This was posted here http://www.webhostin...d.php?p=7945764
Backstory:
Let me start this off by saying that I was a happy customer for almost a year ... until yesterday.
I've had two Xen VPS packages with ThrustVPS for some time now. The larger "Sky" server was my main server, and the other one was my secondary DNS and whatever else utility host. They have both been perfectly reliable and I haven't had any complaints about the service to this point.
The problem:
On 02/07 at about 9:00 CDT I noticed that the big sky server had gone offline. I opened a ticket (XGV-224614) about it - "since there is no longer a telephone number or live chat for support - and was told the following by Ryan in the billing department:
Quote: It appears that the was an issue on your account with invoices, and as such the payments that you were sending us were not being allocated to any Invoices. I have now manually brought you up to date and have allocated all payments. You should now be up to date on Invoices. If you have any Issues please let me know.
At that point the server was available in the control panel again, so I booted it back up and assumed that everything was back to normal. I was also really happy that Ryan was able to resolve the situation so quickly.
Now ... Fast forward to ~16:00 CDT 02/07 when the VPS goes offline again. I check the control panel again and find that the server is not downed by an admin, but that it's just gone. Only my smaller utility server is listed.
So I go back to the ticketing system and open another ticket (GMQ-449786) since the previous ticket led me to believe the issue had been resolved. In this ticket I'm told the following, again by Ryan in the billing department at 12:20 GMT:
Quote: It appears that the billing system has terminated your VPS, I am not entirely sure why on earth it has done this as you were up to date on the payments. As the VPS has been terminated the only thing that I can do for you would be to recreate the VPS for you. Would you like me to do this for?
I replied to the ticket 15 minutes later asking if there was any way for them (the billing department) to restore the VPS that was deleted. I didn't get a response, despite explicitly asking for one FIVE TIMES in the remaining ~4.5 hours before the billing department closed for the day.
Hoping to find satisfaction - or at least remediation - with the support staff (restoring servers has to be support anyway, right?), I entered another ticket (LFU-337684) at 17:43 GMT to have the server that was erroneously terminated/removed restored to working condition. That ticket was answered by the support staff by assigning it to sales. Naturally, that department seems to work the same hours that billing does, so I won't be hearing from them until at least 3:00 CDT, or 9:00 GMT ... 15 hours later.
This summarizes my experience with ThrustVPS in the last 48 hours. I'm posting this both to serve as an account of my experience with them, and in the hope that someone on staff at ThrustVPS will see this thread and do something other than transfer me to billing and/or sales.
My fully paid VPS has been down for 24 hours through absolutely no fault of my own, yet no one seems to care too much about that. I can't even get anyone to tell me if they can restore the VPS or not.
We waited for a response in hopes that ThrustVps would be able to get our info back.
Then we received this response.
"Sorry for the delay in response, I am afraid that as we are a budget VPS provider we do not take back ups of any of the services that we host. This means that we will not be able to restore any data that has been stored on the VPS. The only thing that I can do for you now would be to recreate the VPS and also offer you 2 months of free service due to the issues that you have received."
We knew at this point that were pretty much screwed. Our response you'll find below.
"Ryan,
Thanks for your reply, and the offer for two months of service at no cost. I hope you'll understand when I say that is not good enough, and state that this experience has made me really uncomfortable with hosting anything with your company in the future.
I registered my first domain and co-located my first server in 1998 or so, so I've been doing this for a while. I understand that I'm responsible for an unmanaged server in the sense that if I break it, I have to fix it.
An example would be if my databases got corrupted to the point that they needed to be restored. I can't expect you (Thrust) to do anything about that since that's not the service that I pay for. So instead I had a cron job that ran every night to take a snapshot of all of the databases on my server and store them in a backup directory so that in the unlikely event that something like that happened, I would be no more than one day behind when I restored.
But what good is that when Thrust has a brain damaged billing system that comes through and completely destroys all of my data, and the backups of that data, for no valid reason?
As you pointed out previously - this was NOT because of anything I did. My account wasn't delinquent. I hadn't violated the T&C that I know of. Basically there was no valid reason for my server to be destroyed ... yet it was. And to add insult to injury - Thrust's position on the matter is basically "Oh well. Tough luck, pal. Even though we deleted your server for no reason, it's your fault that we can't put your data back."
Budget VPS provider or not, that is a steaming heap of bovine excrement, and certainly not any way to run a hosting business.
If my data really is gone forever then I guess there's nothing to do but start over. If you have even the slightest remote possibility of finding it though, I really do think your company owes me that much."
To which we got this response
Hi Samuel,
I have spoken to our senior technical support and I have been informed that we do not have any possible way to recover this data due to us not taking backups as previously mentioned. I do appreciate that this is a very frustrating issue to happen, however we have never had an issue of this severity before hand. Please do accept our apology for the issue that has happened. As previously mentioned I will honor the agreement that was decided should you wish to keep the VPS.
Please let me know how you would like to proceed.
Many Thanks
Ryan Sweetman
Senior Customer Service Admin
Thrust::VPS
Follow us on Twitter : @thrustvps"
We knew at this point we were proper fucked and we began the process of bringing the site back online using the year old data.
But figured for good measure another response was in order.
"I appreciate the response, and the circumstances, but that doesn't bring the data back.
One of my customers is requesting contact information for your legal department. Can you provide that, or tell me where to direct them?
Thanks"
This seemed to rattle their cage a little bit.
"As they are not directly our customer I am afraid that they could not speak to us about the issues that have happened. You are the only customer that we have named on the account so I am afraid that only you are able to talk to us regarding the issues that we have had. I can only apologise again for the issues that have happened. "
Our last response was this.
"Well then provide me with the contact information for your legal department."
We haven't heard anything back from them but they were near closing when that was sent.
We're truly sorry for the way this played out I definitely didn't think that this could happen but it did and we're going to make the best out of it and we've learned from these mistakes. There will not be at the very least weekly local backups of our DB going forward to ensure this never happens again.
If you're a sponsor and your forum is missing please contact me @ admin@dallasimports.net and I will get you taken care of immediately.
Thanks,
Runt
