I am here to warn fellow Kirupa members who may be considering getting a VPS.
I have been an Ipower customer since about 2004 I believe. I have had many issues in the past with Ipower and their customer support has been MOSTLY horrible. I would say that 90% of my experience with Ipower has been crappy while on the rare occasion I have had good customer service. 90% Crappy - 10% good??
I put up with this because I wasn’t bold enough to move everything to a new service but now I’m doing so at the risk of losing several clients.
EDIT: It was bad enough trying to manage shared hosting ‘reseller’ accounts through this company and why I thought a VPS would be a better solution with them- I do not know. I along with many others have experienced similar issues with this company and after not even a week of running this VPS - things started to go wrong. Don’t get me wrong, the first 3 days of having a VPS were wonderful until all of my e-mails stopped working due to a DNS issue with an error in the Plesk ‘/etc/init.d/named’ files.
Let me paste my most recent “chat” with Ipower- Keep in mind. This is TYPICAL service you can expect once you are a customer of Ipower and must deal with “tech support”
[img]/uploads/default/4310/efc7d5f72f2ceb82.gif[/img]This is a service announcement as of February 13th, 9:30 AM EST. The repair process on our DNS Server is taking longer than expected. We apologize for the inconvenience. We expect it to be completed in the next 8 hours. Shortly after, all the affected domains will be fixed in the order in which they were setup on our system. More information will be posted on our website as it becomes available. We appreciate your patience while we fix the issue. Thank you. Please hold for the next available agent.
We appreciate your patience. All operators are currently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and we’ll be with you as quickly as possible. In the meantime, please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you for waiting.
[This message repeated 12 times - It took over 1 hour before I was in touch with “tech support”]
You are now chatting with ‘Nicholas Perez’
Nicholas Perez: Hi Darren, I apologize for the wait time. My name is Nicholas Perez, how are you today?
Darren: Hi Nicholas, I’m okay…My VPS is not getting any e-mails on any of the accounts.
Nicholas Perez: I only have your first name. Can I have your complete name for our records?
Darren: And I’m not able to log in to webmail or FTP into any of my domains
Darren: Darren ********* - account ********* security answer = **********
Nicholas Perez: Thank you for providing your complete name.
Nicholas Perez: Can you please provide me the VPS IP address?
Darren: .***.***.
Nicholas Perez: Can you please hold while I review your account and get back within 2 to 3 minutes?
Darren: Ok
[25 minutes later]
Darren: hello?
Nicholas Perez: Thank you for holding.
Nicholas Perez: To protect your account from unauthorized changes, can you please verify for me the answer to the Security Question:
Nicholas Perez: What is your pet’s name?
Darren: *********
Nicholas Perez: Thank you for the authentication.
Nicholas Perez: Can you please provide me the plesk username and password?
Darren: username = ************
Darren: pass = ***************
Darren: I rebooted my server, rebooted my home connection, and everything else I can think of but for some reason it is not connecting to the mail server on ANY of the accounts inside the VPS.
Nicholas Perez: I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.
Nicholas Perez: Can you please hold while I look into this for you? I should have some more information regarding your issue in 2-4 minutes.
Darren: that’s fine.
[About 12 minutes]
Nicholas Perez: Thank you for holding.
Nicholas Perez: The plesk username and password that you have provided is incorrect. Please provide me the correct plesk username and password so that we can further investigate on your issue.
Darren: how about I give you root access?
Darren: **********
Darren: ***************
Nicholas Perez: Okay.
Nicholas Perez: Can you please hold while I look into this for you? I should have some more information regarding your issue in 2-4 minutes.
Darren: Oh yes…sorry, I can hold
Nicholas Perez: Thank you for your patience.
Nicholas Perez: Thank you for your patience, I am still testing the issue, I will be back with some more information in 5 more minutes.
[I took a shower, got dressed, came back and still waited]
Nicholas Perez: Thank you for your patience.
Darren: Ok, I’ll leave this open…Thank you for the help- I have a lot of angry customers right now.
Nicholas Perez: Thank you for holding.
Darren: And I’m not saying it’s YOUR fault - just in case.
Nicholas Perez: As you are the VPS customer, you need to resolve the issue on your end.
Nicholas Perez: However, if you wish we can restart the VPS server in order to resolve the issue.
Darren: I did restart the VPS.
Darren: Why would it just stop working though?
Nicholas Perez: Can you please let me know do you wish to reboot the server?
Darren: Everything was fine yesterday- I have not added any new clients since then and at 2:00 PM
Darren: No, don’t reboot. I already did that.
Darren: What’s up with the Ipower message about a DNS issue?
Nicholas Perez: It is not possible to do anything regarding your issue.
Darren: The last request I put in was to have an SSL put in.
Nicholas Perez: The DNS issue is already resolved by our engineers.
Darren: So let me get this straight- you are saying there is nothing wrong with the VPS from what you see on your end.
Nicholas Perez: If you wish I can reboot the VPS server in order to resolve the issue.
Darren: will that resolve the issue though?
Nicholas Perez: Once, you restart the VPS server it will take couple of hours to resolve the issue.
Darren: Nicholas, I restarted the VPS about an hour ago so I’m going to hold off and see if anything changes.
Nicholas Perez: Okay.
Darren: Can you guide me with what to do if it still doesn’t resolve in an hour??
Nicholas Perez: It will take couple of hours to resolve the issue once, the VPS server restarted.
Darren: Okay…but did you see any settings that could be off or would you know about that?
Nicholas Perez: As you are the VPS customer it is not possible to assist you further. You need to resolve the issue on your end.
Darren: Hey, I just noticed my DNS Server (BIND) is not letting me start it.
Darren: What would cause that?? Is there a way to reset to default without losing the clients?
Nicholas Perez: The DNS issue is due to a technical glitch. However, our engineers have resolve the issue.
Nicholas Perez: Regarding you FTP and e-mail issue, you need to resolve the issue on your end.
Darren: Well now that I see the DNS isn’t running or won’t let me run - that’s why I can’t FTP or receive E-mail …
Nicholas Perez: It is not possible to do anything regarding your issue.
Nicholas Perez: We can only reboot the server.
Darren: Is there a level 2 tech available???
Darren: ccurred: Unable to make action: Unable to manage service by dnsmng: dnsmng: Service /etc/init.d/named failed to start
Darren: that’s NOT something I have access to.
Nicholas Perez: I have noticed that that your domain is pointing to correct name servers.
Darren: Yes… but Service /etc/init.d/named failed to start is causing the issue from what the VPS log says.
Nicholas Perez: Once, you restarted the VPS server it will take couple of hours to resolve your issue.
Nicholas Perez: It is not possible to do anything regarding your issue. You can contact your Webmaster for further assistance.
Darren: My “webmaster?”
Darren: What does a webmaster have to do with a VPS?
Darren: Has a level 2 tech seen this issue concerning the /etc/init.d/named ??? I’m sure they can repair the file…which is why I’m confused that you are saying there is nothing that can be done.
Nicholas Perez: You need to resolve the issue on your end.
Nicholas Perez: It is not possible to do anything regarding your issue.
Nicholas Perez: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Darren: So that’s it…just leave a customer out to dry??
Darren: Did you at least talk to a level 2 tech???
Nicholas Perez: It is not possible to contact our engineers directly.
Darren: why not???
Nicholas Perez: Regarding your issue, you need to fix it on your end.
Nicholas Perez: As mentioned above, you are the VPS customer and you need to fix your issue on your end.
Nicholas Perez: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Darren: Yes…
Darren: Please tell me why you cannot speak with an engineer??
Darren: Keep in mind I’m keeping a copy of this conversation (which I get the impression you don’t really care about this issue)
Nicholas Perez: It is not possible to contact our engineers directly. If we forward your issue to our engineers, then our engineers will contact you at your e-mail address or phone number.
Darren: I have NEVER been called about an issue before.
Darren: I spoke with sales before and they were able to get me in touch with a level 2 tech.
Nicholas Perez: It is not possible to do anything regarding your issue, you need to fix the issue on your end or else you need to wait couple of hours to resolve the issue as you have restarted the VPS server.
Darren: So you are going to give me access to the /root level SSH?
Darren: so I CAN fix it??
Nicholas Perez: Yes.
Nicholas Perez: Sorry for the typo.
Darren: Ok…let me see if it lets me in while you are on the line.
Nicholas Perez: It is not possible for us to do anything regarding your issue. I can only reboot the VPS server if you wish. You need to fix the issue on your end.
Darren: Are you programmed to say that??
Nicholas Perez: I’m a real person.
Darren: I’ll let you get going because you don’t want or don’t care to help me with an issue. Don’t be surprised if I submit this conversation as the reason why I cancel this account.
Nicholas Perez: Do you have any other question?
Darren: No, you can go.
Nicholas Perez: Thank you for chatting with us. Please feel free to contact us at any time. We are available 24x7.
Nicholas Perez: Bye!
Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.