Most of the time I'm pretty happy with the host for generatorland.com, which is 1&1. I'd heard some horror stories about them, but I gave them a try. Up until now things were fine. Today I got home from work and tried to launch my FTP to work on the site and it couldn't connect. I went out to make sure the site was OK and it was down. OK, little panic. Refresh. Refresh. OK, site's down.
It's late, but 1&1 has a 24-hour support number. I call it and about 15 minutes later I'm on the line with someone I assume is in India. I give them my customer ID and tell them my site's down. They tell me that due to technical problems the server my site is on is currently down. OK, I ask, how long has it been down? They don't know. When will it be back up? They don't know. The server administrator hasn't told them anything. They ask me to call back tomorrow if it's still down. I ask if they'll alert me when the site is back up. No, they won't, just call back tomorrow if it's still down and maybe if they get enough calls the server administrator will know this is really a problem(!).
Now it's not like I'm raking in the big bucks with the site, but it's getting good traffic and building a loyal audience. The last traffic I can see from Google Analytics is from 4pm today, which was about 7 hours ago. That means anyone referred to my site in the last seven hours now thinks the site is gone. They may not come back. 1&1 is losing my audience every minute that goes by. This should be important to them and they should be proactive with me in handling the situation. They aren't. I had to call them to tell them their server was down and now they want me to call them again to tell them if it's still down tomorrow. What?
Meanwhile our users suffer, I suffer, and no one is happy. Come on 1&1, get your heads out of your asses.
2 comments:
I'd be peaved too if I were you. I've also used 1 & 1 before and would not make the same mistake again if I could avoid it. I can highly recommend AN hosting or midphase (both the same company but slightly different pricing).
If you're interested in switching send me an email as I can give you an affliate link which gets you and me both a bonus (it seems a bit rude to post it to someone elses blog).
But think of all the money they are saving by empowering the customers to provide quality control. Surely, you'll make that back in rebates and coupons.
I am suffering, too, but it has more to do with the double bean burrito I had for breakfast than it does the inaccessibility of your wonderful web site. Although I did need to come up with a random name for my dead Aunt Lucy for a conference call with some customers, but I was out of luck. DAMN YOU 1&1!
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