View Full Version : My (white label) hoster has had a spat with Heart
Who seem to have suspended the account
His attitude seemed very unprofessional to me - oh yeah I in an argument with them etc.
So down goes the email and website
If he does not sort out the spat over a bill or something then how long might it take me to get the domain shifted to another account
minutes? indefinite?
lesson learned, don't go with a reseller.
nickjohnston
4th June 2010, 16:26
Suggest that you get in urgent contact with Heart. The process of transferring a domain to a new provider typically takes around a week, but they may not let it go that easily if the white label account is in trouble...
JoomGuru
4th June 2010, 17:15
Nicks right, the HP will generally avoid getting involved with the Resellers customers.
1] do you have a back up of your site?
2] do you have the domain parked anywhere else and just pointing at the heart reseller?
if the answer to both of those is YES, then you can be up and running in 48 hours or less on another host. Let me know and I can sort it.
KM-Tiger
4th June 2010, 18:01
lesson learned, don't go with a reseller.
Must agree, this white-label stuff is asking for trouble, as you are putting a layer you don't want between you and whoever can really solve the problem when something goes wrong.
On another tack I have a client who ignored my advice and bought a broadband connection from a reseller of a reseller. The connection is carp, but nobody has a clue as to what to do about it, and the reseller's reseller won't talk to me as I am not the reseller.
Meanwhile the client's business suffers.
JoomGuru
4th June 2010, 18:06
Must agree, this white-label stuff is asking for trouble, as you are putting a layer you don't want between you and whoever can really solve the problem when something goes wrong.
On another tack I have a client who ignored my advice and bought a broadband connection from a reseller of a reseller. The connection is carp, but nobody has a clue as to what to do about it, and the reseller's reseller won't talk to me as I am not the reseller.
Meanwhile the client's business suffers.
He just needs to ask his reseller for a MAC code which must be supplied within 5 working days. If nothing happens report it to Ofcom and then it will go up the line to the ISP and bingo, you have your MAC code and can go where you want.
Bye the way, not all broadband resellers are bad - I have been doing it for 6 years now and I still have original clients from day one.
mattsaw
4th June 2010, 18:09
Why not contact Heart directly and get them to take over your account? Since they already have all of our files and the domain DNS is pointed there they should be able to get you up and running in minutes.
KM-Tiger
4th June 2010, 18:14
Bye the way, not all broadband resellers are bad - I have been doing it for 6 years now and I still have original clients from day one.
Ok, so how does your end to end support work?
If I was a customer and could show you nearly 10% upstream packet loss, how would you deal with that?
JoomGuru
4th June 2010, 18:34
I would be looking at what you were running on your PC in background, as all my customers are on a 2-1 contention ratio on the premium lines there is rarely an issue however there are lots of reasons for packet loss,
We don't supply the routers but would look at that aspect closely. Certainly I would be considering setting the QoS if it wasn't setup. If it looked like the latency was in the connection I would organise a line test and based on the results I would either talk to my ISP tech department or make a direct call to BT and organise a fix.
Invariably from declaring a fault to fixing it with BT there is never a delay longer than a few hours. Even after they have replied with a NO fault found'.
I should say that 95% of my customers are home users so have no issues with upstream as they are unlikely to use VOIP which is where the main problem lies.
I'm not on here to defend resellers I just think sweeping statements are unnecessary. The reseller can often provide much faster more local support than the ISP and whilst it is putting an extra layer between the user and the ISO, that is often beneficial to the User.
Why not contact Heart directly and get them to take over your account? Since they already have all of our files and the domain DNS is pointed there they should be able to get you up and running in minutes.
Ah if only it was possible they do not work like that and cannot which I understand and I even have my own heart white label account but do not sell on.
They cannot just listen to what I say and say okay mate we will swap it.
Even if you transfer a domain within heart with agreement from the current white label guy to yours - everything gets stripped back to nothing and the data is gone - even if you both want it transferred fully working as is - they will not do it.
If you provide a log in to the account before and after transfer - then they will as a paid service since that ticks the "the correct" (legal) way to do it and my guess is that they do actually log in before and after to handle the data transfer
Carl-CSNM
4th June 2010, 21:05
Do you have a backup of your website and do you have control of the domain name (i.e. is it registered to you)?
No a very recent back up - not what I was paying for though I did used to do it just in case about once every 3 months
The domain does belong to me and so I can with time get that back
It is the email being down and loss of email across the business that will be a bigger issue.
It was all on IMAP
He seems to have paid his bill but now everything seems to just be set back to day 0 - so a holding website page etc
I'm not familiar with Heart, but your old email should still be there. Maybe even the email received whilst the web service was suspended could be there.
Next step: move to a reliable, self sufficient provider.
I recommend Kualo for smaller hosting accounts.
JoomGuru
5th June 2010, 10:03
Page
He's not with Namesco is he? thats how they work.
Do yourself a favour. Move your domain to someone like 1&1 and then get the nameservers pointed to your hosting platform wherever it is, and then when you reconstitute your site you need to keep a regular backup of it.
This is good advice to everyone - keep your domains pointed at your hosting NEVER with the hosting.
You will have lost all your statistics as well - bummer!
No he is with Heart
Well we live and we learn and have to start somewhere - and to be honest it was a good start
It is irrelevant now but the guy that I took the hosting on with and with whom I was happy and had confidence in passed it on to someone else and without telling me and I assume anyone else on the account. I suppose like selling a business on - no reason for the customer to know.
webhostuk
5th June 2010, 10:54
No a very recent back up - not what I was paying for though I did used to do it just in case about once every 3 months
The domain does belong to me and so I can with time get that back
It is the email being down and loss of email across the business that will be a bigger issue.
It was all on IMAP
He seems to have paid his bill but now everything seems to just be set back to day 0 - so a holding website page etc
In this case I will suggest why don't you directly buy a hosting for your domain from the hosting provider itself to avoid such problems in future.
sanjiv
5th June 2010, 11:33
In this case I will suggest why don't you directly buy a hosting for your domain from the hosting provider itself to avoid such problems in future.
He may not have known it was a reseller.
titanlee
5th June 2010, 14:44
This is good advice to everyone - keep your domains pointed at your hosting NEVER with the hosting.
Hallo ! Don't flame me, but I don't agree with that statement. There are many benefits to having both domains and hosting with one company; in this case a falling out is about the only reason I can think of for not doing so.
I'll agree that if you go via a reseller then it could amplify the issue; however hosting companies should not *ever* fall out with their customers; we're talking about a professional customer/supplier relationship. In any event domain registrars will quite happily retrieve a domain from a hosting company back to the legal owner, even if there are disputes of unpaid bills etc.
Sounds like a risk associated with reselling. However I'd be quick to point out that "bad" resellers are surely in the majority. We've never had any issues with resellers in the past, much the opposite.
JoomGuru
5th June 2010, 14:53
Hallo ! Don't flame me, but I don't agree with that statement. There are many benefits to having both domains and hosting with one company; in this case a falling out is about the only reason I can think of for not doing so.
I'll agree that if you go via a reseller then it could amplify the issue; however hosting companies should not *ever* fall out with their customers; we're talking about a professional customer/supplier relationship. In any event domain registrars will quite happily retrieve a domain from a hosting company back to the legal owner, even if there are disputes of unpaid bills etc.
Sounds like a risk associated with reselling. However I'd be quick to point out that "bad" resellers are surely in the majority. We've never had any issues with resellers in the past, much the opposite.
HaHa! I'm not into flaming but, its an interesting viewpoint because we have had similar discussions on different forums.
The reason for hosting at one point and holding the domain at another is that there is NEVER an opportunity for you to be held to ransom by a Hosting company.
Admittedly, its open to abuse, but in my experience and I run about 150 sites now it provides a cushion of comfort to my customers for them to know that whilst I can take care of their sites, they can hold onto their domains.
True enough many of them decide that I should be entrusted with their domains too, so I keep the domains hosted separately to my platforms and then change their nameservers to point at my servers.
At any time in the future they can reclaim their domains, or move them without my permission to anyone else. It suits me because nobody can say my clients are trapped with my services.
Its a selling point, and its very effective as it shows confidence and above board operating techniques.
There is one other thing. If I am going to be responsible for paying for the domain renewals I keep hold of the domain. If the customer wants to manage their own renewals, then I pass it to them.
He may not have known it was a reseller.
No and at the time I did not even know what a reseller was or anything about domains etc.
The arrangement has worked well for me until Friday.
None of us are born experts nor can we know everything about all areas and eve n then the experts have differing opinions.
I am still on the case and have some hope of resolving by Monday
stugster
6th June 2010, 09:35
The issue is obviously with the reseller of Heart. It's up to him to provide you the service, he's not doing it.
What company is it? Why did you chose him? What can you learn from these bad business decisions?
The issue is obviously with the reseller of Heart. It's up to him to provide you the service, he's not doing it.
What company is it? Why did you chose him? What can you learn from these bad business decisions?
Ah someone who thinks like me - not just the immediate problem but the learning and improvements. Plan - review - plan.
As I said before it was a good decision that has worked well for me in the past.
Learnt a bit but no regrets on this one - we cannot know or do or prepare for it all.
It is that question of hitting the balance between research/planning and making stuff happen.
Then sometimes good and bad luck kick in. I also try to distinguish between the decision and the result.
With hindsight I can sometimes see good results but that actually came from bad decisions (once I had more knowledge etc) just that that time I got lucky.
And the reverse of course.
Keeps it interesting
stugster
6th June 2010, 14:02
Yup, just learn from it.
Put in a few processes that stop this happening again. Having your domain on a separate system will allow you to change nameservers/dns records if things like this happen in the future.
If your site isn't updated regularly, have fortnightly backups, if it's regularly updated make daily backups.
Put a plan in place for what you're going to do should the site disappear and the host doesn't help. Have that procedure written down 1) Sign up to xyz.com, 2) upload .tar.gz of site, 3) update dns.
Stress is reduced, you're happier, and you don't waste even more time asking people for assistance :)
For those that are following this thread - the conclusion - I hope anyway
Everything is going to be transferred to my own Heart account and they are going to sort out the data restore for £25 per domain.
Hopefully sorted by tomorrow morning.
Thanks to people for their advice and comments - it helps in situations like these since you get knowledge and input and ideas from others
titanlee
6th June 2010, 22:19
For those that are following this thread - the conclusion - I hope anyway
Everything is going to be transferred to my own Heart account and they are going to sort out the data restore for £25 per domain.
Hopefully sorted by tomorrow morning.
Thanks to people for their advice and comments - it helps in situations like these since you get knowledge and input and ideas from others
You make it sound like thats a great outcome, er.. I think not. Heart should be glad that they are effectively gaining a new customer, not charging you for restores. Still, I suppose its a small price to pay if it means you're back up and running again.
Heart have no obligation to the OP, I'd say it's as best a result as could've been gotten.
MASSEY
6th June 2010, 22:51
This is why you never host and domain with the same comp.
I said this before and got a load of "by law they have to transfer" blah blah but here is another situation of time wasted and £25 per domain :eek:.
Their gonna splash out on this years christmas party.
Esk247
6th June 2010, 23:47
well Heart can't be expected to do it free surely? this will take them some time to sort out and will have to be recorded on paper that they are taking it over..that costs time and therefore cash.
i tried with the whole reselling thing but if you ever have a problem with a customers website it can take you twice as long to sort out as they have to phone you and then you have to see whats wrong then contact the actual host then you have to get back to the customer..bleh!...i can setup hosting for my customers if they don't have a clue but i give them a sheet with all of the contact details of the hosting company should they have a nightmare. if they dont get anywhere then they can contact me and i'll ask on the forums.
i was looking in to running my own servers but again, the customer service aspect is a nightmare, you have to be a superb hosting company to keep your customers happy and its not worth the hassle of the reselling, i leave that to the hosting companies, its there product.
titanlee
7th June 2010, 01:34
Well, maybe. All I'm saying is that from personal experience we wouldn't aim to make charges against a customer in such a situation. If the customer has been let down by a reseller they are probably stressed enough as it is. Opportunity here to bail them out for no cost and its things like that which would be remembered.
I had a sales enquiry today from an ex-customer of around 4 years ago! He left the company that hosted with us but remembered the service. Now he needs hosting himself he came knocking. Takes good efforts to earn that kind of loyalty and starting off by making a charge for something which is probably still on their servers (the accounts were suspended, right? Most hosts wouldn't delete accounts for quite some time) just seems to set off on the wrong foot.
Well the outcome has not been good.
Heart do not seem to keep any historical backups of email only one which then gets overwritten each time they back up and all our email on all accounts was on IMAP so it has all gone
And the last backup they made was just after the account had been scrubbed so all the emails were empty.
I estimate this mess will cost me about £750 plus or minus £250 in time and lost income and lost data hassles - but just possibly a lot higher
Oh the joys.
Interestingly they offer no telephone support - quite common - but even if you want to pay for it the answer is no
So something that should have taken 5 mins to establish took about 4 hours
More thinking for the future and plans but not of interest right now
Sorry to hear that man. Again, you won't be in this situation any time soon eh!
I like to feed back you see not as a whine but because we all learn from others comments and others experiences on this forum.
sanjiv
7th June 2010, 21:00
Well the outcome has not been good.
Heart do not seem to keep any historical backups of email only one which then gets overwritten each time they back up and all our email on all accounts was on IMAP so it has all gone
And the last backup they made was just after the account had been scrubbed so all the emails were empty.
I estimate this mess will cost me about £750 plus or minus £250 in time and lost income and lost data hassles - but just possibly a lot higher
Oh the joys.
Interestingly they offer no telephone support - quite common - but even if you want to pay for it the answer is no
So something that should have taken 5 mins to establish took about 4 hours
More thinking for the future and plans but not of interest right now
I would setup a Google Mail account and take backups of your mail accounts through POP. That is what I usually setup for my clients. Just incase something were to happen again, you should have it.
brownie
7th June 2010, 21:01
Very very sad story Page, not something you should have experienced.
When you're ready shout, we will help you setup a more robust solution to minimise this sort of problem occuring again.
I would setup a Google Mail account and take backups of your mail accounts through POP. That is what I usually setup for my clients. Just incase something were to happen again, you should have it.
Nice idea - Can I back up with POP and set to leave on the server and then what is left on there continues to be seen as IMAP but will not be Popped again - is that right and what you are suggesting?
Might sound stupid from someone who has just suffered but do i really need to back up google mail ?
sanjiv
8th June 2010, 00:14
Yep that is exactly what I am suggesting. You don't really need to but I would if your host are not doing any other form of backups. Recently one of my clients had deleted an email which he wanted back. I just told him where to login and find it.
You could backup important emails to a hard drive if you use Outlook.
So outlook can back up IMAP then ??
I could set up an Outlook account for just this purpose
Shame really because I was expecting my hoster to look after that side and emails are so dynamic that really it needs a nightly backup
Plus if I create new ones then this would automatically be handled rather than an additional stage to setting up the back up part
titanlee
8th June 2010, 06:18
Heart do not seem to keep any historical backups of email only one which then gets overwritten each time they back up and all our email on all accounts was on IMAP so it has all gone
I estimate this mess will cost me about £750 plus or minus £250 in time and lost income and lost data hassles - but just possibly a lot higher
Interestingly they offer no telephone support - quite common - but even if you want to pay for it the answer is no
So something that should have taken 5 mins to establish took about 4 hours
Although I'm sorry to hear about your position, this vindicates what I've been saying on another thread (check out post 14 on http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=158713&page=2 )
decent hosting costs decent money. We do run phone support (no queues unless something exceptional has occurred) and we would have been able to get all of your email back as we don't have a shoddy single day rotation. Its so frustrating for me trying to promote my business when I *know* just how much better it is.
As a customer of a hosting company, you should not be having to backup your data to an external cloud. The whole point about IMAP is that the email is retained on the host so its dealt with accordingly.
Setting up google email and taking backups via POP - seems a fair bit of hassle to be honest. Again, you just shouldn't need to.
This stuff makes me pretty annoyed to be honest.
titanlee
8th June 2010, 06:26
Might sound stupid from someone who has just suffered but do i really need to back up google mail ?
No - but you do need to find a decent host. Sorry !
No - but you do need to find a decent host. Sorry !
Don't apologise.
My set up has been great and also even fit for purpose going back a few years or so when set up. Cheap easy to get going with etc - learned a lot from a standing start.
If my guy had been paying heart his bills I would still have been okay and happily ticking along as I had for years.
But...
Behind this was the problem of the email back up and support by phone when I needed it - waiting for the day when ......
The sites are there again and running - yes all wasted time resorting - but they did have that side of things backed up.
We cannot re-assess our needs and position constantly but that time is now coming for me since the effects are far bigger and more serious than a few years ago. I have to much on to do it now so maybe later in the year.
Plus to be honest it would never have even begun to have occurred to me that Heart had no historical back ups email - nor I suppose back then to even have asked about such a thing.
But as my earlier posts say we are not all born experts or can be experts in all areas. I actually thought my hosting WAS good enough - but there we go - and might again think that with the next set up I move to until the day when .....
And maybe I then find another weak link and then on we go again.
But now when I relook I will have a better idea of some of the questions I should be considering and asking and so have some improvement
Page, no matter what service you're on with whatever provider, get yourself a simple backup system in place.
It's all about risk. No matter how reliable Provider A's service is, it's not as reliable as Provider A+B.
oldeagleeye
8th June 2010, 09:14
OP I could offer you the ultimate in back-up. Mirrored storage at 2 state of the art IBM triple A rated data centres. 100 bit connections and full redundancy. All for 25p a GB per month.
I could but I am not going too. Might consider a £1 a month though.:eek:
brownie
8th June 2010, 09:32
IBM triple A rated data centres.
What is a "triple A rated" DC? :|
I could but I am not going too. Might consider a £1 a month though.:eek:
That's hardly helpfull. :rolleyes:
oldeagleeye
8th June 2010, 09:50
1) Triple A rated goes back to 1986 when the 1st anti-terrorist proof data centres were established by big blue. As well as data vaults managed and maintained by secrity vetted IBM staff they also house the mothballed hot desking that would be used by government and big business in the event of a terrorist attack or indeed any natuaral disaster.
2) Was a joke on the basis that as the OP wants a decenyt profit on his costs for hosting then I would too. The 25p GB is actually what I pay.
Rob
sanjiv
8th June 2010, 09:59
So outlook can back up IMAP then ??
I could set up an Outlook account for just this purpose
Shame really because I was expecting my hoster to look after that side and emails are so dynamic that really it needs a nightly backup
Plus if I create new ones then this would automatically be handled rather than an additional stage to setting up the back up part
I use a program called Bullguard for backups and it backups Outlook emails so yes it would. It is not free whereas backup to GMail would be.
oldeagleeye
8th June 2010, 10:06
Genie is the BEST backup software for personal use. Backs up by using simple Icons. Everything from email to your diary. In fact it's a bit like the iphone. Lots of appl's.
Rober
retailworld
9th June 2010, 13:17
I realise this is hardly helpful to the OP, but for future reference...
I was tired last night and deleted an FTP account, unwittingly deleting all the files in the root directory (and yes, I even had to confirm it).
I emailed my hosting support team at 23:30 last night, bascially asking them if they could do a restore... my fault & all that.
At 23:55 I'd had an email back saying it was sorted, and they had restored a 400MB site back from a daily backup (so I'd only lost an hours work). To get that service level of service during the night is fantastic, and therefore only had 25 mins of downtime.
Yes, sometimes things cost a little more, but they are worth it ;) I use www.openmindhosting.co.uk
Well Heart have back ups just not historical ones !
So they could have done that but not got back to an earlier file if you have overwritten it say. So make sure that is on offer and the details.
They only have restore for if their servers go down - they would not even offer historical daily back up as a paid for service! Just not their business model.
And yes you usually do - but not always - get what you pay for.
SteveSant
11th June 2010, 11:31
titanlee, I completely sympathise if your sentiments mate...
In a world which is full of people reselling (often completely already oversold) shared hosting for next to nothing and promising the earth, it's no wonder that businessmen and women without much IT knowledge get sharked.
I've really given up trying to sell my hosting the basis of price any more... Like you I just try and focus on the support and reliability element. The pity is, I am constantly (I expect like you are) pulling people out of the water after they have been left to fend for themselves by Mr get-rich-quick-oh-it-didn't-work-out-so-close-the-phones-and-go-on-holiday.
Hope you get things sorted Page :)
We offer daily backups... plus for a few pennies more, we retain 7 days of offsite backups for you too...
Steve