A Warning to Prospective Hosts Concerning HFB Servers

[Splatter Panda 2]

Hello,

I've been hosting an official-hive and a private-hive server using HFB Servers as a provider for about two months now. After this period of time, I felt that I should warn others who might be considering HFB as a server provider: HFB has no clue about customer service, and I'm pretty sure their "tech support" staff are just sitting around google-ing the issues sent to them.

First, my issue is not with the servers themselves. When I play on either of my servers I have a stable, relataively lag-free experience. Neither server has ever outright crashed during a game, and the few minor glitches that have affected gameplay have always been known DayZ bugs..

The people there at HFB... that's another issue.

About a week ago a hacker visited one of my servers and broke the entire game; a week later, that server is still down due to the bumbling, ineffectual efforts of HFB "tech support". I have asked repeatedly that they just reset the server files to a fresh-install state, but apparently that's too much for them to handle.

So, what's it like submitting a support ticket with HFB, you ask? When opening a support ticket with HFB, the user must decide whether the issue being reported is of Low, Medium, or High priority. I sent in a minor issue months back and marked it as Low Priority. I got an answer back in about half an hour.

But now, when the server isn't even operable, and I've essentially payed for a week's worth of server operation on a down server? Over 24 hours between responses after marking that issue High Priority. As icing added to that fuck-you delay in response, they seem to routinely wait until the end of their business day to send out replies, thus ensuring that if their fix doesn't resolve your issue, you will be waiting another 24 hours for another reply.

And, as some more fuck-you icing, replying to your own support ticket, be it to add info that might help them resolve the issue or just telling them that they suck balls, will send your support ticket to the bottom of the list. Every time.

Here's the message that I get from their support service the most. Enjoy.

"This is an auto reply.

You have submitted a ticket outside our normal business hours. Although we try to answer tickets 24/7, tickets submitted outside normal hours may have a longer response time than those submitted during normal hours.

To keep your ticket a top priority for faster response time, please refrain from replying to your own ticket, as this will simply change its priority to a much lower one and will cause a delay in our responses."

I receive my once-a-day response from their "tech support", usually about 5 or 6 o'clock in the evening, local. I can usually test their fix and report back in less than half an hour. And when I respond to say "No, it's still broken", I get that automatic response every time, each time within half an hour of their message. WTF, right?

I work in a customer service industry, and I can say that the company I work for would probably go out of business very quickly if we treated customers in this fashion. It's the equivalent of ordering a pizza in the morning, having to wait all day for delivery, then finding that they sent you the wrong pizza. You call the pizza store to get your order fixed, but the store has since closed and you just get a recorded message with a choir of 12 year-olds chanting "Fuck you / We're keeping your money" in harmony.

HFB has been in operation as a DayZ server provider for about eight months, making them the oldest server provider for DayZ (their claim). From their current level of service, I can only conclude that they've been providing horrible service for that entire eight months. They are considerably cheaper than other server providers that I looked at, but it seems that their discount price comes with terrible support and a general lack of interest in providing the services that you have paid for.

Hosts, consider yourselves warned.

Edited February 8, 2013 by Inception.
Text size reduced...

[haydenc 1]

agreed

[joshishat 0]

Lol well looks like you aren't the only Dayz server of theirs to get hacked and experience shitty tech support.

[wesmacker 34]

everyone gets hacked!

HFBservers havign no support is old news man, check June last year...

Edited February 22, 2013 by wesmacker

[xomp 0]

It's actually gotten worse. We recently purchased a server from them and there was no indication as to how long it would take to have the server setup until payment was made. That's when we found out it can take up to 24 hours. Welp, as you guessed it took exactly 24 hours to get a reply that the server was up and running.

From there we tried updating the server and had issue where the latest updates were not appearing in our Control Panel so I submitted a support ticket. That's when they decide to inform you that it can take up to 48 hours to respond. And, naturally after 72 hours since purchase I get a response from "Kiote" which proved he didn't even bother reading my support ticket.

I logged in and saw we had the new updates available so I went ahead and updated the server and changed the servers name to reflect the patch version and all and restarted it and retried a connection to the server. Still won't connect even though my Client & Server are running the same patches (1.7.6).

Figuring 72+ hours is adequate time for a server host to fix a problem I put in a cancellation request and after submitting the request got an email where they let you know that there are NO refunds for cancellations. Nothing about this is mentioned during the cancellation process and is reserved for the confirmation email. Needless to say I'm not too concerned about it as a 2 minute phone call to my Credit Card Company will fix this little surprise. There are over 6,000 members in the community I manage and you bet I'll be using all my resources to enlighten people how terrible they really are.

HFBServers.com has to be one of the Top 5 worst Server Hosting Companies I've ever dealt with. They are literally the ProFlowers.com of Server Hosts in my opinion.

EDIT: HFBServers.com has given me a full refund and Kiote has apologized for the inconvenience which is worth mentioning here.

Edited March 1, 2013 by xomp

[nekoboi_sam 0]

I rented from hfb last year, did the basic package. Every time a hacker came into the server and put all the vehicles in the ocean they would reset the server in a matter of minutes. I decided to rent from them again. The only package they have now is the ultimate which is really cheap compared to before. Well first off it's been 6 days and they didn't install my HFB hive/mapper tool, and 2 days ago my server broke to the point pressing the start button will only load the page for 2 minutes and do nothing. I sent a ticket in immediately and haven't gotten a response in 2 days. and i also sent a ticket about the mapper tool 4 days again and haven't heard a single word from them. I am about ready to cancel my service and demand a refund for false advertising of "24/7 customer service and tech support". It's frustrating having a server for your clan, they leave for the weekend to do some shit, hoping i will have it ready when they come back sunday, only to hear that HFB hasn't responded to any of my tickets.

[kaysio 3]

Im just into my 3rd day with HSB servers.

Im no wizz kid, but do know my way around servers.

Ive run several arma 2 servers in past and still running 2 of them at the moment.

Also Im running 2 dayz.st servers as of now.

So now with HSB, I thought I should be able to cope with it.

Now time to play with the system, instead of being limited like in dayz.st servers.

But nope Ive had problems from the start.

Took just over 2hrs to setup the server { the host states upto 24hrs]

Still not got my map tools & hive tools { the host states upto 24hrs/48hrs] - Ive past that.

When I done a fresh install of Dayz Private, it would hang on the loading screen and not move on.

Took 24hrs response from email, to sort it out.

When it runs, it runs with next to no faults.

Now that I want to add a few scripts in Dayz, more problems have appeared.

Everytime I tweak the mission.pbo, the server fails with lost connection to host.

The mission starts to download in the lobby screen, then a message pops up lost connection to host.

I emailed them about the problem, took just short of 24hrs to reply.

There reply they dont offer help to modded servers.

Edited June 14, 2013 by kaysio