IP’s to be routed from the move to Tampa. UNREAL.
Stay far away from Hostway. They have given up on customer service.
NOTE: Valueweb took down the support forum. Interesting isnt it? Guess they REALLY wanted to hide that 60 page thread about the Tampa move FIASCO.
Personally, I think hostway.com/domainpeople.com has steal my domain name from me. I have host my domain with them for 5 years, without any notification, one day, I just find the name is register by someone else under lease domainpeople(hostway’s child company).
I am going to sue hostway for their wrong behavior, and I am sure, I was not the victim alone. If anyone experience similar problem from them would you email me at yli_j@yahoo.com?
Thanks
Just writing to give an update. I had hundreds of websites hosted with Gate (affinity, valueweb, insert other names here) and it was just too much to move during the outage so we waited. 5 days later it came back on. I had allready lost 10+ customers. Lots of money gone. All Gate.com did for me was give me one free month. I cant move my sites off there fast enough. I’ve got most moved already. Only a handful remaining. I moved to Mosso.com. Everyone there has been Super friendly and nice. No Joke you can get through on the phone in UNDER 2 minutes. Valueweb takes (for dedicated support) over 20 MINUTES!!!
So for anyone reading this blog thinking about going with Valueweb , Affinity , Gate or even Hostway (all the same company) give yourself a break and find a real company that actually cares about it’s clients.
PS. Valueweb was so ashamed of their outage they removed their forum completely because of all the negative comments. HAHA.
PPS. Costco and Network Solutions both rely on Valueweb for hosting so dont use them either.
I am still receiving errors to this day. WORST WEB HOSTING COMPANY EVER! Have finally snapped and changed provider. Does nothing work properly nowadays or is everyone just out for your money??!! I am seriously p*ssed off with this company.
Hostway was once a very fantastic place to host a website. The management of this company, however, has lost touch with their customers needs. Management has started a downward spiral into the muck they created for them selves, and only time will tell if there is anything worth saving when the dog and pony show is done. Bigger is not better if you can’t scale your business to match the needs of your growing customer base. Hostways’ suport has gone from fantastic to non-existant in a very short period of time. If you take a piece of poop and copy it all over the US, Asia, and Europe, its still a pice of poop. Buyer beware, things will only get worse from here.