The final straw

**paulocon** · 05-02-2006, 06:12 AM

Just lodged an official complaint on the support desk, a copy of which I am posting here.....

Just a short note to officially make a complaint about the service on Jag over the last few weeks. I have had nothing but trouble especially in relation to email. When it is working, the email is extremely slow (POP3) and times-out more often than not. I have also had problems sending
email and now today, I haven't been able to send a mail in 4 hours (on centuar server).

I have repeatedly been told that there is a problem due to a 'load on the server' but nothing seems to have been done to address this re-occurring issue. Over the weeks the load has been blamed on different things, mainly Exim.

I have had to turn down a few clients because they wanted to migrate hosting and email over to me but I don't have the confidence in your service to do this.

You have offered to change me to another server but at this stage, I have so little confidence in Jag that I feel the work involved in doing so would be better spent migrating to a different hosting company.

I am very disappointed to have to lodge this complaint. The first number of months on Jag went great. Indeed, I was so happy with the service that I upgraded to the Longhorn package so I could take on a few more clients. Unfortunately - since upgrading, the service has gone downhill rapidly.

I would appreciate if you could pass on this complaint to the relevant person.

**Bemoedee** · 05-03-2006, 02:54 PM

It seems to me that they tried to work with you and even offered a solution for you, but rather than work out the kinks, you jump ship. Any hosting you ever have will have kinks. I highly doubt that the Jag staff knew what your problem was and chose to go eat some donuts rather than fix it. They're trying. Technology isn't flawless. Sometimes fixes can take time.

I don't mean to discount your complaint completely, but I feel that posting it publically is simply an attempt on your part to either get attention for yourself or to make Jag look bad. I think submitting it as a ticket was the best thing you could've done. Now you just seem unprofessional and immature.

Jag, apologies if this is inappropriate.

**sadie31** · 05-03-2006, 05:28 PM

I think if leaving Jag would isolate you from the problems you are having, then I would say go ahead. After all, you have to look out for what's best for you and your clients. I think you will find that these problems can occur with any host. Jag isn't perfect and if they claimed to be then I think a lot of faithfull in the forum community would pack up and leave. What I like about tech support at jag is that you get answers from them. They could have easily said, everything is fine, but they didn't!! They gave you an alternative (moving to a different server).

**salewit** · 05-03-2006, 08:31 PM

Well I have to say, while I'm nowhere near the frustration level paulocon is, I too have been noticing LOTS of failures the past 2-3 weeks. In fact, I can't remember the last DAY where there were no timeouts on e-mail or FTP.

And you know those "monitoring" services? Well I signed up for a free one years ago, and I'm getting e-mails daily "Alert: Your site encountered an error". "Notice: Your site is back up.".

Is there something going on with Jag? What scares me the most is that I only check my mail 3 times a day. FTP even less often. So if I'm getting so many server problems in these small windows of time, and the freeby monitor is probably only checking hourly, what's the real picture like? I've got many domains here at Jag and many are "real" e-commerce sites, so every time the system goes down, we lose sales and possibly future business. I know it's the nature of the beast, but it just seems like it's happening with much more frequency than it has in the past.

**Vin DSL** · 05-04-2006, 01:04 AM

Originally Posted by paulocon

You have offered to change me to another server but at this stage, I have so little confidence in Jag that I feel the work involved in doing so would be better spent migrating to a different hosting company...

So, let them switch you...

Look, I suffered through problems on Neutron for 5 months. Finally I had enough and I asked them to switch me to another server. They were all apologetic, and so forth, and switched me to Platinum -- end of problem! Well sort of... I forgot to tell them I had 200,000+ files in one of my sub directories, but they figured it out...

Anyway, my suggestion is to let them switch servers. If that doesn't work out, then pull the plug!

**Vin DSL** · 05-04-2006, 01:06 AM

Originally Posted by Bemoedee

Any hosting you ever have will have kinks...

Exactly!

All you end up doing is trading one set of problems for another...

**Vin DSL** · 05-04-2006, 01:08 AM

Originally Posted by sadie31

I think you will find that these problems can occur with any host...

LoL! Amazing! We are like-minded on this...

**paulocon** · 05-04-2006, 02:26 AM

Hi all,

Just to follow up on this post and sorry for taking so long, It's been a hectic week to say the least.

Firstly, I did log this as a ticket with Jag. In fact I logged a number of tickets that day with Jag, each getting more desperate. Response time was very slow for whatever reason and my post below was borne out of pure frustration (following on from increasingly slow servers and the crash of centuar the previous week).

Bemoedee, I never said they were sitting eating dounuts. My issues were more that there was a huge slowdown on the server each morning European Time and there were consistent issues with timeouts etc. I highly suspect this is due to backups/cron jobs or something of this ilk scheduled for U.S. night-time. I still haven't got a truly satisfactory answer on this.. I also suspect that Jag run pretty much a skeleton staff at night so might not be best suited to European Clients.

In any case, I am looking at other options - something more robust, be it with Jag or (more likely) a local hosting company.

**rainboy** · 05-04-2006, 02:53 AM

paulocon,

I have been with some european providers, and their support

If you are really searching for one, make sure you test them before going with them. Do not only look at the amazing speeds some sales departments can work

If possible ask JPC if they have a possibility to place you on a server with more europeans so that the backups run at a more decent time for you, i am sure that if they hear these more often they might consider it.

Kind regards,
Patrick

**Sara** · 05-04-2006, 09:29 AM

Morning european time would be something like midnight Jag time. Isn't that when some of the backup scripts etc are running? I seem to remember talk about slowdown at that time before.

**sehh** · 05-04-2006, 10:21 AM

Just to add my own experience:

My first hosted account with Jag had the same problems. Server was too slow and as a result email and web connections would frequently time out. After a few months of problems i finaly asked Jag to move me to another server. Those problems are gone now but i now have other problems, MySQL dies with "too many open connections" errors. Not very frequently though.

**Gwaihir** · 05-04-2006, 11:32 AM

Originally Posted by paulocon

I also suspect that Jag run pretty much a skeleton staff at night so might not be best suited to European Clients.

Yeah, something like that. It seems at night there's mainly external techs handling the tickets with not a lot of Jag-savyness. I've also noticed a too high percentage of these folk doesn't escalate problems properly to core staff. I suppose they think it makes them look bad or something, when they can't get it done by themselves.

I've myself found that such techs are excellent for the small or quick 24/7 troubleshooting, but can be a real pain in the b#$ when you have a problem that's not so easy to fix (non-standard, if you will).

I've been very frustrated about this a few times, also up to the point of not understanding how anyone could praise Jag / Jag support so highly, till I figured out the "hidden manual page": some matters you just need to bring up during "real" Texas business hours, not on weekends or (their) nights. During business hours, I've found techs to either solve my problem, or patch me through to the guy in charge on a matter after a maximum of one "lost iteration".

So, you would probably get the deserved attention for the matter by updating the ticket a bit later in your day, even though the problem is not really showing during that time.

Come to think of it; last time I hit the wall (i.e. before figuring out the above solution to bypass the night staff when necessary), it was also about those back-ups and it went much like what you describe. I ended up forwarding ticket numbers to Jag himself and was also very close to leaving, before it finally got resolved.

Contrary to suggestions from others, I advise you NOT to accept a server move for this, unless they can tell you exactly why that would make sense. I don't see a point in moving off a six month old machine over poorly configured back-ups. It can very well be the same at the next machine and simply needs to be fixed anyway. To me it also happened on a relatively new machine, after two or three months, IIRC. Looks like those back-ups need a good check up by the time a machine gets well filled (with both data and visitors).

**Vin DSL** · 05-04-2006, 07:07 PM

Originally Posted by Gwaihir

I've been very frustrated about this a few times, also up to the point of not understanding how anyone could praise Jag / Jag support so highly, till I figured out the "hidden manual page": some matters you just need to bring up during "real" Texas business hours, not on weekends or (their) nights...

And... and... and...

DO NOT submit multiple problems/requests in a single ticket!

For instance, let's say you have three issues that need to be fixed. You should submit three tickets! If you don't -- and JagPC is NOT unique in this -- often one problem will get fixed and the others are ignored or forgotten about...

**rainboy** · 05-05-2006, 12:13 AM

Wow, for once i can agree on Vin, thats true, even while the questions are related you better ask first one question, and then the next one. Sad but true. And most certainly JPC is not unique in this, i even found they did it better as some others

But then, if you see some tickets they are really confusing, with texts like : "I have a problem with my server, it does not show something" or "I expected it to work but it doesn't please fix"

Now i can do a lot, but mind reading isn't part of it, still searching for a good course

Kind regards,
Patrick