Thread: Seedbox hosting, the missing thing

Hi members of T-I.

Since I joined this forum the last month, downloading/uploading has become more than a hobby for me; I used to download some stuff from TPB and demonoid, bur never thought I could find a big community around it. And now I'm here.

This is not a rant, it's just my POV. I'm a customer of other web hosting companies, and I'd like to share my perspective with the people in the business of seedboxes.

Well, in the last weeks I've been reading a lot about torrents, trackers, and seedboxes. I consider myself and enthusiast of web hosting. I have a few web pages hosted in US servers, so this is not quite new for me.

After reading opinions of members, I decided it was time to test some services and that's how I acquired my first seedbox. I'm not going to name any providers here, because this is my opinion and it's very subjective and I want to keep this as neutral as possible.

In general I can say that the hardware is decent and the prices are quite competitive. Some providers offer special features (like unique plugins) while others offer top notch servers ready for us to squeeze them. There're a lot of reviews here so you can do your research if you're interested in a seedbox.

But now comes the "sad" part of this.
One thing that I've noted is the lack of attention to the customer (let me explain this).
Let's suppose that a guy member of T-I is interested in purchasing a box. He has done his research and decide to order immediately. He goes to the sales page and before purchasing, he wants to know some details (because the page doesn't have enough information).

This guy doesn't find any live chat, so he tries desperately to contact the provider. After going through like 5 pages, he finally find an e-mail address. Hoping to get a response to his questions, he sends an e-mail waiting for a response. Some buyers tend to be anxious, and want everything done at the very moment. This guy decides to wait a little bit more, because we're humans and we need to sleep, or rest or whatever.

Well, 6 hours might be a reasonable time, we all have things to do, right?. OK, now 12 hours have gone and still no answers. Maybe they're busy or there's a major situation and they can't answer right now. Waiting and waiting and waiting. It's been more than 20 hours and the guy who was ready to place his order gets a "steve jobs like" e-mail. 20 words of a message that show no commitment at all.

They have lost a potential buyer. A response after 1 hour maybe would have changed this situation. A message that would have taken like 3 minutes to write would have result in a new customer, but sadly they have let this guy go away.

The same thing goes for the tech support. This has been the Achilles' heel of many providers. I honestly think they should be more careful in this area. What happens if a newbie tries to use its box but it happens that ruTorrent has decided to stop working? From the moment they submit a ticket support til they receive a response, it could have been 24 hours, easily. It has happened to me.

When they do things like this, I honestly feel so uncomfortable that I start looking for alternatives. I'm not demanding to be contacted within 2 minutes, but tech support is an important area and they should pay more attention there.

If any seedbox company owner is reading this, I'd suggest you to listen to your customers. I can't say that all companies fail at this points, but it has happened to me. This is what I think, I hope you can learn a little bit more about this kind of situations.

Sorry for the long post.

Agreed completely. The companies I've dealt with all started out with phenomenal tech/sales support, but few of them slipped up and got lazy ONCE you became a customer as well. That enraged me, and the only solution was to move to another box.

Great post OP - I share the sentiments as well.

It's why I'm just going to get my own from kimsufi. :)

I think the problem is. Most providers just do it as a hobby business. Rather than full time.

In my experience, it seems to depend on how far they've come.

A web host just starting out is usually patient, but not as knowledgeable at fixing problems, but the support is usually friendly, even if it takes a bit longer to get things fixed.

This sort of web host starts getting better equipment, so their service is faster and in more demand. It's usually just one or two people, so, they are working frantically to keep up with everything. This is when need for support decreases a little bit proportionally, but customers increase exponentially, causing these couple of guys who do -everything- become inundated. They get all sorts of stupid questions "how i shell!?!??!", "why is site down??????", "what is my ip how do i tell!?!??!", etc. They lose their patients, and support becomes more of a necessary evil than something they want to be good.

Then, they usually get a few more staff members, and you have support that is friendly, but not necessarily very knowledgeable, and machines that are good.

Finally, they make enough money to have every bit of hardware taken care of, meet with competitive rates, and have a trained, competent staff.

The problem is, not everyone gets there, and new companies are starting up all the time. Very few make it to the top, and the ones that do often abuse it, the competitively-prices companies often being lower on the scale.

Not to mention, sometimes there's just anomalies. Otherwise good companies are inundated with new customers and support requests, and their normal staff is suddenly not enough- so they answer in the order they received the inquiries. Besides, good customer service dictates that an existing customer is more valuable than a potential new customer. However, that's no excuse for the crappy email you got.

Anyhow, good luck on finding hosting. =]

It seems that "24 hours" is the average response time, even when your problem is marked as high priority. The worst thing is that this seems to be a standard time among providers. I was asking in IRC channel and the staff was flaming to an upset customer :| seriously guys this is not ok, we pay money for the service and we deserve good treatment.

Yeah..i understand what you´re saying and share the same sentiments...

But i agree with Mercer. Sometimes look like are "hobbies" and not a professional service. Shows like that they are making a favor to you... Maybe they think too that they´re are providing a "a kind of illegal service"..renting a seedbox for illegal downloads (we have to agree...99.99% is that !) so you can´t blame on etc...

But you have HERE !
Give to them a bad marketing here..and on all trackers that you belong... Many user will be affected with this bad marketing...

Good Post alankun, all too true that sometimes the customers often are left in the shadows due to poor customer service.

well, it's quite often that some kids do it as a hobby, so don't expect much of a service most of the time. 24 hours is indeed an average time for reply for most, with few exceptions.
Don't think of those seedbox guys as pros, most of the time again, they are not. All one needs is a desire to make a website and resell the bandwidth. Doesn't take a genius to do this and make some profit.