A little story about Golden Telecom
It will be about the Ukrainian division of Golden Telecom.
1.5 years ago, we decided to host their server for one project. They had the parities we needed and the placement there seemed like a good idea. Bottom line: more than $ 1,000 gone nowhere, a lot of time spent communicating with managers and collection calls due to mistakenly billed a year later, after the end of cooperation. A ray of hatred towards this office, a full story of how the interaction (it’s difficult to call cooperation) with them and what came of it under the cut:
The server was no problem. Had to wait a week before installation, but overall not bad. Before signing the contract, the manager specified 2 important points for us:
- a gigabit port for the server (100Mbit was clearly not enough)
- Disabling world traffic for the server (it was necessary to leave only parity providers and those who worked through the ua-ix traffic exchange point). so that no excess traffic does not affect the monthly fee (in fact, they should not be at all).
The manager called those. to the specialist, she clarified that there are no problems with the provision of such services. Those. the specialist specified from me if we were not going to hammer the channel into the regiment, I said no, 200-300 Mbit would be occupied, the server simply couldn’t pull it out anymore. They said that no problem. The manager confirmed that everything will be done, the documents were signed and the server was installed soon.
We immediately closed access to the server from the “world” and launched the server into operation. The first mistake was not to prescribe these services in the contract and not to clarify in this contract that additional. money is not taken for them (the manager promised that they would do everything for free).
A week later, ping started to get lost on the server. We found out that the server ran into 100Mbps. It turned out that the server was not transferred to gigabit. We’ll call, we’ll find out what’s the matter ... I
would also like to talk about calls to GT. If you call support, then everything is fine. But they do not solve any issues, except about rebooting the server, removing / adding equipment and providing ip-kvm. All other questions must be clarified by the manager. Call the manager through the general incoming number 490-00-00. The average call looks like this:
- Hello, Golden Telecom welcomes you. Hold on. 3 minutes of music, then it says that all the managers are busy and please stay on the line. After 5-10 minutes, the phone usually hangs up and an attempt is made to get through later.
- times from the 3rd on average it is possible to break through to the operator. Clarifies the question, somewhere forward. a minute of music, on the other end they pick up the phone, listen, say that they should not contact them, they will forward them somewhere else or again at the reception.
- after 10 minutes, redirects usually succeed in reaching the desired manager.
This does not always happen, but in the vast majority of cases. One call takes an average of half an hour (from the first dialing to the end of the conversation), of which about 20 minutes you have to hang on the net. There is a “personal manager” service, however, it comes complete with tariffs that can be several times higher than the average ones for the same service. In any case, we were not offered this.
A wonderful manager reports that in order to activate gigabit, you need to write a statement. Amazement as to why not do it right away and why not warned is ignored, okay, the statement is so statement. He wrote and personally delivered it to the central office, handing it over to the manager. Type adopted in the development.
After 2 weeks, gigabit is still gone. A couple of hours of telephone calls and it turns out that my manager is on vacation, and the statement was lost.
It’s easier to spit than to argue, they wrote one more thing, delivered it again, handed it to another manager, who said that he would personally control that he would not get lost this time.
Another 2 weeks, again there is nothing. By calling our manager, I have already returned from vacation. This time the application was not lost, but for some reason was rejected. Why, figured out another week. As a result, they sent an answer:
"The cost of a gigabit connection is $ 200 per month, if you want, come, re-sign the contract, we will connect."
(not a quote, I write from memory, the text of the letter was not preserved)
The server fee was $ 100 per month, by the way. Again, calls, redirects, expectations, finally contacted the manager, told in a nutshell what is called, but, as expected, nothing has changed. I didn’t have the strength to find out something, and so it became clear, we decided to think about how to reduce the load on the server, where to transfer connections clogging the channel, etc.
Here comes the server bill for the last month. (second in a row). $ 400 with a penny. When subscribing to $ 100 a bit too much, we call, find out, wait, still call, nothing is particularly solved. The manager promises to find out, meanwhile, the last day of paying the bill is coming up (the 10th day, in my opinion). We decide to pay for now, then find out what and how.
Somewhere on the 15th, we were informed that more than $ 300 in excess of the subscription was charged for exceeding world traffic. Again, calls, correspondence with support and managers revealed the following:
- World traffic for the server was not turned off.
- some kind of dDoS attack or something else went and despite the fact that everything was closed on the server itself, on the connection attempts (which the server ignored, but they went through the gateway), the above amount ran. Moreover, this attack continues at the current moment (25th day). We weren’t disconnected from the world, the application was rejected (it was transmitted along with the application for gigabit) due to the fact that the company does not provide such services, it seems uninteresting to them.
We wrote a letter about shutting down the server, it was lucky, it was processed before the end of the month (I did not have to pay for the next one) and we were already billed for $ 800 for traffic. After swearing, figuring out what to do and thinking, we decided to pay the bill because the server was a little more expensive and I didn’t want to take out my brain later.
We paid the bill, took the server and put it in another DC of the middle hand (the others did not have the parities we needed).
There were parities only according to the manager (there was only half), the story of world traffic was also repeated. Fortunately, they thought of simply chopping off the server when it went into minus. All the same, it discouraged me from working with these guys, and besides, they had a stable in the hermetic zone, as opposed to the GT (with usual wall-mounted condoms, shoelaces hung somewhere and switches, packs of desktop systems on the floor, etc.).
Parity was not enough and something interesting happened: GT introduced unlimited tariffs. The second time we decided on a desperate stupidity and put the server there again, concluding a contract for a different name and being serviced by another manager. The contract prescribed gigabit (which we threw off up to $ 100 / month) and a non-tariff world (with a 1 Mbps shaper). Igogo, $ 200 + VAT (normal DCs indicate the amount with VAT and in national currency, but GT is not interesting).
At the very least, everything worked for about 3 months, until once the server disappeared from the network. It turned out that GT changed the policy and now the bill had to be paid by the 1st, otherwise the server was turned off without warning. By mail, the account reached the mailbox on the second. The server was cut down first.
It turned out that at that moment shutting down the server severely damaged many operations (several hundred gigabytes of files were processed on it and then copied to other servers). They spat, decided to disconnect already (at least the bills were 50-60 bass higher than usual for the phone, they were strained, not to mention the time), they wrote a letter, we were told to pay the debt so that there was no minus in the account. In fact, they paid for the unused month and on the 3rd day they already took the server.
The next month came the bill. A month later came a 2 times larger score. Considering how everything works for them there, I was not very surprised that someone simply did not understand that we had already taken the server for a long time and threw bills into the trash.
After 3 months, a nervous girl from the company X-Point called (collectors). I began to ride on my ears that I was an unscrupulous entrepreneur, my attempts to explain that we could only pick up the server after paying off any possible debt, that they disconnected it for us not paying, immediately paid everything and took the server, were ignored. I hung up, after 10 minutes the girl called again, in a more calm tone, found out the reason for the default, began to insist that I was like a debtor, and therefore I had to write letters and call GT and find out everything. In a nutshell I told how the average call to GT occurs, said that if she wants to sort out the situation, she should know everything through her channels, firstly, they will answer her faster, and secondly, I'm not going to waste my time because of that someone miscalculated somewhere. On this, the girl and I said goodbye and the more I didn’t hear about her, and the accounts continued to come, but the amount in them stopped growing. It was summer 2008 ...
In February 2009, they called me again. This time they were extremely politely and correctly asked about the essence of the problem. I was a little surprised at how the caller behaved, especially in contrast to the nervous girl. Either the crisis and everyone who does not know how to behave went to smoke mushrooms, or vice versa the office raised the bar due to the strong growth of the collection market in recent years (and competition, of course). But in any case, the person not only promised to find out, but he also found out after 3 weeks.
It turned out that for March last year, we are still prescribed to pay (but not $ 400 as it came in the last accounts, but 100 ... even at the current rate it is already 60). the extra 1500UAH ($ 300 before the crisis and 180 now) is still a mistake.
How did it happen that he gave me the server in the presence of debt, he explained with some sort of catch in the contract, according to which the server, although it is disconnected, but you still have to pay for it a month in advance. Here is such an interesting agreement =) Tomorrow at work I will re-read it again, but there seems to be nothing there (I tend to read the agreements before signing). I told the x-point person that I still won’t pay, because I had to pay everything before I picked up the server. He said that he understood my position, he would find out further. Let's see what else will be revealed in the bowels of the GT. It would be ridiculous if they file a lawsuit because of $ 60. I’m even ready to overpay in case I lose in order to look at it.
GT is generally a very interesting company. Having Internet prices for legal. persons (as I understand it - the main source of their income) are 2-3 times higher than the average Kievan and worse than the shovel service (scoop + regular scam for money), these beauties manage to serve quite a few customers. It is unlikely that these are kickbacks, rather they grease the right people to get exclusive access to the buildings. I have no other explanation why they are still on the market. In any case, I really do not advise you to get involved, so as not to get a lot of headache and a good empty wallet. Now they are under Beeline’s wing, but, as far as I understand, judging by the reviews, the situation has not changed.
1.5 years ago, we decided to host their server for one project. They had the parities we needed and the placement there seemed like a good idea. Bottom line: more than $ 1,000 gone nowhere, a lot of time spent communicating with managers and collection calls due to mistakenly billed a year later, after the end of cooperation. A ray of hatred towards this office, a full story of how the interaction (it’s difficult to call cooperation) with them and what came of it under the cut:
The server was no problem. Had to wait a week before installation, but overall not bad. Before signing the contract, the manager specified 2 important points for us:
- a gigabit port for the server (100Mbit was clearly not enough)
- Disabling world traffic for the server (it was necessary to leave only parity providers and those who worked through the ua-ix traffic exchange point). so that no excess traffic does not affect the monthly fee (in fact, they should not be at all).
The manager called those. to the specialist, she clarified that there are no problems with the provision of such services. Those. the specialist specified from me if we were not going to hammer the channel into the regiment, I said no, 200-300 Mbit would be occupied, the server simply couldn’t pull it out anymore. They said that no problem. The manager confirmed that everything will be done, the documents were signed and the server was installed soon.
We immediately closed access to the server from the “world” and launched the server into operation. The first mistake was not to prescribe these services in the contract and not to clarify in this contract that additional. money is not taken for them (the manager promised that they would do everything for free).
A week later, ping started to get lost on the server. We found out that the server ran into 100Mbps. It turned out that the server was not transferred to gigabit. We’ll call, we’ll find out what’s the matter ... I
would also like to talk about calls to GT. If you call support, then everything is fine. But they do not solve any issues, except about rebooting the server, removing / adding equipment and providing ip-kvm. All other questions must be clarified by the manager. Call the manager through the general incoming number 490-00-00. The average call looks like this:
- Hello, Golden Telecom welcomes you. Hold on. 3 minutes of music, then it says that all the managers are busy and please stay on the line. After 5-10 minutes, the phone usually hangs up and an attempt is made to get through later.
- times from the 3rd on average it is possible to break through to the operator. Clarifies the question, somewhere forward. a minute of music, on the other end they pick up the phone, listen, say that they should not contact them, they will forward them somewhere else or again at the reception.
- after 10 minutes, redirects usually succeed in reaching the desired manager.
This does not always happen, but in the vast majority of cases. One call takes an average of half an hour (from the first dialing to the end of the conversation), of which about 20 minutes you have to hang on the net. There is a “personal manager” service, however, it comes complete with tariffs that can be several times higher than the average ones for the same service. In any case, we were not offered this.
A wonderful manager reports that in order to activate gigabit, you need to write a statement. Amazement as to why not do it right away and why not warned is ignored, okay, the statement is so statement. He wrote and personally delivered it to the central office, handing it over to the manager. Type adopted in the development.
After 2 weeks, gigabit is still gone. A couple of hours of telephone calls and it turns out that my manager is on vacation, and the statement was lost.
It’s easier to spit than to argue, they wrote one more thing, delivered it again, handed it to another manager, who said that he would personally control that he would not get lost this time.
Another 2 weeks, again there is nothing. By calling our manager, I have already returned from vacation. This time the application was not lost, but for some reason was rejected. Why, figured out another week. As a result, they sent an answer:
"The cost of a gigabit connection is $ 200 per month, if you want, come, re-sign the contract, we will connect."
(not a quote, I write from memory, the text of the letter was not preserved)
The server fee was $ 100 per month, by the way. Again, calls, redirects, expectations, finally contacted the manager, told in a nutshell what is called, but, as expected, nothing has changed. I didn’t have the strength to find out something, and so it became clear, we decided to think about how to reduce the load on the server, where to transfer connections clogging the channel, etc.
Here comes the server bill for the last month. (second in a row). $ 400 with a penny. When subscribing to $ 100 a bit too much, we call, find out, wait, still call, nothing is particularly solved. The manager promises to find out, meanwhile, the last day of paying the bill is coming up (the 10th day, in my opinion). We decide to pay for now, then find out what and how.
Somewhere on the 15th, we were informed that more than $ 300 in excess of the subscription was charged for exceeding world traffic. Again, calls, correspondence with support and managers revealed the following:
- World traffic for the server was not turned off.
- some kind of dDoS attack or something else went and despite the fact that everything was closed on the server itself, on the connection attempts (which the server ignored, but they went through the gateway), the above amount ran. Moreover, this attack continues at the current moment (25th day). We weren’t disconnected from the world, the application was rejected (it was transmitted along with the application for gigabit) due to the fact that the company does not provide such services, it seems uninteresting to them.
We wrote a letter about shutting down the server, it was lucky, it was processed before the end of the month (I did not have to pay for the next one) and we were already billed for $ 800 for traffic. After swearing, figuring out what to do and thinking, we decided to pay the bill because the server was a little more expensive and I didn’t want to take out my brain later.
We paid the bill, took the server and put it in another DC of the middle hand (the others did not have the parities we needed).
There were parities only according to the manager (there was only half), the story of world traffic was also repeated. Fortunately, they thought of simply chopping off the server when it went into minus. All the same, it discouraged me from working with these guys, and besides, they had a stable in the hermetic zone, as opposed to the GT (with usual wall-mounted condoms, shoelaces hung somewhere and switches, packs of desktop systems on the floor, etc.).
Parity was not enough and something interesting happened: GT introduced unlimited tariffs. The second time we decided on a desperate stupidity and put the server there again, concluding a contract for a different name and being serviced by another manager. The contract prescribed gigabit (which we threw off up to $ 100 / month) and a non-tariff world (with a 1 Mbps shaper). Igogo, $ 200 + VAT (normal DCs indicate the amount with VAT and in national currency, but GT is not interesting).
At the very least, everything worked for about 3 months, until once the server disappeared from the network. It turned out that GT changed the policy and now the bill had to be paid by the 1st, otherwise the server was turned off without warning. By mail, the account reached the mailbox on the second. The server was cut down first.
It turned out that at that moment shutting down the server severely damaged many operations (several hundred gigabytes of files were processed on it and then copied to other servers). They spat, decided to disconnect already (at least the bills were 50-60 bass higher than usual for the phone, they were strained, not to mention the time), they wrote a letter, we were told to pay the debt so that there was no minus in the account. In fact, they paid for the unused month and on the 3rd day they already took the server.
The next month came the bill. A month later came a 2 times larger score. Considering how everything works for them there, I was not very surprised that someone simply did not understand that we had already taken the server for a long time and threw bills into the trash.
After 3 months, a nervous girl from the company X-Point called (collectors). I began to ride on my ears that I was an unscrupulous entrepreneur, my attempts to explain that we could only pick up the server after paying off any possible debt, that they disconnected it for us not paying, immediately paid everything and took the server, were ignored. I hung up, after 10 minutes the girl called again, in a more calm tone, found out the reason for the default, began to insist that I was like a debtor, and therefore I had to write letters and call GT and find out everything. In a nutshell I told how the average call to GT occurs, said that if she wants to sort out the situation, she should know everything through her channels, firstly, they will answer her faster, and secondly, I'm not going to waste my time because of that someone miscalculated somewhere. On this, the girl and I said goodbye and the more I didn’t hear about her, and the accounts continued to come, but the amount in them stopped growing. It was summer 2008 ...
In February 2009, they called me again. This time they were extremely politely and correctly asked about the essence of the problem. I was a little surprised at how the caller behaved, especially in contrast to the nervous girl. Either the crisis and everyone who does not know how to behave went to smoke mushrooms, or vice versa the office raised the bar due to the strong growth of the collection market in recent years (and competition, of course). But in any case, the person not only promised to find out, but he also found out after 3 weeks.
It turned out that for March last year, we are still prescribed to pay (but not $ 400 as it came in the last accounts, but 100 ... even at the current rate it is already 60). the extra 1500UAH ($ 300 before the crisis and 180 now) is still a mistake.
How did it happen that he gave me the server in the presence of debt, he explained with some sort of catch in the contract, according to which the server, although it is disconnected, but you still have to pay for it a month in advance. Here is such an interesting agreement =) Tomorrow at work I will re-read it again, but there seems to be nothing there (I tend to read the agreements before signing). I told the x-point person that I still won’t pay, because I had to pay everything before I picked up the server. He said that he understood my position, he would find out further. Let's see what else will be revealed in the bowels of the GT. It would be ridiculous if they file a lawsuit because of $ 60. I’m even ready to overpay in case I lose in order to look at it.
GT is generally a very interesting company. Having Internet prices for legal. persons (as I understand it - the main source of their income) are 2-3 times higher than the average Kievan and worse than the shovel service (scoop + regular scam for money), these beauties manage to serve quite a few customers. It is unlikely that these are kickbacks, rather they grease the right people to get exclusive access to the buildings. I have no other explanation why they are still on the market. In any case, I really do not advise you to get involved, so as not to get a lot of headache and a good empty wallet. Now they are under Beeline’s wing, but, as far as I understand, judging by the reviews, the situation has not changed.