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shit-happens 1230402 Information source about anatomy body human….

As i stated several times up above I AM researching other hosts but simply posted my experieince for others to view. Call it “complaining in public” or call it “informing the consumer”. This is a blog with open comments, thats why its here “Rick”

Rick

I had used MT’s shared servers for 2+ years with little to no problem, and know a few other users who have as well. I had experienced issues with their shared servers being blacklisted for spammers. In my support ticket about this in which i clearly stated i use PINE for email, it was recommended i switch to “the grid” as it might alleviate the issue and was also advertised as the latest and greatest on their site. Upon migrating I discovered my site and FTP to be quite slow and wordpress to crawl. I also discovered PINE was not installed. After some discussion they did install PINE and I was greatful. I never said I understood PINE was not part of your product offering. I said I understood it was not an advertised feature, there is a difference. but when I signed up 2 years ago it was because I was specifically told I could use PINE with my shell account. If I had known of any of the problems the grid had I would have hung on the shared server as long as possible. But atleast I would have been aware of the potential issues.

I never received a call from you andrew asking to test Alpine, I don’t know where you came up with that. I never received more than 1 phone call from you and that was the initial contact. When I discovered no one had tested the program I called you and asked why the program was installed and not tested, you weren’t aware of the issue. After much discussion you were “brutally honest” and you did say there were issues that were ongoing for months, I mispoke by using “tickets”, assuming they were one in the same. I told you i could accept waiting for PINE to be fixed but i was disatisfied with poor response times. When you said you didnt know what else to tell me or when they could get to it is when i asked that when the problem was finally being worked on that the admins actually test the issue to make sure it was properly fixed before marking it resolved and put in the back of the line again. You then assured me you would personally test my account to follow up and call me.

After another 10 days the issue was worked on but still does not work properly. No one tested it because they just wrote me asking for my password to test it. Also I never received a response from you and you never informed me whether you tested the account or not.

Shortly after posting on here I am now getting responses and answers on issues. That is all I ever wanted. As I have said dozens of times, my particular issue is not with PINE, its with unsatisfactory response times and service. The only times I seem to get a response is when I called a supervisor or post on here. And despite my email issue, MT hosted sites are still slow, as well as FTP and wordpress all of which I told them i was willing to deal with if there was some sort of progress being made. The irony is another site I am involved with has not migrated to the grid and it works perfectly fine. And through all this, it is still recommended to switch from the properly working shared service to the slow and admitted problematic grid. I just don’t understand that?

As I have said, I had been very satisfied with mediatemple and since their suggestion that I migrate to the grid I have been very unhappy. While I’m sure they are trying to resolve the issues they don’t seem to recognize that paying customers are paying for properly functioning service. Short term issues happen, the grid errors happen, but why am I paying for their problem and having to twist arms to get answers on whats going on with pending issues? This I just don’t understand. The grid is their problem but somehow has become all the migrated users problem’s as well.

im so glad i cancelled your crap
its pretty sad when HostGator is able to provide superior service and support

Yes, I remember our conversation. But my notes of our conversation are quite different. I do remember that there was an email issue and the email issue was that PINE was not working. I also explained to you that we never offered PINE as part of our product offering and you said that you understood this. I also pointed out that getting PINE or actually Alpine to work on our (gs) Grid-Server product was not currently a priority for us due to the fact that there are other more important issues that need to be resolved is not untrue. But I never said there are “tickets that are months old”. Actually, I have never said this to any customer. What I did say was that there are issues that we are working on that are months old and I am sure that everyone is already aware of our mySQL issues and how long we have been working on this issue. Here is the post that I am sure most people have already read:

http://weblog.mediatemple.net/.....-the-grid/

And here is the latest update to this:

http://weblog.mediatemple.net/.....scheduled/

I also do remember very explicitly calling you and asking you to test the ALPINE service. And yes, the answer I gave you regarding ALPINE functionality and when it would be resolved in one of the previous calls was that I would have our system’s engineers look into it, but I didn’t know when we would have it resolved for you.

And my motivation to respond to you in the forum, was only to assist you with your issue and not debate our service levels. Obviously, if you feel that we are not up to par and that you are not receiving the type of service you feel you deserve, then we are in the wrong. So my attempt at contacting you was to correct this issue.

Once again, if you would like to discuss this further I am available by phone and by email.

Kevin, I would love to address your concerns personally. Please give us a call at MT and ask for me. While we don’t make it a habit of providing extra attention to customers because they post on techcrunch, we do want to make sure that your concerns are taken care of.”

If this is Andrew Won, then I have already spoken to you about 4+ times. The last time was about 10 days ago when you were “brutally honest” as you put it and said my 3 week old (at the time, now 5 week old) issue just wasnt important enough to know when it might be resolved. As you stated, there are “tickets that are months old” that are much more important, and my email working the way it was workin on the shared server just isnt a priority. When I spoke to you 10 days ago you had hoped someone might solve my pending issue the next day but you couldnt promise anything. You also noted that when they got to the issue you would personally test my account to make sure it worked properly. None of this has been done still. I never heard back from you, I never got an update on my ticket and that more or less shows me that the only alternative left is to find other hosting. Once again the ONLY reason I am even getting a response is because I am complaining on here, just as I had to complain to you in order to get a response to the original ticket.

Again, all I ever wanted was my hosting to function as it did prior to being switched over to the grid. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The real issue is poor customer care. I don’t have time to babysit mediatemple and call supervisors daily because support tickets get ignored (though I did this for about 4 days at which point andrew you told me “I dont know what else to tell you” when I asked when my problem might be resolved). I do appreciate andrew posting here to verify that I don’t work for dreamhost or some other company but am just a frustrated customer.

MT doesn’t offer you the control and customization Dreamhost does. I have had thorough experience with both and Dreamhost just makes me feel in control of all my domains.

What i have a difficult time accepting is poor customer service. On several occasions I have gone 4+ days without a response to a ticket, not so much as a “we will look into it”. It isn’t until you call and complain that you get a response. That is just poor business practice. Then if you need something done if it isnt a major problem they dont get to it because they use the reason that the grid has so may problems. So Zach if you spoke to customer support they themselves would admit they have a mountain of problems with the grid. Its not just some competitor making it up.

And despite the admitted slew of issues with the grid and having to wait 3 weeks for a problem with my email to be fixed, they are still encouraging people to migrate from the properly functioning shared service to the completely faultered grid service without even a hint of all the issues its having. Why is that?

As I stated, I praised mediatemple for over 2 years now I feel they have taken a major downward spiral. The biggest issue being their customer support and poor response times which they have admitted to me themselves on the phone, yet nothing changes. I felt it necessarily to properly inform others of the issues. I hope mediatemple can come back from this but my hopes have faded and as I said in the beginning if they don’t redeem themselves I will be going with another service.

Media Temple is easy, fast, friendly, good, and it works so excellent with the control panel designed for “everyone”.

Don’t expect anything about Support. It will be rare if you get a solution, only you will get “answers”, but no solutions. The support and customer service is the worst in the planet, almost as bad as Telmex in Mex.

MT is goodie, their support service does not exist.

http://kb.mediatemple.net/article.php?id=235

Hope this helped!

The problem is that your sessions keep getting passed to different servers on the grid. So any application that relies on a persistent open session is doomed.

My opinion is that the whole grid server thing was poorly thought out and insufficiently tested.

Anyone have a host they can recommend?

I have 3 hosting accounts at different providers and Media Temple by far is the slowest and has the most down time.

My CS professor uses GoDaddy and seems to like it without to many complains. I used fremonthost.com and the uptime was good, better than dreamhost. Dreamhost has way oversold and so hardware and server crashes are common, but they give a lot for the money. I know people who love them. I’ve also heard good things about bluehost.

You should still consider MT, just make sure if you do you take advantage of their 24/7 phone tech support because you get a response right away. I haven’t experienced any of the problems of others here and MT has been resolving most of the problems. Besides I believe they have a 30day money back.

JW

I was referring to the two posts 244 & 245. Have you tried contacting MT? Is it possible something is wrong on your clients end?

As Ethan pointed out, it’s sad that a few people who are experiencing problems seem to make the most noise. Instead of considering that it may be just them or a very few customers experiencing problems they open their mounts and start complaining. Then to take thing further they insult anyone who says they aren’t experiencing the same “claimed problems”.

As for me I host about 15 sites with MT and I’ve only experienced problems with urchin. Nothing more, no MySql connection errors or email problems.