IPOWER Problems

Let me start off by saying I'm not here to bash this host. I'm here to share my culmination of over 5 years of experience with this company. I want to make fellow webmasters and IT proffesionals who run small buisinesses aware that this provider is in trouble. There is no accountablility at this company, they grew too fast and you are never going to get any sort of "technical help" if your site is down or if your having any problems. What you will get is legions of cut and paste experts reading a scripted dialouge. That being said, lets look at the meat and potaotes of what prompted this post.

Today is 2/2/2006 I have a dedicated server with these people and I am a reseller with over 20 sites hosted with them. The dedicated server went down a day ago, and I have called and spoke with 3-4 "technicians" to get it back up. All they can tell me is they will try to "page" someone to reboot the server and then hang up. I pay $99 a month for this thing and was promised 24/7/365 monitoring.....its false. When one makes the decision to get a dedicated server they do so for reliability issues, I have clients to answer to, what do I? Bottom line. I move my accounts, I learn my lesson. Do not use these folks if you want reliable hosting and solid tech support. They will leave you hangin and not look back. I am totally at these peoples mercy right now and I have clients calling every ten minutes.

The tech guy who works in the dedicated server area actually told me that his day would be good no matter what happened once he got off of work. He honestly did not care and said there was nothing he could do to help...all he could do is send a page to some guy. When asked to speak to a Supervisior I got put back on hold for 20 minutes, after 1 hour of waiting only to find out, "He just walked out"

To make matters worse they changed a bunch of settings and protocols on their shared hosting (cpanel) servers without letting anyone know. This has completely disabled several of my clients ability to send and recive email. They have no answer and I currently have clients going on 1.5 weeks with no email service. Again, no one can tech the issue on their end, they give you cut and paste responses and there s no chain of command you can go through to escalate a problem.

I tell you these things being one of IPOWERS oldest reseller customers. I have had enough success to stay with them over the years but have also had several times like this and the honest truth is they rely on the technology too much. When everything is working well, things are fine. The moment there is an issue, of any sort, they completely fall apart.

If you want more info on any of these claims, or written proof in the form of emails let me know.

sales@causatech.com

Your problem reminds me of Lunarpages. They are just terrible and if you send them an email because you have problem with their server then they answer you after 48 hours. I don't think it's easy to find a good reliable host these days.

Manni

Well, 24/7/365 monitoring doesn't mean 24/7/365 uptime, and I'm assuming they don't specify who will actually be doing the monitoring? Did they say what they'd be monitoring? If they don't specify exactly what they're monitoring. "Monitoring" literally can mean anything.

In all fairness to ipower though (who I've never used), but you get what you pay for. My servers are $269/mo each, and other than one 36hr period where it'd work for coupla hours, then disappear for three or four hours, then work again, then not work again (big network issues that affected, apparently, a whole Class C IP range), I've not had any other issues in 4 years.

I've had sites on Ipower for some six years or so. I've had all sorts of problems. But the worst I think was last June. They were down for 24/48 hours and during that time, G did the crawl and I got delisted. Now I DO NOT know if it was because of the Ipower outage. I do know they had a spam problem, which caused it. I'm still banned and still on Ipower. I want to move. I'm just not sure where to move to.

I also notice that the support people don't even know how to work on an .htaccess file. I had to tell them. Additionally, they added junk to my directory and took othe stuff out ... none of which I'm familiar with. They literally screwed up part of my site.

it seems like ipower has tonnes of customers. i guess their affliate system is working very well... just look at the awards they have won! it appears to be a very reliable host. thanks for the info as I could not believe that ipower support is that ..erm

Well done!

I don't know about hosting...since I run apache on my own machine, but I have my domain registered through them and haven't encountered problems. However, that is the very reason I chose to run my own machine...so if something isn't working right...I don't have to depend on remote technicians who probably aren't as invested in fixing my problem as I would be...

Thank you very much for the info. Was going to host a site on there, now I'll go somewhere else.

I'm on hold with iPower right now. I have several clients that run hosting accounts with iPower. Several have registered domains with no hosting through iPower.

I'm running into trouble with both. Domains registered with iPower are a month later unaccessible. Hosted accounts stop working or the email stops working.

Each call to iPower requires 20-30 minutes on hold. I've reached help desk people on 5 different ocassions that either hung up on me(after simple calm questions) or put me back on hold for another 20-30 minutes as a punishment. Ask for a supervisor (20-30 minutes more hold time).

Who's interested in finding a lawyer for a class action suit?

Through my clients they have a couple dozen hosted plans and a couple hundred registered domains. One help desk rep told me my problems would go away if I upgraded to a dedicated server for $500 per year, after reading this chain that is in doubt(I doubted it originally. If they can't get the basic stuff right, I had no reason to believe they could get the slightly more technical stuff right.)

I'm not a reseller but am an affiliate and have run into dozens of issues on that front with them as well.

I had been hosting my websites and my customer websites on ipowerweb for last 6 years or so. One of the motivation for doing it was the affiliate commission I get for every new hosting I recommened. However I have seen a deterioration in their service level over last one year. Their online support always give blanket statements like 'We will update your problem to our technical department' .. but the action is taken very late .. usually after 48 hours ! think it is happening because of too many customers.

Recently I have been hosting my sites on Godaddy. Though their control panel is not so friendly as that of ipowerweb, their reliablity is much better. And if you buy a domain from godaddy, you can also get an ad supported free hosting. It comes with PHP, MySQL, ASP and free webmail. That is good enough for testing.

Im Back!

The server went down again and no one was there to help (as usual) Im getting used to this every few months.

I wanted to share this info with any perspective new consumers. IPOWERs biggest problem is with billing. They utilize fraudulent billing practices. For instance, they do not send out renew notices and renew any accounts you have automatically. There is no choice to manually renew like most other companies (godaddy)(netsol). They continually bill me for domain that I no longer want to renew then refuse to issue credits. And if they do the credit is often not in the same amount as the charge. What you are left with doing is calling and beggin for help. At the end of the day they cannot be trusted with your credit card. They continually try to renew my server for a 3month period when I pay for 6. Think about that. They wont send confimations of renewals either. I cant complain about overall uptime but their billing is costing me huge money and if there is any investigation or class action it should focus there becasue they are totally trying to get over on each customer.


Ask for help you say? I tryed to get in touch with anyone that was willing to help me. I contacted a senior managment member and look at this email chain.

To: 'Warren Lanier'
Subject: RE: Trey (Incident: 040301-004080)

I am having billing issues and a few other concerns I was looking for help on.

Are you able to help?
--------------------------------------



From: "Warren Lanier" <wlanier@ipowerweb.com>
To:
Sent: 4/5/07 6:05 PM
Subject: RE: Trey (Incident: 040301-004080)

Probably not- as billing is a separate department from mine and they have their own rules and regulations that enable them to address every customer concern on a fair and equitable basis.

Thanks

**note this guy doesnt even give a *plum* a five year customer is trying to go up the chain asking for help, he doesnt even offer to help, at all.

----------------------------------------------------
To: Warren Lanier
Subject: RE: Trey (Incident: 040301-004080)

Thanks.
You must be pretty high up the chain to formulate a response like that.

Yet..knowing you work for the company don't you think you could have atleast offered to pint me in the right direction instead of leaving a 4 year customer out to dry?

Customer service shouldn't be limited to a department.

---------------------------------------------------
Your are welcome.

Perhaps my email was somehow not clear. In my response to your inquiry of my ability to assist you in resolving some issues you are having concerning the billing area of your service; my goal was to point out that I am not able to assist you in rectifying any billing concerns you may have as a result of our billing department having autonomy over all such concerns.

In referencing this observation in my response back to you, my presumption was that you might seek additional assistance from our billing department about your concerns. If I did not convey that directive clearly, please accept my apologies for any confusion or misgivings that may have resulted from this.

Regards

Warren Lanier, Jr.
Marketing Sales Manager-Los Angeles
IPower, Inc.
wlanier@ipowerweb.com

-----------------------------------------------
To: Warren Lanier
Subject: RE: Trey (Incident: 040301-004080)

Even after reading this and realizing that you prefer to create long winded emails, I'm left wondering. Why havent you offered to help, even if you offered to try to have someone in billing contact me or perhaps even giving me a persons number. I honestly think this sense of customer service you present is the worst thing about your company. It bleeds through from tech support to billing, the attitude is, "its not my job!"

Please don’t reply unless you have either a contact number for me or are able to contact someone on my behalf. I have been a customer of IPOWER for about 5 years and don’t want to be patronized.

** I have been trying to get 3 domains refunded for over a month. They have my money and refuse to refund it. The domains are down and not renewed yet they dont credit me. For sure thats against the law?

I think ipower would provide a good service if it wasn't for their lame support. I once got an email that "your problem is being sent to a level 2 expert".
A few days later, i believe a level 72 expert with B-grade armour and S-grade weapons fixed the problem

If you aren't happy with it, then stop griping about them and go get a new host. *duh. causasui, you made your initial complaint over a year ago. If you're still having problems, then it's your bad for not changing them. Complaining here isn't helping anything.

l also dont like overselling web hosts

Well, I finally had it and have moved to another provider (almost complete with transition). My server went down for over a week and I lost a handful of customers because of it. The phones were busy and no tech support was available. I wish I was exaggerating (I have gray hairs to prove I’m not). Finally, I am migrating all of my accounts from IPOWER and just in the nic of time.

Apparently they are merging with another company and will be moving all of their machines to Boston (From AZ and CA) and there is no doubt this will be a disaster of the highest degree. They plan to lay off over 300 people so the support won’t be there either.

They just sent me an email saying they are upgrading their servers and to expect down time for "FALL". They didn’t have a time frame beyond an entire season.

As my company has grown I find I am not able to, in good conscious, offer IPOWER as a solution anymore. They simple grey the company and sold it. The OWEN has a reputation for doing this in other areas...Google it..


If you are thinking about moving hosts, now is the time to do it, things are sure to only spiral downhill from here.

Thomas Gorny, CEO
IPOWER, Inc.