Man.. me chiming in on a "me too" post that Brad makes? What is this world coming to?!
But yes. Me too. I fully agree.
Managed is managed. Things are setup in a specific manner so technical staff can quickly, and efficiently diagnose a problem that may occur. Every time we've ceded to a customer and given them administrative privileges on a machine it has led to nothing but problems due to unmaintainable and undocumented changes being made.
When I can login to a machine and *know* certain things are setup in a certain way, so I don't need to go through a 500 point bullet list of things to check, I can *very* quickly delve into where I believe the problem might lie. If I have to go through 50 config files in a chain of troubleshooting that a customer may or may not have edited.. Well, it that exponentially wastes both my time, and increases the time your site is down. Don't even get me started on the "control panel" software out there...
While I cannot speak for anyone else, believe it or not, we truly *do* care that your site is down or not performing to your expectations. Over all my years in this business, when a customer is down or otherwise upset, I still cannot sleep, and get that huge knot in my stomach until it is fully resolved. When that goes away, I will know it's time to quit this business. Truly, when folks are effected by our screwups I do show physical signs of distress and will do whatever it takes to make things right again.
I know other hosts here are very similar. Some are not. Choose wisely!
If you go unmanaged, then understand this. Does your server ping? Yes? Is the hardware functional? Yes? Then guess what? Your host just fulfilled their end of the bargain. If you broke some software, it is entirely and 100% your issue to resolve. Hopefully your host DOES care, and will assist you, but do realize this is far and beyond what they "have" to or even should be doing.
I do agree that one of my pet peeves is customers calling in asking for a "regular reboot" just because.. Someone told them they should reboot their server every week or whatever. If you have someone competent running your systems, you should have uptimes measured in years. The only reboots necessary would be for critical kernel upgrades when/if security or performance issues arise. If you are having stuff being rebooted more than that, something is wrong with either your server configuration, your application(s), or the machine is underpowered.
Regards,
-Phil