Bye bye server4you – a review | Torsten Curdt's weblog

Bye bye server4you – a review

Soon the contract for my dedicated server will run out. I was sharing a server from server4you.de with a few people. But more and more people dropped out and since we could not find people to fill the spot we decided to quit and move somewhere else. Well, that and the incredibly awful service. (Too many stories to tell!) Just to give some examples: When we got the server we wanted to run Debian instead of SuSE. The question whether they could just pop in a CD that we prepare was just refused without giving a reason. So we ended up installing Debian from the swap partition. Yay! But a much worse story is that hey refused to reboot my server when I was down in Australia. I didn’t have the password to the server admin at hand (I left the records in Germany and my parents where on vacation). Due to a special number you cannot even reach the support hotline from abroad. Somehow I worked out a different number and finally talked to them on the phone. So imagine – my server was down. No access to console. No access to the server admin website. I was explaining them the situation. I was able to give ALL my details. Customer number, of course even bank details etc. They still refused to reboot the server. They asked me to fax them a written request for a new admin password. As it was Saturday that would not be processed before Monday. Then they wanted to send me new credentials to my home address. That would have been at least 5 days downtime. The best thing – due to the time difference I was calling 20 minutes before the end of their business day. You know what? They just hung up on me! “Sorry, Sir I cannot help you”. I was almost getting mad. After some “meditation” I worked out the password and was able to reboot the server myself. So the downtime was just half a day. My complaint to the management was left unanswered. After they even f..cked up the billing several times I am soooo happy I finished moving all my service to a different provider yesterday. If you consider server4you – just don’t. They might have a competitive pricing – but it’s just so not worth it.

29. June 2007 | server

Elefsis

I have the same problem with server4you.de. They do not even bother to reply considering that we are 36 hours offline. If you try to call them to find out it will cost you 1.50 usd per minute. KEEP AWAY from SERVER4YOU.DE. They might be cheap initially but if you need their support they will charge you at least 100 USD for something that wont take them more than 10 min to fix. I am on the search for new hosting provider- KEEP AWAY
Elefsis

Very unreliable hosting providers. Our servers are down for the last 36 hours and all they say is that we have to wait. Keep away from this company. Very bad experience especially server4you.de.
james kipling

I had similarly bad experiences with server4you. They don't seem to understand that when you pay $100 per month, you expect to have civilized service. They are arrogant, won't credit downtime and technical support doesn't seem to really read and understand your requests. You have to repeat several times. I cancelled with them but they also make sure that they annoy you with the cancellation process: You have to fax or mail a written notice for what they claim to be legal reasons but that's ridiculous, how do they know it's your signature anyway? You didn't sign anything in the first place. I guess they just do that to make it more difficult to cancel. Very disappointed with both uptime and customer care.
Sam

Oh wow, lucky I read this, was about to order a server from them!
Adriaan Moors

I just had another horror story with server4you. Out of the blue, I got a threatening letter that I had to pay two-year old bill + a 40 EUR fine. I had indeed forgotten to pay the bill, but had in the mean time paid more than 4 later ones without error. They never reminded me -- no email, no note on the later invoices, nothing. Instead, they immediately hired the debt collectors "mediafinanz" who falsely claimed I had ignored several warnings, etc, etc.
Anyway, I have since ended my contract with them.
tcurdt

I am with gandi and slicehost now and are a happy camper. Slicehost even has a real community around it. A friend of mine went gandi and hosteurope. At hosteurope you seem to get a bit more for the money ...and the server is in europe. But not sure about their support.
njappboy

So are you having better luck with gandi.net as your host? I was considering server4u but now I'm thinking twice about the prospect.
tcurdt

Hey, Dpdog. Please read properly. There never was a conversation about any password. (The root password would have been especially silly as support never had that) I asked them to reboot my server after giving them proper authentication over the phone (like you do with banks or mobile carriers). They refused as there was no such process "in the book". This was at a weekend and they stated they would not have the fax available until Monday. And they wanted to send me the password via snail mail. So your "same day" would have been 5 in my calendar. And when the girl from support hangs up on me when I ask for her manager ...well, I am not sure what you consider good customer service - but for me that's the exact opposite of that.
Dpdog

It seems to me like a problem of yours ended up becoming their problem. The issue here is, remember your own password. Remember, S4u is a business like any other. They do not want to provide bad service, and will provide the best service they can (as I have found out). Unfortunately, exchanging root login passwords over the telephone is unsafe and for security reasons I am amazed you even had a conversation with them about it. From what I understand, customer support is every day until 12am in Germany. The fax would have gotten through and you would have gotten your password same day...had you taken the time to fax them what they needed.

nuf said.

Torsten Curdt’s weblog

Bye bye server4you – a review