Assuming they are rational, and fairly competent there's a number of options.

Building from scratch shows either they are trying to squeeze as much
performance as possible out of their hardware or they are using a
distribution like Gentoo or LFS where that is the norm. It's possible
that they don't know how to configure their server properly. I choose
to pay $8/month for directadmin on my production server & other than
easy management of users, one of the big reasons I have it is it does
custom builds specifically designed to support web hosting. I'm not
sure I'd want to be doing my own builds.

If they are trying to squeeze as much performance as possible these
days then either they live in a low labour cost area where hardware
and/or electricity is relatively a lot more expensive or they are
running very huge numbers of servers.

The evasive answers suggest one of:
   * they are incompetent,
   * they know there are severe problems because of the way they
designed their setup,
   * they are only interested in retaining customers who fit a narrow
set of needs & your customer has just gone outside their parameters,
or
   * they are so big they just don't care about their customers except
in bulk ... ask me one day over coffee about my experiences when I
hosted with Godaddy starting as an emergency measure when my hosting
went west 48 hours before flying out of the country for a month's
holiday in India.

Word to the wise ... get fully set up on the new host with DNS
switched over and resolving globally before telling them you are
leaving. I've heard too many stories of smaller hosting companies
pulling the switch as soon as the client gives notice of ending
hosting rather than waiting until the end of the already paid period.

Bruce

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Kent Parker <[email protected]> wrote:
[Long tale of woe]



-- 
Bruce Clement

Home:    http://www.clement.co.nz/
Twitter:    http://twitter.com/Bruce_Clement
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"Before attempting to create something new, it is vital to have a good
appreciation of everything that already exists in this field." Mikhail
Kalashnikov

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