The truth about eUKhost
Hello,
I would like to share with everyone my experience with eUKhost.
I have been their customer for three years.
After their sites were attacked and defaced, I tried to solve my problem with their tech support. All of that will be stated below.
In the meantime, I left a Customer Testimonial on their Forums and was banned and forbidden to post again in the forum because of that.
My post that was deleted multiple times and that lead to me being banned was this:
To whom it may concern:
I've moved to eukhost some years ago, after it was made clear to me that my hosting company of the time was bankrupting. I read the testimonials and decided to go with this server, despite the fact that it was more expensive than the competition. For most of the time I was perfectly happy. Everything changed last week and, oh boy, in which way...
Allow me to start by saying that I work as an IT Security Manager, occasionally doing some gigs as an IT Security Consultant. For that, I use two of my domains that I have hosted in eukhost.
On the Jan 29th my two domains were defaced. My first thought was that it could've been an sql injection or someone using my authentication details. After confirmation that it wasn't neither, I proceeded to starting a service call, so I opened a chat with RonnieV. And here everything started going downhill.
First of all, maybe i'm mistaken but I think the support people used to be British or, at least, English Speakers. Well, the language level of everyone that I spoke with since that interaction with RonnieV was below mediocre. But that would not be a reason, by itself, to be frustrated with the service. It just adds up.
I explained the case to
RonnieV, saying that it wasn't an sql injection and that I demanded for them to understand what was exploited on the server since, for all we knew, the server might have a backdoor installed and everything could happen again. I also said that I did the forensic verification of the contents of my homedir and authentication, and it wasn't from there. He said that it wouldn't be of his competence to do that and that he would open a ticket. And so he did, with the following information (which doesn't match *at all* what I said):
Quote:
A new helpdesk ticket has been opened for you with the ID: CEG-34113-412
----
Hello
my domain kernelsecurity.net and securitylabs.co.uk were infected. I am replacing now the infected pages.
I'd like to know what was exploited, which services, and i'd like a real guarantee that it won't happen again.
can you check exactly now what happened? check the ssh and ftp logs that I don't have access to and understand if my accounts were compromised or if it was one of your services that was exploited?
and Provide the server logs how the it will happened.
Thanks
Miguel Azevedo
I didn't request for any logs to be provided, didn't say that anything was infected, but defaced, I had already replaced the pages by then. Well, a panoply of mistakes and errors to which I replied:
Quote:
Good evening,
That wasn't, at all, my request or description.
Please contact me as soon as possible.
Miguel.
And, from there an entire fruitless email discussion.
At this time, I contacted the Billing Executive department in order to handle the refund and cancellation of my account, where I spoke with a
Mr. Bryan Oscar who assured me that in 48 hours the source of the problem would be discovered and fixed and that I wouldn't need to move to another company. He asked me to come back in those given 48 hours and we'd speak again.
So I was a bit relieved. Maybe some real investigation was going to be done and I wouldn't pass the hassle of moving to a new company. I was hopeful for a couple of days, but eventually the 48 hours arrived.
I connected to the chat system and spoke with
Shawn, who told me that Bryan was out of office and would come back in four hours. And so I waited.
At the time I was beginning to be a bit frustrated, but so I connected to the chat again in four hours, and that was when I spoke with
Simon. Simon told me that Bryan wasn't in the office and that he would take 2 or 3 hours to arrive. So I said I'd wait, and Simon said Bryan would take a long time to get out of the meeting (!), and I still waited, and waited, and waited. This was yesterday evening.
This afternoon, I connected again to have the displeasure of speaking with
Ashley and Austin. At this point, me already frustrated, I started the conversations with the two at the same time to try to get some truth out of them. In between conflicts of statements (where one said that Bryan was out of the building and the other said he was on a meeting, then, laughably, they both changed their opinions at the same time, making them to disagree again), lies about the status of the service call and rudeness from Ashley (who passed me to a Jack, while I screamed away that no, I didn't want to get passed to any Jack, who disconnected my chat three times and suggested I'd find another company to host my domains - This is a long, long chat, but I'll be more than happy to share it with anyone, if anyone is curious. It's a pearl, I assure you.), they passed me to this Jack guy who was supposed to be the supervisor.
And so he did. Open the call, nothing said, 1 second, disconnects the call.
Again started to speak with Ashley and I demanded the names and emails of the people who were involved in this charade, as well as to speak with Karen (the supposed Team Leader) or Bryan (who clearly didn't want to speak with me). Half an hour later, Ashley disconnects me the call again. So I do the same thing again, and open two conversations with two different Agents. Again, one says that Karen is in a meeting and the other that she's out of the office and she'll be back in three hours.
In the end, I'm just waiting for my refund to move to another company, after giving more than many opportunities to Eukhost to redeem for their sloppy security and system administration.
What happened to this company?
Does the savings in outsourcing the services really compensate for the mediocre service?
Or are the people in charge just getting sloppy?
This is a summary of the email I'll be sending to eukhost management. I feel, after so much time as a eukhost customer, that it's my duty to communicate which kind of services eukhost is offering today and why are they losing customers.
My sad story for any future buyer to think about before subscribing a service in eUKhost.