Chris Meistre

I have always promoted Dreamhost and the great support we receive from them.  I use them to host a few personal sites.  Over the last 2 months there has been a lot of down time, but it normally gets resolved in a few hours.

On Sunday, 26 July 2009, at around 13:00 (GMT +2) I noticed an error.  I checked a few of the domain and it seemed that the server was acting wacky.  I immediately submitted a support ticket.

At 15:34 I got a reply saying that they had sorted out the problem.  I checked and it was still not working.  In fact, it was worse now affecting more of my domains.  I immediately emailed back saying that it was still not working.

At 23:07 I got an email back saying that they simply refreshed the HTTP service and it is working.  I checked, and again it was not working.  I once again emailed them back and said that it is still not working.

When I didn’t receive feedback from them by 10:00 the next morning, I logged another ticket.  I only got a response on previous message at 18:11 on the Monday evening.  That is 18 hours later.  I got an explanation that the IP address on my server had changed, and for some reason the DNS settings didn’t update correctly.  I was told it might take up to 72 hours for the problem to be rectified because of DNS propagation times.  I checked up on the DNS settings on a few of the domains, and their IP addresses.  Now, if they had changed the IP address, surely it was the IP addresses I was looking at.  So I wanted to see if it propagated yet, by sheer luck perhaps.  I did a dig of the domain name against my PC’s dns server, and it was resolving to the correct IP address according to the IP address in their setup.  I tried to access the domain, and it didn’t work.  I emailed them back at just before 19:00 asking them to explain this.   In the meanwhile I continued testing various domains, and to me it looked like the IP addresses didn’t change and/or they had already propagated.  BUT THE DOMAINS WERE STILL NOT WORKING.

During the next 24 hours I read about several people having Dreamhost issues on Twitter – http://purl.co.za/LAxLH.  There was one consistent thing, everyone was having trouble with getting hold of Dreamhost or have had the same issues that I’ve been having over the last couple of months.  I tried getting hold of Dreamhost by their support email address, via Twitter and by submitting more tickets.  For almost 24 hours I heard NOTHING from them.  And the support staff must’ve been at their office, because in that time their website that shows the status of some of the machines were being manually updated.

So at 18:50 tonight, Tuesday 28 July 2009, I got a reply saying that they had now moved my domains over to the new Private Server I had ordered.  This is something I ordered about a week ago.  Gone is the story now that it was IP issues I was having.  I emailed them back immediately asking what is up with that, and will probably get a reply tomorrow evening this time, if at all.  I checked, and all but 1 of the domains are now working.  I also emailed them about that.  Hopefully, sometime soon, that will also be sorted out.

I am extremely disappointed in Dreamhost.  I host websites with other companies, and the support I get from them is excellent.  The most I’ve ever waited for response was probably 2 hours.  They also make use of a live support system where you can chat to a technician while they are busy sorting out your problem.

I cannot understand that I can receive an email from Dreamhost, respond to them immediately, and then have to wait up to 24 hours for a response.  What makes it worse is I am not the only one to experience this type of service from them.

Like a lot of people, I hate being on the receiving end of telesales phone calls.  I do understand it is the person’s job to do it, and that it is a way for the company to promote it’s products and services.  Therefore, I do tolerate it and try and deal with it calmly.

After putting down the phone this morning after another sales pitch, I started thinking.  This particular call did not make my blood boil, and when I put down the phone my blood pressure was still on normal levels.  As apposed to other times that I put down the phone being extremely angry, feeling that I will never again have back that wasted time.  In 99% of the cases I just put down the phone because a person doesn’t accept NO for an answer.

What made this phone call different?  I was told immediately what the call was about.  It was a personnel recruitment agency wanting to know if we have any positions available, I said no, and she thanked me and said good bye.  I am happy to receive calls like this where the person gets straight to the point and doesn’t try and change my answer by offering other versions of the sales pitch.

So good on you if you follow the same approach to telesales!

With all the above being said, please don’t phone me because 10 out of 10 times I’ll say no because if I wanted a product, I’ll go look for it.

Sometimes I get sad when I have to think how we’ve got to make our homes more and more like prisons so that people cannot break into our property to steal our stuff or harm us.  We’ve had to, at great expense, put up electric fencing, higher walls, higher gates and alarm system ever since moving in.  There’s also the ongoing cost of having an armed response security company keeping watch for you via the alarm system.

I can gladly say (touch wood) that we have not had a problem at our home, and I’d like to keep it that way.  I always believe if you make your place a bit more difficult to break into than the person next door, they’ll rather target that person.  Sad that we’ve got to think like that, but that’s the way it is.

We make use of Seagate Security Services at our home, and I’m extremely impressed with their response.  A couple of times that our alarm has gone off, they always phone within seconds of it going off, and most of the time after the call has been completed and you look down the street you see the vehicle already on it’s way just in case there is a problem.  Awesome service I think.  It makes us feel a little bit more at ease knowing we have someone looking over us.

This morning we woke up with the alarm going off.  Now if you’ve ever woken up like that, you know it’s a horrible feeling.  It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to read on the panel to see which zone was activated.  I ran downstairs to check it out, and as I opened our bedroom door I already heard my cellphone ringing.  On the way to it I checked that everything was in order, and picked it up and it was a lady from Seagate asking if everything was fine.  I couldn’t believe it, it must’ve been about 3-5 seconds from the alarm being activated to the phone ringing.  Luckily everything was fine, and it seemed a moth or something caused the motion sensor to activate.

So if you’re in Port Elizabeth and need a company you can depend on in the time you’ll need them most I will definitely recommend Seagate. Their number is 041 487 3425.

Fucking Homemark – http://www.homemark.co.za/ has really pissed me off now.

Not only do we need to sit through their kak informercials and stupid adverts but now I get SMS spam from them.  Normally I wouldn’t even bother taking notice of this, but I checked up the details in the SMS and it corresponded with the contact details on their website.  So I thought let me phone and see what it’s about.  They say that you’ve won a free fleece blanket, and you just need to phone them to claim your price.  I thought this would be a cool gift for my wife.

I phone them, and they take down my address and name.  Then she tells me I must pay a small contribution of R140.00 for a delivery fee.  What a crock of shit?  The thing only costs R99.00 if you buy it from them.

I impolitely told the lady she just wasted 2 minutes out of my life that I’ll never have back.

In a matter of 5 minutes I went from thinking Homemark is not that bad, to vowing to never buy ANYTHING from them again. Stupid stupid Homemark.

Vodacom has launched Vodacom Fame (http://www.vodacomfame.co.za/).  It’s all a promotion combined with a competition to get people and celebrities to make a video resembling the Single Ladies spoof that is airing at the moment.  It’s a ripoff of the Beyonce Knowles music video.  I like the video, and the promotion is a good idea.

The problem is that the website is broken.  Going to http://www.vodacomfame.co.za/zoopy or any derivative thereof brings up:

A timeout occured while waiting for the script output (in: /usr/www/users/vodacoa/index.php).

Why the fail?  My money is on the fact that the website interfaces with Zoopy which is an only video sharing services, and the interfacing is either broken or cannot handle the traffic that the website is generating.  User registration, login, etc. doesn’t work currently.

So if you’re like me and would really like to see these videos, give http://vodacomfame.co.za/ a skip and go direct to http://www.zoopy.com/ and search for “single ladies”.

Next time you want a run a good marketing campaign (and I do believe this is a brilliant one) consider that it will actually work and you’ll need stable software.