I had my coupon blog hosted at Cpanel Solutions. I’ve had some problems with them in the past, but this last one takes the cake. A couple of days ago I was working on the site, adding some content, changing some things, and all was well that morning. Then that afternoon I tried to go back to it and I thought it was down because I couldn’t connect to it, couldn’t login to the cpanel, and couldn’t receive the email for that site. I waited thinking it would come back up. When it didnt show back up by the next morning, I sent in a ticket reporting the problem. This is some of the correspondence:

Message By: Melody Ralls
When: 2006-03-20 17:09:58
Message (below):

My site is down, my email won’t work, I also can’t get to the cpanel to try repairing the database. What’s going on? It’s been down since yesterday.

Message By: Anne Kriz
When: 2006-03-20 17:11:19
Message (below):
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(Message 1) It has never been down since yesterday.
http://percentsavings.com/
It’s working. Please contact your ISP

(Message 2, came one minute later): For example I can see
Get The Vintage Ruby Ring for only $32 with coupon code AFRUBY32. Expires 04/13/2006

(Message 3 came another one minute or less later, i haven’t even had time to reply to the first): Do not jump into any conclusion too quickly. Please try it on another computer with a different ISP to test it.

OK, so I thought, well that’s strange, they can see it and I can’t. I then asked both Rich and Diane to go look, and they could both see it. Only I couldn’t. I also called my ISP… they too could see it and said the problem wasn’t on their end. So I added a message to the ticket thread:

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Message By: Melody Ralls
When: 2006-03-20 18:22:13
Message (below):
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Hi,

I talked to my ISP, they say that its not them and that they also can see the site. I don’t know what else to do.

And got back this:

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Message By: Team Lead
When: 2006-03-20 18:25:51
Message (below):
—————-
Great! I am glad you can trust us now.

The other 2 possiblities
1. A company firewall
2. A firewall triggered by a virus on your PC. A proxy setup to block your favourite domains.

Glad I can trust them now? What the hell is that supposed to mean? What makes them think I didn’t? Although I must admit that by this point, I was beginning to wonder about them.

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Message By: Melody Ralls
When: 2006-03-20 18:49:41
Message (below):
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1. I’ve always trusted you.

2. I’m on my home computer, I was working on the site from this computer yesterday morning, suddenly yesterday afternoon neither the site nor the cpanel would come up for me, and also can’t receive any percentsavings.com email.

3. I turned off the only firewall i’m running and still can’t access it. I just ran both Norton and AVG anti virus, even though they run automatically every morning, and still can’t access it. I also ran xoftspy, still no go.

I really am at a loss here. I can access any other site except this one, the one hosted by you.

SO at this time, it had been more than 24 hours that I couldn’t view my own site, or log in to the cpanel for it, or receive any email for it. I had been around in circles trying all these retarded things they suggested. Maybe it was a ridiculous conspiracy theory, but I was really starting to think that THEY had blocked my IP from seeing my own site. It seemed to me that every time I added to the ticket, their reply came IMMEDIATELY, and there was no way they had time to really check anything.

On that last message, I waited quite a long time for them to reply back to me, and they never did, So I sent this:

Message By: Melody Ralls
When: 2006-03-20 21:59:43
Message (below):
—————-
No replies to my last message?

And received back this:

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Message By: Team Lead
When: 2006-03-20 22:16:29
Message (below):
—————-
Sorry, the message was not related to server operations.

I think you need to have your computer check or borrow a computer until it resolved.

I quickly moved my site to where all my other sites are hosted, and what do you know? I can see everything, although I still had to move the database, etc… thanks to rich for logging into my account and getting it for me. Funny isn’t it? A “virus” was keeping me from seeing it when it was hosted by one place, but not by another? YEAH RIGHT.

So here are the last messages, one from me, and their reply:

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Message By: Melody Ralls
When: 2006-03-22 02:24:49
Message (below):
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I’ve moved my site to another hosting company, and lo and behold, I can see it perfectly now, and my email works too. Too bad you guys didn’t put a little effort into this. If you had at least tried, I wouldn’t be talking about the “help” your company gave me on all my blogs.

I want my account cancelled immediately.

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Message By: Team Lead
When: 2006-03-22 02:31:12
Message (below):
—————-
We did help, reviewing your account and running test. I guess some people just do not appreciate things.

To cancel.you have to login to your paypal account, and cancel subscription.

Ticket ID: 1248
Email To: melody@finelineweb.com
Date Opened: 2006-03-20 17:07:21
Priority: Urgent, Center Queue 5:12 hours
Category: General
Status: Answered
Open/Closed: Closed
Subject: site down

In my opinion, you should NOT USE THIS HOSTING COMPANY.

Speaking of crappy hosting companies, I also wouldn’t recommend the one that I’m using for all my sites, 1and1.com. Although I’ve never had a site go down in 2 years with them, and they have a lot of great options, both Rich and I have been trying to reach them for 2 or 3 days. Rich just wants a simple question answered and has sent them two emails with no reply. I just had a question about my billing, and they never replied to my email either. I called them too, and was left on hold for 25 minutes. Bad service! I also had a hell of a time moving my coupon blog database over.

I also need to move a site for one of my clients, and I’m looking around. I called bluehost to ask a question about shopping carts, and I was talking to a human in less than a minute. Hmmmm, might go with them.