A2B2/VAServ

Just thought I'd pass on my experiences with A2B2/VA Serv to avoid anyone having similar experiences.

I've been a customer of theirs for several years now and the past 6 months have been awful. It started with them canceling a DNS hosting service they offered with out notification, leaving all my sites inaccessible for two weeks. Since then I've lost track of the number of times that my DNS records have been inaccessible. There have also been problems with their firewall denying access to my box, causing another day of downtime.

In fixing these issues, the support staff have continually shown lack of knowledge of the tools they're working with (from not knowing how to send out important announcements to people on their mailing list, to pressing the wrong button and overwriting my zone file with the default). Speaking to Rus has usually resulted in the source of the problem being located, but then it can take days for his support team to then understand what needs doing. The worst support was when Rus and team ignored requests for access to my zone files for months and then demanded I paid them an extra month's worth of hosting or they would switch of my site instantly. I have tried to find out if this was an isolated case or if others were having similar problems, but Rus refuses to allow me to discuss this issue on their own forums - presumably he know how many people have been affected and doesn't want that many people complaining publicly.

It's a real shame - it was a great company when I started hosting with them, however I think it's now grown too big for it's boots and can't provide the same level of service and reliability it used to.