Jill Murray

Keeping in mind that by definition, “dread” is one of the emotions that make up “awe.”

My hosting company wins a special spot in the Gallery of Bad Advertising because they advertised 99.9% up time and friendly 24-7 tech support but you might have noticed, this site has been down five times a day since I moved it to their servers. For all I know, the problem is totally not their fault, and it’s puzzling, and weird, and they’re all over it, trying to figure it out. But I will never know, because thanks to their communication style, they totally appear to put the “host” into “hostage.”

* * *

Netfirms Support wrote:
Hello,

Thank-you for your e-mail inquiry.

Some customers were experiencing intermittent problems with loading their web site or using MySQL earlier. This was a temporary issue affecting a small number of customers and has already been resolved.

Thanks for your patience on this matter and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Tutorials, demos, and answers to over 90% of your questions may also be found immediately at our Self-Help Support Centre: http://support.netfirms.com

Regards,

Brandyn
Netfirms Inc.
www.netfirms.com

* * *

—–Original Message—–
From: Jill Murray
Date: Thursday, May 25, 2006 11:00 AM
To: Netfirms Support (support@netfirms.com)

It can’t be resolved. It’s happening right now. (11 am, May 25th.)

* * *

Netfirms Support wrote:
Hello,

Thank you for your inquiry.

Please be advised that we are aware of such intermitten issues pertaining to a partiular DB server.

Our system adminsitrators are currenly working on resolving the issue. We expect for this to be reolved over the weekend.

We appreciate your patience and cooperation in this matter.

Tutorials, demos, and answers to over 90% of your questions may also be found immediately at our Self-Help Support Centre: http://support.netfirms.com

Regards,

Ashiq
Netfirms Inc.
www.netfirms.com

* * *

—–Original Message—–
From: Jill Murray (jill@accomplice.ca)
Date: Monday, May 29, 2006 12:49 PM
To: Netfirms Support (support@netfirms.com)

It’s Monday and the problem persists.

Who do I contact re: getting my money back? I was clearly sold this hosting package under false pretenses. I am beyond unhappy with this situation and the lax way it is being dealt with.

Jill Murray

* * *

Netfirms Support wrote:
Hello,

Thank-you for your e-mail inquiry.

Some customers were experiencing intermittent problems with loading their database services yesterday. This was due to an unusual high traffic on the database server. This was a temporary issue affecting a small number of customers and has already been resolved.

Thanks for your patience on this matter and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Tutorials, demos, and answers to over 90% of your questions may also be found immediately at our Self-Help Support Centre: http://support.netfirms.com

Regards,

Todd
Technical Support Team Leader
Netfirms Inc.
www.netfirms.com

* * *

—–Original Message—–
From: Jill Murray (jill@accomplice.ca)
Date: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 05:23 PM
To: Netfirms Support (support@netfirms.com)

I’m still getting these errors on [my web sites]:

“The connection has timed out.
The server at [web site] is taking too long to respond.”

Can you please stop sending me messages telling me your problems have already been resolved, when they haven’t? At this point, I have no idea what, if anything is being done to fix the problems. My confidence in your service and your reassurances is very low.

Please have a genuine, non-automated person contact me when you have really addressed my problem. I no longer care why it is happening, or how your alleged service systems work, or that I am a member of a small but unprivileged group of customers whose hosting is constantly failing. Am I meant to be impressed that some of your other customers enjoy the privilege of having their web sites hosted properly? How does their good fortune provide me with the service I paid for, in a lump sum, up front?

The way I see things, you have not delivered what you sold me: web space that makes web sites visible to the general public in a consistent and reliable manner.

This is unacceptable. I want my money back for the months I prepaid up until this point, and so do my clients.

Sincerely,

Jill Murray

* * *

Netfirms Support wrote:

Hello,

Thank you for your e-mail enquiry.

We are happy to inform you that we were able to browse to your site successfully. We suggest that you try to reload your site again with your browser. Should you continue to experience problems with viewing the site, we recommend that you clear your browser’s cache.

Tutorials, demos, and answers to over 90% of your questions may be found immediately at our Self-Help Support Centre: http://support.netfirms.com .

Regards,
Sandra
Netfirms, Inc.
www.netfirms.com