I ordered a bed roughly 1 year ago now, October so 10 months. A custom sized Divan bed, via the phone. I was most delighted I would have a nice large bed that would fit into my room width ways. Memory foam, exciting stuff! The bed arrived on the day of my (at the time) gf’s grandads funeral. When we arrived back at mine, to my shock, the bed was not what I ordered. Let me explain:

When placing the order, I made it very clear on a few occassions that this bed MUST be in two (2) halves. The BASE of the bed, in 2 halves. Otherwise it will not go upstairs, nor will it fit in my tiny box room. I was assured numerous times the bed would come in 2 halves, so I placed my order and started becoming an interior designer for the next few weeks before its arrival. When I heard it had arrived, I could not wait to get back home and go to bed in it, after all, I had been sleepin on the floor for the a month before so.

So imagine my shock when I get home and its one giant solid piece. This is not what I ordered! My £519 hard earned cash has bought me a solid lump of badly built bed that wont even get upstairs. I phone the company, explain this to them, surely they will apologise, come collect and deliver me something that resembles what I paid for? Apparantly not. A quote from the sales manager:

The picture shows a carpet, the bed does not come with the carpet does it. – Sarcasm and rudeness to the extreme, it was clear I would have to take things further.

I wrote to my bank, opened a dispute for my credit card, told them the facts, go refunded. Happy days. They will have to come and do the bed now I thought. Apparantly not. After not hearing a single thing for over a month, my bank tell me they have disputed the refund. They promptly lose this dispute. In the meantime however, I have written to the bed company telling them to come and collect it, or I will dispose as I see fit. Afterall, a giant near double sized bed cannot sit in the middle of a room forever. This has been nearly 3 months now. I give them 10days of reciept to contact me letting me know their intentions. I hear nothing from them for a good few months.

Bring on 6 months later. Not much has been heard, the refund is mine, the bed is mine. Suddenly I get a let a letter saying they demand to collect the bed in its original condition. Wow, do they seriously expect me to keep this bed in its original packaging etc for 6 whole months? I don’t think a court would agree with them either. The bed by this time has been cut in half and dumped in my room. We rebuilt the bottom to make it solid and added some more wood to the top as it only had 4 slates going across. Had a shagged someone, it may well have collapsed. Not good.

So I tell them, by all means collect it. You get it out my room, and your welcome to take it. They are not happy with this, instead saying I refuse to allow them to collect it, and contact my Bank disputing it, again. The bank contact me, I send a letter that includes what I told the bed people. Dispute to them is lost again, and I hear nothing further for 2 months. I then get a letter saying ‘Pay now, or we will sue you’. I ignore this letter, as i’ve already said no corrospondence will be entered unless its a legal document saying i’m going to court with them. I have now not heard back for a further 2 months now. So much for the threat.

The company is incredibly unprofessional. The staff are rude, the products are badly made, and certainly will never ever recommend them. They company is more stress that they are worth. On the bright side, I have a broken bed and i’m £500 better off because of their stupidity and stubbornness.

Extreme Gameservers

Extreme, what does this make you think? The best, superior, unique or does it make you think, not original? Whichever answer you go for there, you might be correct. Whilst not original in the naming (there are various forms of ‘extreme’ gameserver companies out there), they are very good for the money you pay. Whilst not the cheapest out there, you do get what you pay for.

Having tried the company a while back based on there 7 day no quibble refund, I did feel somewhat guilty at asking for my money back, as the service was ultimately faultless. Apon asking around, those that have heard of them, don’t have any problems with them when they used them. In fact, the only reason so far for moving, has been due to prices cheaper elsewhere.

They use TCAdmin for the control panel, and allow you to switch to 2 alternative games. Good if your a CSS, L4D and a L4d2 player for example. You may only run one at any time however. Amending this to running as many as you wish but within your slot limit, would essentially turn this into a TCAdmin version of the e-FRAG Panel. Not sure if TCadmin would allow this however.

Billing systems, haven’t heard anyone complain about it, so i’ll go on the assumption it is good.

Webhosting – The basic package comes free with your gameserver, although, for the higher prices you pay for some of the games, this can be argued as to whether it comes ‘free’. Regardless of this, the package is good, and gives you all you really need for a basic website. Just don’t expect to use it as an svdownload site if your server is incredibly busy. For most though, this package is fine. They offer further packages that are competitive with some of those available from pure webhosting companies. I suspect if you needed extra bandwith they would be able to cater for this if asked (on lower packages).

Dedicated Servers – There are cheaper and better deals out there. Once this review is live, a link to it will be emailed to them. It could be down to outdated page perhaps. An example would be for the £90pm dedi, this should really cost more on the line of £50-60. With 1GB ram, you aren’t really going to be able to do much with it in terms of gameservers. The CPU itself will handle quite a few servers without problems, so major concern with that, if it was for the above example prices. A dual would be preferred, but its not a requirement for a £50-60 guide price. Bandwith wise, it could be higher, but again this would depend on what you are using the server for, and how busy it is. For most, the bandwith amounts shown will be fine. The dedicated server is given to you unmanaged, as full root access is given (on MANAGED servers, root is usually not given).

Support – Support was pretty rapid when I had my account there. I asked some pretty stupid questions in an attempt to frustrate the staff and see if they came across as know it alls in the response. This was not the case. So support wise, i’m giving them a thumbs up.

—-

Addition added on 16/08/2010-

Having spoken with ‘Laurance’ on the live chat at approx 12AM, I have found some more info out on them.

They are apparantly a 5 man company, 2 people are direct associates of the owner, and the other is a paid employee. Was not advised if he was full or part time, or his experience, nor the others. I say apparantly as their is no evidence to suggest this is true or false.

Phone support is 24/7. Ticket support is also 24/7. Have not tested ticket support to confirm. However, if it is that urgent it needed immediate support/fix, you would phone them.

They handle support tickets on a ‘urgency/priority’ basis. For instance, someone asking for a mod to be installed is not high priority, a server down/looping, would be high priority. This is what EVERY company does, but fails to admit, so thumbs up again to their honesty.

They believe in being honest and open to customers. A ‘almost direct’ quote from Laurance: Why lie? It will get found out. – - So very true, as the new owners of e-FRAG have found out.

—————-

Overall, a good company. Not heard of by all, but definitely people you should true. When ordering, remember the extra stuff you are getting, and the price will suddenly seem very fair. Besides, you could always try haggling Definitely a company to go for.

J

This review is based on a VPS 1000 package on openVZ using Centos 5 32bit.

I run mumble, websites, and a gameserver on my VPS. No issues with any of them. Ping is nice and low for the gameserver, chat is lag free and high quality, websites open fast and download speed is quick. Support team answered my queries quickly and helped me set pretty much everything up, including a control panel I found on the web. This helped me manage my websites a bit easier, similar to how plesk or directadmin would function.

I have openVZ for my VPS running on centos5 32bit. uptime has been 100% so far and the control panel is brilliant. The guys have made a basic panel for noobs, or you can use the standard panel for the system you use which is alot more advanced one if you know what your doing. The basic one allows for simple things like hostname change, restart VPS, stop, start etc. The advanced one covers everything else you could possibly need. I like looking at this one but don’t know much so generally stick to the noob one haha! Can’t risk breaking anything then.

Price wise, you can’t really fault these guys. There are alot of VPS providers out there now, all offering different packages. These people have got it to a T though. Prices are awsome and the support is awsome. If you need to customise your order, just contact them and they will help you with this (like I did). I honestly can’t really fault em. Definitely recommend.

>Summary

Overall i’d 10000% recommend this company. I have heard that people had issues a year or so ago, but these really are a thing of the past. Havent seen a single bad review thats been done in the last 8-9 months. All positive recommending the company, and this review can add to the list!

They offer a 30 day money back guarantee which was why I went originally, so really, you have absolutely nothing to lose going with them.

reviewed by Greg and updated on 20-08-2010 at reviewers request

Not many know this, but I did do a spot of work for INX Gaming for a few months between mid-end 2007 and early 2008. The company, back then, did appear to be poorly run, but ticked along relatively well. From an admin side, it was setup pretty bad, with no centralised panel, instead using 2-3 different ones to do seperate things. Whether this has now changed isn’t something I could comment on, nor does it really matter on a customer perspective.

The reason I stopped working for INX Gaming though, does matter. Olly, the owner, was, and to a fair few i’ve heard from, still is, a class A liar. For months I was promised to be setup on the payments and have a secure job with them. This never, ever came, despite a few months work with them, and help in how to improve the admin side of things. I remember speaking with Olly when e-FRAG returned, he was quite adamant that me going back to them was a bad idea and that I should come and do work with INX. When I asked if he’d actually pay me this time, the answer was shady, but it was obviousy heading in the ‘no’ direction. So, work for free with a liar, or work for money with something I believe in? I made my choice, and Olly quickly deleted me from MSN and Facebook in a raging sulk. Shame.

In 2010, I was approached by Aaron who wanted to know if I was interested in work there after e-FRAG got taken over by morons. I told him yes, and was told we’d talk more later that week. Nothing happened so I contacted Aaron again, numerous times. No reply. A shame really, as it could well have changed this review into something a little better, ie: allowed me to see the issues were gone, the setups now compared to before, and see how the company is now run. Unfortunately his rudeness has only led to further bad points in the review regarding staff.

A few current and old INX Gaming customers have mentioned similar cases with Olly promising a free upgrade perhaps, which never saw the light of day, along with compensation for poor service, which never saw the light of day. Whether these can ALL be pinpointed onto Olly, I cannot confirm. However, if they can’t be, it does make you wonder about the other staff members.

I’ve said it many many times now, I have always tried to be as honest as I can be with customers wherever I have worked. Its meant customers respect me, its meant they stay loyal, and its meant that any problems that arise, are understood by customers on the cause, and how long we believe it will take to fix. Honestly really is the best policy when it comes to customer service, or anything really.

———-

Regarding client side, when I was using a server with them, I didn’t really think it was that great. The ping was good, until it became apparant the server was overloaded. This could be told by constant ping spikes (ie: 35 going to 120 for a few seconds) and general jittering on the whole. It was running like it was on SWAP memory. The staff obviously denied this, and moved the server to another place, to which point the problem went, thus making my diagnosis correct. (If you can’t tell what overloaded server lag looks like in the GSP industry, you shouldn’t work in it). After moving servers, the panel did stop working properly, and I promptly gave up attempting to the use the server.

The above problem seems to be something quite alot of people have experienced. Whilst many will no doubt have no performance issues, it is clear that servers have been overloaded at INX Gaming in the past. Again, I cannot comment on what they are like now, apart from what others have told me. And i’m told not much has changed in that aspect.

Support wise, they did hire someone on full time, named Mike Kent. From what i’ve heard, he was relatively good at this job. I was told he was studying at University at the time, and was a friend of Olly if I recall correctly. From viewing the forums, it does appear its been good with support, however, others have not had such great experiences. I’ve seen a few posts from the INX forums get removed that complain of bad support. Whether this is to cover up their own image, or because the post was slightly abusive due to no support, isn’t something I can comment on. You are welcome to make your own speculation.

I’ll do a summary rating on the prices and panel, if anyone would like explanations for these, just ask and i’ll add. 1 is low, 10 is high.

Cheapness: 5
Value for Money: 6
Billing System: 2
Control Panel: 7
‘Freebies’: 1

I will explain the ‘freebies’ quickly. The claim that webhosting/voice server come free, but if you choose a basic package, it is not included. The only real difference between the 2 packages is the extra additions like webhosting and voice comms. It is therefore NOT ‘free’. This is a misleading conception that alot of companies try and do.

Ultimately, i’m not going to recommend INX, nor will say to avoid them. On the forums, they look good, from hear say, its not so good. I would recommend getting a trial server for a few days first, test out the support, the panel, and then make a choice on whether to purchase. From personal experience, i’d avoid them, but everyones experience is different.

When I originally contacted Gaming Deluxe (www.gamingdeluxe.co.uk), I did not recieve a response. After speaking with someone via IRC did I get a response from a managing director. I had previously emailed the first MD, to no reply. I recieved a reply from Andy (W00der) who seemed very friendly and took a personal interest in the business. This, to me, looked promising, both in terms of working for them, and in terms of business expansion in the future for the company itself.

So after a faily long chat on the phone, I got setup on the support system for a weeks trial, my main role was sales however. Support tickets themselves were responded to very quickly, and usually in a personal manner. However, some replies seemed to be lacking general intelligence, or actual effort to find/fix the problem. For instance, I saw a few regarding packet loss/lag/high pings. These were never really looked into, instead the users were either told its a plugin, or a change of server was offered. These are not really solutions. If there is an issue with the network (which there clearly is on these ones), then this needs addressing, not ignoring. For this reason alone, I cannot recommend them for TOP support.

So from an admin perspective looking at how it is run, generally on the whole, its good. But as far as network issues go, they don’t seem to be looked into quite as thoroughly as they should be. Not everything can be blamed on a plugin and staff should definitely take note of this.

Speaking with a customer of GamingDeluxem, who runs a few servers with them – He was having lag issues and the support team were doing nothing to help, instead blaming plugins, even on a vanilla server. Only after speaking with the director on the phone, did something happen. They have now moved them to a new server, and lo and behold, issues are gone.

I did play on his server at one point, and it was clear to me that there were definitely problems with it. I don’t think it was network related, more machine hardware related. The ping was ok, but the choppiness suggested an overly full server. The other servers hosted by GamingDeluxe were also suffering the same ‘lag’ issue.

Pricing wise, there is cheaper, but then there always will be. For what you get, the prices are generally pretty good. However debranding options are now a thing of the past, but have yet to be removed for this company. I’m not too sure this is a wise decision as it will deter quite alot of people if they have to pay an extra £3 to have it debranded.

When ordering you do get webhosting and a voice server, however I dont think these get setup by default, instead you have to email in to get it setup judging by the amount of emails that come through regarding this part. The setup there seems a little poor, but if it gets done quickly then there is little to complain about really.

Generally speaking, issues for customers are sorted quickly, it just seems to be networking/hardware related ones tend to be overlooked from what I have seen. I don’t think it is intentional, most likely to the part that staff are not really trained in networking so if they see it ping ok, they think everything is fine. Not the case.

Panel wise, you can switch between multipul games that you choose when ordering. A nice feature, but would be better if they could run more than 1 at a time. Emailing in does see this being amended for you however. It should be a feature provided as standard though, a direction many companies are now taking. This company uses TC Admin control panel.

Summary

Overall, I would recommend GamingDeluxe. Like any company, some staff are better trained than others. Whilst the standard guys are great at fixing plugins, game browser issues and server crashes, their networking knowledge does seem a little off. If the guys can fix this, their support would be one of the better ones around that I have seen. Otherwise, what you get for your money, is pretty good stuff.

If your looking for a good host, I would recommend this company. You can also get 20% off your order using the following code: 20offnow.

MikeyKing

Absolute shambles. Last year e-frag were the top of the tree. Then M247 took over a month or so ago. Since then, servers have been up and down with no explanation. Their support website has been down. They are rude to customers and have lied in an open forum and accused others of conspiring against them.

The e-frag name had excellent reputation and I’m gutted that it’s been ruined by a tin pot company who care very little for their current customers and there appears to be no one with any customer service skills anywhere in the ‘organisation’ (I think it might be someones shed in Manchester by the service recently received).

Sadly I have to say, avoid at all costs. e-frag disappeared about 2 years ago when we were with them and came back last year. As soon as they came back we jumped ship from the old GSP to e-frag because we knew of their fantastic service and technical support. Now, we’ve jumped ship and, even though I’d like e-frag to rise from the ashes once M247 have stripped it to the core, I don’t think there’s any coming back. M247 have put the nail in the coffin of e-frag – perhaps that was the business plan given they are already in the business of GSP – if that is the case then I praise M247 management for doing such an excellent job of completely burying a once fantastic company by taking them over and completely failing their customers. Hats off.

AVOID AVOID AVOID.

PlexusDeath

Absolutely awful. Under the new owners a formerly decent GSP has been completely ruined. Support answers are slow to be received (if at all) and often only partially answer what was asked, include useless generic information and/or show the support person simply has no idea what they are talking about. I had installed an updated version of sourcemod and was having performance issues, so queried if any other users had reported similar and if they were aware of any issues – final support reply on the matter links me to the sourcemod thread i’d not only posted in already but had obviously used to get the new version in the first place.

Numerous issues have also supposedly been fixed but continue to occur – control panel functions becoming stuck, leaving servers unusable for hours on end. New FTP accounts inaccessible. Game updates applied ages after release, or applied but with no notification so users are left thinking their server is useless when they could actually be making use of it.

After the initial problems they offered customers a free extension to their contract, i accepted this, thinking a free month couldn’t hurt. Well, it does. It hurts alot. Continued use of the service may well cause permanent damage as it’s one infuriating and stressful incident after another. I’m going to find a new GSP to take most of the stress off, before it’s too late.

Paul

Lets get straight to the point :

STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY.

I have been one of the longest standing members of e-frag (looking at joining date on the forums). There were very few problems during my time at e-frag, and these problems were always addessed quickly and politely either through customer support, forums, email or at least through their homepage – the community was always updated on problems and updates etc.

Over the past month the company has changed hands: OMFG

I will not pull any punches here: the company are a bunch of muppets;

1. Don’t answer support tickets
2. Emails get lost
3. Denile of problems, even when the whole community are complaining
4. Broken promises
5. No refunds
6. Loads of downtime
7. Absolutely NO SUPPORT at weekends
8. Banning community members for little/no reason
9. Not updating games after numerous days
10. Passing the blame onto others
11. Arrogant (assholes) staff
12. One problem gets fix, two more become apparent
13. Implementing ideas that don’t work
14. Don’t listen to the community

There will be others, I just aint got the time

Believe me guys there are plenty of other GSP out there that will value your custom. With a bit of luck this company will fade away and be a distant memory soon, and I WILL LAUGH!!!

Please do a quick search and find a better service.

AbstractPhoenix

e-FRAG was one of the greatest GSP’s I’ve ever used, until recently when M247 Ltd took over. Since then the support has been abysmal and the “support team” is populated by arrogant people who constantly pass the problems off as being Britband Media’s (the old owners) problem/doing.

A server taking 4 days to update (for a minor update) or taking a full weekend to restart is pathetic at best. This, compounded with the fact that the staff seem to take weekend’s off is incredibly poor.

The forums used to be a nice place to go, and even though they weren’t officially for support, the support staff never had a problem answering questions. Now if you ask a question, the thread is locked (possibly deleted) and a quick “put a ticket in” message is posted by the new staff. Despite the staffs claims, they obviously DON’T want to keep the “community” together.

In the past I’ve recommended half a dozen people to get a server from e-FRAG, now my only choice is to direct them elsewhere. e-FRAG is now a company to avoid, at all costs.

It wouldn’t surprise me if M247 was purposely killing off e-FRAG to get all the customers over to UKGame (Which they also own).

———————

James

new company, terrible service
When e-FRAG was managed by britband media the service was amazing. my support tickets were answered quickly and my servers fully stable. any issues were quickly fixed and compensation was given fairly.

I have had my services with e-frag for nearly a year up until now, and i cannot say this any clearer – DO NOT GO NEAR THEM. the new company – 247ltd is part of Open Hosting. they are a terrible company with arrogant attitudes and terrible customer service skills. Emails are openly ignored, and they accuse the previous owners of sabotage rather than admitting their incompitence.

Again, do not go new them.

———————

Alex

E-Frag used to be awesome you would be able to get a server up within minutes of purchase through paypal and your done mike was a old admin of britband media he supported every topic 24/7 no complaints just king and grateful customers. When m247 took over billing was messed up support tickets responded in weeks new owners don’t ! have a clue on what they are doing. They was stupid questions over the forum about how to administrate. Gorman “e-frag customer” he’s the one trying hes best to keep this company at least online but they always avoid help from customers. They are a 1 man company basicly. Would’nt go with them now.

——————–

Spitfire

e-Frag was Orignally Owned by Britband Media – Mike and his Staff were awesome (Answering Tickets in Minutes , Updating the Core Servers in Minutes After Release, Sometimes 1AM-3AM!)

e-Frag is now owned by M247 LTD (Who also Own UKGAME.com)

Support Takes Weeks for a reply – No Weekend Support – replys are Copied and Pasted – Tickets get Deleted without Reply)

James (A Director) accused ex-e-frag staff of sabotage on a public forum! – this was later retracted via a public Apology via the forums.

According to James – Sourcemod Does not Work with L4D2 – Mike (Who is not employed by M247) showed him that he was infact incorrect – it Does Work!

AVOID e-Frag while M247 LTD are at the Helm!

——————-

n00b

E-Frag used to be a fantastic little company and one of the best companies of it’s type I have dealt with. Fast email support, easy payment system and control panel and in about 8 months, only 1 day of downtime (That was due to a switch malfunction on the datacenter, nothing to do with E-Frag).

Since m247 took over it has been nothing but a massive headache. Problems have persisted for over 3 weeks. This included FTP access problems, inability to boot servers, they were not updating games from steam update, SV Download problems and a severe lack of customer support. We had barely any communication from support staff for days. My server was offline for 4-5 days due to the panel being broken so in the end I had to foot the bill to get a server elsewhere!

They also promised money refunds for remaining would be sorted out, but they just passed the buck onto the previous owners even though it was nothing to do with them. Supposed to have heard further yesterday but nothing.

Defiantly steer clear of this company. I would have recommended had it not changed hands, but I am frankly disgusted with all that has happened.

——————

Gareth

e-FRAG used to be a brilliant GSP reliable servers stable pings Brilliant and friendly support team, recently it has been taken over my M247 the worst Organisation Imaginable, they also own UkGame which speaks for itself really.

Since the M247 takeover, All negative comments/feedback is deleted and the user banned form the forums, If support tickets are written in which they have no knowledge on how to solve the issue the ticket is deleted, They do not even have the decency to reply saying they are sorry but do not have any knowledge as to how to solve the issue, the clients could do a better job themselves If they have the access Although the clients do a better job at keeping e-FRAG going anyway.

On there takeover and Move they screwed up their system and decided (without proof) to Claim that A support team member of e-FRAG known as Mike had become a Computer wiz/Abnormally efficient hacker… the amusing part is he was sleeping at the time of the downtime.

Effectively before the M247 takeover I would of recommended e-FRAG to anyone who was looking for a Linux OS server with Stable pings and awesome support, with the takeover I would rather stab my eyes out with a fork than rent a server from them Plain and simple, I did post something alike this on their forums.. But who is now known as “Hitler” to me Had deleted the thread as it was full of negative feedback, Even though most of the time negative feedback could be helpful.

The new owners of e-FRAG are idiots and don’t deserve to be running it, How they managed to Buy e-FRAG out with their way of running things is beyond me.
Therefore I will say that Anyone looking for decent Game servers, yes there machines are still great.. But it’s support that people mainly go for the support is terrible now and will not be able to help you with even the tiniest of problems that will take 10 seconds to fix… they will just delete your ticket.

Links are now:

• 1 Guy 1 Jar
• BME Pain Olympics
• BME Pain Video 2
• 2 Girls 1 Cup
• 2 Girls 1 Finger
• The Church of Fudge
• Super Long Dildo Insertion
• Fart Brazil Porn Trailer

Its no secret that sites like this bring in a fair bit of traffic. This site itself, after being back in google for a little over 2 months, now gets around 40,000 uniques per month. This site does not have advertisements on any other site out there (bar e-frag in my signature), so for what it gets, its pretty good. Having to transfer the data, getting corrupted databases, and starting all over again a few months back, didn’t bode well. In fact, I lost nearly 80% of the visitors. Before then, I was getting around 55,000 uniques monthly, so i’m quite pleased with the current progress, and shows that it once again, has alot of potential. Anyway, i’ll get to the point:

Those of you who wish to advertise on this site: The starting price is $55 per month, this will vary based on the size of your advert (for instance, a full length horizontal one will cost alot more) and if you wish to place it on the blog also. Please use my contact form with your details if you are interested. Please ensure you leave an email address that is from your company, and not a gmail/hotmail account. Those will be ignored. Only those I deem 100% geniune will get responses now.

1 Guy 1 Cup Video

I’ve also heard about 2 more videos by this same person, where he has got random objects stuck in his arse. If this is true and you have a link to them, please send it my way and i’ll get it added pronto.

I think I put this every year/update. I do have big plans for this site, its literally down to finding the time to get it all done. I will try and keep everyone more posted on whats actually going on in the future however. All contact emails have been replied to also! So check your inboxes for those who messaged 2 months ago and finally got a reply today :p

Looking forward to the new year, its an exciting time.