When hosting companies go bad

I’ve just had a run-in with my old hosting provider ServerGrid and it has just escalated to a point where I can’t work with them any more. The latest debacle consisted of them turning off one of my websites last week because they alleged that I was using a section of  it to send spam! Those pages hadn’t been in use for a couple of years, so this was highly unlikely, but they deactivated the site without any notification. I realised this a couple of days later, so raised a ticket about the problem. It’s now 5 (FIVE) days later and I’m still waiting for the ticket to be resolved! How shoddy is that!

I’ve just looked over my ticket history and I raised 27 tickets this year, most of them caused by sites being down or non-responsive. Most of the tickets were pretty frustrating. I would raise a ticket that there was a problem, they reply a few hours later saying that it looks fine at their end, I tell them I still have a problem, then a few hours later the box gets reset (problem goes away) and they email back saying that it still looks fine from their end.

As I’m writing this post The Only Network is still offline but I’ve already made the domain change to move it to my new host (Tubu, whom I love). I raised the ticket last Thursday about this and it’s Tuesday now and well, I’m sick of being treated like crap. The ineptitude of their staff and their sheer reluctance to help means that they have lost one customer who was happy to sing their praises in the past.

Goodbye ServerGrid. I won’t be missing you!

9 comments

  1. Ditto. I’m leaving my beloved Hosting UK. A small, very helpful company in Wales. I know everyone on the tech team and they are all knowledgeable and accommodating. However, they seem to be losing touch with my needs in a support role and in terms of flexibility of their packages. They have started in VPSs, which I think has been problematic. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them, but for my own support issues (tickets unresolved after weeks) with my VPS I have to send a clear message … and that is to leave.

    Turns out I am now at 1&1, which is cheaper, faster, better. Just have to deal with shaky VoIP support lines to the US. VPS has been A1.

    I think you might have fixed the “console is undefined” JS error, btw. You’ve avoided being in my list of “Javascript Wall of Shame” (coming soon), though you would be in good company 😉 Maybe it was with your WordPress upgrade?

  2. Hmm .. re the Javascript error, sites nowadays (particularly this one with it’s busy sidebar) tend to be dependant on script injected from other sources. I guess that tends to mean you see errors pop up and disappear which are really out of your sphere of control.

    Welcome to the distributed web!

    (I have recently removed CloudShout and Scoutle as the fact that they poll their servers every couple of seconds was doing my head in)

  3. hey owen, sorry to bother you here about this considering you haven’t used servergrid in 2 years… but i’m having some difficulties with their system and wordpress. i was hoping you might be able to give me some insight on how to set up the “pretty permalinks” (i’ve tried everything i could find through a google but nothing works). i’m not a programmer so my knowledge is weak though i understand the concepts. you’re one of the few people who have mentioned servergrid and wordpress in the same breath. i’m getting really frustrated and finding the service not helpful and often only responding to what they want to respond to.

    thanks!

  4. @vanessa: The best thing I can recommend is to switch out from ServerGrid and to select a provider who hosts on Linux.

    In the long run, it’s the best thing you can do.

  5. Vanessa, Owen, I hope you don’t mind my chiming in here.
    I’m the CEO of Tubu Interent Solutions. I’d be happy to help you with your Permalinks and hosting needs.
    Already I have an idea or two to fix your Permalinks the way you want them to be.

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