I recently purchased a The Planet dedicated server, and it's been a week and the server is still not ready. I have received 2 verification emails from them already. Are dedicated servers supposed to take this long to setup? (Been using Shared and VPS the whole time so I wouldn't know) and don't recommend me another hosting company. The Planet is trustworthy in my opinion, and I read some great reviews for it.
It is acceptable a smaller web host to wait a hardware to be shipped, but it is not the same with big companies that have to have servers in stock. Did you asked them why do they have delay in server set up?
I've never ordered a dedicated server from The Planet. Most of the places that I have ordered dedicated servers from have them set up in less than a day from the time that the order was placed. We order cPanel on most of our servers and I believe that it is what takes the most time installing. I can order a dedicated server from one of the providers that we use without cPanel and it is provisioned in just a couple of hours. That is my experience. You may have ordered a different type of set up than I normally do. Or The Planet may have parts back ordered. I would open a ticket with them and see what is taking so long. It may be a legitimate reason.
They will call you to verify if you used your credit card. Atmost server would be setup within 24hrs. Thats what i remember If in doubt just call them or live chat!
I think the existing customers get server provisioned fast then new customers as they do not need to verify the order but one week is too long period. Contact them via chat or call them for the status of your server. Kailash