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God bless the “Teal” server, I wrote in an email to one of Arvixe Technical Operations Officer, but my appreciation was only a sign of frustration. Ride with me as I share with you, our devastating experience with Arvixe Web Host.
On the day we celebrated a successful re-branding of our blog, TechRez successfully sat on Arvixe host and this was due to my complete trust on the company. I had received three separate mails from my friends, whom I recommended Arvixe web host. Content of each emails were clear; they have been raped by Arvixe and it was all my fault.
I have never seen Arvixe go out of stock. Each time you want to buy a hosting plan, they is always a server for you. Shouldn’t that cast a doubt in one’s mind? Arvixe servers are old but the company would rather force you to buy their hosting plan with advertisement, instead of creating new servers. – Nosa Ero Nosa
How would I know that I was only lucky to be given the “Teal” server on Arvixe? The “Teal” server is a shared hosting server that the previous blog sat comfortably on. My thought pattern was that, every other server on Arvixe would be optimized for performance and speed as the “Teal” server was designed
Obviously, I was wrong. My friend’s complain that I am too emotional and I put in so much emotion into this blog. For this reason, a decision to get Arvixe Business ClassPro was reached. Our new blog was launched on the Business ClassPro, specifically on Hedgehog server.
This is an extract of one of the mails from my friend. He was lucky to have recovered some part of his websites.
Their entire server hosting my account crashed, lost all my database and I initially complained to them about server overload; 503 error, they didn’t listen. I would not have portion of my website today if not for 19th of March backup I did manually. After then, my site was hacked. F— that host, my website crises started from Arvixe, took them 6 days to take my advice of consolidating my site. They said it was rare, and that they were sorry, they didn’t even bother to bring the site back. I have asked them to refund my money. – Clarke Gilbert
We successfully migrated the old blog from “Teal” server to “Hedgehog” server and work on the design started immediately. However, most of the time when we accessed the server’s Cpanel, we saw 100% CPU usage, causing the blog’s load time to be more disgraceful than a snail’s locomotion. We even lost connection from the blog and server on several occasion. Initially, I thought the culprit was our new theme, but after several email exchange with our Egyptian developers, there was confirmation that the blog code’s were completely light-weight and ran effectively on other servers I was privileged to test.
We decided to launch the blog while we constantly monitored the performance. The problem didn’t stop; we were getting minimal traffic so the ideal of “too much traffic” was completely ruled out.
No day goes by without having two or three chat sessions with Arvixe Live Chat. Most times, when I request for a Live Chat, I do forget I had initiated a session with their support staff. It takes forever to get someone to talk to, and when you finally get a reply, the chat sessions are annoying at best. You send a message and you get a reply after five minutes.. WTF!!!
Also See: Count-down 190 days – Arvixe Support is Dead
In a separate chat session, one of the staffs said a VPS could be the solution. I agreed because I thought they were going to just convert my Business ClassPro to VPSClass. To my bewilderment and utmost dissatisfaction, that was largely not the case, I got the email that sent shock-waves through my veins. I had to purchase a new VPSClass, just one week after using Arivixe Business ClassPro.
Meanwhile, this is an extract of one of the mails I received from another friend I had recommend Arvixe.
Arvixe has one of the poorest and technically inept support staffs, with lack of indept knowledge about hosting. It always took them days to respond to mails and I had to manually configure the VPS myself. They always have problems with database connectivity. Simply put, Arvixe was a nightmare. I am currently enjoying life at Site5.com – Samuel Bruss
Your VPSClass Has Been Provisioned
48-hours after I paid for Arvixe VPSClass, it was provisioned and I was particularly excited because, in my mind, I thought it would completely put to end, days of frustration. Again, I was entirely wrong! I have been fooled; I wrote in an email to Clarke Gilbert, nothing has changed and the blog was becoming the benchmark of mediocrity.
I would never forget June 9; a never-again-to-be-duplicated-event that raised my frustration level to the very limit. I had just spent hours crafting the far-famed article; How Chinese Students Are Using Hi-Tech To Cheat In Examinations and published. Immediately, the blog disappeared from the internet and gave me the infamous “error establishing database connection” for three hours. I contacted Live Chat again, I mean, we were already best friends, since it was my duty to always have Arvixe.com loaded on my browser so I could easily contact them.
Also See: Count-down 190 days – Arvixe Support is Dead
Meanwhile, I had told them on three occasion, that I always got that infamous error which lasted 2-5 minutes, but the response was the same – Contact us whenever you notice this problem and we will fix it.
Multiple screenshots of Arvixe database error
I did, but they saw it as not important until the problem degenerated to the 3-hours error. I contacted Live Chat, a junior officer promised to escalate the issue, and he did. I waited but got no reply from a so-called “escalated” ticket. Using my little knowledge on web hosting, I temporarily fixed the ridiculous problem myself! Yes, I did – only to get a reply from the so-called “escalated” ticket the next day.
What did I get as a gift? Arvixe asked me to upgrade for the third time in one month, they wanted me to get more memory because in their mediocre mentality, I was a cash cow.
That was the height of all embarrassment, not excluding the constant messages I got from readers about daily multiple downtime, all because I deliberately decided not to leave Arvxie. Unaware to me, Arvixe left me a long time ago.
Arvixe literally told me to “Go and Die”, but I chose to live and facilitated the migration of our blog to a new host. I didn’t ask for any refund while the problem persisted, until I got to a level where my so-called tolerance became a curse.
One of the mails I sent that broke the heart of Arvixe.
I later initiated the refund process for my Business ClassPro, VPS plan, as well as a recently billed Personal Pro plan. When the company saw I was leaving, they decided to offer for FREE, a second month $50 VPS hosting plan where they claimed, they would address all my problems. Like you would expect from a friend like me, I politely rejected their offer.
Final Thoughts
A tempting offer, but was quickly and politely rejected.
I do not deliberately set out to write ill of Arvixe, anyone who reads this would know that I had the highest level of tolerance with a company who has notoriously changed her philosophy of dealing with customers and addressing critical technical issues. Incredible as it stands, I do not have a track-record of ill-writing, but Arvixe should have known that when dealing with people, they aren’t just dealing with a creature of logic, they are dealing with creatures of emotions, creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride. A good web host shows her greatness by the way she treat little customers.
The post This Is How Arvixe Is Telling Her Customers To “GO and Die” appeared first on TechRez - Nigeria's Leading Tech Blog.