Shared Hosting
Shared HostingKnowledgebase
Portal Home > Knowledgebase > Articles Database > Vision Plateau - review
Vision Plateau - review
 |
 |
 |
Posted by pamaro, 01-04-2006, 11:14 AM I've signed up for a reseller account there and stayed for two and a half months. Everything went well initially, the service was good and, apart from the occasional downtime, everything worked. Their tech support usually took a while to answer by e-mail (usually between 1 and 2 days after sending my first message regarding a problem) but they were nice. The support on their forum was faster, but the guy in charge of doing it was extremely unprofessional (I'll get back to this later on). During my whole stay, the total uptime was around 98.5% (monitored through dotuptime). Even though they had a 100% uptime guarantee, they never used it (they said it was only if the downtime was caused by them, but they always managed to blame it on theplanet). In late December, sadly, major problems started. All of a sudden, I couldn't send out e-mail and some of the mail I should receive was bouncing as well. I've immediatly left a post in the forum about this, which resulted in a "not our problem" type of answer. Basically, due to their new "spam war efforts", the whole IP range of my ISP was blocked (and I'm using the largest Portuguese ISP). Considering all my clients and sites are mainly for a Portuguese audience, you can see the mail I've lost and the complaints I've received. Two days went by and the complaints kept growing in the forum, from other clients as well (also living in other countries and using a variety of ISPs). Still the same reply... complain to your ISP, not our problem. Basically, seems like their method of stopping spam is to disable everybody's e-mail. Meanwhile, I was forced to swap hosts urgently during this period, along with other of their clients, as a failure in such a basic service like e-mail is critical. One or two days later, I found out that they had removed the blocking they had imposed on e-mail. Their explanation was that "we did this due to the constant whining". There's nothing like calling "whiners" to your clients to win'em. The person in charge of their support forum always kept a rude attitude throughout my whole stay there, towards all clients. Even in simple questions, he'd answer something like "are you kidding?", "are you crazy?" or "I could be retarded, but I could swear this was answered before"... in all these situations, the clients were having a corteous behaviour. In a situation that occured with other client, where he reported a problem about e-mail, the forum support guy decided to open a topic with the title "For all e-mail noobs like ", where he posted what he thought would fix the problem. Not only was that client unsatisfied with this, but he later on found out that the post didn't fix the problem, as it was something else caused by VP. I left their service mainly due to the e-mail problems, but this attitude problem also had a lot to do with it. When you place a question and get rude answers for no reason at all, it's bad. When you lose e-mail for days and get a "not our problem" answer, it's terrible. When e-mail returns due to several customer complaints and the official explanation is "we changed it due to the constant whining"... I don't even know what to say. It's the most unprofessional behaviour I have ever seen. Shortly after, the whole thread was deleted, probably to cover up the complaints. VP usually have a good service in technical terms (if we exclude this problem), but they should do something about the person in charge of the support forum. Such abusive behaviour isn't tolerable in a professional host, especially one that considers itself to be "above all the rest". The only good memory I have of my last days with them was the refund they got me when I left. On one final note, whenever they send out a system-wide e-mail, it's sent to everybody (including your clients), so everybody knows you're a reseller of Vision Plateau. This didn't affect me much, but it's usually important for most resellers.
Posted by Lubby, 01-04-2006, 02:36 PM Sounds like you made a good decision to find another host. It really is true that you gain far more respect from your clients by treating them with respect and being courteous. I hope your new hosts works out better for you.
Posted by Shaw Networks, 01-04-2006, 11:20 PM Definitely a good decision there, mind posting what domain name do you have hosted with them?
Posted by pamaro, 01-05-2006, 09:13 AM Right now, none, as I moved out still in December. I can provide the list of the domains I had hosted with them, but I'm not sure if that'll be of interest.
Posted by AcidNet, 01-05-2006, 09:19 AM Very Nice Review. I dont understnd some people, A client is paying them money for a service and they are not providing it and being rude about it. No doubt if they were the client and their host was being like it they would not be impressed.
Posted by nfh77, 02-22-2006, 01:23 PM I felt I had to "resurrect" this thread because I have to back up what pamaro said. I'm a VP customer since November or December, and almost everytime I had to request support, I received near insultuous replies, something not acceptable anywhere, specially in a this competitive business. But now things are even worse: I've been trying to contact their service support for almost a month, but without any success. I tried to contact them by mail, by customer support form, and even on their discussion forum, but I still didn't get any answer. To me it seems obvious: they don't give a cr@p about their customers. Their customer service is basically NOTHING. And another obvious thing: I think they're going out of business, but they don't let their customer know... they haven't been on their support forum for a while, their billing system license expired... everything points to my conclusion. So, if you ever think of going to Vision Plateau, you better think twice, unless things change a lot.
Posted by h0t1ce, 03-08-2006, 06:34 PM I am a client of Vision Plateau since mid-February. I thinkjoined at a very bad time. My e-mails are not being responded to. And now even their service including their site is down. How do I proceed to get a refund? Yet keep my domain name if they registered it for me? Unless they come back up online in full force real quick... I can't stay with them for very long.
Posted by RackFleet, 03-08-2006, 06:53 PM quote=pamaro]When e-mail returns due to several customer complaints and the official explanation is "we changed it due to the constant whining"... quote] Number One Rule in any Business: The customer is ALWAYS RIGHT.
Posted by jer2eydevil88, 03-08-2006, 11:24 PM I have been a customer of PlanetGac.com now visionplateau.com going on three years. They are abusive, disorganized, rude, incompetent and non-responsive. I have stuck with them because they have gotten better and it is an inconvienence to switch my sites. I really enjoy having every Cpanel control at my disposal and not many hosts offer clients such full control at less than $10 a month. But lets not waver to much from the point, the guys over there take days if ever to answer questions via the cpanel support and as of this moment 4-8-06 10:23p.m. visionplateau.com and all my site zigzap.net is also down. I
Posted by nfh77, 03-09-2006, 09:59 AM What cPanel controls do they enable that other companies don't enable on budget plans?
Posted by h0t1ce, 03-09-2006, 02:36 PM Ack!!! How am I suppose to transfer my domain name if they can't be reached? HELP! please
Posted by ProtoPC, 03-09-2006, 04:03 PM I second that question...they have my domain as well. Man this will look bad if we can't recover our clients settings and any files they had posted with us...besides our own files. There must be some legal recourse to get our files and domains back from them.
Posted by Dave_B74, 03-09-2006, 04:55 PM You can still control your domains by going. If anyone knows away to get the data from this place, I would love to hear it.
Posted by nanoplane, 03-09-2006, 06:43 PM Hmmm, I tried going there to manage my domain, but it won't let me in... --marcel rivard.org, pntsdf.org, laketuck.org... and a few others...
Posted by Dave_B74, 03-09-2006, 06:46 PM It takes a little time to load, but eventually will come up with an error message which you just click no on, and it should load from there.
Posted by ProtoPC, 03-09-2006, 06:50 PM Next we need a recommended reseller host, that has an established rep. Would have been nice to have them transfer through CPanel...now we have to rebuild from scratch. What a nightmare.
Posted by nanoplane, 03-09-2006, 07:18 PM No, it loaded fine, but it won't let me in... I've only done the domain management through the VP client connection, but I thought the login/pw should be the same right?? .. I also paid upfront for a year... --marcel
Posted by jer2eydevil88, 03-09-2006, 09:05 PM I don't know of any other budget ($8 or less) hosts that have unlimited everything except bandwidth, space and uptime. As for everyone on here who is scared shitless about vital data loss just calm down, last year PlanetGac (their old name) went out for about 2 - 3 weeks before coming back online. This means that while all your customers will be extremely upset with you for about a month at least there is a good chance they will get their data. Last time this happened they did the responsible thing and blamed someone else, I assume it'll go down in a simillar fashion this time around. I think I am gonna get a new host this time though... As early as next week I will be signing a new annual contract with a host, hopefully someone here can recommend a great cpanel budget host with similar unlimited features.
Posted by 2Macs Jim, 03-09-2006, 10:07 PM Sure sounds like they don't care about their business, or clients!
Posted by nanoplane, 03-09-2006, 11:34 PM So let's propose a "reasoning" behind their madness... If you're a hosting company and your service has been "out" for two weeks due to lack of dilligence.. I'll bet your SLA would mean you would need to give a lot of credit to your customers... It's probably cheaper to just disappear and reappear as a different company... Oh, the tangled webs we weave... --marcel On the topic of alternative reseller hosts... for me, resellerzoom.com is out.. they wont support ruby or java.. things that all my previous budget hosts supported.. Last edited by nanoplane; 03-09-2006 at 11:37 PM.
Posted by Cynthia001, 03-10-2006, 05:42 AM I am also a customer of vision plateau. Now everything breaks down. My site contains quite important data, and I am now thinking about getting it back by legal way and my lawyer said that it is possible.
Posted by HybridReseller, 03-10-2006, 08:48 AM Hosting disasters like these need to stop happening. The sad part is that most of them are quite preventable.
Posted by pamaro, 03-10-2006, 10:09 AM Damn, I'm glad I moved out when I did. All these problems don't surprise me... given their attitude, it was expected sooner or later.
Posted by Atarian, 03-10-2006, 09:53 PM They are pretty much closing down. They can't afford the server bill. I called up The Planet last night to see if they could give me access to my data to get it out of there, and they said my only option was to foot their bill. I have over 40 clients so I put in $300 to get their server back online so I can get my data off of it. it is up now (thanks to our donations) but stay far away from this place!
Posted by nanoplane, 03-10-2006, 10:52 PM Yep git yur data back fast... It's alive and working... They claim to have completed a move from thePlanet to another data center (their own??).. Weird thing is, the IP addresses haven't changed... hmmm.. didn't think you could do that easily.... To be honest, we've been told they were moving, just not that it would be this painful.. No explanation for the outage, just a notice that we won't be billed for any hosting we've had for this year so far.. I'm still thinking.. It's hard finding a host who is willing to provide what they offer at even double the price. --marcel
Posted by Atarian, 03-10-2006, 10:54 PM I reccomend cwshosting.net I used them before VP (i only switched because i needed a lot more space). I'm in the process of going back to them now. Excellent customer service, too. I can only describe them as the opposite of VP, heh.
Posted by nanoplane, 03-10-2006, 11:37 PM I know you get what you pay for, but it's really hard to justify a cost factor of 10 times.. particularly since I mostly support non-proffit groups.. that, along with the lack of java, ruby and I can't tell of they allow ssh.. --marcel
Posted by pamaro, 03-11-2006, 09:10 AM I moved over to westernavenue.biz after vp. Got less bandwidth than before, but the difference in support terms is massive and the costs are similar. The sites I've got with'em now are: forumcoimbra.com, forumlisboa.com, forumporto.com, forumcovilha.com, forumjogos.com, pedroamaro.com, pacee.pedroamaro.com, oramatechnologies.com and martial-artists.info I'm on a special plan that they offered here at WHT in December... but I can try asking the owner if they do custom plans, in case anyone's interested.
Posted by cdksystems, 03-20-2006, 07:36 PM Having just typed up a great reply to this thread I lost it to an errant click of the mouse... argh! My second try just isn't the same... I was involved with restoring the VP server and the other server on the same account which is where I come into the picture. Along with Atarian's support the account was paid. Being as both servers are on one account the entire bill had to be paid before even one of the servers could be restored both were restored. I joined this site after being told to check some of the posts in this thread and I just had to join because I just had to reply! I am still amazed that anyone can talk to their clients, calling them "whiners" or worse, and expect to stay in business for very long. I was also very surprised at the 100% Up Time Guarantee and the rates being charged along with it. I expected to see steep rates for such a guarantee, or a very big catch! Being a hosting company myself for close to 10 years and not wanting to cause a conflict of interest issue I had been reluctant to let very many people know I am an ISP. With the VP server being shut down though and knowing an ISP will usually LOCK or FREEZE all domains on a disabled server account until the bill has been paid I decided to offer FREE, temporary hosting to anyone from the VP server wishing it until they could find another service able to provide them the kind of hosting plan they needed. Offering an emergency service and for free was out of someone's need and not greed. Knowing I cannot afford to just GIVE AWAY my services and under the circumstances it was the least I could do. We DO have competitive pricing and custom plans (we don't like forcing people to pay for features they will never use just because they are in a package with a feature they do need and it's the only way to get it). We upgrade our hardware and support services every year around June or July and by August we are full again. We have a formula we use and in order to provide the kind of support needed we limit ourselves to how many new clients we can handle on an ongoing basis. We were already adding two more servers for other new business but we just weren't ready to take on the VP clients and still be able to offer the support our existing customers have grown to expect from us. So we didn't actively seek them as new clients. Bad business decision? I don't think so. Once the ones that took us up on the free hosting find new hosts we expect a few will want to stay with us even though we can't offer the same budget rates Vision Plateau charged. I can't imagine how they could survive charging so little and I guess I can tell the answer to that one now, don't pay their hosting bill. My purpose in posting here wasn't to advertise or sound good (no halo around this head, yet! ) I mostly wanted to let Atarian know that once the bill had been paid the owner of VP surfaced again and is offerring a FULL REFUND to anyone who asks for it of any money they gave to restore the servers and REFUND any prepaid hosting fees as well to any client who asks for one. He also went on to say that those clients still loyal to VP would be greatly rewarded for sticking it out with him and basically sounded like he was blaming his ISP for the trouble and that was why he is planning on moving to a new one soon. I would be interested in seeing the results of a Request for a Refund posted here. (I wonder why they have to ask for their money back. Maybe it's because he might not have it all like he says?). Had I known this thread existed I probably would have joined sooner and at least been able to share my own experiences with the handling of the other server and the people using it. I don't know if it would have prevented what happened but it might have allowed some of you to make a more informed decision by having an additional "testimonial" to go by. I don't think anything I can say will make a difference either way but thank you for posting because I wouldn't have heard about this site otherwise. CDKSYSTEMS (our hosting company uses a slightly different name in case you were wondering. As I said, I am not posting here to advertise. If you ARE interested though I suppose Atarian might be able to help you find me ).
Posted by Cynthia001, 05-10-2006, 11:45 AM What's wrong with vision plateau now? Gone? their site, my sites all dispear! Does anyone of you know anything about this hosting company? I am sooooooooo dispointed now! How can I change DNS pointing and get back my data now? How Can I Contact them?
Posted by Cynthia001, 05-10-2006, 11:51 AM Atarian, and CDKSYSTEMS, do you have the contact info about vision plateau? Or do you know How I can change DNS pointing?
Posted by jer2eydevil88, 05-11-2006, 11:41 AM Guess what guys!!! Pgac / VP is dead again and this time I actually needed something online... I bit the bullet and got a Virtual Dedicated host account over at godaddy.com to replace this lousy host. Hopefully they come back online and I can get my account tarballed up for this new server... I won't hold my breath though because this time I think they are going to be gone for good.
Posted by chamelion, 05-11-2006, 12:23 PM that really is biting the bullet... best of luck with that!!
Posted by Cynthia001, 05-11-2006, 02:25 PM have you ever tried these two numbers? +19542979043 and +19547476144. I tried, the second one has been disconnected. And for the first one, a guy answered and the attitude was bad, and he asked me to contact the support person by email, and before I tried to say anything more, he said Bye! And this second time I tried, it went to vioce mail. He just did not answer me!!!!
Posted by lucasrangit, 05-11-2006, 09:46 PM My site has been down since 2006-05-09 11:15:29. I'm trying to find an email address they provided in case their servers were down. One for planetgac customers and another for visionplateau. the domain was something like optonline.com (I THINK!). I've tried google's cache and cannot find their support.shtml page. Anyone else tried?
Posted by Cynthia001, 05-12-2006, 07:30 PM It seems that the boss of Vision Plateau should be Gary A Cornell, and at least he has these websites for hosting or e-commerce: GACtechnologies.com, I guess GAC is short for Gary A Cornell. PlanetGAC.com, Visionplateau.com, Hostingserenity.com, PARADOXICONLINE.COM. Now none of them works, and the servers for all these sites are at Theplanet.com now. Last time, he said that he has terminated the contract with theplanet, and changed the server, but actually not! I called theplanet yesterday, and got the confirmation that the server for vision plateau is still there. GAC's username at this forum is hostwithmost, and the profile is like this: Date of birth: Feb 8th, 1968 age:38, New York. Don't know whether the info is true. And search for GAC technologies, I found: GAC Technologies Inc GAC Technologies is a New York State licensed Corporation. Our headquarters are located in Suffolk County, NY. We are a leader in e-commerce and multi-media applications. Contact: Gary Cornell CEO GAC Technologies Inc 19 Independence Ave. Babylon, NY 11702-1304 Tel: 631-587-4948 GACtechnologies.com and http://www.galexc.com. I have a very bad intuition.... Does anybody know that whether we can find this person according to the above info assuming the info is correct? Maybe we can do something by legal way if vision plateau does not come back anymore.
Posted by lucasrangit, 05-12-2006, 09:43 PM excellent detective work Cynthia. I tried the number you listed. obviously the number for GAC is no longer in service. If I had a car, I'd drive to his location, which is not far from Manhattan. Did ThePlanet.com mention anything that customers of PlanetGAC/VisionPlateau should do? i.e. wait it out or change DNS and hosts immediately? Sorry I don't have more information to give you. But I'll keep searching. Too bad the PlanetGAC datacenter moved to Texas, otherwise I'd be there right now! Last edited by lucasrangit; 05-12-2006 at 09:48 PM.
Posted by Dave_B74, 05-13-2006, 01:09 AM That is the info I have for VisionPlateau as well... Although I heard the owner had recently moved from New York to Florida. So much for their promises of never going down again...
Posted by jer2eydevil88, 05-14-2006, 02:40 PM I'm just glad I started making backups of my VP sites. I don't forsee them returning..
Posted by vickiedavis, 05-18-2006, 12:10 AM Has anyone gotten their domains back from these folks? I started the process at GoDaddy.com but as I see it PlanetGAC has to release (unlock ??) our domain name to transfer it to another host. With them being dead there is not much chance they will do anything. Seems like a "catch 22" situation! What can we do?
Posted by Dave_B74, 05-18-2006, 12:20 AM There is a couple things you can do here. 1 - Go to the following page, and manually change your domians to link to your new server. http://www.planetdomain.com/visionpl...rs/details.jsp 2 - Contact planetdomain.com directly and have them move your Vision Plateau account over to their main accounts, and cut out VP as the middle man. Contact them and they'll give you the run down on what you need to do to get it changed over. Once it gets changed over you can either just make the changes you need or move the domain to another company.
Posted by lucasrangit, 05-18-2006, 12:56 AM Dave_B74: great suggestion. I asked PlanetDomain, via their support ticket system, to move my sites. even though I've already changed registrars I still hope they can help by giving me access to the data via ftp. Good luck everyone.
Posted by vickiedavis, 05-18-2006, 05:32 AM I put in a Support request too. They were able to get me that "Auth Code" but did not explain how a dead "reseller" was going to release the our domain name, much less give us accesss to our files on May 13. Vickie
Posted by Dave_B74, 05-18-2006, 10:07 AM PlanetDomain is just the domain register not the server host. They can move your domain registration to there main site, from there you can then transfer to a new company or stay with them. There is some paperwork you'll need to do for this, but it's not too complicated. Course this is only good if you had an account through VP's planetDomain reselling, not sure what you'll need to do if VP took care of the registration process for you.
Posted by vanrock, 08-07-2006, 08:25 PM So is everything that we had on their server gone for good??
Posted by jer2eydevil88, 08-08-2006, 02:27 AM vanrock it is safe to assume that it is all gone for good.
Add to Favourites 
Print this Article
Also Read
