dispatches from the new world of work

High Speed Web. Low Speed Service.

[This just in from one of our colleagues: Mike Neiss, welcome to blogworld! It seems Mike had to get a bit upset before he had something to say ...]

From Mike:
I started getting odd messages from my clients that their emails were being bounced back. Well aware of my technology expertise level, I figured I must have done something wrong. I reconfigured my account settings in Outlook, sent a trial message, and it appeared I had fixed the problem. Wrong. I finally talked with my web host, ipower web, at 5:30AM. Seems that when I renewed my domain, someone forgot to register it at ipower. Of course they were appropriately "sorry for the inconvenience" and appreciated "my patience." Patience in the web world?? No way! I was out of touch with my clients and friends. They blew it, not me. They had my cash, I had no website.

First tech support person said she would let people know about the problem, "when they came in." Hmm, their site said 24/7 tech support. Went online and waited for someone to respond to my live chat with the tech group message ... 15 minutes. The tech was respectful and understanding. He couldn't get in touch with a transfer tech. I asked for the number of someone worthy of my growing wrath. I called and got an answering machine, was informed someone would respond in 24 hours. I called their main number, hit zero, and asked the operator to please put me in touch with someone who might care. 58 long minutes on hold later, someone finally admitted they blew it. The registration (and my email accounts) would be restored in 24 hours. I was not satisfied. I suggested that I was going to spend the time waiting by logging on to every tech blog I could find to share the story of their poor service. The tech apologized with "I'm sorry, but these things take time." Yeah, my time! I wasn't going to take it out on poor Alan the tech guy, he tried.

But ... I did ask him if he'd heard about the Kryptonite bike lock story and how the blog world had finally brought them to their knees? He acknowledged it. Amazingly, I was back up and running within thirty minutes. I just can't believe that a company whose brand is based on speed moves so-o-o-o-o slow. Aargh!

Mike Neiss posted this on 01/31/05.

Comments

At least he didn't say "It's not my fault."

Posted by cathy at January 31, 2005 6:23 PM

Nice comment, Cathy.

Posted by felix gerena at January 31, 2005 7:26 PM

Cathy, I checked Mike's site, could not find RSS feeds so he's not blogging.... yet !! :)-
I also checked his site for any mentiion on the the Service level Failure which you blogged. .. I dug further for michaelneiss.com within
http://reports.internic.net/cgi/whois?whois_nic=michaelneiss.com&type=nameserver
and come out with a great china wall.. :(-. I was wondering if you/mike could clue us in on who is hosting his site ?? I would love to keep this provider on my radar list.. !!

Posted by /pd at January 31, 2005 7:58 PM

I am going to make a wild assumption. Is it at all possible that Mike waited until the last web second to renew his domain? Is he in any way at fault?

Yes, patience in the web world is zero, but responsibility does still exist. His web company took responsibility, did he?

PS - Anyone who has ever had to renew a web domain knows that you receive at least 10 notices.

Posted by Paul Davidson at February 1, 2005 1:46 AM

Paul,

I am on an automatic renewal program with ipower. I even contacted ipower one month before the automatic renewal, which wasn't as it turned out, automatic, to make sure that all was set. My credit card was charged well before the renewal. Nope Paul, they own this one themselves.

Posted by mike neiss at February 1, 2005 6:49 AM

Gotcha Mike. Looks like things are back up and running.

Posted by Paul Davidson at February 1, 2005 2:25 PM