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WebbyCart System Admin Services Review
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Posted by hD-Scott, 12-17-2009, 01:03 PM I don't like to disparage other companies, but in this certain case, a fair warning about WebbyCart's services are in order. To be fair, I have only been a client of WebbyCart for two months and we had them admin one server with DirectAdmin/CentOS5/LiteSpeed. We had managed this server ourselves without issue for 6 months but then had a tricky php issue that I couldn't resolve myself and instead of making matters worse, I hired, who I though were more knowledgeable than myself to do the job, WebbyCart. In the beginning, they were fine. They asked for my information and the problem that I hired them for and they did resolve it to my satisfaction. However, this is where the issues began and most I didn't know of until much later. When they made changes to my server, they never notified me or asked my permission. They would change config files, add software, remove software, and overwrite software without ever letting me know, and without making any backups whatsoever. The first time I discovered this was when a client was locked out of the firewall. I logged in to delist him and found out the CSF (the firewall that was installed and working correctly and the one that I prefer) was removed. When I opened a ticket, they said they replaced it with APF as they thought the firewall was causing some issues. They never told me, nor moved my config from CSF to APF. When I told them to restore CSF with my original config files, they said they didn't not make any backups of the config files and they were gone forever. I couldn't believe that they wouldn't have made any backups of any major files that they change on a server that wasn't theres! It took me a couple of days to get CSF configured correctly as I had tweaked it over a period of months and couldn't remember all of the port numbers that I had to open to allow WHMCS to work with cPanel and my other servers, to allow for backups to be run remotely, and other things. It caused problems with people ordering and people making support requests. It was a disaster. After that incident, I told them that I wanted a detailed report of each thing they did to my server when I asked a support issue be resolved. They complied once, but then never complied again. Later on, I had clients complain that spam was an issue and they were receiving upwards of 100 spams per day, sometimes 200. When I looked, although spamd was running, it was not filtering any emails. I asked them to look into this. Apparently they had made some change to my server that caused spamd to stop filtering emails because it was doing so until they took over the server. They kept telling me that spamd was running. I knew that, I told them it was running but not scanning! They said they would look into it. Instead of troubleshooting the problem, they deleted and reinstalled both EXIM and SpamAssassin! Doing this destroyed all of my config settings and they AGAIN didn't bother to back them up before they made their changes. The only backups of the config files were my backups. I only back up when I make changes, so I didn't have backup of the most recent one as I just updated it to the new exim.conf file the day before. They replaced it with a config file from 2007! When I asked them what they were doing, they said, "oops! We didn't make any backups! Sorry!" Inexcuseable. The spam issue is still unresolved. It was at this time that I went on the lookout for a new system admin co. I have found one and they're getting started today, so I asked WebbyCart to remove their login they created and to remove any software they installed that granted them access to my server. They responded that they removed their login and nagios. Nagios! I had that installed to monitor my 3 servers with over 2 years of history. I had it set up in a complex escalating notification system. Apparently, unbenownst to me, when they started managing the server, they overwrote my Nagios installation and overwrote all of my complex config files! When I asked them about this, they said how were they to know that I had nagios already installed. I don't know...LOOK! They apologized and said the following: The refund was a nice gesture, but the money and the man hours this company has cost me is much more than the cost of one month of service. They caused many more issues than they fixed and they apparently didn't learn from their mistakes at any point. They should be making backups of users config files before making any changes. That's just common sense. So hopefully, my new company will live up to basic expected standards and perhaps even surprise me with their abilities. So far, with the preliminary emails, they have.
Posted by @Matt, 12-17-2009, 01:40 PM Hey Scott, Thank you for the review and that is indeed alarming to see that they would remove/add/edit files without your permission. If they asked then maybe the whole issue of "can you provide me with a backup" would of been avoided. I hope your able to get all your old config files backup to par.
Posted by hD-Scott, 12-17-2009, 01:45 PM Thanks! It will take hours and days, but I will eventually get them back up. Nagios is a pain to configure with all the different text files, but hopefully I will remember kind of what I did (2 years ago) to get it all set up and working.
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