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C-Servers (Centerfield Ltd) - Great Deals and Very Rude Support Agents
PointyCandle
Member
TLDR: C-Servers has very affordable deals, but their customer service is terrible. I asked them a relatively simple (to be fair, somewhat silly) support question and their support personnel reacted very unprofessionally, resulting in a ban.
To be fair, if you think that you won't mind not contacting their support ever, I totally recommend their service. It works just fine.
They had a good Black Friday offer. They were offering the following for 44 USD for 3 years
- 3 vCPU AMD Ryzen 9 3900 @ 3.1 GHz (60% Fair Share)
- 6GB RAM DDR4
- 120GB NVMe RAID
- 1 Gbps / Unmetered + C-Servers Remote SSH Included (IPv4-to-6)
It has not been 3 years, so I cannot know how things would have gone, but their product worked. To be clear: their advertisement was NOT fraudulent.
Here is my interaction with the customer service.
Ticket 1
I can't find my original message, but it was about running a script they provided, from here
Hello,
Script is not broken. NAT is working as intended at the server. The output of both scripts is correct.
Ticket Closed
Ticket 2
Me
I am trying to reopen #XXXX. Closing the ticket without actually checking with me why I think it is broken is not very nice.
As you can see in this screenshot, the script terminates with
./nat.sh: line 113: 16#: invalid integer constant (error token is "16#")
Is this intentional?
Thanks for your time.
Them
Hello,
Let me exceptionally state a huge "what?", first and foremost. Because, evidently, you don't seem to understand what you're doing - at all.
Obviously the NAT script is EXCLUSIVELY for the IP provisioned and provided by C-Servers. And solely these. Not obviously for your own created IPs, which are private and we don't have knowledge of.
Attempting to have a NAT script go on your own "fd7a" created IP, when this was never part of our own provided range per the product description, is just absurd.
Sending twice a ticket after creating an IP and not realizing this, is even worse.
Blaming the provider for being "unprofessional" on an adequate resolution provided beforehand, when you've apparently created by yourself your own theoretical "issue" and then sent us a ticket for that, is truly the worst.
Think on what you're doing in life - and this ticket will, again, be closed.
Next time, kindly reconsider that your own actions are your sole responsibility - not the provider's. And the VPSes are unmanaged, as usual on this industry, so don't even think of sending another ticket regarding that IP or you will be banned for 7 days from writing support tickets.
If you've broken your own Internet, it's time for a reinstall with another OS. That is also entirely on you to do, as VPSes are managed by their users just like a server.
Have a nice week.
Best Regards,
C-Servers Customer Service
Specialized Support - Systems Administrator
Response to Reddit Post
At this point, I posted this on reddit
Hello, good night, and thank you for bringing that question here.
I stand by my own word: expecting a resolution from an apparent issue you've created (the fd7a IPv6 is not automatically created by the system, our range starts at 2a00/2a01) like this was our problem, or our issue, is not reasonable.
We provide info on NAT port ranges on our own IPs. We can't provide it on other ranges created by a customer. How would we know these? We don't have a way to. They're private. Technically your request doesn't make sense - and if a support ticket doesn't make sense, it's wasted time for both parties. Unpleasant, may we agree, right?
In any case, support ticket volume has been very significant lately after the Black Friday, myself I've been getting pressured for the natural expected decisive answers at this time and to bring support volume back to normal, and I do apologize if in any way you felt offended, because it was absolutely not intended - we do strive to be up to standards, support-wise.
It is a three year deal, but I'll gladly give you 3 extra months for free, as a compensation. Send us a ticket and I'll extend it from there.
Performance-wise, you'll see the VPS is nice. They're tested before commercializing them and I want to ensure they have quality. And we are implementing soon a new automation system based on VirtFusion - which all in all, will improve this topic.
Best regards.
I said the following:
Hi u/ittakesfive
Thank you for responding in a more civil tone here.
Thank you for your semi-apology. (A real apology shouldn't be guarded by an if.)
I am aware that you would not be able to answer arbitrary tech questions as part of support. A simple, "As for X, this is working fine. Please look at Y. As for Z, we are not able to help, because it is not relevant to our service" would have been fine. Instead, you went on a meltdown ("Think on what you're doing in life") and threatened to ban me.
I understand that customer support is a thankless job (when it is done well, nobody notices and when it is done poorly, it results in drama). I empathize with you as a fellow techie and a fellow human, but I cannot say the same in my capacity as a customer.
Thanks for the offer. I will take you up on it. I will also post screenshots of my tickets here (regardless of whether the conversation goes smoothly or is hostile), for the sake of transparency.
Thanks for assuring me that your VPSs have good performance. I have not tested them. However, I do not have doubts about the quality of the machines, or your technical capabilities but only your civility towards customers.
After some digging, I figured out what was going wrong with the script.
Here is the output of the script
You have the following IPv6 addresses at this server: 2a01:4f9:xx:xxxx::1 fd7a:115c:a1e0::9a34:714d ──────────────────────────────────────────────
NAT IPv4 ports of the IPv6 IP: 2a01:4f9:xx:xxxx::1 → TCP: xxxxx - xxxxx → UDP: xxxxx - xxxxx → NAT IPv4 IP: 135.181.113.98 ────────────────────────────────────────────── Thank you for choosing C-Servers. ──────────────────────────────────────────────
For the first IPv6, it works fine. For the second IPv6, it does not.
However, the second IPv6 is something I have added and I cannot expect your script to work for it. You were right about that.
However, you could have just told me that, instead of closing my ticket early, or yelling at me.
Even better, the script should have said that by itself. Something like "Non C-Server IP detected. Ignoring this IP.". Instead, it exits un-gracefully.
I think you could improve the script by checking if the IPv6 is a global unicast one
2000::/3before attempting the calculation.
The Ban
In a few hours, in response to my response, they cancelled my service - Screenshot 1 and Screenshot 2
They sent me an email stating that it would not be sustainable to continue the current service relationship - Screenshot
LowEndBox & LowEndTalk.
Comments
Welcome to LowEndSupport, your ticket has been received and your wait time is doubled
Please wait for reply
Did you get a refund?
No. At least, not yet. But they said they would give me a refund.
I paid with my credit card via Stripe, so I don't know if it that route causes delays in me receiving the refund.
My experience with it, probably take a month
you mean, in general, for this sort of situation, or with this specific provider?
Hi,
we also use stripe, it can take multiple days....If you did not get anything within 10 working days, you should follow up.
As to the story: Quiet unfortunate. But maybe its indeed better to stop this kind of business relationship if both parties are unhappy with the performance of the other party.
While deleting an account / service without warning or possibility for the customer to save his data is quiet harsh in my opinion.
Its depend on your bank
Thanks for the info on what to expect about the refund.
I can wait. Thankfully, it wasn't that much money.
Take the refund and run.
i mean, you get what you paid for. I also have this plan in my global vps list, but im routing it through tailnet and use it as a cheap service & incremental backup server.
yep, I had the same idea! The
fd7aIP mentioned in the story was indeed added by tailscale. I wasn't smart enough to know this at the time.The thread at https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/4449616/#Comment_4449616 is interesting. The agents do respond, but their is the same tone problem, at the end of their comment "Be considered as warned"
I prefer no bullshit support and at least talking the truth rather than 'check now' and playing dumb.
You also 'lost' the first ticket content, yeah.
Script clearly worked, you selected wrong IP, you had output. You disabled brain.
If script didn't work you had a whole damn website how to calculate. You disabled brain.
Script is public, you could trace what is happening, you decided go to support. You disabled brain.
There is nothing wrong with disabling brain once, but if you are being told to re-enable it and just do it before going at support again.