That is some people want for example Linux servers and other Windows servers.  A hosting company that can provide both solutions as well as good customer support could definitely be a valuable resource for webmasters and site owners.

New technologies, such as Virtualization will help hosting companies survive the current economic downturn, says Dan Richfield, president of the Web hosting company and Microsoft partner, Easy CGI (www.easycgi.com).

“Hosting companies that survived the last downturn in 2001 – 2002 learned their lessons well. They’ve not only adopted new, more flexible hosting technologies, they’ve also streamlined their operations, standardized their services, and have learned the importance of responsive customer service.”

…

“The key is to be flexible about providing hosting plans that give customers what they need. At Easy CGI, we are driven by what our customers want, rather than trying to force them all in to one mold. That’s why we were one of the first companies to offer a full, competitive range of hosting plans for Linux as well as Windows.”

“Some of our customers want the very latest Windows Server environment, the moment it becomes available. Others are content to stay with older, more familiar technology. We give both of them what they want. Through our close ties with Microsoft, we were able to offer Windows Server 2008, a full month before it was generally released. But we continue to fully support earlier versions.”

PR-USA.net

Easy CGI seems to be positioning themselves to accommodate the needs of everyone from businesses to virtual reality start ups to bloggers and specialty sites selling a cat condo for finicky feline lovers.  Ala carte options that enable people to choose their own services to meet their needs at reasonable prices seems to be a good solution, and check out that bandwidth ->  3500 GB for $7.96 /month!

When logged into my account with Ipower, I try to order a brand new domain to add to my existing account.  The ordering process system tries to force me to create a brand new account (while logged in) instead of adding the domain to my existing account.  This error pops up regardless of the path that I tried to process the registration.  It occurred in both IE7 and Firefox although the video only shows firefox.

Below is the chat transcript from my session with IPower. 

Welcome to IPOWER! You are number 1 in the queue. Please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you. Please hold for the next available operator to respond.

You are now chatting with ‘Ipower Sales Rep’

Ipower Sales Rep: How can I help you?

IPower Customer with Complaint: Hi name edited out to protect Sales Guy,

IPower Customer with Complaint: I’m trying to register some new domains to add to one of my accounts.

IPower Customer with Complaint: Your ordering system has been broken for a couple months (I’ve even been interviewed by the Press in Phoenix about it) and I’m trying to figure out when it will be fixed so that I can place a new order.

Ipower Sales Rep: I apologize for the inconveniene.

Ipower Sales Rep: I can order them for you.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I manage about 100 domains through iPower, and I’m trying to keep all my new domains under my existing account.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I’d prefer for your system to be fixed.

IPower Customer with Complaint: Do you know when that might happen? Its been broken since February.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I was interviewed in March.

Ipower Sales Rep: I was unaware of that problem.

Ipower Sales Rep: I have ordered myself and have customers that have done it.

IPower Customer with Complaint: That’s partly why I’m chatting. I assumed that since the problem had been reported in the papers that IPower was aware.

Ipower Sales Rep: Today in fact.

IPower Customer with Complaint: Usually I can get an order through on the 4th or 5th attempt.

IPower Customer with Complaint: Today, I’ve tried about 10 times and it just seems to get worse.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I can take a video of it and send it to you if you like, but I’d like to see it fixed or I’ll have to take my business somewhere else.

Ipower Sales Rep: I am unable to fix it from here in sales.

IPower Customer with Complaint: Who is responsible for the sales portion of the website?

Ipower Sales Rep: I will connect you with the support department and try to get a supervisor on the line to assist you with htis.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I tried billing but had no luck there. I can’t get through to support

IPower Customer with Complaint: thanks

Ipower Sales Rep: I will connect you.

Please wait while I transfer the chat to the best suited site operator.

You are now chatting with ‘IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint’

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: Hi Customer with Complaint. My name is IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint, how are you today?

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: How can I help you today?

IPower Customer with Complaint: Hi Ipower Support Rep,

IPower Customer with Complaint: I was just transfered from sales

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: Okay.

IPower Customer with Complaint: Since February your new web site setup continually errors out when I attempt to place new orders.

IPower Customer with Complaint: In March a reporter from your local Phoenix newspaper even interviewed me about the problem.

IPower Customer with Complaint: It seems to be getting worse, and I’m trying to figure out if you are even aware of the problem.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I’d like to see it fixed, because I can’t place orders for new domains.

IPower Customer with Complaint: (note on that last) I usually can get an order to go through after 4-5 repeated attempts, tonight I tried over 10 times and it just gets stuck.

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: Your domain name ‘domain-mentioned-in-chat-form-session.com’ is associated with the account ‘username’ and the hosting plan for the account is Domain parking account which is of free of cost.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I have about 100 domains with you.

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: In this plan you will not be able to use any hosting account features.

IPower Customer with Complaint: They are not under the same account

IPower Customer with Complaint: hold on, you do not understand

IPower Customer with Complaint: I’m trying to add a domain to the account with the home address of different-domain-with-multiple-domains-already-on-it.com

IPower Customer with Complaint: when I signed into chat, I mentioned the ‘domain-mentioned-in-chat-form-session.com.com account thinking it was the primary. the chat session info is incorrect.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I have 6 other domains under the different-domain-with-multiple-domains-already-on-it.com account

IPower Customer with Complaint: I’d like to have about 100 there, but consolidation under your system is extremely problematic for legacy accounts with or without hosting plans with you.

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: Domain ”domain-mentioned-in-chat-form-session.com.com’ is associated with the account ‘mavenmap’.

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: Could you please let me know where exactly yo wish to add your domain name ‘ different-domain-with-multiple-domains-already-on-it.com’?

IPower Customer with Complaint: forget about that domain, that is not the problem

IPower Customer with Complaint: ok, let me try again.

IPower Customer with Complaint: different-domain-with-multiple-domains-already-on-it.com is the account that has the home symbol on it in your system. I’m assuming that this means its the primary account under the login name of brettbum

IPower Customer with Complaint: I am trying to purchase a new domain (actually several) to add to this account.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I already have 6 additional domains on this same account, that I have ordered over the last 60 days.

IPower Customer with Complaint: They were difficult to order and it took me about 5 times per domain before your system would process the order. (the errors that I’m referring to and the same errors that I was interviewed about when the Press wrote up a nice article about the problems that IPower has with its customers).

IPower Customer with Complaint: Are you telling me that I can no longer add domains to this account? If yes, that’s all I need to know. I can go do business else where. If not, then lets talk about getting your system fixed.

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: You can add multiple number of domains under your current account.

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: I have checked your account ‘username2′ and noticed that the account is set as Domain parking account, where you can only park the domain names.

IPower Customer with Complaint: no, that’s the problem the system is not processing orders. I’d love to but its not working

IPower Customer with Complaint: What does this “I have checked your account ‘username2′ and noticed that the account is set as Domain parking account, where you can only park the domain names.” have to do with buying more domains for parking?

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: In order to add the domain name from the account, please follow the steps given below:

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: 1. Log into the vDeck at http://www.ipower.com/controlpanel/index.bml with your vDeck username and password.

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: 2. Click on  ‘Add Registered Domain to Account’ under Domain.

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: 3. Enter the domain name you wish to add and click on ‘Add Domain’ button.

IPower Customer with Complaint: you are telling me things I already know.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I’m telling you that your system does not work when I do that.

IPower Customer with Complaint: Should I send you the video?

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: Okay sure.

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: Are you trying to register the domain name or trying to add the registered domain name?

IPower Customer with Complaint: give me your email address or I can post it online and send you a link

IPower Customer with Complaint: here’s the news article btw http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0306biz-ipower0306.html

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: Okay.

IPower Customer with Complaint: trying to register a new domain name

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: You can e-mail us at support@ipower-inc.com .

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: Okay.

IPower Customer with Complaint: attention who?

IPower Customer with Complaint: I’ve sent emails there before. they get lost.

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: You can register the domain name by going to the URL:

IPower Support Rep responding to Complaint: http://www.ipower.com/product/domainRegistration.bml

IPower Customer with Complaint: yeah, that doesn’t work either

IPower Customer with Complaint: tried that about 6 times, tried hitting the Domains button and then going through the New Registration link.

IPower Customer with Complaint: Let me know when you want to hear about how this doesn’t work?

IPower Customer with Complaint: btw, just tried it again while doing the video and it did not work

IPower Customer with Complaint: OK, look I feel like you are waisting my time, when I’m trying to help you.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I will render the video and send it to ipower’s support email. In the meantime, I place my order with someone else because you do not seem very helpful.

IPower Customer with Complaint: I wish you and Ipower luck with this and hopefully won’t have to read about you in the paper again nor give another negative interview.

Your chat transcript will be sent to my-email-address@yahoo.com at the end of your chat.

Note: I tried to call in initially.  After waiting on hold for 20 minutes I tried chat.  I might as well have pulled my optical mouse through my nose and out my ears and returned it with a computer rental absorbing the equipment damage on my credit card for all the good the chat help did me. 

When you call the experience you receive and the time you spend can quickly change your perspective on who is good and who is affordable. 

If you get a hosting deal that costs you $50 a year for hosting expenses, but requires that you spend 8 hours a quarter on the phone waiting on hold or getting transferred around, and your time is worth $10 an hour (just a low example) then this hosting company would actually cost you $50 a year + $80 per quarter or $380 per year!

For that money, you could lease your own dedicated server!

So here is an excerpt from a discussion forum thread where a number of people are trying to share their experiences and assessments of hosting companies based entirely on the subjective view of how good their phone support is.

Obviously, this should not be your only criteria for choosing, but it definitely should not be neglected when you make your choice. 

I have used several hosters. Currently on Aplus.net and Godad, which have phone ssupport, and mediocre service.
My LIST So Far:
- Liquidweb: a very impressive company with good, 24 hour support. But to get dedicated IP, you need to go with their $25/month plan. Yikes!
- NewIdeaHosting.com. A very small company. My call was returned, and the owner chatted with me for an hour on the phone! Plans have small bandwidth, but promises No overselling, and personalized attention. Extra $5 for dedi IP. He specializes in Small business sites, and small eCommerce sites. He has only 250 accounts, on 3 servers. He rents servers from the Equinox data center of Chicago. Seems exceptionaly honest.
- MegaHosters. Excellent phone support and WHT reviews. But company was taken over by another company, and so may well go downhill in future. Another problem: uses Hsphere.
- Steadfast. Has a good rep on WHT, and seems impressive. Tech answered the phone immediately, but they say they prefer emails. Sales phone has limited hours. Good price on $20 SSL. But, uses Hshhere.
- JodoHost 24 hour phone. But, uses Hsphere. An Indian company with office in Florida, and good rep. I like the idea of outsourcing phone support, if it makes it more available and affordable. But, the accent on the phone was very hard for me to understand, so maybe this might not work…..
- Hostgator. Yes, it’s a big overseller, but seems to get good reviews/results anyway, and good phone support.
- ? ThePrimeHost ?? Mostly good WHT reviews; some dissenters. Site says 24hour phone, but when I called on several nights, no one ever answered… 

OnGoing List of Good Hosters with Good TELEPHONE tech support – Web Hosting Talk – The largest, most influential web hosting community on the Internet

Hope that helps get you started on your path to choosing the best host.  If you have a hosting company experience that you would like to share drop us a comment.  We’d be happy to cite your example and give your site credit in the form of a plug with a mention and a link. 

In the mean time, try and keep yourself sane as you work to deal with your hosting company.  At the end of the day its just business, not personal, don’t let a hosting company representative push you over the edge or before you know it you’ll find yourself drinking away your web profits and end up in drug rehab or something.  Keep yourself happy, sane and balanced no matter how bad your host is!

This weekend I experienced a new problem with IPower.  One of my client websites has a blog component to the site, used for updating news releases.  The blog is powered by WordPress and I needed to upgrade WordPress and add some new functionality.

This is normally a very simple process and relatively quick.  You upload some files and possibly run the upgrade.php file in WordPress if the database needs an update too.

Well IPower runs MySQL (database program) on a separate server from the actual web server on their new systems.  For whatever reason, IPower apparently ran an upgrade on the MySQL server this weekend. 

They have previously indicated to some users that poorly performing MySQL performance was related to systems like Joomla and WordPress and not their own servers.  These systems are not perfect but 99 out of 100 other web hosts do not seem to have the slow loading page problem with MySQL powered systems that IPower has.

Maybe its possible the reason for this upgrade actually hinged on the need to solve the slow page loading problem for its customers or maybe not.  I suspect there’s more of an issue with the configuration as opposed to their actual physical server.

The Problem

Anyway, I uploaded the files (took 4 tries as something kept timing out.  Couldn’t tell if this was Dreamweaver or their ftp server connection.  I normally have no issue with Dreamweaver and couldn’t tell what was causing the problem.

When I got to the upgrade.php step, I hit the link to run the upgrade and there was a distinct lack of action.  In fact the process timed out.  I tried it again an hour later and an hour after that.  Timed out all three times.

Then the entire blog portion of the site stopped working and I started receiving error 500 notices and then Database Connection errors. 

My Client’s Site was Down!

I tried contacting support through chat and never got through after waiting for 50 minutes ( I was 8th in the que when it started).

I then logged into vdeck and created a support ticket, which is a new beta system that they have.

After more than 24 hours, I never received any updates or acknowledgement and definitely no action from IPower based on the ticket.

So I tried chat again.  This time I was 2nd in the que and got an actual person after about 20 minutes.  The person was nice, but obviously managing multiple chat sessions.  Responses during chat were extremely slow and it was obvious the chat representative was not paying attention to what I was saying let alone understanding my comments.

I did my best to keep my patience knowing that if I lost the person, I’d only have to get back in the que all over again some other day.

TIP – Once you have an IPower support person talking to you, do not let them go until the problem is actually fixed.  No Matter what!

Anyway to make a long story less long, my problems were apparently related to IPower’s upgrade of their MySQL server.  Initially as I was chatting IPower led me to believe that my problems (site down) could last for several days until the upgrade was done.   That seemed nuts, so I persisted with them and was ultimately able to get things resolved.

The following is a transcript of your chat session.

General Info

Chat start time

Mar 24, 2008 4:46:07 AM EST

Chat end time

Mar 24, 2008 5:35:38 AM EST

Duration (actual chatting time)

00:49:30

Operator

Ipower Chat Representative

Chat Transcript

info: Welcome to IPOWER! You are number 2 in the queue.
Please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you.
Please hold for the next available operator to respond.
info: We appreciate your patience. All operators are currently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and we’ll be with you as quickly as possible.
In the meantime, please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you for waiting.
info: We appreciate your patience. All operators are currently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and we’ll be with you as quickly as possible.
In the meantime, please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you for waiting.
info: You are now chatting with ‘Ipower Chat Representative’
Ipower Chat Representative: Hi Me. I apologize for the wait time. My name is Hannah, how are you today?
Me: Good how about you?
Me: I have a ticket that has been open for over 24 hours relating to MySQL issues on Ipower servers, that is causing my site to crash regularly.
Me: So far no one has responded to the ticket at all Support Ticket #4809381
Me: domain is advancedenvironmentalmanagement.com (on an ipower hosting plan)
Ipower Chat Representative: I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.
Me: no problem as long as we get it fixed
Ipower Chat Representative: To protect your account from unauthorized changes, can you please verify for me the answer to the Security Question:
Ipower Chat Representative: What is **** ***** **** ****?
Me: *********************************
Ipower Chat Representative: Thank you for the authentication.
Ipower Chat Representative: Can you please hold while I check this for you?
Me: sure (btw I can login to MySQL admin, but the service doesn’t run appropriately)
Ipower Chat Representative: Can you please hold while I check this for you?
Me: sure
Ipower Chat Representative: Thank you for holding.
Ipower Chat Representative: We are in the process of upgrading MySQL version, hence you may experience slowness. However, once the upgrade is completed you will not experience any issue.
Me: How many days is this going to take?
Ipower Chat Representative: The upgrade will be completed in few days.
Me: We aren’t talking slowness, we are talking failure
Me: How can you take websites offline for a few days?
Ipower Chat Representative: Me, we have not taken the Web site offline. However, you will only experience slowness.
Me: I’m telling you that the MySQL problems have taken my site offline.
Me: (for the last 24 hours)
Ipower Chat Representative: Me, you have told above that it is loading slow. However, if the Web site is not working, please let me know.
Me: No I stated that the MySQL issues were causing the site to crash regularly.
Ipower Chat Representative: Can you please provide me the URL of the page?
Me: I never mentioned anything about slowness.
Me: This is the directory that has the wordpress installation
Me: http://www.mysite.com/news/
Me: The problem is in the admin section of the site, it crashes due to the db after login
Me: and often comes up with a 500 error code for the publicly viewable portion as well or a screen that says there is a Database error
Ipower Chat Representative: Okay.
Ipower Chat Representative: Can you please provide me the admin username and password?
Me: username – ***************
Me: pword *****************
Ipower Chat Representative: Okay.
Ipower Chat Representative: Can you please hold while I check this for you?
Me: sure
Ipower Chat Representative: Thank you for holding.
Ipower Chat Representative: I was able to log into the admin page of the WordPress without any issue. I have not received any error.
Me: Did it say Upgrade ? and did you click it?
Me: that’s where it errors out
Me: and crashes
Me: I can’t proceed with any other work on the site until I get past the upgrade
Ipower Chat Representative: Can you please provide me the steps to replicate the issue?
Me: I just did
Me: alternatively go to http://www.mysite.com/news/wp-admin/upgrade.php
Me:
Ipower Chat Representative: I have accessed the above URl and I receive the following output ‘No Upgrade Required
Ipower Chat Representative: Your WordPress database is already up-to-date!’.
Me: I can get in now as well. It must have finally processed through or something.
Me: Thanks for the help.
Ipower Chat Representative: It’s my pleasure!
Ipower Chat Representative: I only have your first name. Can I have your complete name for our records?
Me: sure Me
Ipower Chat Representative: Thank you!
Ipower Chat Representative: Have you sent any e-mail to us regarding your issue? If so, please provide me the e-mail address through which you have sent the e-mail.
Me: no emails, I provided them through your support ticket process (number above)
Me: and entered at the start of the chat
Ipower Chat Representative: Okay.
Ipower Chat Representative: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Me: Nope that should do it. Thanks again
Ipower Chat Representative: Thank you for chatting with us. Please feel free to contact us at any time. We are available 24×7.
info: Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.

So my issue is now fixed.  My site is running.  The slow loading problem is now there, just like the representative promised (thanks for that).

There are times when I feel like my hosting experience with this business partner is more like the experience that a person receives when they go on a royal caribbean cruise ship and get sick from the service or the ships food or something.  You spend all that money and time and end up getting sick from it.

The long and short of this one is that I host my websites on my own server (leased from InMotion Hosting).  So when I buy/register a domain from IPower, I have to go reset the DNS settings to point towards my inmotion hosting server.

About 1 out of 4 domains I get for myself or for my customers has something that goes wrong with it and I have to contact support to get the password username or something fixed.

Ipower uses TuCows for domain registrations so I have to go there to redirect the domain Name DNS.

So I register with Ipower, Ipower registers with Tucows, I get a hosed up domain from Ipower, figure it out when I can’t log in to Tucows, go back to Ipower to get it fixed, they fix it with Tucows, send it to me, I then repoint the DNS at Tucows to aim at Inmotion hosting and then all is well with the world.

The customer support sessions take a long time though and drive me nuts.

Mostly I get the sense that the chat reps are chatting with about 10-20 other customers at the same time, so when I explain something to them they do not always pay attention.  I feel like they would rather just give me some free advertising pens and hope that I go away so they can get to the multitude of other customers.

 

Thank you for contacting support. We are currently experiencing a network outage at our support location. Please expect a delay in our response as we are currently operating with minimal staffing using our back up lines. The local IT team is working to fix the issue. Please contact us later or continue to hold; we’ll be with you as quickly as we can.We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you. Thank you.

We appreciate your patience. All operators are currently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and we’ll be with you as quickly as possible. In the meantime, please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you for waiting.

We appreciate your patience. All operators are currently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and we’ll be with you as quickly as possible. In the meantime, please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you for waiting.

We appreciate your patience. All operators are currently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and we’ll be with you as quickly as possible. In the meantime, please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you for waiting.

We appreciate your patience. All operators are currently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and we’ll be with you as quickly as possible. In the meantime, please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you for waiting.

We appreciate your patience. All operators are currently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and we’ll be with you as quickly as possible. In the meantime, please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you for waiting.

We appreciate your patience. All operators are currently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and we’ll be with you as quickly as possible. In the meantime, please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you for waiting.

We appreciate your patience. All operators are currently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and we’ll be with you as quickly as possible. In the meantime, please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you for waiting.

You are now chatting with ‘Customer Rep’s name withheld’

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Hi Yours Truly . I apologize for the wait time. My name is Customer Rep, how are you today?

Yours Truly: good how about you? I need help with one of my domains

Customer Rep’s name withheld: I’m great, thank you. How can I help you today?

Yours Truly: (fyi Ihave a little under 100 domains with iPower)

Yours Truly: I can not access vdeck nor tucows with GreatNewWebsite.com

Customer Rep’s name withheld: To protect your account from unauthorized changes, can you please verify for me the answer to the Security Question:

Yours Truly: the account info I have is not working

Yours Truly: what’s the security question?

Customer Rep’s name withheld: I have noticed that you have not set the Security Answer in your account. In order to set the Security Question, please follow the steps given below:

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 1. Log into vDeck using the account username and password.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 2. Click on the link ‘Set Security Question’ under the Account Information section.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 3. Click the ‘New Profile’ radio button.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 4. Enter First Name, Last Name, and set the security question and answer.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 5. Finally click on ‘Save’ button.

Yours Truly: well that’s the thing.

Yours Truly: I can not log in to vdeck because the account information doesn’t work, so I can’t set up a security question either.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Do you have access to the account Administrative contact e-mail address myemailaddress@something.com?

Yours Truly: hang on the forgotten password thing just came to me. I’m in Vdeck, let me set my security question then we can figure out tucows

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Okay.

Yours Truly: ok, I now have a security question and answer, but need tucows fixed

Customer Rep’s name withheld: What is your mother’s maiden name?

Yours Truly: ********

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Thank you for the authentication.

Yours Truly: np

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Can you please let me know what exactly the issue in the domain is?

Yours Truly: The account information does not work when I attempt to login to https://manage.opensrs.net/

Yours Truly: ergo tucows

Yours Truly: I need to set up the DNS there

Yours Truly: to point to my server

Yours Truly: here’s tucows message

Yours Truly: Error: Invalid username/password combination for heathenology.com. For support regarding heathenology.com, please contact your reseller, iPowerWeb via the following: iPowerWeb, hostmaster@ipowerweb.com 888 511 4678 602-307-5438 (fax) http://IPOWER.com This company may be contacted for domain login/passwords, DNS/Nameserver changes, and general domain support questions.

Yours Truly: This happens on about 30 percent of the domains that I get from Ipower

Yours Truly: before and after the conversion to the new vdeck

Yours Truly: usually it requires you to reset the password at tucows

Customer Rep’s name withheld: In order to change the domain name server information, please follow these steps:

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 1) Go to https://manage.opensrs.net

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 2) Enter the domain name.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 3) Enter the domain username and password.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 4) Click on ‘Manage Domain’.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 5) Click on ‘Manage Name Servers’

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 6) Change the name server information.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: 7) Finally, click on ‘Save Configuration.

Yours Truly: yeah I know all that

Yours Truly: The username and password that Ipower gave me do not work there

Yours Truly: Hence the need for the reset

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Okay.

Yours Truly: let me know what you need next

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Okay.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: I will send the domain login information for the domain so that you can access the domain in https://manage.opensrs.net .

Yours Truly: OK, when can I expect that? (I apologize its a required question)

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Yes.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: I have sent it to YoursTrulyEmail@something.com.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Can you please check it?

Yours Truly: yep checking now

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Okay.

Yours Truly: got it, checked it and it works. Just to confirm that is only for manage.opensrs.net correct? (Not for vdeck)

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Yes, correct.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Could you please let us know, if you have contacted us earlier via e-mail with regards to the same issue?

Yours Truly: not in regards to this domain. I have had this same type of problem about 20-30 times over the last couple years with other domains

Yours Truly: Sometimes in addition to the manage.opensrs.net login information not working I have also seen vdeck accounts that were never set up and domains that weren’t actually registered even though I was charged for the transaction successfully, and received the account set up information.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Can you please provide the domain name so that I can investigate on this?

Yours Truly: just a sec

Yours Truly: http://CustomersWebsite1.net/

Yours Truly: http:// CustomersWebsite1.org/

Yours Truly: http:// CustomersWebsite1.us/

Yours Truly: http:// CustomersWebsite1.biz/

Yours Truly: http:// CustomersWebsite1t.info/

Yours Truly: http:// CustomersWebsite1.org/

Yours Truly: Those were some of the worst and may still be broken

Yours Truly: There were a lot more but it would take me a while to get the list together.

Yours Truly: If you have a way to look back through my old support tickets I’m sure its there somewhere.

Customer Rep’s name withheld: Can you please hold while I look into this for you? I should have some more information regarding your issue in 2-4 minutes.

Yours Truly: sure

There may be a problem communicating with Customer Rep’s name withheld. Please wait while your chat is transferred to another operator.

My own preferred post and one that I do highly recommend experience the bandwidth outage last night for about an hour and a half.  Initially I wasn’t certain if my own DSL connection was down or preparing to go down or if my host was down.  Sometimes my DSL connection starts to waver, I’ll start to the experience patchy browsing experiences for lack of a better word.  A bill to open one site but not another and then a few minutes later everything will crash and I’ll have to go reboot my router for my modem or something or in bad situations called my DSL provider and said on the phone for an hour half.

Last night my host went down, and initially I thought they were down and then I thought maybe my DSL provider was going down.  So I lost a few cycles troubleshooting things internally to my own systems before I was able to determine that my host was actually down.

In the past I’ve experienced this type of issue a couple times before and usually my host came up before I was done doing all the troubleshooting on my side and I was never sure if they had truly been down or if it was just something in my head or my system.  Unfortunately, my host was truly down at all by websites and all my customers websites were down as well while they were down.  Fortunately that happened in the bill of the night and most of my sites and my customer sites receive the majority of their traffic from the Western Hemisphere and so we don’t lose a lot of business and is not going to slow down my ten year plan on buying a luxury home or anything like that.

I sent off an e-mail to my host your my Yahoo account because my own e-mail was down along with the servers and by websites. 

What’s my Point?  – Does your Host have 24/7 Phone support?

my host has excellent customer service.  They are widely recognized as having excellent customer service.  Their prices are not the cheapest in the industry, but most people flock to them for their customer service.  They’re not the most expensive either it’s not like I’m paying a premium for that customer service.  I would consider their prices reasonable and possibly even cheap if you consider the fact that you can get someone on the phone typically in under a minute… IF… YOU… CALL… DURING… BUSINESS… HOURS!

My host does not have 24/7 phone support.

I can live with that, but you may not be able to and it’s definitely something you should consider.  I’m positive that there is a distinct trade-off between finding a host that does provide 24/7 phone support and one that does not.  My host is InmotionHosting, and you can find them at our list of hosts.  I have worked with iPower as well.  They do have 24/7 phone support, but it’s been my experience that you’re hard-pressed to find a person that knows what they’re doing two hours out of the day low loan 24 and if you do happen to find that person that knows what they’re doing during that two hour window, odds are they’re very overworked, very pissed off and not likely to be terribly helpful to you.

Maybe if you could slide them a $50 bill over the phone, they might be nicer but I doubt it.