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.
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