Singlehop - 1 Year Review Of Dedicated Server And Customer Service

just want to say this forum kicks some serious arse. It helped me out tremendously with a potential scam that I almost got myself caught in this morning. Secondly, since I am on here posting this morning I might as well post up a one year review of Singlehop.com and the dedicated server I am using.

My websites hosted on rig: www.svtsnake.com, www.nsgcenter.com, www.nextlevelhardware.com
My host: SingleHop
My sales rep: Miguel Villegas
My hosting package: Dedicated Server E8400, 2GB ram, 250GB HDD (non raid), Plesk CP with 5 domain license.
My monthly pricing: 189.00 even per month

At the beginning of my term about a year ago I was achieving 2.1 to 3.0 MB/s throughput down and close to 500 KB/s up which is excellent and really incredible for working on SSH Secure Shell for me with uploading and downloading DB files, etc. At this current point in time I have noticed a minor decrease in speed to around 1.5 MB/s download speeds and at nighttime hours around 700K, which is more than ample and still excellent IMO as you will see in this picture: http://nsgcenter.com/dlspeed.jpg

I am very happy with overall throughput of the server at almost all hours. You can check out overall network response time and server DB response by playing around with the vbulletin database I run at svtsnake.com. There is always a huge amount of concurrent users and never any slowdown.

Something else incredible for me with Singlehop so far is network downtime. I can honestly say, since my latest term with them. I was also a customer a few years ago and had a few issues with server downtime that I ceased being a customer with them because of it. However, I was refunded an compensated in a timely matter and everything was taken care of immediately.

However, it seems that as of recently they have improved there infrastructure tremendously because I have NOT been down for 1 second in over 7 months. Even when they schedule downtine, my server has never noticed it. My uptime has been 100% for every single day that I have owned this server on Singlehop.com.

There is one issue that I can say I am very unhappy with, and it is an issue where all partys can be blamed even including myself. I am well aware that there policy states after 3 days of non payment they can shut down server connection. So, I was a customer for seven months when a new single hop account executive named Miguel Villegas joined the team and was my representative. I had changed my cell phone and never updated the file, and at the same time I own multiple businesses and frequently close and open different credit/debit/rewards cards to be used for processing payment. Note that I have never missed a payment with them up until this point. The payment was do on like the 18th of the month or something, and I received the invoice thinking that my credit card on file was automatically going to pay my bill like it always does. But it just so happens that the credit card I had on file with singlehop was stolen at a nightclub in NYC called MansionNYC, and I was pick pocketed. I lost all of my credit cards that night and called up to report all of them stolen. So, obviously I was issued new credit card and I was waiting for them to issue me new cards in the mail and new numbers, which took about 3 to 5 days with most companys. So, here I am 3 days late for payment and I wake up one morning and ALL of my websites are completely shut down. No notification, no warning, just closed and I got an email from Miguel Villegas my account representative explaing that my server was turned off until I remit payment.

I called up Singlehop and I was furiated, yelled almost at the top of my lungs that they simply just shut off a server, after 3 days of payment. Especially in a situation like this and they never even called me up to let me know they were doing this because my cell phone was different on file - which was mis-communication on my part. At this point in time I called up my bank HSBC and got an emergency debit card number to make the payment to Miguel through email and my server was re-activated.

But, 3 days after invoice is due to just cancel someones server or suspend it is definitely not good business policy. I have been a customers for almost a year and the whole incident was a fluke, they didnt have to suspend the server. In my business, we give a customer at least 30 days to pay a bill. But thats not the point, I know there policy states you have 3 days to remit payment or policy account suspension. But I think that is a horrendous policy, especially for emergency situations like I was in. What happens if the owner of a business is dying of an anyeurism in the hospital and is 3 days late with his web payment for his website, does singlehop simply suspend his 16 million hit per month vbulletin forum just because of lack of communication and payment?

I am still a longstanding customer with Singlehop but felt I needed to share that story with everyone. So, yes I am very happy with quality of service, speed of service, tech support, packages offered. But, I am very upset about there payment policy regarding 3 days of lack of payment that just aint right. I really like the attitude and business practices of the execs at the company and they are going to hate me for the negative feedback of my one bad incident with them, but overall Singlehop has my business and will have my business UNTIL either the server is offline every other week, or my DB crashes due to SInglehop issues. LOL Neither I think will be happening anytime soon.

Thanks for reading everyone. If anything, I hope Singlehop reads this and considers modifying there policy regarding server suspension and lack of payment maybe to something more like 10 to 15 days. Not 3 days.