Leaseweb – Goodbye & Good Riddance

I’m on the verge of saying goodbye & good riddance to Leaseweb – and I couldn’t be happier.

It is through great regret that I recommend that anybody thinking about renting a server from Leaseweb, should think again. The trouble I’ve had from the moment I said Go, has been unbelievable. And despite their very cheap prices, there is no value to be found here.

I joined Leasewebback in June this year, due to issues with my previous host – I was sharing a server with a friend, but it seemed I was paying the full bill every month. So for 80 EURO (approx. $120 USD) I ordered a dedicated server from Leaseweb.

Here’s the blunders:

1. I ordered my server on the 22nd of June, and assumed I’d be paying my bill on the 22nd of every month. No, this isn’t how it works! Once I paid, Leaseweb sent me another invoice for the remainder of June. My first payment was for July, and if I didn’t pay June’s payment my server would be shut off. This is a horrid way of doing things, and isn’t made clear when you sign up. The email is ridiculous, just reading the first line makes my blood boil:

Explanation:

As you might know LeaseWeb invoices per calender month.You have already paid one full month for your service which covers 7-2008. However the period remaining for the current month was not yet covered. This period is not known beforehand as it depends on availablity of the services as well as on the date your first payment was made.

2. Less than two weeks after my server was first installed, it crashed.And I’m not talking about any old crash, this crash took half the hard disk down with it; the main database was corrupt. Leaseweb were also indifferent to this catastrophe – I don’t remember an apology anywhere. Note:

Dear customer,

 

It seems that the server is having an kernel crash, so we would like to reinstall the server, if this is ok by you. Do you have a backup of the HD or do you want to copy the data after the new installation.

OK, so at least they have some idea as to what they’re doing, right? Wrong. I spent ages recovering my data, but they forgot to install PLESK! So I couldn’t set my website back up. When I say forgot, I can’t emphasise enough how ridiculous it is. Note:

Dear customer,

 

The server is newly installed, but we forgot to install plesk.

An engineer will install plesk asap and remove the old disk.

We also hope that this will never happen again, but we can’t control hardware failure, about the response time, we all working on giving fast and good service to our customers. 

We keep you updated about the status.

Obviously, Leaseweb has never heard of a checklist. Due to this blunder, I had to wait 3 days before I couldn’t even recreate the domain. THUS: Lots of angry customers.

3. Awfully slow service. Paying 80 EURO every month would suggest you’d receive decent service – but customer support isn’t even open over the weekend or during evening to morning hours! Worse than that, they’re in a different time zone, so you’ll have to wake up at the crack of dawn just to call them. Replies are few and far between, and often aren’t coherent with your original message.

4. No prioritised support even when they know my server is dead!I emailed them and told them, more than 12 hours later they emailed me back to tell me they’re looking into it. At this point, they should be working their butts off to get my server up and running again – but they’re not, so obviously they don’t prioritise problems by severity. Unfortunately, this speaks for itself, you simply cannot rely on Leaseweb.

5. Nobody offered any compensation despite my server crashing twice. It quite literally swallowed my entire website the second time round – it took me two weeks to get the site back up and running again. No compensation, not even an apology.

So as you can see, Leaseweb is far from desirable. I’m sorry to have to write this, but I really hope the warning is taken seriously by everybody. I have recently joined Liquidweb in the US – and my server, despite being statistically less powerful than the server I had at Leaseweb, seems ten times as fast. I’m very happy with the service I’ve received from Liquidweb – I’d definitely recommend you join them. Stay tuned for a review on their services; the grass really is greener on the other side!