Domain Host Is Wrecking My Business!

I Think My Domain Host Is Wrecking My Business!

Not one to want to moan or whine but over the last few days I find myself in a really uneasy situation.

I’ve had my domain with the same company for three years now and it changed ownership about a year and a half ago.

12 weeks ago the owner started saying he was going to change server and this involved moving all the domains and sites etc. He gave a deadline of end of January 2007. At first he asked people if they would like him to manage the transferring.

Well I guess he was inundated with responses as he withdrew that suggestion pretty much as soon as he had made it. So he has been updating people through means of a blog and the emails sent out just pointed to that blog’s URL.

Anyway, not to bore you and to cut a long story short I am no technical wizard when it comes to transferring domains etc. Don’t get me wrong I can build websites using an HTML editor and bits without and can manage a domain site. But what he was asking us to do might just as well have been build a spaceship that could fly to and return from Mars.

Among his programs that he purchased he has a 10 Course Success Formula section on a downline builder. He has been telling people to carry out and follow the instruction in course 10.

Ok I may have left things a little late but even so that does not account for what has transpired and the reaction I have now to deal with.

The one thing I am so glad of is that I backed up all my HTML files from my domain but failed to do the same for my email. I followed this course and think as far as it stated did everything he said I needed to do even changing the DNS from one site to another.

Last week I submitted a support ticket asking him if my domain and sites would be ok as I still wasn’t sure what I needed to do. He advised me that I had left it a bit late and needed to act fast. I did what he said to do as expressed above. He then said once I had done this to submit another support ticket to his colleague who he had made aware of my situation and he would complete the changeover for me.

Great I thought at last some decent help. The same day I sent the support ticket that he stated I should. Every ten minutes I checked for a response and there was nothing. Ok I thought maybe I’m being a bit hasty. So I left it until the next day and when I logged onto my PC I went to check my emails as normal and my domain was down…

I immediately checked to see if there was a response to my previous support ticket but there was nothing. Ok now I was in panic mode but knew there was nothing I could do.

I left it until the next day and still nothing no reply and still no domain active. Now I was starting to not only panic but get extremely angry as well. This is not a toy this is my business he is playing with and one I had taken three years to set-up and build. Did he not realise how many URL’s I have pasted all over the Internet, did he not realise that I needed to check my emails daily without fail. Did he not realise I had campaigns that I am paying for that are driving traffic and visitors to my websites that I have built. Yep I was furious at how much power I guess this guy has over my being seen online. Don’t get me wrong I’ve had a domain go offline before and yes it is very unpleasant but normally the same has happened to everyone on that server and you kind of understand that the host will be doing everything in his power to rectify the situation.

Well the good side is (If you can call it that is) he wrote back to me today after I had left a support ticket on every program that he runs asking him if he didn’t read his support tickets. He did not fill me with joy and glee, instead he just soaked me in more doubt and irritability.

Instead of explaining as he should of that his colleague was working on my situation and that he was sorry for the delay and inconvenience he actually wrote this:

Hi Clive.

I know I have responded to this but will do it again.
We began communicating on 10/28/06 that the Server
would be going down and gave specific instructions on what needed to be done. This has been independently mailed thru the mailers plus has been in the newsletter for over 12 weeks.

http://www.his blog site

I know you can understand that it would be a bit difficult for us to manually move hundreds of sites; so we asked from help from each site owner. Some heeded the call; some did not. You fall in the latter category.

Luckily, we backedup up your files and are working on the site restores as we speak. It is being done on a first come, first serve basis. You are on the list and we ask for your patience in this matter. We understand the sense of urgency here; but would like to reiterate the fact that we have been communicating this situation for over 3 months!

Thanks,

END:

Obviously I have withheld certain details here but apart from that it is exactly what he has said.

My question is this. Does this man think I have been paying him over $75 a month for the last three years to be treated like this. It sounds to me as if he isn’t bothered one way or the other whether my business goes T**ts up or not or that I am deeply concerned about the whole thing. This is not a response to the ticket I was asked to support, he has just gone ahead and done something to my domain without notifying me that there was anything else I needed to do as was only discussed late last week. He has suddenly changed the whole context of where we were actually at with it. I am worried sick and know not what I can do to get my domain and email up and running again. All I am forced to do is wait for him to tell me one way whether it is OK or not.

What can I do if he says not. I am at a loss.

What would you be doing right now?

Sorry to drag on here but I still haven’t fully gone into it as I could have.

Kind Regards

Clive Anderson

 

You should look into writing a short novel about this saga...

In all seriousness, if you want things done right, you have to do them yourself. Good luck...

 

You have the data, just move the damn domain set it up on a different server and cancel the $75 a month to this jerk.

 

If your businesses earn you that much amonth to where its a huge deal for them to be down for 2 - 3 or however many days...then I would sure be learning how to do this stuff. You can't rely on others to do the work for you no matter what. You should alway skno whow to do the stuff yourself incase of problems like this. Search the internet and starting figuring out how to do it.

 

You had several months warning as to what was going to happen yet you chose to cross your fingers and hope for the best.

Should have hired someone to do the backup and restore for you if you were that concerned about it.

I'd still change hosts though, if he wants to move stuff around then its his responsibility to take care of it properly.

 

Just hire a freelancer if you cant get it dome yourself and i hope you can get a sub $10 hosting. I'd recommend hostgator. If you need help, I can do it too.

 

Another hard lesson unfortunately learned the hard way. I'd consider what the
others have posted.

ServerUnion said it best.

 

Firstly I would like to extend my thanks to those of you who took the time and replied to my previous post. Your comments are certainly of value and of course in the major common sense I know but I suppose sometimes we just need a little nudge to clarify that, which we had initially thought.

But suppose I took away the factor of learning to do what is necessary myself. If this was not an option and I maybe needed to move my domain and everything what would be my best form of action and with who in that respect.

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As you have probably guessed, all is not going too well with the situation. I thought after my submission here that it would probably get resolved and I would have made a mountain out of a molehill.

This has not been the case as I did hear a day later only to say that my domain was next to be sorted so all should be OK in the next few hours.

I entered my domain main URL and bingo the site was there, I had a massive grin on my face and gave a huge sigh of relief. Phew I thought to myself this really was a close call.

Then I tried to access my email through squirrel mail but was unsuccessful, I thought maybe it wasn't all done yet I'll give it a while. I then tried to login to my domain to delete some pages, but again I couldn't get anything. All I was getting was error 404 pages.

I tried entering a few key URL's for pages that I had recently created. Nothing! Again I was gobsmacked I couldn't believe it

Immediately I submitted a support ticket stating that I thought something was amiss and explained why, and left it at that.

I was then informed that there was a whole new Control Panel and I would have to set up my email addresses as per segment one of something or other and my access details should have been sent by email to access my domain.

Darn it, I thought as I knew the email would have been sent to another email account I had that I couldn't access from this computer for some reason. My other computer was bust and going to cost a fortune to fix.

I sent a support ticket explaining this and asked if the access details email could be re-sent to another email address that I had set up.

And since I sent that support ticket over 27hours ago I again have heard nothing and still no more visible of my domain than the main site and a few other pages.

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• If I wanted to change my host at this point would it be possible.
  
• If I did would I get my email account retrieved.
  
• If all that was possible would I be able to change the contact details so that when the domain name comes up to expire I can be notified at a different email address.
  
• How much could I expect to pay to have all this done.
  
• Would it be difficult to do.
  
• What else would be involved that I may have overlooked.

**********************************************

Kind Regards

Clive Anderson