interhost technical support seems to have gone on holiday
Update [27/09/07]: Today Interhost have moved me onto a new host and my quota is now a healthy 50GB.
Update [10/09/07]: Interhost have responded to my ticket suggesting a move to a new VPS. I have asked them to confirm that I'll be getting the quota and bandwidth allowance that corresponds to what I'm paying.
I just posted my eighth ticket (see below) on a single request for support from my hosting company, Interhost UK. They have a problem with my (and probably other customers') filesystem quota.
Twice so far this year my webserver, a virtual private server (virtualised Linux host) has crashed because available space has mysteriously reduced to zero, despite me being well under-quota. Twice I have had lengthy, frustrating exchanges with Interhost technical support. They've run "fixquotas" but not explained what exactly why this is necessary. They've not proposed any long-term solution. They've not offered any promise that they'll pick up on this problem when it next occurs to save me the hassle of chasing them to fix it. And worst of all, they are now being evasive about contacting me at all. I have called three times in the last couple of weeks after my tickets went unanswered for a couple of days or more. On the other end of the phone - a non-technical person who attempts to call the technical support department but this goes straight to voicemail. I'm promised a call-back. It doesn't come.
I once recommended Interhost, but not any more.
Further to my unanswered post on Monday:
Over the last two days my filesystem availability has dropped from 2.1GB (on Monday) to 1.7GB today, despite no increase in usage from my VPS. If the mysterious drain on space continues at this rate my VPS and websites will be crashing by the weekend.
My total available space is now apparently a measly 6.7GB, and I have had to cancel backups and delete data to fit within this. I'm paying for a 50GB allowance. I'm being charged double the cost of a 10GB allowance, but getting less than 10GB!
Where is the explanation of the problem? Where is the proposed long-term solution? Where is Mark? Where is Interhost technical support?
I used to be really impressed with Interhost, but recently it seems all I get on the phone is blank, un-technical people that promise callbacks that never materialise, and several tickets I have raised have sat unacknowledged for days or even weeks (as is the case with my ticket regarding domain registration).
Update [27/09/07]: Interhost have moved me onto a new host and my quota is now a healthy 50GB.
05/09/07 03:17pm
(8 months, 1 week ago)
5 comments
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Hi chris,
I too share some of your issues with Interhost, we have 1 VPS and have been with Interhost for over a year. Things have slowely been going downhill. Recently we have had problems anfter problems with our VPS and yes your right a phone call is usually picked up by someone who doesnt knowe a VPS from a cabbage. They offer to take your details down and promise a call back but the call never comes.
Mark it seems runs everything and when Mark isnt there everything falls apart. If your reading this and thinking of moving over to a VPS with Interhost then think again....this used to be a little gem of a company but its going sownhill FAST...if your value your support and reliability then think again....
09:29pm
Interesting posts. I am a new customer and had some very basic questions (not even technical) about billing etc., and posted them by ticket system on Monday. Also rang. It is Friday and silence. Rang just now and tried to speak to somebody... anybody. And NOBODY could take my call. I asked the person who answered the phone whether they were an outsource phone answering company but she said she worked for Interhost. I then asked her if nobody was available because they had not come into work or just busy... and she said it was a bit of both.
Can anyone recommend another VPS hosting company in the UK that actually communicate with their customers?
Thanks, Andrew
09:24am
Hi Chris,
I was flabbergasted to see your post today as we've had exactly the same issue. We moved a site to a VPS with them around 9 months ago after doing some stress testing and finding the server to be very fast and responsive mirroring Interhost's technical staff at the time. Our site sells tickets to an event that happens once a year, and so it was with horror during the busy period of sales we had the zero space based crashes you describe making our sales (front end AND back end) unavailable for long periods of time. After much toing and froing over a period of a few weeks a move was suggested. Unfortunately by this time we only had an hour of selling left, so decided to leave off and do it slowly and methodically. Since then we've written test rigs to specifically test the ordering process and find that it won't even finish running on the Interhost VPS - i.e. we process 100 orders in 700 seconds on our development server, but the Interhost VPS won't get to the end of the 100 orders. Not only that the server was at some stage hacked by the looks of things. Interhost have promised callbacks on both issues but it has remained impossible to get hold of anyone. It's such a shame as they seem to have fallen into the classic hosting trap of:
1) setup hosting company with great prices and watch the customers arriving
2) think - this is a doddle this hosting lark, why didn't we do this before
3) things start getting busier and the wheels start coming off - hosting turns out to be pretty complicated
4) hide under desk hoping it all goes away
Hey ho. I'm going to try and sort this out this week, I wonder if it's worth comparing notes? Gimme a shout or IM me:
alex at (romeo echo echo foxtrot november echo tango) dot co dot uk if you want to
09:20am
I have to VPS' with a2b2.com and although today isn't the best day for me to recommend them since my 2nd one died on me for some reason, possibly my slack security not theirs. However, they got me a new VPS ready within an hour then I just had to restore data from my own backups. If you know your stuff then their dirt cheap, unmanaged packages can't be beat.
10:11pm
I've had the problem with file space on a Windows VPS wee have with Interhost going to zero this was due to a large ammount of .tmp files in "c:\windows\system32\drivers" now they wasn't able to explain why this would happen just told me to delete them, so I now run a bat file everyone hour to check for tmp files and delete them.
In the past when I haven’t noticed them, there would be around 16,000 of them totalling 4.5 GB. SWSoft forum say's the node has likely been compromised in some way.
10:05am