Today my support team forwarded me an interesting ticket where a customer was complaining about not being able to login to their Data Center rack rental session. The support team was confused because INE's CCIE Data Center Rack Rentals and workbook are currently still in closed beta, with a select few testing out the rack rental system and the workbook content. As this isn’t the only ticket they’ve gotten about the situation, I thought it was appropriate to address it publicly. In short, these tickets relate to another vendor's Data Center rack rental issues as INE’s CCIE DC Rack Rentals are not yet publicly available.

The reason they got this ticket and the other related ones is that another vendor has pre-sold Data Center - and I believe also Wireless - CCIE rack rental sessions that don’t actually exist, and a few people are confusing INE with them. Apparently once it’s time to actually use your pre-paid rack session you get an email similar to the one below:

From: (redacted)

Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 1:43 PM

To: (redacted)

Subject: Data Center Rack
(redacted),
We are going to have to cancel you 20:00 session today and upcoming sessions at least up to the 15th of April due to the fact that the DC rack is not complete at this time. We are expecting to get this up and running in the next couple weeks. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause. You will receive a replacement voucher for all canceled sessions.

--

Regards, 
(redacted)

Technical Support/ Editor (redacted), INC.

The CCIE Data Center Facebook group has had a bunch of posts about this recently as well:

Normally I try to stay away from this type of industry drama, but I want to make sure that INE is not lumped in with the rest of our competitors that have this type of shady business practice. Pre-selling vaporware not only hurts the end customer and the vendor, but also other vendors in the CCIE training business, as apparent by the support tickets that we received. If you’ve found yourself in this situation and are being offered vouchers instead of a refund then I would suggest to get in touch with your credit company to dispute the charges, as this is pretty cut-and-dry as a product paid for and not delivered.

As for INE’s rack rentals, like I mentioned we are still in closed beta. Public beta is going to be starting next week, and if you are interested simply send me an email to bmcgahan@ine.com with the subject “DC Beta Testing”. If you already submitted a request you don’t need to send another one, we will be following up with everyone shortly after the weekend.