Centova Technologies Forum

Centova Cast v3 => General discussion => Topic started by: Roger on September 07, 2013, 05:07:29 pm

Title: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Roger on September 07, 2013, 05:07:29 pm
Hello,

We regret to inform you that a recent problem with our billing database might have caused inconsistencies, on some of our client's accounts.

Affected accounts could present one or several of the following; missing payments and/or license keys, as well as canceled packages that shouldn't be, or are stuck on provisioning status.

The following FAQ should help you deal with the forementioned issues, please follow the instructions according to your case.

IMPORTANT: Please note that this issues are now being corrected

Q.- One or several payments are not reflected on my account, what should I do?

A.- Please send us the unique transaction ID(s) for the missing payment or payments, and we'll be happy to apply them manually for you.

Q.- One of my licenses is missing from my account, or has been canceled and it shouldn't be, can you reactivate it?

A.- No, unfortunately canceled packages cannot be reactivated, we must ask you to order a new package of the same kind, and send us the transaction ID of your last payment. We will then proceed to apply your last payment to activate your new order, or to credit your account if you already pay for the new license/service.

Q.- Why is my license shown with provisioning status, can you reactivate it?

A.- This means that the license key was damaged and could not be recovered, however if you send us the key stored in your server we'll be happy to install it on our side, and get it working for you again.

You can find the license key in "/usr/local/centovacast/etc/license.conf".

Q.- I need my license working right now, I can't wait for your billing department to clarify the missing payment, can you help me?

A.- You should consider ordering a new license to get your server up and running temporarily, you can use the new license for up to 14 days, and then cancell it for a full refund.

If you purchase a new license, you'll need to replace the key in "/usr/local/centovacast/etc/license.conf", just remember to save your old license key, in case you need it.

Then delete the old key file, and restart Centova Cast.

rm -f /usr/local/centovacast/etc/license/license.key
/etc/init.d/centovacast restart

Q.- Why are you not responding my emails, I've been waiting a long time.

A.- Please note that our maximum response delay has been of 72 hours at most, if you have been waiting much longer than this, then most likely your email didn't came through to us. We recommend that all tickets are sent from within your client area at centova.com instead of relying on email.

We are aware of the slow response time from our billing department, this is due to the huge number of tickets regarding this issues, and the limited personell that have access to our payment gateways.

We deeply apologize for the inconvenience.

If anyone have any further questions I'll be happy to answer them for you.

HTH
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent License Issues
Post by: Yahav on September 08, 2013, 02:32:25 am
Bunch of amateurs, for one month me and my clients are waiting for your reply,
for one month you're repeatedly ignoring my messages and emails and sending the same automated response asking me for information i already sent!!!!!.
You cost me a great deal of money, half my clients already left us.
So thank you Centova for acting line a child without any sense of responsibility, going way over your head and messing with other people businesses.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent License Issues
Post by: My Auto DJ on September 08, 2013, 03:27:14 am
Thanks for the post,now at least I have something to pass along to my clients that keep getting license errors in their panels, I don't think they were believing me :(

Can you please tell us if the problem is now corrected, I just now tried to get into my client area @ http://www.centova.com/ and get this morning :(

"Web Site Temporarily Unavailable
This web site is temporarily unavailable; please try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."


Once you get it back up will payments get applied? Will we have to keep re-issueing llicense keys every few days? I have several license and they are all mixed up now, should I wait to go over them all and corrected them? Tired of doing that over and over and tired of getting tickets from clients telling me there is a license problem with yet another server.

More updates would also be great, we hate to loose money!

Title: Re: FAQ - Recent License Issues
Post by: Roger on September 08, 2013, 07:49:44 am
Bunch of amateurs, for one month me and my clients are waiting for your reply,
for one month you're repeatedly ignoring my messages and emails and sending the same automated response asking me for information i already sent!!!!!.
You cost me a great deal of money, half my clients already left us.
So thank you Centova for acting line a child without any sense of responsibility, going way over your head and messing with other people businesses.

Dear sir,

I have searched through your ticket history and there is not a ticket that has been kept waiting over 72 hours, much less a month.

I suspect that your emails have not reached us at all, if you have a ticket number please send it to me via PM and I'll be happy to check it out.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Yahav on September 08, 2013, 08:00:04 am
PM SENT
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent License Issues
Post by: Roger on September 08, 2013, 08:02:21 am
Thanks for the post,now at least I have something to pass along to my clients that keep getting license errors in their panels, I don't think they were believing me :(

You're welcome, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Can you please tell us if the problem is now corrected, I just now tried to get into my client area @ http://www.centova.com/ and get this morning :(

"Web Site Temporarily Unavailable
This web site is temporarily unavailable; please try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."

We are aware of this issue, however it is only for brief windows while we move stuff around, as we continue to deal with some internal issues and improvements.

If you're still experiencing this issue, make sure to clean up your web and dns cache, and refresh the webstie a couple of times.

Once you get it back up will payments get applied? Will we have to keep re-issueing llicense keys every few days? I have several license and they are all mixed up now, should I wait to go over them all and corrected them? Tired of doing that over and over and tired of getting tickets from clients telling me there is a license problem with yet another server.

Our billing system has been fully available for a several days now, if you're having an issue with a license just follow the instruction in the FAQ.

More updates would also be great, we hate to loose money!

I'm not sure what you mean by more updates, if you could clarify I'll be happy to help if I can.


HTH
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Roger on September 08, 2013, 08:18:03 am
PM SENT

Thank you, I've replied to your PM. If you still don't get the response on your email make sure to check your spam folder, or just let me know and I'll post it here.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: websavers on September 08, 2013, 11:35:39 am
Your workaround is to order a new license, which I would gladly do to resolve this problem, however your website is down. So not only is my existing license not working, but I also can't order a new one! Meanwhile my client's streams are unable to be started due to licensing errors...

Do you have a workaround for the workaround yet? (Or perhaps a timeframe as to when centova.com will be back online?)
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: My Auto DJ on September 08, 2013, 02:13:05 pm
Yea I have cleared my cache but it's still down for me also

http://prntscr.com/1q5oo2
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: qnn on September 09, 2013, 02:31:22 am
Roger,

I sent Centova staff a DM since I CANNOT even login to the Client page. The password retrieval of your system doesn't even work. It's been more than 72 hours and still no response through this channel. Now my messages don't even show up in this forum. This is extremely frustrating!!! >:(

I hate to flame you guys in the open, but unfortunately your services are very precarious. Every month our PayPal account makes an automatic payment and regardless of the auto transfers, we get those nasty emails saying that our account has not been paid. For this month, PP made an auto payment on Tue 9/3/2013 at 6:31 AM - Transaction ID: 47K454533C287840P.

As of this time, we are getting a message in the backend saying "Internal Error - We apologize for the inconvenience, but an internal error has occurred. Please try again later"....This is unbelievable!!! >:( >:(

Please provide a prompt solution.

Thanks,
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: My Auto DJ on September 09, 2013, 03:29:51 am
Their main site is still down :( but their billing and account manager is up :)
https://secure.centova.com/cp/login/index.php

Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Roger on September 09, 2013, 06:55:02 am
Their main site is still down :( but their billing and account manager is up :)
https://secure.centova.com/cp/login/index.php

Thank you for that, I have reported the issue directly to Steve.

Please use this direct link to login to your client area until the main site is back online.

https://secure.centova.com/cp/login/

Also, if you're having problems with a license stuck in provisioning status, please open a ticket with your license key and PM me with your ticket number. I might be able to get your license working a little faster.

Please don't PM me your license keys directly, you'll need to open a ticket through the helpdesk anyways.


Regards.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Roger on September 09, 2013, 09:35:13 am
Yea I have cleared my cache but it's still down for me also

http://prntscr.com/1q5oo2

The main website was being migrated to a new secure server, it should be back to normal now.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: EVS Portugal on September 09, 2013, 10:06:38 am
for when the licenses back to normal?
Since Saturday my license says is invalid.
Ticket open with no response so far.

Trying to update license (this may take a minute or two) ...
License update failed at http://license1.centova.com/license/ (ERR INTERR): Internal error; reissue failed (Key generation failed); trying next server ...
License update failed at http://license2.centova.com/license/ (ERR BADKEY): Invalid license key; trying next server ...
License update failed at http://license3.centova.com/license/ (ERR BADKEY): Invalid license key; trying next server ...
No more licensing servers to try
Failed to obtain license update from any licensing server; license update failed
License update failed; product not licensed

**** WARNING ****
License validation failed.  Daemon will reject all connections until a valid
license is installed
**** WARNING ****
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Centova - Steve B. on September 09, 2013, 11:24:46 am
Their main site is still down :( but their billing and account manager is up :)
https://secure.centova.com/cp/login/index.php

Apologies for the inconvenience; this was a transitional issue and web site is back up now.  We will try to avoid any further hiccups as we continue our migration over the next few days.  The secure server (billing/helpdesk) has already been migrated, though, and should be stable and reliable in its new home now.

I will likely post a more detailed explanation of what happened once the dust settles but in a nutshell, I made a horrible, horrible choice to put my trust in a datacenter that seemed ideal, but which I later found out was seemingly unfit to be in business at all, and which repeatedly screwed us in several different ways over the course of a 2 week period.  I (and unfortunately our clients by extension) am now paying the price for my mistake.

The current situation is that we are migrating all of our services to a new pair of geographically-disparate, well-reviewed datacenters, and will be finalizing that transition over the next couple of days.  After that, there should be no further unpleasant "surprises".

Again, my deepest apologies to everyone who has been affected by these licensing issues.  Please know that I am every bit as angry and frustrated by the situation as you all must be, and that the steps we're taking now in migrating to multiple datacenters for redundancy are intended to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Centova - Steve B. on September 09, 2013, 11:27:33 am
for when the licenses back to normal?
Licensing has been back to normal for quite some time, save for a few corner cases which were an unfortunate result of the data loss incident last month.

Since Saturday my license says is invalid.
Ticket open with no response so far.
If you opened it on Sunday we were closed; you should receive a response today.  Alternately you are welcome to PM me your license key for the affected server and I'll investigate immediately.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Yahav on September 09, 2013, 01:19:26 pm
Roger,

I Re-registered the same package as you instructed me,
then i opened a ticket [Ticket #VY4-KDO3-786]  with my old account details and paypal transaction but still i can't find a new Licenses key and the status of the package is Awaiting paymens.
Now what?
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: qnn on September 09, 2013, 04:18:43 pm
Steve & Roger,

I PMed you both and placed a ticket (YA3-TLE3-449) through the client system. Then got a new package for trial (#150801) and proceeded to install the new key in the server. Got this message:

**** WARNING ****
License validation failed. Daemon will reject all connections until a valid license is installed
**** WARNING ****

Would you please be so kind as to provide a response or solution?

Thanks,
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: toto17 on September 09, 2013, 04:26:32 pm
Hello Steve can you please take a look at this ticket  ID #NF9-ODE1-669 that we have from August.
Also, we cannot log in to the client area using our username and password.
We have stopped receiving E-mails when we tried to reset the password.

thanks
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Yahav on September 11, 2013, 12:47:23 pm
Roger,
I opened a ticket just like you said.
I'm still waiting, two days since i opened the ticket.
will you take any responsibility at all? help us get on with our businesses as soon as possible will you?!
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Roger on September 12, 2013, 07:06:10 am
Roger,

I Re-registered the same package as you instructed me,
then i opened a ticket [Ticket #VY4-KDO3-786]  with my old account details and paypal transaction but still i can't find a new Licenses key and the status of the package is Awaiting paymens.
Now what?

Roger,
I opened a ticket just like you said.
I'm still waiting, two days since i opened the ticket.
will you take any responsibility at all? help us get on with our businesses as soon as possible will you?!

We're very sorry, but we already provided instructions for your case in this FAQ, please read answer number 4.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Yahav on September 12, 2013, 12:01:11 pm


Roger,
I opened a ticket just like you said.
I'm still waiting, two days since i opened the ticket.
will you take any responsibility at all? help us get on with our businesses as soon as possible will you?!

We're very sorry, but we already provided instructions for your case in this FAQ, please read answer number 4.

ohh You already  provided instructions? great, how about actually answering tickets and doing it in a reasonable time frame?
why should i spend extra money for your mistakes ?and what if i cannot afford it? what kind of answer or solution is it, relying on the customer finance to solve your own issues.
no, it is not acceptable, I'm going to open a PayPal dispute to get a full refund and then pay it back, this will be faster imho.

Thanks for nothing.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Roger on September 12, 2013, 12:13:59 pm
ohh You already  provided instructions? great, how about actually answering tickets and doing it in a reasonable time frame?
why should i spend extra money for your mistakes ?and what if i cannot afford it? what kind of answer or solution is it, relying on the customer finance to solve your own issues.
no, it is not acceptable, I'm going to open a PayPal dispute to get a full refund and then pay it back, this will be faster imho.

Thanks for nothing.

We're very sorry, but as we've already explained we hava a lot of billing tickets to attend to and very limited personnel that has the proper access to our payment gateways.

Please note that submitting a chargeback on your payment, will probably just serve to block your account for fraud, causing further delays.

Really the best option at this point is just to order a montly license and use it for up to 14 days, then cancell it for a refund, this will only take $20 usd or less depending on your type of license, wich will be refund later.

Unfortunately there is nothing else we can do about this at the moment.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: qnn on September 12, 2013, 05:55:28 pm
Quote
Please note that submitting a chargeback on your payment, will probably just serve to block your account for fraud, causing further delays.

Not only you got it wrong in the customer service/business side of things, but also are clueless about how Paypal's dispute resolution system works to make such a bold statement.

Due to your lack of response and solution, we had no other choice but to look for another more efficient provider. At least make one last thing right and refund us the payment for this last month. This is not about money, it's about how poorly your business operations are, your incapacity to recognize your mistakes and for trying to pass along the financial burden onto your clients. As someone stated before, THAT'S NOT RIGHT!!

Quote
we hava a lot of billing tickets to attend to and very limited personnel that has the proper access to our payment gateways.

If your personnel is very limited, then hire more people to do things right. You've always complained about that, but haven't done anything to improve it, have you?. There has been nothing but excuses in this thread or PMs to the problems that we've faced with your service. Do you think our clients care about that? Should we care about your problems with this poorly planned hosting change when you haven't even notified us ahead of time to prevent this fiasco? Get a grip on reality.

Remember that as soon as there is someone that provides a similar product but with better service, you clients will be gone. Good luck with your sustainable business model. It will be a perfect case for academia.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: toto17 on September 12, 2013, 06:06:29 pm
Hello we have  PM both of you " Steve and Roger,"
this is because we cannot login to the client area and it is now 3 weeks " DID YOU DELETE OUR ACCOUNT ?" we always pay our bill. We send many emails no one gets back to us.
last pm today both of you no one PM back  we have the  license down we understand the issues Centova is having but at least reply to your client and Help to fix the issue.
Note: because we can't login to the client area, we can't even open a ticket.

Thank you.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Roger on September 13, 2013, 11:09:22 am
Hello we have  PM both of you " Steve and Roger,"
this is because we cannot login to the client area and it is now 3 weeks " DID YOU DELETE OUR ACCOUNT ?" we always pay our bill. We send many emails no one gets back to us.
last pm today both of you no one PM back  we have the  license down we understand the issues Centova is having but at least reply to your client and Help to fix the issue.
Note: because we can't login to the client area, we can't even open a ticket.

Thank you.

Hello,

I've answered to your PMs, I will be adding this question to the faq later today.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: toto17 on September 13, 2013, 01:26:56 pm
Thank you Roger,
just pm you back :)
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Centova - Steve B. on September 16, 2013, 06:54:30 pm
Yick, this thread is going to hell in a handbasket -- sorry I haven't been following it more closely.  I'll respond first regarding the discussion with qnn:

Really the best option at this point is just to order a montly license and use it for up to 14 days, then cancell it for a refund, this will only take $20 usd or less depending on your type of license, wich will be refund later.
Just to amend Roger's point here, this is NOT the recommended course of action nor would I suggest that our clients should ever spend more money to fix a problem on OUR end.


Unfortunately there is nothing else we can do about this at the moment.
I will need to look into this specific case as I'm not sure why a comment like this would need to be made... the problem is on our end so we certainly should have been able to do something about it -- and as best I can see, we DID resolve it, this same day.


Then got a new package for trial (#150801) and proceeded to install the new key in the server. Got this message:

**** WARNING ****
License validation failed. Daemon will reject all connections until a valid license is installed
**** WARNING ****

That just means your trial key wasn't installed properly and is not related to any other issues you're experiencing.  A situation we commonly see is one in which a client purchases a trial or a second license and assumes it will be applied to an existing server automatically.  That is not, of course, how it works -- if you purchase another license, in most cases you're using it on a separate server and wouldn't want to overwrite your existing server's key.  You have to install the new key on your server before it'll work.


Not only you got it wrong in the customer service/business side of things, but also are clueless about how Paypal's dispute resolution system works to make such a bold statement.
No, this part of what Roger said is correct -- if we receive a chargeback/dispute for an account it will go into suspension, so that's a bad idea.


Due to your lack of response and solution, we had no other choice but to look for another more efficient provider.
I have to admit I'm a bit puzzled at this, although perhaps I've missed some critical bit of information.  To explain, though: as far as I can see, you posted the above comment on September 12th, 3 days after opening ticket YA3-TLE3-449.  But a member of our staff responded to ticket YA3-TLE3-449 on September 9 at 5:46PM, the same day you opened the ticket (within about 4hr of opening it), and explained that your license problem had been fixed.

That is the only ticket I see on your account, so I'm not sure what "lack of response and solution" you're referring to... as best I can see, we did respond and resolve your issue on the very same day you opened the ticket...?


At least make one last thing right and refund us the payment for this last month.
We can certainly do that, although you'd need to open a ticket with the helpdesk to allow us to process this.


If your personnel is very limited, then hire more people to do things right.
That was an awkwardly-phrased comment by Roger.  We have plenty of staff; what Roger meant was that the number of staff we employ *who have access to our PayPal and merchant accounts* is limited.  Which is true; we don't give that access arbitrarily to all of our staff, both for security and privacy reasons.


Should we care about your problems with this poorly planned hosting change when you haven't even notified us ahead of time to prevent this fiasco? Get a grip on reality.
It sounds like you're not aware of the scope of what happened last month.  Our datacenter brought us down hard -- their negligence ranged from causing major data loss on one of our servers, to null-routing a number of our IP addresses for no quantifiable reason during our recovery efforts, to completely ignoring their support SLA and keeping us waiting for days on end in some cases for simple status updates.  This (not the migration) was the root cause for the issues you experienced.  We had no choice but to perform an emergency migration (entirely unplanned) to another DC because the folks at our original DC apparently lost their minds overnight.  We're now in a new facility and working on deploying a failover infrastructure at another, separate DC as well to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.

In any case, that is not by any means an attempt to pin the blame elsewhere -- it was our fault (my fault, specifically) for choosing what ended up (despite reasonable reviews) being an awful DC -- but I thought it was important to explain that we didn't just randomly and carelessly decide to perform a massive infrastructure migration without notifying our clients.  It was purely a reaction to the situation at hand and was not at all something we had hoped to have to do.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Centova - Steve B. on September 16, 2013, 07:02:38 pm
Regarding the discussion with Yahav:

ohh You already  provided instructions? great, how about actually answering tickets and doing it in a reasonable time frame?
Ugh, please accept my apologies for Roger's response there... you are of course correct -- your ticket should not have been left waiting for anywhere near as long as it was, and you certainly shouldn't have been referred back to the FAQ after opening a ticket exactly as instructed for a resolution.

I have investigated and determined that the delay in responding to your ticket was the result of human error, and was unrelated to the volume of tickets we've been dealing with.  I do apologize; I have discussed and clarified the problem with our staff and it should not happen to anyone ever again.


why should i spend extra money for your mistakes ?and what if i cannot afford it? what kind of answer or solution is it, relying on the customer finance to solve your own issues.
As I mentioned in my reply to qnn, this is absolutely NOT something I would ask of our customers and I'll discuss that with Roger.  You should never have to pay more to resolve an issue on OUR end -- that's ridiculous.

I've also PMed you in regard to this matter.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: Centova - Steve B. on September 16, 2013, 07:04:25 pm
Regarding the discussion with toto17:

We send many emails no one gets back to us.
To which E-mail address(es) did you send your emails?  Did you receive back a ticket confirmation email?  If not, your messages were not received.

last pm today both of you no one PM back
We try to watch the forum as best we can but as it is not an official support venue, there can be delays in responding to PMs and posts here.

Note: because we can't login to the client area, we can't even open a ticket.
You should have no problems emailing the sales department (for sales/billing issues).  If you have a valid license registered with your email address, you should be able to email the support department too.

I can tell you that the address you're using for your forum account is not on file as a product licensee.  It also is not (and, as far as I know, has never been) associated with the account that I believe you're contacting us in regard to.

As for being unable to log in to the client area, you likely just need to reset your password.  In regard to your earlier comment:

We have stopped receiving E-mails when we tried to reset the password.
I have tried the password reset feature (by setting up a test account using my external Gmail account) and confirmed that our system is definitely sending the password reset emails.  Most likely, either the email address you're using is not the one we have on file for you, or the reset email is being caught by your spam filters (if any).

I believe I've identified your account however you haven't provided any identifying information in any of your PMs so I'm not 100% certain I know who you are.  I'll PM you with an email address for further assistance.
Title: Re: FAQ - Recent Licensing Issues
Post by: DJFire_CFR on September 16, 2013, 09:06:10 pm
to null-routing a number of our IP addresses for no quantifiable reason during our recovery efforts, to completely ignoring their support SLA and keeping us waiting for days on end in some cases for simple status updates.

Sorry a bit off topic here,  but do we have the same company?    Our server was null-routed 2 times this week. and have been nagged for 2 weeks since we updated  all the servers..  All of our servers were null-routed.

(again, sorry for the off-topic),  I do have a post about it though.