[Shiro]

So I got kicked off of Fused Hosting yesterday for asking for support at an inopportune time (1am sunday night their time). It was screwed right up. I was seriously shocked. I really liked them at first, and the service was great, but in the last six months it's come with a bit of attitude each time I've asked for help, like I was doing them a disservice by asking for help.

Now some of you may remember, I went through a bad time with first Bluehost, then Cirtex a year ago, which lead me to pick Fused. They had really good reviews. And for the first while, they lived up to their reviews, I was honestly happy. But I think the guy running the place (who seems to do it all by himself, as all emails come from him, and occasionally one of his underlings) must be getting tired and stressed out, because they've lost that edge. He actually swore at me!

Now, I'm the kind of person that figures if someone keeps having the same problem with different people/companies, the problem probably partially lies with them. And I've really reflected on this, but I don't think that I did anything wrong this time.

Anyways, here is the transcript of my help thread today - tell me what you guys think - was I an asshole here? (sorry, its a big long)

Jay Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 2:43 AM
I'm trying to run a Cron job on my site jaypan.com. However, it appears that Cron has been running for a few hours. I am trying to convert a few videos by ffmpeg, but I don't think that it should take that long. But maybe it should? I don't know how long ffmpeg takes, though I do know that it's quite processor intensive.

Can you take a look into it for me? Thank you.


Jay Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 3:03 AM
Also, I changed my email address in my cpanel, but it doesn't seem to be reflected here on the ticket side of the site. How can I change it over here as well?


Jay Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 4:35 AM
Any thoughts on this?


David McKendrick Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 5:03 AM
You should probably kill the process and figure out what's wrong, first of all.
Note that it's skyrocketing your cpu usage and will rather quickly result in suspension.

--
David McKendrick
Fused Network Founder & CEO


Jay Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 5:17 AM
I would like to kill the process, but I don't know how - that's why I contacted you!

Jay Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 6:20 AM
I have to be honest here, I switched to Fused a year ago, because of the rave reviews on customer service. My last two companies were absolute garbage. They were cheaper and offered much more bandwidth, more databases, subdomains, and storage, but the service was crap. For the first half a year or so with fused, the service was great - prompt, friendly and always to the point. But recently I've noticed a drop in service quality. It seems to be slower and not as friendly, sometimes with a bit of attitude. I asked for a quote for my company a few weeks ago, and it took so long that someone else eventually went around me and got another quote which made me look bad. And in this situation here, I was told the problem, and was semi-threatened with being cutoff, all without being given the help that I was looking for, and its been over three hours already. On top of that, no mention was made whatsoever of how I can change my email address on this side of the site which I already asked for.

I was willing to pay more for fused for the customer service, but if the level of customer service drops, then I have to wonder what I am paying for - I can get of everything else at a different company.

I'm not saying this as a threat that I'm ready to leave just yet - I just signed up for another years hosting a couple of weeks ago - but I want you to know my frustration, so that you guys can maybe try to identify what the problem is recently and work on it. I would much rather stay with fused at the level of service I used to get a year ago, then have to go look for another company.

In the meantime, how can I kill this response - it's obviously not good for you guys, and it's not good for me either.


David McKendrick Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 6:24 AM
I've suspended the processes & related account.
Where shall I send your backup?

--
David McKendrick
Fused Network Founder & CEO


Jay Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 6:30 AM
Do you mean you are cutting me off?


David McKendrick Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 6:32 AM
Yes'sir. Not to be critical, in reverse, but 'three hours' re: cron
fuck-up @ 1am is rather standard. Don't screw up cron-jobs on a Sunday
night and expect immediate results.

I've got your backup prepared, where shall I send it? We'll refund any
unused payment in full.

--
David McKendrick
Fused Network Founder & CEO


Jay Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 6:39 AM
I honestly am shocked. And I am willing switch companies if you insist. It's not Sunday night where I am, it's Monday afternoon. Having some staff on at night to take care of these problems would probably be the best bet. And I've been working on my site all weekend trying to get it going - I don't have time to do it during the week. I had no idea that this cron job was going to work out this way - had I known, I wouldn't have done it.

Now, I appreciate that you are obviously frustrated, but please, try to be professional about this and put my sites up and give me a day or two to figure out who and where I am going to switch to. I have always tried to be polite to you, and I have always made a point to say thank you when receiving help. I have recommended you to both my company and friends. I would at least like to receive the courtesy of being given time to pack up and move out before being kicked out.


David McKendrick Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 6:42 AM
Unsuspended, notify me when you've completed the migration.

--
David McKendrick
Fused Network Founder & CEO


David McKendrick Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 6:43 AM
And really, seriously?

[note from Shiro: 3 cron processes removed - I didn't want to post them in this thread]


--
David McKendrick
Fused Network Founder & CEO


Jay Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 6:43 AM
Thank you sir. I'm on it right now.


David McKendrick Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 6:46 AM
And remember, you can leave the 'I pissed off David because of dipshit
crons at 2am on a Monday morning (Or 3PM, Japan time) after a year of
faultless service' review here:

Add Review - Hosting Reviews at Hostjury
You are also free to note that I'm rather blunt, an asshole, and jerk,
too. Admittedly I'm far too proud of the latter.

--
David McKendrick
Fused Network Founder & CEO


Jay Posted On: 23 Nov 2009 8:11 AM
That's not really my style. All I want is to host my sites, and get help when I need it. I'm not the type to go complaining on the net.

I apologize for having asked for support at a time that was inconvenient for you. I wish you luck with your business, and I thank you for being professional and giving me a couple of days to get my affairs sorted out to switch over to another company.

Admittedly, I was bullshitting in my last comment (as I am very obviously complaining right here!), but I didn't want him to cut me off before I could get my sites transferred!

Anyways, as an update (I typed this as a draft last night), he did apologize to me a few hours later. He said it was a long day and bad timing, and the apology came off as being sincere. But I have already switched all my sites to a new company and even had I not, I don't really want to risk that happening again in the future.

I think that the problem with fused is that the boss is doing all the support and customer service. So if there is a problem, there is no one to take the problem to - he is already the boss. And he is obviously willing to cut people off if he decides he doesn't like them, and that just doesn't bode well for me as a client who needs support at times. I'm a software guy - not a hardware guy. I don't know server management very well, which is why I asked for support in the first place. But I didn't get it, quite the opposite really.

So over all, I would have to say from my year of using Fused:
1) hardware - mostly good. For the better part of the year, my site was always up and running, though I did have one bad patch for a few weeks where my forum kept going down and they had to keep fixing some unknown (to me) problem. They also did some upgrades a few times which caused my sites to crash, but helped me fix the problems quickly enough.
2) cost - reasonable. More expensive than one of those unlimited everything hosts, but they don't appear to resell, and the speeds are fast. The prices weren't ridiculously high, but they are higher.
3) service - what can I say. For the first six months - very friendly and very prompt. For the last six months - very prompt, not as friendly. For the last day - slow and very unfriendly to the point of actual hostility.

I wouldn't go with them again myself, and I would like to think this is an isolated incident, though I did read this review on a different site (second post):

Worst Host Ever

Horrible attitude. One of the worst hosts I have ever dealt with. Very unprofessional. Instead of being understanding when I contacted them after finding my site down with a "bandwidth exceeded" and no warning that it was coming up on exceeding, i get yelled at and sworn at and my account killed.

They are horrible, pathetic hosts and I would recommend everyone avoid them like the plague.

So my incident obviously isn't isolated.

[Shiro]

Gotta love DT google bomb - this thread is already #4 for 'fused hosting review' on Google. Crazy.

[solarisedesign]

Heh. Always good reading a "poor service" rant email.

That's why I never went down the road of offering hosting with web design services - web hosting is a 24 hour, 7 day a week business (especially given that you'll be dealing with worldwide timezones unless you limit it to one country)

If you're not able to provide the support required to manage such a business, then you should be prepared for requests at all hours and, yeah, the stress that comes with it.

I guess he probably was just in a bad mood though, but that doesn't reflect well on the business. The hosting company I'm with have always provided me with excellent customer service, replying sometimes within minutes, any hour of the day, and that's one of the main reasons I've stuck with them.

[freelancr]

I know you have already moved hosts, but some of this might be useful to other people that find this post...

An awful lot of companies out there are "bedroom hosts", so they don't have the resources to provide good service or support - and you have no way of knowing before you go with them. These are the hosts that tend to be good in the early days, but if they have too many customers for one person to deal with and don't earn enough money to employ some staff, then that is when things go down hill.

But another problem is when a host has "too many" customers, the sort of cunts like UK2/Fasthosts/1and1. They pile as many users as they possibly can onto ancient hardware and employ call centre staff for peanuts - pay peanuts and you get monkeys.

If you were looking for a UK host I would recommend tsohost. They provide clustered hosting, similar to Rackspace Cloud, but much cheaper. No matter what time of day they respond to email tickets in under 5 minutes, and if you call them a knowledgeable human being will answer the phone within a few rings. Load Balanced Clustered Web Hosting from Tsohost

Personally I haven't had any problems with Dreamhost, if you are looking for a cheap US host, and they do let you have a fair bit of control over your hosting.

Media Temple receives a lot of love from designers, but I think its because their brand has a "cool" image (much like Apple) rather than a superior service.

If you are looking for a very good US host, then Rackspace is just about the best you can go for. They have recently aquired Mosso, and are now operating as Rackspace Cloud. Cloud Sites - Cloud Hosting with the Power of Cloud Computing

[Shiro]

I picked up another host already. I'm quite happy with them so far, though of course it's only been a few days. I was also extremely happy with Fused for the first 6 months.

Fused is most definitely not a bedroom operation, they are an actual company that is running their own servers. And their servers are good, I had no problems with speed or reliability the whole time. And as I say, during the one short spurt when I did have problems, they took care of the problem very quickly.

The root of the problem that I see here, is that the owner is also the customer support and tech guy. On one hand, this is great, because it means everything goes through one guy instead of dealing with non-communicating teams like in bigger companies. But the downside is that there is that if he gets frustrated, he can just cut you off and there is no one to complain to - he is the boss!

Working in support, or really with customers of any kind, is a frustrating job at times, as any of us who deal with customers know, (which is pretty much all of us on this site). I'm sure some of the questions I asked him at times came across as annoying and were those facepalm/*sigh* moments to him. I'm not a server guy - I only understand them slightly at best. And it can be frustrating as hell to have to deal with people like me sometimes when you know what you are doing and they don't know anything. But generally, the person dealing with customers will not snap at the customers out of fear of being fired, or if they do, they may get fired. But when the boss is the one dealing with customers exclusively, there is no buffer, and no fear of fired. This does not bode well for customer service, as I discovered the hard way.

I have no idea if fused will see this or even care (my last attempt at trying to bring a problem to light resulted in getting kicked off their servers in a matter of five minutes). But hopefully they will, and will come up with a means of dealing with these problems so that other customers won't end up in the same position I did.

[hawken]

sounds like a proper cunt that David McKendrick Fused Network Founder & CEO

At best he's just the CEO of "fuck you". IMHO he was really rude to you, didn't answer any of your questions and probably has a micro penis.

I use nearlyfreespeach for all my hosting. No downtime, no customer service either. Only pay what you get for.

[ian]

Am impressed with your restraint and being professional at all times, I would have lost it at some stage and told him as much, although I appreciate that you wanted to ensure you had time to switch hosts and all that.

What a crap attitude to have towards his customers though. Bizarre.

[Shiro]

Well, on one hand I was keeping it professional, but on the other hand, I posted it here!

[Rotuy]

It's not just what he did, it's the way that he replied. It's like he's talking to you as if he's replying to one of his friends - so casual. There's no professional or comforting feel to any of his replies, which is what you expect from ANY company that provides a paying service. Even if what they are telling you is bad news.

Fucker.

[Klang]

It says on their site that they offer '24/7 support' and are 'flexible' clearly neither are the case. If you're going to promote yourself as a business to business service to a world wide market you should be available at all times and professional at all times.

[Shiro]

This is interesting - I searched for this page on google yesterday - number four. Today I can't even get it when searching google, with this site specified as the site to search.

Can companies get pages removed from google?

[hawken]

Murdoch can

[ian]

Originally Posted by Shiro

Well, on one hand I was keeping it professional, but on the other hand, I posted it here!

Ha, true!

[DKuntz2]

Well actually, he can only remove his companies websites, and their subsidiaries, but not other people's.

But I laughed when I read that.

[hawken]

anyone can remove their site from google. Not sure why they would want to.

Wordpress even asks you if you'd like to keep out of google when you set it up.

[b.]

It's #7 for me.

[DKuntz2]

You would do it because microsoft is paying you large sums of money to have it only on bing.

[yangyang]

Is this fused hosting or fused network? Kind of confusing. The OP mentioned it as fused hosting, but then the David had a message signature of "Fused Network Founder & CEO"?

fusedhosting.net
fusednetwork.com

?

[hawken]

con-fused

[DKuntz2]

They're different. Network has been around since 2001, Hosting has been around since 2006 (see, looking at footers has proven useful)