Here is my rant on eTecc Communications. Skip to the last paragraph to skip all the gory details.
I was hosted at SteadCom since April 3rd, 2010. Except for the two major downtimes, one due to PacificRack and the other due to some sort of network problems, I had a fairly pleasant experience with SteadCom. For $10 per month, I got 40GB disk, 1TB bandwidth, and 768MB memory (with the same in swap) on a Q6600 @ 2.40GHz processor. The benchmark results are somewhere on this blog; just search for steadcom.
What does this have to do with eTecc? Well, eTecc recently acquired all SteadCom VPS customers. Throughout the month, they emailed about 3 times with your standard “our company is the best” message, while reassuring that they will make the migration from SteadCom servers to eTecc servers as ‘seemless’ as possible.
On Wednesday, July 28, I got this email:
ATTENTION! SteadCom servers will be shut down on August 1st, 2010, if not sooner, due to recent datacenter complications on the behalf of SteadCom. Thus, the original migration schedule has been accelerated and we require your immediate attention.
If you should have questions or require assistance during this expedited situation, please do not hestiate to contact us at any time. We are here to help.
The seamless migration of your account from SteadCom servers to eTecc will begin July 27, 2010. This migration has been segmented into several pieces in order to ensure a fluid transition with little to no downtime. Based on the type of account that you have, OpenVZ, XEN, or a shared hosting environment, we have prepared the following schedules. If you need help determining the type of account that you have, please contact support.
(snip)
XEN Based Accounts
A new VPS account will be setup on your behalf, using the same Operating System as your previous system, on eTecc’s enterprise level Parallels Virtuozzo platform as of July 28th, 2010. You will then have the ability to migrate any data or configurations to your new account until SteadCom systems are closed on August 1st, 2010. If you should require assistance in this migration, please do not hesitate to contact eTecc support technicians, we will be happy to help.
Accessing Your Account
In order to access your new account, please login to our Web Site control panel to retrieve your new access credentials. Please note, for some accounts the accounting information was not provided due to SteadCom bookkeeping methods. Thus, those accounts will be prompted to confirm their billing information before access to their new login information is released.
(emphasis mine)
Okay, so I have 3 days before the SteadCom servers goes offline. 3 days notice that my existing server will go offline and that I must *manually* transfer all my data to their new VPS. Why they even bothered calling this a ‘seemless migration’ is way beyond me. “Okay, whatever” I thought. I expected that they would contact me shortly regarding my new VPS server login. Nope. eTecc simply did nothing until I contacted them about my new VPS IP late Thursday.
Even though the email said I can get my server info from the customer control panel, all that is displayed is
To access your IP information, please add a credit card using the “Add Credit Card” link at the bottom of this page.
Meaning, if I wanted my server details, I had to give them my credit card as that was the only option offered. After asking them about payment by paypal did they then give me a subscription button. It was only after I paid and waited for approximately 17 hours did they finally reply with my new VPS IP address, with nothing else; not even a root password for the new VPS. The customer panel still showed the same message about me needing to add a credit card. I guess they don’t consider payment via paypal ‘confirmation of billing information’. /sigh
Now I’m starting to get worried and frustrated. The SteadCom server is supposedly going to shutdown that night. I’ve paid them the amount due, and yet I still haven’t received my server login or any other details other than that my server IP is 68.169.197.152. Their staff was taking their sweet time replying to my tickets and I still have all my data to transfer.
Instead of bothering with this joke of a company, I ordered a new VPS at DamnVPS (ThrustVPS) with instant setup. I then canceled the paypal subscription to eTecc shortly after. Within an hour (faster than their usual support responses), Derek (the president of eTecc) emailed me, asking why I canceled the subscription. Having explained my reasons and my frustration, he kept refusing to refund the $10 that I paid the day before, even though I haven’t even been given the VPS login details other than the VPS IP (meaning, I couldn’t even use the service I paid for). It is now 5 PM Friday, and I’ve still yet to receive the server password for my eTecc VPS, with the SteadCom VPS planned to go down hours later.
However, with my DamnVPS VPS, I’ve recompiled, reconfigured and transferred all my sites from SteadCom to DamnVPS in 2 hours. Had I not moved to DamnVPS, my sites along with all my data would be lost, all thanks to eTecc’s gross incompetence.
TL;DR Version: I would suggest whoever is interested in VPS hosting to not touch eTecc with a 100 feet pole. They failed at every aspect of being a good hosting company. Slow, incompetent support, no service after payment, and their lack of initiative with their customer’s needs. This so-called server migration of theirs simply highlights their sheer lack of competence.
I understand if a host does not give refunds, but honestly, I gave them $10 for absolutely nothing. It’s like going to a coffee shop, paying for your coffee, and all you get is a cup with no coffee. No Refunds? Fine, so long as I get what I paid for. But in this case, it just shows that eTecc is simply nothing more than a scam. You won’t get a server, you’ll get their half assed attempt at giving you a server.
If you need a good budget VPS, get one with Rus at DamnVPS (ThrustVPS). Although I’ve only had this VPS for about a day, I have been on the DamnVPS’s beta and I’m confident the server will be as solid as when I tested it.
I’ve posted this review on WHT.
Ticket contents follows:
