Layered Tech reviews

Worst. Support. Ever.

Totally unresponsive. Removed telephone support completely. They program your phone number into their system, and if you call their main number (even if it's for something other than tech support), you can't get through. You get a recording that tells you that you're only authorized for "portal access."

I'm currently waiting (36 hours and counting) on resolution to a very simple Defcon 2 support ticket. 36 hours... no communication... not a single email... no resolution.

Avoid this company like the plague.

Biggest Pro: None.
Biggest Con: Horrible support.

LT -- WHAT the HECK Happened to you?

I originally signed up when you were FastServers.net. Fairly priced, and responsive you were. I had no problems out of the ordinary. We made a good team.

WHAT HAPPENED? I didn't notice problems when you were first acquired by Layered Tech. But OH MY WORD how things have changed. I am paying for "managed" service, so that when things happen like my server being compromised by hackers, I have you there to back me up. That happened on July 4. My initial requests for help slowly turned to desperate pleas, as after 12 days I slowly began to realize I was on my own. I finally gave up asking you for help, and I became much more knowledgeable about dealing with hackers than I ever wanted to be. When I happened to start a chat with your sales rep, he managed to get things moving along, and solved my problem.

By then it was too late. I was already feverishly shopping for a new provider.

I did request to speak to a manager, who called me back and apologized for the 12-day delay in fixing my problem. He assured me that it was a fluke, and that they were having internal issues moving to a new support policy. My situation was unique, he said, and it wouldn't happen again.

But it did happen again. Time after time.

As I submitted tickets for system changes required to migrate off their server, response time was 10-days, 5 days, etc. Once my server even went completely down.

Now when you don't have the box in front of you, and you have NObody that cares on the other end, when your sites go down, it's a pretty MAJOR thing. Like, desperate-major.

My advice? STAY AWAY FROM LAYERED TECH. They are having some kind of major internal problems, and from the looks of this forum, they haven't fixed it for the last 6-12 months. The sales staff admitted that the topic of support made them cringe when they were selling their service. The billing department said I wasn't alone. One poor chap in billing that I managed to get on the phone said "I don't see anyone over there in tech support." The man stood up, looked around, and the department was a ghost town. He said they were having some staffing problems, but even the managers were out -- I hope they were enjoying themselves, whatever they were doing, because meanwhile all hell is breaking loose in their system.

Layered Tech -- we used to be buddies. Pals. You had my back. Now, it's apparent that you're only looking out for yourself. Apparently (according to your sales team) you enacted a new service policy in January '12 (which I didn't get a copy of) that goes something like this:

"If you're a big client and you pay us $2000/mo, you get the great service you've come to expect over the years. If you are a small client, screw you. Our policy says we don't have to respond to your ticket for 3 business days, but we won't honor that either. Your service will be nearly non-existent, but your monthly bill will not reflect it. We'll still charge you the same amount for what you thought you were paying for this whole time."

Managed services -- I pay extra because it's there when I need it, and I hope I don't. When I needed it, you didn't provide it, and that's misrepresentation if I ever heard of it. You should be ashamed.

Biggest Pro: Their previous reputation of service. They'll ride on those coattails for a while longer.
Biggest Con: The cobwebs on the squeaky support systems.

Layeredtech Customer suppoert, unsupprtive!

I have never left a public review positive or negative for anyone. I believe that many of these are realted to specific issues that handled correctly would have been resolved. but in this case. I have tried for over 10 days to resolve a simple issue. I have issued three tickets to NO response, and called. Waited the 3 days, and Nothing! The absolute WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED! Period! Even when I canceled I got a form email response. This is worse that 1980' cable service. Absolute train wreck. The sad thing is, if you ever got anyone on the phone they were nice and helpful. But 99% of the time that aint gonna happen. If i was an employee for this company I would run from that crap hole before the name on your resume brings you down.. Am I angry? You bet. I paid good money for bad support. No support.. If you reading this to decide on layered tech as a host. RUN..

Biggest Pro: None
Biggest Con: Customer service! Reliability

Utterly disgusted with Layered Tech - DO NOT EVER USE THEM!

I am trying to contain my extreme anger and disgust at this company which I believe the owners should be in jail for running the way they do.
We have been with LayeredTech since 2005 and their level of service has steadily become worse and worse since that time.

We have already moved our one dedicated server $250 p.m from them to DedicatedNow and will be moving our next server away as well.
Their complete lack of regard for the customer, their lack of understanding that a customer's server cannot be down for hours upon a time and that tickets cannot be responded to 8 hours later shows that this company should not even be considered as a "hosting provider"

If you value your clients or money stay away from LayeredTech and their partners!!

Biggest Con: Worst customer service ever experienced

simply incompetent

after almost five years with a dedicated server, there were three critical stops on my server in just over a month. During these stops my server remained inaccessible for more than 36 hours at each stop. The only solution I found was to change web host, because they wanted to pass a cost of U.S. $ 1000.00 to re-establish the system. I miss the FastServers were more professional.

Biggest Pro: nothing
Biggest Con: all

What are we paying for???

The tech support phone numbers all lead to a message saying to visit the website and submit a ticket. You can't get through to talk to anybody if your life (or job for that matter) depended on it. Why do they even bother having a phone number? When I actually did get through to somebody, the extension went to the wrong department (billing).

Submitting a ticket is also a joke. Responses are not emailed to you. There is no way to mark a ticket as urgent. They told me to reply if I wanted my problem to be top priority. I replied three times and never got a response or a phone call or an email.

Our site goes down randomly, particularly during high volume times. We are supposed to have a dedicated server that can handle much more than the maximum amount of visitors we have at any one time.

As the price goes up, the service goes down. Why do they need to keep increasing the price? I've spoken to multiple IT professionals that have told me we are not getting nearly what we should be from the price we're paying.

We are switching hosts as soon as possible.

DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY.

Biggest Pro: not using them anymore
Biggest Con: EVERYTHING: from service to price customer support

Layered Tech Raises Prices Lowers Quality

I just received my CC bill for my Layered Tech Hosting. Without notice it jumped from $287 /mo. to $319 / mo. Three weeks into December of 2011, I posted a ticket (you can't call them anymore) to sales. It's now one month later and they still have not returned my call. Ever since Fastserver's was bought out by Layered Tech, the tech support has gone downhill FAST! Sales support is equally worthless. I've been trying all day to reach my sales rep with no luck whatsoever.

Since the merger, my site also seems to go offline and online at various random times. I think they have some considerable internal network problems. Looks like I'll be spending my next few days hunting for a decent dedicated hosting company.
It's too bad because they used to be a great hosting company (Fastservers).

So, tech support and sales support is worse, equipment is outdated, connectivity is suspect yet prices increase over 10%
Their excuse? Power costs and connectivity costs. I say BS! It's greed. So long LT!

Biggest Pro: When they were Fastservers
Biggest Con: Being Layered Tech

Network Issue they are unable to resolve

I was a long time customer of Fast Servers. Since layered tech took over they are a JOKE.

They told me they needed to move my colocated server. After the move, I noticed some sites were not resolving to my server. I opened a ticket and they said "others are having this issue also, we will look right into it."

7 hours later they had not commented on the tix or resolved the problem.

After numerous calls, they stopped answering the support line.

The problem is that when they moved the servers they did not route all of the IP's to my server. So I have sites that are down and have been down for over 21 hours now.

I troubleshot the issue for them and told them what they needed to do, but they are too stupid to be able to take the action to get the IP's routed to my server.

I would NOT recommend them to anyone.

I will be leaving them very soon.

Biggest Pro: none
Biggest Con: they are idiots.

Be carefull with layered technologies

This month, after more than 2 years of service, I have a problem with a hard disk.

To solve it, default support offered don't solve this problems, so they suggest me to upgrade my level support to a level called defcon 2, so they can assist me better.

The problem was about an os failure.

After Payed the defcon 2 level upgrade, they tell me that they can upgrade my to this level.

And the tell me that to repair the system, they will invoice me 100$ for hard disk replacement(HARDWARE Failed!!! That The Client Must PAY) and $ 50 to reinstall the old damaged disk to recovery the cpanel accounts.

Of course I have change to another provider, but I ask layered technologies If the can return me the money, of the defcon upgrade, and simply TheY Not Answer For This Questions.

The two agents asked to return me the money, Ignore My Ticket And Don't Answer Me.

Me recomendation is go to a provider, that don't take advantage for the hardware fails to charge the client with $150.

They can't charge $50 for a service and after this don't give the service, that's a fraud. AND THEY DON'T RETURN ME THE $50

Thanks.

Tech support deleted legitimate email

Overall things are okay. They are having some issues with their support/billing interface, terminology, and call-routing while they work out the takeover of FastServers. These are annoying but tolerable. What is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE is the tech "support" I received today. Without asking, the techie deleted ALL messages in our mail queue! Sure, there were a few spam messages. I hand hand-weeded a bunch myself before calling. There were also plenty of legitimate messages of our clients. Obviously, we can't have a service that will delete our data without our permission.

Biggest Con: Thoutless tech support