Web Africa FTP Blacklisting

E

Elfreako

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Hi there,

I am posting this as a last frantic attempt to get my Web Africa hosting working correctly. I recently moved all my domains to Web Africa as I thought them to a reputable and professional company. Boy was I wrong, and I regret my choice of moving to them. I have been unable to download all the files form my web container, after about 5 minutes of downloading I receive an FTP error that my connection has been blocked by their firewall. I then cannot connect to my container at all, until I get a new IP address!!! After about 14 days of correspondence the best solution they have been able to come up with is to send them my current IP address to be whitelisted on their server. OMG seriously? You do realize that your ADSL accounts (Yes WA is my ADSL ISP to) don't come with a static IP right? And 14 days of near daily communication with them to come up with that solution!

I have got nothing but bad service. A technician on Friday said he would send me a test account on another server and then just messed off home. WAJeff said that this matter had been sent to their management team, I did not get any communication from anyone about this.
Support is a horror story, you don't deal with a single support technician rather whoever is free at the time. This is very frustrating as I have had to explain the issue at least 5 times!

PLEASE WOULD SOMEONE AT WA HELP ME!!!!
 
Why is it failing on the upload? it doesnt make sense!
Is it windows or linux hosting?
Surely you are uploading to them though and not downloading? did you get all the files off your old host and now you want to upload them to your new host?
 
Sounds about right for Webafrica. They must be the worst web hosting provider I've ever dealt with, and I've dealt with some shockers in my years.

The real solution is moving your sites off them as soon as possible, otherwise expect to encounter hours/days of downtime, misconfigured servers, incompetent technical support, script filtering, erratic web server responses, and much more, on top of your current problem. It's been like this for years, and it doesn't look like they'll ever change.
 
@rocketboy uploading is fine. Their server only blacklists me on downloads. What happens is sometimes I need to make a few quick changes live and then want to down load them again to update my local copy and can't.

@sbbw I am losing hope. I am kicking myself for spending so much to move to them in the first place :( I guess looking at the alternatives is a good idea.

@Evil-Twin I hope you come right. I am sure you feel my pain with dealing with the support team.
 
Are you using a program to do the downloading? Eg. FileZilla? I know I can effectively block myself on my own ftp server if I open more than the allowed number of connections as per my server settings.
 
@Id13 yes I am. It has the standard 2 connections though. I have even tried a fresh installation of Windows with a fresh download I FileZilla. I have tried on 4 different computers, with 4 different ADSL ISPs and 3G all with the same result. The thing is I am web developer as my day job so I work on loads of servers, and have never had anything like this.
 
Elfreako said:
Hi there,

I am posting this as a last frantic attempt to get my Web Africa hosting working correctly. I recently moved all my domains to Web Africa as I thought them to a reputable and professional company. Boy was I wrong, and I regret my choice of moving to them. I have been unable to download all the files form my web container, after about 5 minutes of downloading I receive an FTP error that my connection has been blocked by their firewall. I then cannot connect to my container at all, until I get a new IP address!!! After about 14 days of correspondence the best solution they have been able to come up with is to send them my current IP address to be whitelisted on their server. OMG seriously? You do realize that your ADSL accounts (Yes WA is my ADSL ISP to) don't come with a static IP right? And 14 days of near daily communication with them to come up with that solution!

I have got nothing but bad service. A technician on Friday said he would send me a test account on another server and then just messed off home. WAJeff said that this matter had been sent to their management team, I did not get any communication from anyone about this.
Support is a horror story, you don't deal with a single support technician rather whoever is free at the time. This is very frustrating as I have had to explain the issue at least 5 times!

PLEASE WOULD SOMEONE AT WA HELP ME!!!!
Click to expand...

Hi Elfreako,

Are you using Linux or Windows hosting?

Have you requested that they monitor your servers FTP log while you attempt to download a file.. if there is a problem it should be easy to pin point within the logs.
 
Hi Telasera, thanks that's a great idea! When I get hold of someone, I will ask them to do that. I asked them to check the firewall logs but apparently they couldn't find any issue in there. I am on the Linux hosting.
 
Elfreako said:
Hi there,

I am posting this as a last frantic attempt to get my Web Africa hosting working correctly. I recently moved all my domains to Web Africa as I thought them to a reputable and professional company. Boy was I wrong, and I regret my choice of moving to them. I have been unable to download all the files form my web container, after about 5 minutes of downloading I receive an FTP error that my connection has been blocked by their firewall. I then cannot connect to my container at all, until I get a new IP address!!! After about 14 days of correspondence the best solution they have been able to come up with is to send them my current IP address to be whitelisted on their server. OMG seriously? You do realize that your ADSL accounts (Yes WA is my ADSL ISP to) don't come with a static IP right? And 14 days of near daily communication with them to come up with that solution!

I have got nothing but bad service. A technician on Friday said he would send me a test account on another server and then just messed off home. WAJeff said that this matter had been sent to their management team, I did not get any communication from anyone about this.
Support is a horror story, you don't deal with a single support technician rather whoever is free at the time. This is very frustrating as I have had to explain the issue at least 5 times!

PLEASE WOULD SOMEONE AT WA HELP ME!!!!
Click to expand...

Morning Elfreako

I'm following up on this thread from our PM conversation on the 1st December, last week.
This was in fact escalated onto our Senior Hosting guys for a full investigation, which has in turn been passed onto our Engineers for server log reviews and further testing.

According to my escalation logs, Yusuf called you on the 28th November at 9am mentioning the Engineering tests being run. He tried to contact you again at 13:27 that same day but couldn't get hold of you.
You then confirmed at 15:15, also on the same day, that this only happens when uploading/ downloading hundreds of files at a time. This is where we took testing further for you.

We tried updating you on the 30th November but no answer, we left you a message.

Let's see what our Engineers say further, we'll have further feedback for you today.
Please confirm if you'd prefer communication via email or phone.
 
Hi WAJeff,

I phoned Yusuf on the 30th at around 15:00. If it is not in your logs, he did not add it. He promised to send me test details on a new server to try out, apparently there is another customer with the same issue and you are moving him? He did not send those details, I waited around like an idiot.
I then dealt with your weekend support who were not very helpful and made no mention of this been escalated any further. They did mention that your server people did not work weekends, but after I posted a link to this forum topic they promised someone was in fact working on it (Not sure what to believe here).

I would prefer a phone call.
 
Elfreako said:
Hi WAJeff,

I phoned Yusuf on the 30th at around 15:00. If it is not in your logs, he did not add it. He promised to send me test details on a new server to try out, apparently there is another customer with the same issue and you are moving him? He did not send those details, I waited around like an idiot.
I then dealt with your weekend support who were not very helpful and made no mention of this been escalated any further. They did mention that your server people did not work weekends, but after I posted a link to this forum topic they promised someone was in fact working on it (Not sure what to believe here).

I would prefer a phone call.
Click to expand...

I'll follow up with the staff working over the weekend, we definitely have Engineers here.
We'll have further feedback for you today.
 
You would think a firewall would only block someone trying to login with a wrong username/password combination... not because you're uploading or downloading files with a VALID username/password.

My advice, and if you want to live a long healthy life and not die of an early heart attack. Drop Web Africa as your ISP and Hosting company entirely. Rather take your business to http://elitehost.co.za where you will be helped immediately IF there's a problem and it will be fixed the same day. Those guys actually know what the **** they're doing.

As for your ADSL ISP, move to MWEB. You will never have any issues anymore. EVER
 
Elfreako said:
but after I posted a link to this forum topic they promised someone was in fact working on it (Not sure what to believe here).
Click to expand...

WAJeff is the only one that can really sort anything out at that place. But I wouldn't believe them as far as I can throw them. Their normal procedure of complaints coming up on MyBB is to take it into PM and silence you with promises. You then become "the fire" they're putting out so that you're not vocal anymore online.

You can just imagine the 1000's of other customers that don't bother complaining and just wait around like idiots.

Like I said, vote with your wallet and take your business elsewhere. This forums is FULL of advice and I can't believe you chose Web Africa when there's literally 100's of threads with EXCELLENT hosting companies in here.
 
Thanks to WAJeff and Yusuf at Web Africa, the problem is now sorted and I have access to my files.
 
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