For most of the year or so that I was Blutekhosting I had horrible performance, consistent downtime which with one or two exceptions never reached their gaurantee of 99.8% and on November 1st, they had a massive crash that lost many of the files of my family and friends accounts that I host. Below is a record of my recent history with the company which lead to my closing the account with them on November 15th. I recommend to anyone considering blutekhosting.com to search on webhostingtalk.com for Blutek to read reports by myself and others about our problems with this company and that you seek hosting elsewhere.
Looks like Blutek gave up on their live chat. Every other day or so I would spend 2-6 hours waiting in "line" on their live chat but no one would emerge. Email would sometimes get a 2 line response but never answer any of my specific questions. The server was still missing lots of files, databases had been lost, settings and email accounts gone. I had by now set up a new account with a different host but went in for a last try and finally got a technician. My last conversation with Blutek before I submitted my account cancellation request:
Mahesh: hi
Mahesh: how may i help you?
[Me]: Hi Mahesh, how is the progress coming on restoring information for the Blutekhosting clients?
[Me]: Lots of files and databases have been missing since November 1
Mahesh: please give me your domain name
Mahesh: let me have a look
[Me]: Well, there are many and I gave a list to the last person I spoke to here (no answer) and also emailed it to support when asked (no answer) so
[Me]: instead of giving you a full list please just look into these 2 very important cases:
[Me]: I'm missing files for muninn.net/cgi-bin/
[Me]: and MOST IMPORTANT:
[Me]: warsailors.com -> MYSQL database -> _phorum
[Me]: First tell me what you can on these, and then I will go through the other missing files/databases with you.
[Me]: (there are some files in muninn cgi-bin but many directories are missing. As are some directories in the /blog/ folder
Mahesh: just a minute
Mahesh: i am checkiing it
Mahesh: hello
[Me]: hi
Mahesh: does you have your personal name server?
[Me]: what did you find?
[Me]: no, warsailors.com has left me (because of your 2 weeks of lost files and downtime) but I still have the account set up and I have promised my former client to try to recover her the huge _phorum database. Muninn uses the blutek DNS and is my own personal site...
[Me]: Muninn uses: ns5.blutekhosting.com and ns6.blutekhosting.com
Mahesh: which is the previous server your have?
[Me]: http://67.15.40.2/~[me]/ I think
Mahesh: change your naneserver as per that sever
[Me]: I'm sorry but I don't control warsailors.com - > My client left me because of your server crash.
[Me]: I just want to recover the _phorum database for that client
[Me]: then I will give my former client that database and close the "[me]" account via WHM
Mahesh: we are very sorry but we had problem with the hard disk
Mahesh: it get charshed and we lost the data
[Me]: ok, can you restore the backups for the _phorum database and the missing files from muninn.net/blog/ and muninn.net/cgi-bin/ ?
[Me]: you did have backups right? (waited 10 minutes for response)
[Me]: you are wasting my time, this is "live chat" not an email exchange, answer the question please Mahesh
Mahesh: we are sorry to say that we dont have the database backup to restore it due to hard disk crash
[Me]: Mahesh, I'm sorry to say that Blutek has been incredibly incompetent and I hope you find work somewhere else. Thank you for your help. I need to ask you to close my account at Blutekhosting.
[Me]: I will also reject any further charges to my credit card from your company and will soon be posting a long web page detailing my exchanges with your company via email and chat so that others may not share the same fate that I have.
[Me]: Please let me know if there are any further procedures for the shut down of the reseller account
Mahesh: post a ticket for cancellation an account
[Me]: Ok, thank you Mahesh
Mahesh: welcome sir
Still everything is down so I log on to talk to them again after 40 hours of downtime in the first 2 days of November...
[Me]: I dropped out....
Deepali: its o.k sir
[Me]: what is going on!!!
[Me]: This is totally ridiculous, with no warning
Deepali: sir i am on your issue
[Me]: all of my clients have lost email, and their sites are often replaced (if you add /blog/ after the address) with a lewd website with someone's rude blog talking about pregnancy and using swear words
[Me]: like
[Me]: http://www.muninn.net/blog/
[Me]: it is now over 40 hours of down time
[Me]: twice that for the whole month of September
[Me]: and October had more than 25 hours of downtime
Deepali: sir the harddrive crashed
Deepali: and we are trying our best to recover the data
[Me]: So Anand on November 1st was lying to me...
[Me]: he said not to worry...it was just an "upgrade" and the DNS was being updated...
Deepali: sir, it happened yesterday
[Me]: after the upgrade?
[Me]: So, you have a redundant network
[Me]: just switch over to the backup...
[Me]: just switch to the backup...
[Me]: you just get the backup up and running right?
[Me]: or is everything on your website a lie too? http://www.blutekhosting.com/network.php
[Me]: Deepali....talk to me...
[Me]: be honest with me here....
[Me]: please I beg you....my clients are killing me...
Deepali: sir i am on your issue
Deepali: please hold on
Deepali: http://67.15.40.2/~owls/
Deepali: http://owlsden.com/
Deepali: site is working fine
[Me]: hold on
[Me]: there are still big problems...
Deepali: sir, this server will give better performance and reliabilty
[Me]: you gave me absolutely no warning, no email explaning what happened, no clue of what to do...
[Me]: hold on
[Me]: My biggest client warsailors.com has lost her phorum:
[Me]: http://www.warsailors.com/phorum/list.php?f=1
Deepali: we already sent an email to all of the clients
[Me]: froginawell has lost all its wordpress blogs
[Me]: http://www.froginawell.net/japan/
[Me]: what?!!!
[Me]: I GOT NO EMAIL OF ANY KIND!!!
[Me]: what email do you have for me? What email address did it come from?
[Me]: there is nothing for http://www.froginawell.net/
[Me]: there is nothing for http://mopi.us/
[Me]: nothing for http://chatani.info/
[Me]: please send me the email you sent everyone to me and update my client information to be the new address
Deepali: sir we are working on your issue and your sites will soon work fine
[Me]: Deepali I better not be charged for November....I have been down for 40 hours and counting....
[Me]: Send me the email that everyone got....
[Me]: update my client info to the new email
Deepali: froginawell.net is working fine
[Me]: Hello?
[Me]: Can I get and OK "I will" perhaps? or "I'm sorry sorry we have totally messed up your operation"
[Me]: I'm getting nothing for froginawell...
[Me]: ok Deepali
Deepali: check the sites after 2hrs
[Me]: I'm being a bit hard on you
[Me]: imagine how stressful this has been for me...
Deepali: sir the dns is updated and the sites are restored
[Me]: please do all you can to get all the sites up and working....I'm so tired...so very tired...
Deepali: it is accessible
[Me]: please tell me: will you send me the email with the explanation?
Deepali: using http://ip/~username/
Deepali: and the domain will work within 2hrs
[Me]: ok,
Deepali: please check after 2hrs
[Me]: e other client sites too will all of them be restored?
Deepali: please get the list of the domains
Deepali: for verification
[Me]: ok,
[Me]: chatani.info
[Me]: gesticulations.com
[Me]: huggin.net
[Me]: iclptaiwan.org
[Me]: larseny.com
[Me]: mopi.us
[Me]: muninn.net
[Me]: opentranslations.com
[Me]: securitygirl.net
[Me]: woodelf.com
[Me]: froginawell.net
[Me]: I think that is it
Deepali: o.k sir
[Me]: can you tell me: will you email me the email that everyone got and update my client email to (if it is not already set to this?)
Deepali: sorry but the mail was not sent
[Me]: but you said above that it was sent...
[Me]: So you mean that all the sites were lost and Blutekhosting didn't contact its customers to explain what had happened?
Deepali: sir the the harddrive crashed
[Me]: Deepali you said an email was sent to everyone
[Me]: now you say no email was sent
[Me]: so now I'm asking how Blutek can have a hard disk crash and 40 hours of downtime without contacting clients?
[Me]: Hello? I'm waiting for an explanation...
Deepali: yes sir
[Me]: Hello? I'm still waiting...
[Me]: Are you there?
Deepali: yes sir
[Me]: I AM WAITING FOR AN ANSWER
Deepali: sir i asked the senior tech regarding your issue
[Me]: Also, Anand told me yesterday this was an "upgrade" and the DNS was just updating...so that was a lie? and When you said an email was sent out, that was a lie too? Deepali, I talked to you (or someone with the same name on October 13th) and you promised me a reply on my ticket requesting compensation for September...I never got a reply although I spoke to Manish, and Sarvesh about the same ticket...still no reply after a month...
Deepali: and there was some technical issues regarding the server and that's why your sites were down
Deepali: i am sorry
Deepali: i did no lie sir
Deepali: just now i checked the issue with the senior tech
Deepali: there was a technical issue
[Me]: Deepali, you said an email was sent to everyone, then said no email was sent. Anand said it was an upgrade, you say it was a crash.....or a technical issue, I don't care what it was!! WHY WASN'T I EMAILED
[Me]: if i didn't connect to this live chat for the second tiem in two days I feel like my sites would never have been restored...only by talking to you were they restored....IS NO ONE MONITORING BLUTEK?
Deepali: no sir
Deepali: we all are taking care of
Deepali: blutek
[Me]: I feel like I'm talking to a computer...almost none of my questions are answered...
[Me]: WHY WASNT I EMAILED
[Me]: DEEPALI I AM WAITING!!!!
[Me]: Hello?!
[Me]: This is a total scam operation isn't it? You couldn't care less aabout the customers could you? I have asked for a single ticket about compensation to be updated for a month....nothing
Deepali: Sir, i told you that you were not mailed
Deepali: by mistake i told you that it was
[Me]: Deepali....I know....
[Me]: I am asking you .... if a company has a server completely down for whatever reason
[Me]: since Monday morning
[Me]: WHY DIDNT BLUTEK EMAIL ALL CLIENTS?
[Me]: or an announcement on the blutek website?
[Me]: ok this is a hopeless waste of time...
Well, looks like October had 25 hours of downtime, again far short of their guaranteed uptime. I still haven't heard back for my request for refund that I submitted almost a month ago. Today, all the sites went down in the morning and when the server came up in the afternoon everything was gone, except any link which had "blog" in it was replaced by some bizare. I waited almost an hour for tech support in line for their chat support:
Anand: hello
[Me]: Anand, hello to you. I am extremely angry and I will do my very best to keep calm with you...
[Me]: I will just ask 3 questions
[Me]: 1) What the hell is going on with all my client sites and blutekhosting homepage
[Me]: 2) When will this be fixed
[Me]: 3) will all my client data and databases be intact
[Me]: Anand...I'm waiting for an answer...
Anand: we have upgraded to powerful server
Anand: now we are making DNS changes, it will up within few hours
[Me]: Anand, I was given no warning of this whatsoever...you guys promised me before to let me know when you made these scheduled changes
[Me]: Besides,what the hell is this:
[Me]: http://muninn.net/blog/
[Me]: this is someone's blog about being pregnant and it is viewable at all my client sites with /blog/
[Me]: take this down...clients have wondered what this rude and lewd site is...
[Me]: IT is totally unprofessional to make an upgrade and then not keep the old server up and running when you make the upgrade...if this was a scheduled update it was completely incompetent....is that really the real reason?
[Me]: Anand, I have another issue:
[Me]: I submitted a clientexec ticket number 1551 October 3rd to ask for compensation for over 20 hours of downtime in September...
[Me]: On October 13rd I still had no reply, I spoke to Deepali, he promised me that I would get a reply "soon"
[Me]: On October 19th I spoke with Manish when I still didn't get a reply, he said I would get a reply "today"
Anand: we migrated the server for better performance
[Me]: On October 23rd, I spoke with Sarvesh when I still didn't get reply and he again assured me I would...
Anand: i will mail to billing department regarding this
[Me]: Anand, now almost a whole month has gone by and I got no reply on my request for compensation because of 20 hours of downtime in September and I want confirmation today or tomorrow or I will find you in breach of contract.
[Me]: Also, I just got my SiteUptime statistics for October and you had even more downtime in October, a total of 25 hours so I will be requesting an additional month of compensation.
[Me]: tell me where I can email this...
[Me]: since you no longer have clientexec running...
[Me]: Anand, take down the files currently showing at all my client sites at /blog/ it is someone elses blog....How can I run a business when you suddenly shut down ALL OF MY SITES FOR OVER 7 HOURS to upgrade a server without telling me!! Tell me this isn't absoulutely crazy!
Anand: for compensation, please mail to billing@blutekhosting.com, even i am going to mail regarding this
Anand: just a moment
[Me]: ok Anand, nothing personal, I hope you can understand why I'm so angry. This probably has nothing to do with you personally...
[Me]: the files are at 67.15.40.3/blog/
[Me]: they are NOT my client's files....and I hope you are right, that all the old files are up on the new server when DNS updates...
[Me]: it says "soul into hades"
[Me]: May 25, 2004 or something....
Anand: Sir, i do understand your problem. I will try to get the response as soon as possible
[Me]: ok, I just can't believe this is happening, I have never seen a hosting operation run like this...ok, have a good day Anand, and good luck dealing with other customers
[Me]: bye
All the databases on all the client sites seem to have dissapeared. This usually means the SQL server is not working. I contact them via chat and after 10 minutes of checking, he restarts the SQL server and things are working again. Who knows how many hours all the databases were not working...
Server is painfully slow, still no reply to my request for compensation...so I log on and again ask for a response to my ticket
Sarvesh: Hello.
Sarvesh: How can I help you?
[Me]: Hi Sarvesh, I hope you are having a good day
[Me]: I am having trouble with all dynamic pages....the load on the server for owlsden clients is really high and making it painfully slow...
[Me]: load is over 10, some times cpanel is timing out, as are php scripts etc.
Sarvesh: Sec.
Sarvesh: Let me check.
[Me]: Sarvesh, one more thing, my ticket 1551 in clientexec has now gone 20 days without response...
[Me]: I also logged in and spoke to Deepali on October 13, he said the ticket would be updated "soon"
[Me]: I then spoke to Manish on October 19 and he said the ticket would be updated "today"
[Me]: well, 4 more days have passed...
Sarvesh: ok Si.
[Me]: This is such a joke....I can't believe how unprofessional that is...when will I get a response?
Sarvesh: Let's first deal with the server issue right now.
[Me]: ok, Sarvesh, nothing personal man, I'll let you deal with one problem at a time.
Sarvesh: Thanks.
Sarvesh: Please hold on.
[Me]: Hey Sarvesh, I have an appointment here in 5 minutes, I'll leave you to work on the server, and hopefully get a response from billing on my open ticket! Thanks in advance
Sarvesh: Sure.
Sarvesh: Welcome
[Me]: bye
Sarvesh: Bye
So I have had a little more downtime since my last conversation with Blutek. The server was down for a bit on the 16th. Today, for the second time, I get an email I sent with my mail server at Blutek sent back to me with a note saying that the server is a spammer.
Wonderful. Now my web sites are all on a server which has been registered as an email spammer. So, I log into live chat and talk to them about it:
You are now chatting with 'Manish'
Manish: hello
[Me]: Hi Manish
[Me]: I hope you are having a good day. My name is Konrad, and I have a question about the mail server.
[Me]: My domains and clients are all hosted on one of your servers, which has the IP addrss 69.93.198.218
[Me]: Apparently, some of the mail being sent out from mail servers by my clients (including my own mail) is being returned
[Me]: Because, we now discover, your server has been listed as a Spammer
[Me]: http://spamblock.outblaze.com/69.93.198.218
Manish: one moment
[Me]: I pressed the "Remove IP" button just now and it removed your IP but I have previously also found your IP listed on the SPAMHAUS Project's registry
[Me]: Why is this?
Manish: we have to investigate the issue .We have to update spam filter on our server.
Manish: Thank you for your information
[Me]: Update your spam filter? Doesn't mean you have been hosting spammers?
[Me]: This causes problems for all clients who try to send out regular email through your mail server. I believe this was why access to your IP was banned by many ISPs and I had to get a unique IP for warsailors.com, one of my clients.
[Me]: I hope you take this very seriously and prevent spammers from using your servers.
Manish: spam filter is there on our server
[Me]: host neti-outblaze-com.mr.outblaze.com [205.158.62.207]: 554 EMail from mailserver at 69.93.198.218 is refused. See http://spamblock.outblaze.com/69.93.198.218
[Me]: This looks like your server's email was blocked by a remote server. Is that not the case?
Manish: we will have to look into that problem
[Me]: I have one more question
Manish: yes
[Me]: I submitted a ticket at the beginning of the month (Oct 3rd) and after 10 days, I talked to one of your technicians here (Deepali) and asked why it was not updated (1551 in clientexec)
[Me]: He said "your ticket will be updated soon"
[Me]: Today is October 19th. When is "soon" going to come? I have waited 17 days.
Manish: you will get update today
[Me]: When I asked for help with downtime on the 13th, I got a similar answer that you gave me today. Today you said "we will have to look into that problem" and on the 13th I was told "our senior techs are investigating the issue"
[Me]: Ok, thanks Manish. I appreciate your help.
Manish: you are welcome sir
[Me]: Have a good day, and I hope your server gets off any spam registries.
[Me]: bye
The server is down again. It has been down for at least once this month on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 11th, and most of the night on the 12th. I'm now totally sick of it and will switch hosts in December when I have time to move all my "client" sites to a new company. However, so that others in the future can learn how horrible Blutek is (and Bestreseller.com, which I left for similar reasons) I decided to keep track of my problems on this page until I switch, with selections from the "live chat" session with their support techie.
They have yet to respond to my request for compensation for September, which had over 20 hours of downtime and by their own contract Service Agreement, allows me 100% compensation for that month because they had so much downtime.
Deepali: hello
Deepali: how may i assist you?
[Me]: Hi Deepali, hope you are doing well. Why is the server down? (now 2:25 am eastern time)
Deepali: could you please hold on for a sec sir?
[Me]: yes
Deepali: sorry for holding you, but i am on your issue
[Me]: ok, thanks
[Me]: let me know when you have some info on what is going on
Deepali: it will take 1-2hrs
[Me]: ok, what happened? Why is it down? And why was it down for many hours yesterday?
Deepali: sir our techs are investigating the issue
[Me]: ok, I'll wait, thanks.
[Me]: I hope it can be resolved soon.
Some time after 3am the server is up, but server load is still high (cpanel:3.5).
[Me]: Hi Deepali, the server seems to be up and running now, although server load is still high, do you have an idea of what is going on now?
Deepali: our senior techs are investigating the issue sir
[Me]: ok, no problem, I can wait another hour or so
Deepali: o.k
Deepali: but it may take more than that
[Me]: ok, I'll log off then, but can you tell me why it was down for so long yesterday?
[Me]: Also, I hope I can get a reply to Ticket: 1551 (clientexec ticket system) which asks for compensation for September because of the 20 hours of downtime (I forwarded the siteuptime email).
[Me]: (or not compensation, I just mean get October without paying for it)
Deepali: it seems that somebody was running some scripts and that's why there was such a heavy load
[Me]: I sent the ticket October 3rd, today is October 13
Deepali: as i already told you, our senior techs are investigating the issue
[Me]: Thanks Deepali, so the downage is probably due to heavy script load. That at least tells me a little. Thanks.
Deepali: your ticket will be updated soon
[Me]: Thanks Deepali, have a good day
Deepali: welcome
Deepali: bye