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Urgent help needed!




Posted by makhosting, 06-21-2005, 10:01 AM
Hello I am a reseller for a couple of years now, this is not for my daily income but just to make my own account a little cheaper. I started to share my account with 1 but since today I have 18 clients. After a bad experience with some UK company my account has been taken over by Techbrink in Canada. He gave me a nice deal and the contact has been very nice until a couple of months ago. First he moved our account to another server and from one day downtime came periods of 2, 3 and even 4 days. From Friday 17TH the server stopped working and we can’t even ping our server. Sunday I finally got in contact with the owner by mail and he told me that the ISP is out. While still his site is working Techbrink. our accounts and even some other accounts from his clients are out. I decided to stop and found my own server with a friend in the Netherlands but if we can’t get the IP number of the actual server we can’t get our files out. Also a refund has been refused by the owner and as I don’t know about my rights I have no information how to proceed. I feel really sick and I hate lying to my clients and I am giving all of them a whole year free hosting as I feel responsible. Even a Hotel chain at this moment in high season, can’t get their bookings trough their email. I am absolutely at the end of the line and really would like your help on this matter. I asked him to give me the IP address as a friend told me that the DNS server is out; he told me the ISP service has the error. So it seems he is blaming some one else and I feel myself sitting in the middle of a tennis game. If he would be a gentleman I guess he would do the same as I am doing, getting another server and change the DNS to point to this. This would take not more than 32 hours, now it takes me 5 days and the downtime is still continuing. He has put a message up that he will not answer any question about updates on this downtime. In advance my sincere thanks to any help what to do on this matter from you all! Peter. Makserver.com

Posted by Lubby, 06-21-2005, 11:02 AM
It sounds like the server is completely offline and therefore if you have the IP it won't help. It could be his site is on a different server, I did a ping of the domain and got 69.72.143.252 This is the reason that it is very very important to keep your own backups. 99.9% of hosting companies will state in there Terms of Service that clients need to take care of there own backups. I am sorry to hear about the situation you are in and hopefully they will get you your files back, but it doesn't sound good.

Posted by cnv, 06-21-2005, 11:31 AM
Since you have a small client base you shouldnt have purchased a server. Maybe started with a Reseller or VPS would of been better. Thats just my opinion, and a suggestion is get an account somewhere else and let your clients move to it offering something to them. Good luck!

Posted by makhosting, 06-21-2005, 12:52 PM
Thanks guys for the replies and the understanding! After 5 days finally I got some information about the downtime and believe me I wrote a hundred emails to him! This is what I got from the owner of Techbrink-Rob: I gives me a weird and not professional taste. Am I right if I said that if he has on regular base problems he should move the DNS long time before? And which steps can be taken against this company based in Canada? The downtime report from the last period of 5 weeks has been 11 days and this is still growing. I know about the law in the Netherlands and you can file a claim against this extreme downtime and bad-management. One time the server has been down and it took me 3 days to get him on the MSN! Another day has spent to get the server up again. Always another excuse, no power, or dos attack, server overloaded and so on. I can collect all these emails from him and use them for a server nightmare book. What is the law in Canada? Could anybody just start a web hosting company; and the clients to be with no rights to have a minimum of uptime and service? I am really planning to make a claim against them and would warn others to stay away! We have a reseller account, but he prommised us to have a name server included for the price, he also never did! On the other hand I found a dedicated server not fancy but owned by a friend of mine who has 3 DNS servers in place. A guy with 17 years of experience and his terms are according the Dutch law. Just to have the old server back on line, grab my accounts and leave Techbrink to milk some other cows! We got lots of them in Holland Peter Last edited by makhosting; 06-21-2005 at 12:57 PM.

Posted by Klaatu, 06-21-2005, 01:02 PM
Whoa Peter! Haven't you learned anything from your current experience? Get your clients off that server and over to a GOOD host. WHT is a great place to find one. Also with only 14 accounts I too am wondering why you need a ded server? Unless those accounts are huge, a good reseller account should do nicely. Stay away from "a dedicated server not fancy but owned by a friend of mine". Thats like buying a car from a friend. It never works out good LOL! Last edited by Klaatu; 06-21-2005 at 01:06 PM.

Posted by makhosting, 06-21-2005, 01:14 PM
No this hosting company is very wel respected timmit.nl it is not a small company and the history is very fine! A very proffesional staff and a real 24/7 service. I know lots of people who have their server stocked there. I am also for over 5 years a mod for the biggest Dutch satellite boards with over 30,000 members and more than 3000 postings each day. This board never went down for over 0,3% and lasted very short. Yep I'm a hard learner still believe in people it might have something to do with my Hippy music history

Posted by DediZoneSales, 06-21-2005, 01:15 PM
Hello, You only need a reseller account for your 14 clients/accounts. Search for good reviews in WHT , i am sure you will find plenty! Good luck!

Posted by makhosting, 06-21-2005, 04:36 PM
Thanks I am looking into this as I typ, just to have a backbone. But the really question was if there is any thing according Canadian law I can claim? Or can they just go offline for so many days? So this means that Canada allows any one to open a hosting comapny? There are more clients from techbrink who are angry and sad at the same time too, so we might make a stand together.

Posted by Klaatu, 06-21-2005, 05:49 PM
I would suggest contacting a lawyer for that. Although there are a lot of wanabe lawyers and maybe even one or two real ones here at WHT. Bert

Posted by writespeak, 06-22-2005, 01:22 AM
When you want to set up a company in Canada, you fill in a form, you send it with a cheque to a government address, and they send you back a piece of paper telling you that you have a registered company. After that, you get a business licence from city hall. There are no legal requirements specific to owning a web hosting company that I know of. Is it any different in any other country? Lois

Posted by cafournier, 06-22-2005, 01:29 AM
Hi, I am also with Techbrink and till about 2 months ago their service was good, low downtime (if ever). Lately the downtime become more and more frequent as makhosting say, can't access site and e-mails since the 17th. I understand that some problem may occurs, and that the company may not have a hand on all the layers but what I did not like this certain time was the support itself. I opened a ticket Sunday afternoon with high priority, the ticket was open by support only Monday evening and I got first information about what's happening only by Tuesday. My feeling is that they don't realy offer 24/7 support, and that over week-end nobody is around. Mainly the lack of information to the customers and no information whatsoever on thier main site is realy a show of lack of professionalism.

Posted by techbrink, 06-23-2005, 03:35 AM
We had emailed our clients earlier about the downtime at hand. The reason for the ticket being open so late was due to the lack of the "new" upgrade of ModernBill, not alerting me of new tickets and their responses, which has messed up some accounting info and support info. We do offer 24/7. We may not answer emails or tickets within seconds of them being made, but we try our best. We have been sending our clients near daily emails on server updates since Sunday, as new information is at hand. Our main site does not reflect server downtime, as you have more than sufficient email addresses to email to get us at, sales@techbrink.com, support@techbrink.com, and a ticketing system (with priority email support).

Posted by makhosting, 06-23-2005, 04:29 AM
Give me some time to copy and paste all emails send to techbrink and times, dates and hours. Will come back on this issue!

Posted by makhosting, 06-23-2005, 04:54 AM
Just read this guys! http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...02#post3184702

Posted by cafournier, 06-23-2005, 08:39 AM
Don't blame software, when ticket with high priority are NOT answered within 24h there is a problem, and if you know that the system does not send you alert then it's your responsibility to check the system every few hours, sitting on your butt saying it do not provide alerts is not an excuse. When ticket and emails are not answered within 24h it's not 24/7, sorry. 24h/7 mean any e-mail or ticket are answered quickly, anytime of the day or night. Otherwise it's not 24h/7. If you promise it, do it. I don't require by the minute reply but a high priority ticket should be answered within a couple of hours. If I open a ticket during you night time and you open it only when you wake up then we are not on a 24h/7 support. Primary email address is hosted by you so I did not received anything. My secondary email address is valid and off your server and I did not receive anything on that address. If not used what is that secondary contact e-mail address doing there ? And the system does not allow us to change the primary address in our profile. Are you lying to your customer on the server status ? If you main site does not reflect server downtime what are server status page for ? yep I know that and I did use them. But these are not answered very swiftly, I grant you the excuse that your mail box must have been full. Overall I am not blaming you for the technical problem, "**** may happen" and it did, even the whole Swiss railway system was down for 3 hours yesterday. What I blame you for is for not making the information available for your customers. The primary email address excuse is not valid, there is a secondary contact address you did not use. You did not publish any information on your web site, you did not publish any information on the customer support page. That's why I am angry and that's why I still say there is a lack of professionalism here, not on the technical side, but on the communication side. You need to improve that part badly.

Posted by jmweb, 06-23-2005, 09:15 AM
just doesn't happen when it comes to connectivity. My question is, why did cogentco pull the line from you? Obviously they wouldn't have just woken up one morning and said, alright, lets disconnect these customers for no reason.

Posted by techbrink, 06-23-2005, 09:42 AM
actually jmweb. thats pretty much what they did. it was a huge billing problem with cogent, in where for some reason or another our bills were being sent to ibm. then one day ibm sends us a package, with our bills. they notified cogent of the mixup. cogentco never notified us. cut the line. we called, asked what is happening, and they told us. and they dont want to put it back online without payment. simple as that, as people WANT to hear about it.

Posted by atnet_solutions, 06-23-2005, 10:00 AM
Good day everyone, The issues surrounding the downtime for Techbrink Solutions and Gameline.ca are ISP related and not server related. Unfortuantely, we have been getting the runaround from two ISP's about getting new service connected and are working as fast as we can to get the servers back online. Customer data is intact, and not going anywhere. We ask that you keep billing related issues off of a publicly accessible resource and use our billing system which is up and running to submit questions regarding the current downtime. Downtime is unfortuante, it hurts everyone, but customers also need to be understanding. That being said, we understand that some of you have businesses to run and if you need to go elsewhere to keep your bunsiness running, when the server comes up we will make sure you can get your data off of it. For those of you who do this as a hobby, but have clients like hotels etc...maybe it's to rethink whether you want to do this a hobby or fulltime. Rob is doing all he can to get service restored ASAP. If you have any questions, please use our Support ticket system or email Rob and everything will be looked after. Thank you. Regards, Andrew Matheson Owner @net Solutions (Holding company for Techbrink Solutions)

Posted by jmweb, 06-23-2005, 10:29 AM
And no one noticied the failure to bill, that would be a pretty big bill..no accounting is perfect but not seeing your upstream providers is billing you is kinda big.

Posted by cafournier, 06-23-2005, 10:36 AM
I agree with you but if we complain here it's because the "community" link on techbrink main site bring to a forbidden area. Should you had have a forum running there would have been no need to post here and it would have been an easy way for you guys to explain things. Again don't blame customers, they angry for a reason and if you don't provide them the media to express themself they go where they can.

Posted by cafournier, 06-23-2005, 10:39 AM
yes that's a funny one. ...... I imagine the accounting department : "Hey psssttt don't say anything, cogent did not bill us for months, maybe they just forgot about us"

Posted by makhosting, 06-23-2005, 11:29 AM
Thanks I already saw the same lyrics at the other subject here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...01#post3185201 Why do I get the feeling you wants us to shut up? Hotel groups are not allowed as a reseller? Dutch Chamber of commerce as a customer is a bad mistake of me? And more of such? Mr. Director-CEO of the holding company please stick with the isue mentioned by (again) PAYING customers, you know this are people who do pay their bills! And they might like to have something in return for this! Let me spell it out for you: If I pay at Joe Trader a half Gallon of Orange Juice I aspect to have Orange juice inside and not milk of a 25% of a gallon! On the other hand no messages or announcements have been published on your "HOLDING" company! Instead the message board has been taken offline..Mmmm I wonder why! And please leave the admin and the moderators on WHT to decide what is allowed to publish here and what not! Me and other clients of your Holding company came with fair critics which pointed out to a bad means of communication from Mr. Rob. He instead lowered himself saying that I am a bad customer, this Mr. CEO makes me angry! Even more angry as I have been when I have to answer my phone ringing of my paying customers and trying to tell them that MY service provider has no news! Believe me when i tell you that I am angry! Falso promises of telling us for a few days that the server will be continued soon Even yesterday sending out a email that yesterday the server will be online again! Well this has not been done, just checked and all is still offline! They have been billing you, you did not pay, you are disconnected and you blame them and us?

Posted by techbrink, 06-23-2005, 11:38 AM
We already pay upwards of $1000 for the cage we're in, and the owner thought it came included. FYI.

Posted by makhosting, 06-23-2005, 11:57 AM
So now the blame on 1 cogent 2 Bad customers 3 The owner PS Who's next?

Posted by techbrink, 06-23-2005, 12:15 PM
WTF are you talking about? Cogentco is the one to blame for downtime as they are the sole provider of our ISP. Thats it, thats all. Case closed.

Posted by jmweb, 06-23-2005, 12:36 PM
No offense, I am not trying to come off mean. Just looking out for one of our clients that has a reseller account with us and with you guys.... Did not one contact cogentco about this and verify? No records? No paper trail or did someone mis-read something that thought said it included bandwidth and then they forgot to bill you for numerous months. I assume you guys would not have considered paying anyway to get peoples sites up and then look at moving them elsewhere? As opposed to just forgetting that peoples websites are down?

Posted by makhosting, 06-23-2005, 12:40 PM
The customers getting pissed off because no one posted a message? Please???? Say that again Rob? Please don't shift all the time critics of bad communication to some one else, Cogentco is a respected business company, what this means? You don't pay they stop the business and cut you off! Clear to me! I don't pay for Techbrink you cut me off! I contacted them as a Dutch journalist they mailed me back from their office in the Netherlands and will get back on this soon! So whenever some of you clients are writing their fair critics here you blame someone else, or you try to explain us that 24/7 means that in the weekend you don't answer. You called me a bad customer, not fair while you keep forgetting that I am your oldest customer and posted lots of good advertising for your CEO his company? When some posted a simple fact that they did not get support, you answer that you can't answer this within a few seconds; this has never been stated or asked! You saw the problem coming this is not the first time! Rob btw you know i lost a website domain name, well I started this during the beginning of the 90ties. This simple server has been always working! I also am a mod for sat4all.com with over 30,000 members posting on a regular basis, the website is 5 years now up and running! Its your business so YOU have to take care of thise problems, we are paying you in trust that you arrange those things lke isp. If I had the time I would get a dedicated server but why? Do you want to tell us that all resellers are not good? So when you have important customers you need to get away from a reseller account? I am sure that lots of WHT members from which are also owners of a service that offer resller account will be pissed off as you put also them in your mistakes! I checked with Peer asked them how long it takes, if you like will post this also here, they told me in less that 2 1/2 days but most of the time much sooner! You announced 3 days ago that a new contract has been made with Peer1 and that the service will soon start again.. What do you mean with SOON?

Posted by atnet_solutions, 06-23-2005, 12:48 PM
Mak, I would just like to clarify a few things. 1) The customers you have are not bad, all I was saying was that you posted that you do this as a hobby, and taking on customers who rely on their websites, may need someone more fulltime. I was not attacking your choices at all. I am happy that you have customers like that, they are hard to get. 2) The service went down on a Friday, offices are closed here on weekends. Peer1's head office is in Vancouver Canada (a 3 hour time difference to us, so they weren't open till ~12 noon our time. That is generally too late to get something done that day. The contract was worked out on the Tuesday so today is within the 2.5 days that they quoted you. Nothing is taking longer that it should, it's just that the timing stinks for everyone involved. 3) As for the holding company, well, all I can tell you is that there are 1000's of companies in the world that are owned or held by other companies and that info is not neccessarily made public. 4) I only asked that you keep billing issues off the board, nothing else, those issues are between you and Techbrink and should be dealt with accordingly. That is really all we can say, things are going as fast as we can make them go. The Techbrink message board has been down for well over 6 months, I am not sure why you are just now making it an issue, if you had wanted it to stick around, you should have let Techbrink know that. Thank you. Andrew

Posted by cafournier, 06-23-2005, 01:00 PM
I propose we let Rob work on the problem. I prefer him working on the problem than getting stressed out on this forum. I think he has enough on his hand right now. Restart that discussion once the case is solved if you whish but for now let him alone.

Posted by makhosting, 06-23-2005, 03:41 PM
Andrew the thing that is pissing me off is that I am sudenly stated as a "BAD customer". Why? Rob many times praised me for the good things I have done. But having a downtime for a week is unforgiven for a proffesional company! The lack of information too! I’m not and again I say, I AM NOT interested in what the problem it is or was, or why, or even if you paid the bills yes or no! I am interested to have the account of mine online! Nothing more and nothing less! He turns around with unfair explanations and excuses. If he needs a message board yes or no, we need it. A couple of months ago the message board was on the same server so when the server was offline this has also been offline! Now it’s different. Please take the time and see my postings and the postings of other customers. Again this board is for us webmasters and server providers. This is the only means for us to chat about the problems. Believe me I have a bunch of mail from your other clients too and they all say the same! If you can’t get the important spirit of the fuss around the lack of information there is no use talking about it. About the time business different, thank you, I have an office in Santa Monica and in Houstan Texas so I need to Skype very often with the guys.. But we are talking about a week being offline and in the last 4 weeks another week adding it all together.. I can give you my U2 rack with a P3 dual server and it will give you guaranteed a better performance. I asked, this also has been promised by Rob, for a name server IP, this has never been done too. Suddenly the CPanel has been gone because of the end of the registration period by the software company. Special that time I had to upgrade a clients account and could not get in. Adding up all this, no phone number, no 24/7 support I must say that I am taking my business elsewhere and sure am I others will do the same. Just look at the techbrink.com website and tell me where a simple message is? I have been shopping around on this board and looked at other offers their website, they have been very honest about their downtime and its published on the main index page! We are looking to the techbrink page from 2003, ok he changed that year into 2004. No info, no update and our account still offline and counting!

Posted by tke71709, 06-23-2005, 03:49 PM
mak, First of all take a deep breath. Second of all, move your stuff to another host. Third, move on with your life before you have a heart attack. It's outside your control now.

Posted by makhosting, 06-23-2005, 03:55 PM
Thanks my wife is a MD so don't worry! I will move all to another host waiting a week now to be online just for a little to be able to move! Cheers, Peter

Posted by techbrink, 06-24-2005, 11:20 PM
To all WHT people and techBrink Customers: Our servers are back online 100%. All services have resumed, and customers have been emailed all information pertaining to their web hosting space. All DNS has synchronized 100%, and by a quick view at people's websites, I can say, everything has switched over to the new IP address space. We have fixed any IP related problems with our services. As for some accounts with DNS off of our servers (like zoneedit and what not), an email was sent out to our clients to modify their zone files as they wish. Thanks to everyone for their support during this downtime frenzy, I have talked myself to Peer1, and I am quite happy with their customer service. This ISP is one that we tend to keep and will not go down.

Posted by swflnetworks, 06-25-2005, 06:21 AM
sigh* Sorry, just from reading this: 1. I agree with Mak! 2. BIG LESSON FOR THE HOSTING COMPANY! Unless you are gonna put in the money to have it sent to a datacenter which has multiple connections from different providers going through it simutaneously, then GET MORE THAN ONE INTERNET PROVIDER! 3. Don't blame the ISP for senfing your bills elsewhere.. All it takes it calling the ISP and saying "Why didn't I receive my bill". Usually after 15 days, you'll notice something is wrong. And to let this go on for as long as it did is just rediculous on your part. It's just as much the ISP's fault as it is yours. You have someone there that pays the bills.. I think it would be a tad odd to just not even think a second thought that "Hmm, our bill hasn't arrived this or last month.. Something must be wrong." -------------------------------------------------------------- Like I said.. Unless you are planning on getting more than 1 ISP provider to simutaneously pump data through your network of servers, then colocate them to a datacenter where they can get the multiple providers they need. I hope to never see the lack of professionalism from a company that I've seen in this thread alone, ever again.

Posted by makhosting, 06-25-2005, 08:32 AM
Thank you for your bright comments on this, must, say horrible experience. First trying any one of the clients to shut up and not to speak openly on this board, this board as I think is just made for chatting along with other hosting owners, resellers and so on. The professionalism is far away with Techbrink. 8 days of downtime and openly blaming everyone but not himself. I wrote on request of Rob, owner of Techbrink, good critics and until a few days ago he called me a “good customer” made for many time a chat with him with MSN messenger. Now suddenly when the phones started to ring from my customers telling me that their site is down, I checked and it took me more than a day and a half to get any info back from him. While they advertise 24/7 support. When I reminded him after a couple of days that I needed to put my files out and that I needed to take my business elsewhere, suddenly the friendly tone changed 320 degrees! Suddenly this MSN was his private messenger and see other message, postings from him that he will block me. Also the website from Techbrink.com was all the time online but no info has been posted there. Why? Even the message board has been taken offline or being protected by a password, why is that? Not absolutely not what Rob his excuse has been, as [quote] It has been taken dust and customers were complaining that no more than 1 message has been posted monthly. This is B**lS**T! Critics hurt, yes, I have turned far over 50 years now of age and I also learned that from critics you can learn to be a better person and a Hostings service as Rob calls Techbrink.com just that. You can’t imagine what kind of a stress expierince we from Makserver.com had with Techbrink. For months and months we could not send any email as later on I found out Techbrink opened only one port (21) Again it took me hours and hours of my free time to convince him that he should open another port too. Savo my technician and partner, winner of many awards from his excellent script and excel end designs, gave Rob many tips and tricks how to get his server “smooth” and better running. I can tell Rob from Techbrink the following: Learn from mistakes and don’t blame me or an ISP service for having not only 8 days of downtime and add al up with the little past weeks 16 days or so downtime. I gave to all my clients a free year of hosting as I don’t blame Techbrink in front of them but I TAKE my own responsibilities! They paid my bill and they are not interested why the site is offline, they want their site online that’s all! How we will survive with opening an other account proud to say with BGFWeb and not getting any refund from one year payment to Techbrink back, unless a ice-cream candy of 40$, is our problem. We learned not to trust in Techbrink and all neutral readers who are just planning to take an account with you will think twice about this! You can blame this on yourself not on me or isp! As Screaming just posted, you don’t receive a bill, you should call them! And for tke71709 [your posting]: First of all take a deep breath. Second of all, move your stuff to another host. Third, move on with your life before you have a heart attack. It's outside your control now. [end of your posting] As you just saw I moved my files BGFWeb did this for me as soon as the Techbrink ip went online. But the third suggestion is a little overdue? If I have, and I hope your accounts does not go down and you have a sincere honest feeling to serve your clients, your provider is really not informing you, good clients ringing me and crying because one is a Dutch chamber of commerce [ www.kvkmk.org ] and not an NGO but a government foundation, and another is a owner of 3 hotels with a wide chain of more. Its season, high season, they can’t read their reservations and client get their mail send to them bounced back [ www.inexgorica.com ] another one a traveling agency [ www.travel-club.org ]and there it’s the same story. Also the British MBA College in Macedonia is a well respected customer of us. So thank you for your advice as I can read between the lines, have a life, but believe I do not wish this would happen to you. I opened this topic to ask for advice as I want to learn from others and I would love to learn until the day I die. But please stay on topic and refrain concerning about my health please! I am one of the most famous war video journalists and believe or put on your TV, I know about crises! Again Makserver.com is not my income importance but still my responsibility! And I am not like Techbrink hiding my head in the sand! Enough postings from my side; my accounts at BGFWeb, thanks for this forum as I found them here, are working and all is wonderful. I can see the different in their state of their server and the state of techbrinks server. They do have 24/7 “live” support I am happy for now and will take a nice cold glass of beer! Cheers! Peter J Last edited by makhosting; 06-25-2005 at 08:35 AM.



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