Where's the support team?

[Feline Forums]

@Slavik is spot on and quite frankly you should be appreciative of all communication you get.

You are glazing xenforo as us kids would say.

 

[Suzanne O]

You are glazing xenforo as us kids would say.

Age wise i'm just as old and maybe a few years older than them. I could even be as old as your mum. (I'm an grumpy old fart as you might read.)
The fact that i happen to agree with the company means that i'm on the same page as them.
The reason why there's not much contact is because of the constant negativity.
They hate being accused of a myriad of things.
Oh and i don't post much on your cat forum. I'm just keeping my stress levels down.
I'll be back there soon.

 

[FTL]

The reason why there's not much contact is because of the constant negativity.

It's the other way round. Managing expectations with good communications is a critical part of good customer service.

 

[Wing]

Have you even looked at our ticket?

To clarify why we consider this issue critical on our end, I want to outline what we are actively experiencing on the live site and have been since November (when the original ticket was submitted.)

We have multiple members, from different geographic regions, reporting that the forum intermittently fails to load altogether daily—pages hang indefinitely and never resolve. Others have provided screenshots showing pages loading so slowly that raw HTML renders before assets or styling, which strongly suggests a server-side delivery issue rather than an end-user or browser problem.

In addition to this, we are seeing recurring “Oops” server errors, so frequent they happen NEARLY EVERY 5 MINUTES, frequent 502 Bad Gateway errors, and behavior consistent with server deadlocking. These errors are occurring every few minutes and are being reported by users globally, not in isolated cases.

This is not a matter of individual user configuration or local connectivity. It is a platform-level issue that is directly impacting availability and usability for our entire community.

Compounding the concern, our server error logs—which historically provided actionable output—are now nearly empty. We have previously raised this discrepancy and asked why expected logging has ceased, as it makes diagnosis and communication more difficult.

At present, we have no visibility into what is failing on the backend, and no feedback from support to guide remediation.

The result is that the forum is becoming increasingly difficult to use in practice.

Members are frustrated, new users are encountering errors within minutes of joining, and it is genuinely damaging to the experience and credibility of the community we have built for over 15 years.

Inviting people to participate while knowing they are likely to encounter errors shortly after arrival is both embarrassing and harmful to long-term growth.

For these reasons, we consider this a critical issue—not because of urgency for convenience, but because it affects core availability, reliability, and trust in a live production environment.

We are not asking for immediate resolution or special treatment. We are asking for acknowledgment, visibility, and engagement on a problem that is actively affecting a global user base. Any guidance, status update, or confirmation that this is being investigated would be greatly appreciated. But I have feeling that based on your attitude, nothing will come from this.

This looks like quite a critical issue, doesn't it?

 

[InfernoDev]

Banks don’t even work on new years lol

 

[Seeker-Smith]

I will point that paying customers are just that and deserve a certain level of respect. They should also have support tickets resolved in a timely manner. The week of Christmas and of New Years are not easy for staff. My suggestion for the user to share their problem went ignored so I don’t have a ton of sympathy.

 

[Lee]

Have you even looked at our ticket?

To clarify why we consider this issue critical on our end, I want to outline what we are actively experiencing on the live site and have been since November (when the original ticket was submitted.)

We have multiple members, from different geographic regions, reporting that the forum intermittently fails to load altogether daily—pages hang indefinitely and never resolve. Others have provided screenshots showing pages loading so slowly that raw HTML renders before assets or styling, which strongly suggests a server-side delivery issue rather than an end-user or browser problem.

In addition to this, we are seeing recurring “Oops” server errors, so frequent they happen NEARLY EVERY 5 MINUTES, frequent 502 Bad Gateway errors, and behavior consistent with server deadlocking. These errors are occurring every few minutes and are being reported by users globally, not in isolated cases.

This is not a matter of individual user configuration or local connectivity. It is a platform-level issue that is directly impacting availability and usability for our entire community.

Compounding the concern, our server error logs—which historically provided actionable output—are now nearly empty. We have previously raised this discrepancy and asked why expected logging has ceased, as it makes diagnosis and communication more difficult.

At present, we have no visibility into what is failing on the backend, and no feedback from support to guide remediation.

The result is that the forum is becoming increasingly difficult to use in practice.

Members are frustrated, new users are encountering errors within minutes of joining, and it is genuinely damaging to the experience and credibility of the community we have built for over 15 years.

Inviting people to participate while knowing they are likely to encounter errors shortly after arrival is both embarrassing and harmful to long-term growth.

For these reasons, we consider this a critical issue—not because of urgency for convenience, but because it affects core availability, reliability, and trust in a live production environment.

We are not asking for immediate resolution or special treatment. We are asking for acknowledgment, visibility, and engagement on a problem that is actively affecting a global user base. Any guidance, status update, or confirmation that this is being investigated would be greatly appreciated. But I have feeling that based on your attitude, nothing will come from this.

I will point that paying customers are just that and deserve a certain level of respect. They should also have support tickets resolved in a timely manner. The week of Christmas and of New Years are not easy for staff. My suggestion for the user to share their problem went ignored so I don’t have a ton of sympathy.

Did it?

 

[Ferry]

I’ve had issues with support tickets too. All the responses were basically "Ask your question on the forum." Of course, I did exactly that, but I still wanted to get at least some basic advice on my problem. I hope that in the future, the XenForo staff will take into account the customers' desire for them to be more communicative.

 

[Slavik]

I’ve had issues with support tickets too. All the responses were basically "Ask your question on the forum." Of course, I did exactly that, but I still wanted to get at least some basic advice on my problem. I hope that in the future, the XenForo staff will take into account the customers' desire for them to be more communicative.

"All the responses" ?

Every ticket you have submitted from this license has been answered by a member of staff correctly, with the one exception pointing you to the forums being a styling question which we dont cover in ticket support.

 

[JamesBrown]

Have you even looked at our ticket?

To clarify why we consider this issue critical on our end, I want to outline what we are actively experiencing on the live site and have been since November (when the original ticket was submitted.)

We have multiple members, from different geographic regions, reporting that the forum intermittently fails to load altogether daily—pages hang indefinitely and never resolve. Others have provided screenshots showing pages loading so slowly that raw HTML renders before assets or styling, which strongly suggests a server-side delivery issue rather than an end-user or browser problem.

In addition to this, we are seeing recurring “Oops” server errors, so frequent they happen NEARLY EVERY 5 MINUTES, frequent 502 Bad Gateway errors, and behavior consistent with server deadlocking. These errors are occurring every few minutes and are being reported by users globally, not in isolated cases.

This is not a matter of individual user configuration or local connectivity. It is a platform-level issue that is directly impacting availability and usability for our entire community.

Compounding the concern, our server error logs—which historically provided actionable output—are now nearly empty. We have previously raised this discrepancy and asked why expected logging has ceased, as it makes diagnosis and communication more difficult.

At present, we have no visibility into what is failing on the backend, and no feedback from support to guide remediation.

The result is that the forum is becoming increasingly difficult to use in practice.

Members are frustrated, new users are encountering errors within minutes of joining, and it is genuinely damaging to the experience and credibility of the community we have built for over 15 years.

Inviting people to participate while knowing they are likely to encounter errors shortly after arrival is both embarrassing and harmful to long-term growth.

For these reasons, we consider this a critical issue—not because of urgency for convenience, but because it affects core availability, reliability, and trust in a live production environment.

We are not asking for immediate resolution or special treatment. We are asking for acknowledgment, visibility, and engagement on a problem that is actively affecting a global user base. Any guidance, status update, or confirmation that this is being investigated would be greatly appreciated. But I have feeling that based on your attitude, nothing will come from this.

FWIW and while you wait....It looks to me that those issues would only be an Xenforo problem if you hosted your site with them. They, and the issues you experienced in October, all appear to be related to your server rather than the forum software.

 

[FTL]

FWIW and while you wait....It looks to me that those issues would only be an Xenforo problem if you hosted your site with them. They, and the issues you experienced in October, all appear to be related to your server rather than the forum software.

But he's on XF Cloud, isn't he?

 

[JamesBrown]

But he's on XF Cloud, isn't he?

I don't know whether he is or not.

 

[Ferry]

"All the responses" ?

Every ticket you have submitted from this license has been answered by a member of staff correctly, with the one exception pointing you to the forums being a styling question which we dont cover in ticket support.

That was over a year or two ago, so I don’t even remember what I asked about. The point is, I was left with a sense of a lack of communication, and that’s the main thing I took away from it. You might be partly right, but it’s hard to fight against how people remember things. In my case, I’m just left with memories of a less-than-ideal experience.

 

[smallwheels]

But he's on XF Cloud, isn't he?

I don't know whether he is or not.

Once more a proof that it is always a good idea to actually read the thread you are posting to to understand the problem that is being discussed and to avoid giving ill-led advice.

Instead, I'm told "maybe next week." For a service that we pay $2400/annually for their own cloud hosted solution. That's absurd.

Support is not optional or ancillary in this case; it is explicitly included as part of the XenForo Cloud offering. If you review the Cloud Hosting page on XenForo.com, “Support” is listed as a core selling point of the service:


Given that support is marketed as part of what we are paying for, it is reasonable to expect basic acknowledgment within a reasonable timeframe.

 

[FTL]

I don't know whether he is or not.

I pointed it out because it makes all the difference. I'm reasonably sure he is. @Hobbes are you on XF Cloud?

EDIT: smallwheels beat me to it.

 

[JamesBrown]

Once more a proof that it is always a good idea to actually read the thread you are posting to to understand the problem that is being discussed and to avoid giving ill-led advice.

Thanks Mum

 

[JamesBrown]

But he's on XF Cloud, isn't he?

I see now that he is. If I was paying for xf hosting and not getting help, with those particular issues, I'd be screaming about it too. Holidays or not.

 

[PumpinIron]

A bunch of people have made fools of themselves in this thread, no doubt.

He's on XF Cloud. Yeah, I'd be livid if I was having server (or software?) related issues even if it was the holidays.

 

[zappaDPJ]

Not wishing to stir the pot in either direction (but probably doing both ) unless there's a service level agreement in place you are almost certainly looking at best endeavour, at best.

 

[smallwheels]

Not wishing to stir the pot in either direction (but probably doing both ) unless there's a service level agreement in place you are almost certainly looking at best endeavour, at best.

If you offer a paid cloud-service that is - by definition and nature of the service - used 365 days a year around the clock you should offer support 365 days a year. The more if it is not cheap. If you cannot or want not to offer that level of service I would personally this consider unprofessional and you should not offer said cloud service. Sure, holidays and especially christmas and new year's eve are a time that is demanding for having support available but the attitude shown by XF staff in this thread does lack any respect for their paying customers and as far as the sitiation seems to be the best advice would be to avoid XF cloud altogether if you want a forum that is actually reachable, want support in case of trouble or want at least be treated respectfully.

The abysmal attitude in communication that XF shows in other areas shows here as well. I have huge sympathies with small businesses and the special challenges they face. Still you cannot take big business money and deliver this level of communication, support and behavior. Even for a small business it should be possible to have a support system that automatically sends "ticket received" messages and also, if you are unable or unwilling to deliver support during bank holidays (which may happen) this is something to communicate clearly and openly in beforehand instead of mocking the customer if he dares to wonder, to complain and to escalate if ignorance hits him not once but multiple times in different cases within a short time period.

SLAs are one thing, the majority of people that don't have an IT service background probably don't have any idea what those are and are rightfully expecting their problems to be solved instead of being laughed at. Especially when looking at the advertizing claims on the website:

Support​

A helping hand, available when you need it​

Nothing always goes 100% to plan, it's a fact of life. But if you find yourself at a loss and need some guidance or advice on how your community works, our team of experts is ready and able to field your queries with a fast, friendly and effective service included with your XenForo license.

Obviously this is untrue: A helping hand was needed but was not available or not wanting to help. Twice.

When looking at the could service contract:

7. Service level​

The Service shall be made available for at least 99% of each Service Period. Periodic down-time may be required for essential maintenance to Service infrastructure and software updates, but this shall be kept to the minimum possible.

Down-time or unavailability of the Service due to circumstances and issues beyond Our control shall not be counted towards the 99% uptime guarantee.

We will inform You in advance of any scheduled down-time likely to make the Service unavailable for a period of four hours or more.

Probably more relevant here is the section about support:

9. Support​

For the duration of your subscription to the Service, We shall provide You with support to respond to any problems ("Support") You are experiencing with the Service which result in it not complying with its description or the demonstration, as made available on Our website ("Problem").

You may notify Us of Problems via the website and We will use Our reasonable endeavours to respond to such Problems and provide a resolution to such Problems. For the avoidance of doubt, We do not warrant that We can provide resolution to Problems on an individual basis and resolution to Problems may be provided with the next Update.

Whatever "reasonable endeavours" may mean. Generally I would have no issues with a contract like that for a hobby forum and with a small company like XF - based on their reputation I would have trusted them. Unfortunately based on what has been written in this thread by costomers as well as by XF staff I would now not trust them any more.

I am wondering, if dpreview (being prominent new cloud customers with their forums) had the kind of issues that the thread starter had or still has they would have been treated in the same way including being publicly mocked.