Non-caring attitude toward YOUR customers

[-Oz-]

I got notification of suspension via email when it happened 3 days ago.

[thewave]

I got notification of suspension via email when it happened 3 days ago.

I don't doubt it. But enough people have complained about the notification process that it seems to be an issue. I have no idea who, if anyone, is at fault, but a simple phone call seems prudent. I'm sure some would even be willing to pay a small fee for the service.

[-Oz-]

i only say it cuz last time i had a domain suspended I just had to find it on my own. Maybe things have started to improve?

[ChrisTech]

I got an email when one of my friend's domains (that I had hosted) was suspended.

Subject: Domain Suspended
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 22:53:33 -0600


Dear Customer,

One of your domains, xxxx.com, has been suspended permanently for blatant disregard of our AUP, ToS, and general shared hosting practices. This domain was running a Steam server, had attempted to compile a new version of MySQL and several other pieces of software, attempted to add users/groups, run IRC related software, etc. The list just go on and on. This is a shared hosting environment and none of this is allowed, much if it is strictly prohibited in our AUP and ToS as well.

xxxx 20548 0.7 0.6 11256 6780 pts/0 S 22:26 0:09 ./steam -command update -game hl2mp -dir . -usernamexxxxserver -p

Regards,
Andrew

Now if your contact email address would be on the domain that was suspended, I bet you wouldn't get the email.

[classictoysnyc.com]

I never recieved any such email of suspension - ever. I was told that the warning within the trouble ticket was sufficient after the site was already shut down. Prospective customers - beware!

A simple phone call and killing just the process that was causing the overload would have been fine - I would have utmost respect for that. Fact is, my entire business - everything - was interupted. We were not even allowed to do our backups. Andrew went and backed up the site telling us that the tar file was working "perfectly" when it really didn't. Reading through some other posts here, cpanel seems to have some problem backing stuff up.

It seems that a bunch of the more technically oriented customers of Dathorn are happy - maybe hearing things like "this will not be tolerated" and "this is absurd" are accepted forms of communication when ones' business is shut down - but not for me. While these more techinical users are happy, the business end people do not seem to be.

It is one thing to ride high and mighty when you technically know more than others but if your job is to keep other people employed and keep a full business running - get the he** off your high horse and do what is right.

So, people asking me about Sql queries and such - kill the queries - don't go shutting down the entire site including my email. That is a pathetic thing to do. We are now running the exact same site in a different location and getting good traffic again. We have yet to detect any problems at all. The server I am on is sharing space with 6 other accounts. I really wonder how many sites this guy hosts per box.

Shutting down an entire business is not acceptable under any circumstances unless there is something illegal taking place.

Signing up with Dathorn was a terrible mistake for my business. I should have done more research on customer satisfaction.

[AndrewT]

classictoysnyc.com:

When a response is added to your trouble tickets, you are automatically sent an e-mail notifying you of this. You were warned via the ticket because you had submitted a ticket stating that your site was running "very slow" - which was relevant to the issue at hand, not just some random ticket you had submitted. At first, I did not see anything abnormal other than your index page being problematic. Then another customer reported the same problem, after looking into it a bit further your domain was creating extremely heavy loads with MySQL usage consistently at 75 queries per second.

Your domain was suspended for 28 minutes until you replied to the ticket and agreed to disable xcart to prevent these problems from occuring.

You then ran three seperate PHP DB backup processes at the same time which had run for over 30 minutes. Finally they were killed as this was doing more harm than your site was to begin with.

We were able to create a full cpmove backup of your entire domain in 21 minutes, which dumps all of the MySQL databases too. cPanel backups work perfectly. We use them to transfer hundreds of accounts between servers when we upgrade them. Your backup was no exception to this, I even extracted it for you on the local serveral for you to access the files individual via FTP, including the database dumps.

[Grunfeld]

Two sides to every storey, I guess readers have to decide who to believe.........

[thewave]

Two sides to every storey, I guess readers have to decide who to believe.........

The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

Its too bad Dathorn doesn't notifiy by telephone of suspension. Email isn't nearly reliable enough, especially for those with commercial websites.

[Grunfeld]

[QUOTE=thewave]The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

Its too bad Dathorn doesn't notifiy by telephone of suspension.

Then the complaint would be that Dathorn didn't try to call or "no you didn't call"

I think Andrew's explaination seems fair enough and from that looks like Dathorn did everything they could to cause as little disruption to said account....

The main concern is the other cleints on a server they all are suffering becasue of one account....

[thewave]

Then the complaint would be that Dathorn didn't try to call or "no you didn't call"

I think Andrew's explaination seems fair enough and from that looks like Dathorn did everything they could to cause as little disruption to said account....

The main concern is the other cleints on a server they all are suffering becasue of one account....

I'm sure some people will complain about not getting a call, but that doesn't address the point that e-mail only notification is insufficient for a number of people. classictoysnyc.com is not the only person to complain about notification. There are myriad reasons why an email may arrive late, or never arrive at all. A phone call does not seem unreasonable.

While the main concern is server stability, a secondary concern should be the reliable, timely notification of clients accounts.

[openbox]

Service has its price. If you want all of the bells and whistles, you need to pay for them. Considering the cost of Dathorn's service, I think that what we get is exceptional. If you have a site that is that big of a deal that you can't afford to be down (Dathorn's fault or otherwise), then you need to be hosted somewhere else paying a lot more money.

[ThomasW]

I can’t speak for Andrew, but I would say it is not worth his time calling someone to notify them that their domain is in peril.
Think about it for a minute, how would someone react to the phone call, most would argue, piss and moan, for what we pay a month for hosting I am sure Andrew would rather loose the occasional client rather than deal with that.

I am sure that some will read this post and say, they would never yell but would be courteous and thankful they got the call, yeah right. I had a small problem a few months ago and when I got the email I was royally pissed off, if I had gotten the call I would have been pretty nasty and I am a very mellow fellow.

I do agree that email is a horrible way to be notified, pity there is not some way we could get an automated trouble/reminder call when there is a problem, like the kind you get from Blockbuster when you are late returning a rental. I am sure most of us would pay an extra dollar a month for something like that.

[thewave]

To Openbox:
I agree with you about price. If you go back and read my previous posts, you'll notice I mentioned a fee based service.

I don't agree with you statement about needing to go elsewhere if you're "That big a deal". If you have a corporate account with one backup, you're already paying entry level vps or dedi money. These are reseller accounts. I don't think a secondary method of notification (whatever it may be) is out of line, especially if its fee based.

To ThomasW:
I too was thinking about an automated solution, or even a text message to a cell phone.

[openbox]

To Openbox:
I agree with you about price. If you go back and read my previous posts, you'll notice I mentioned a fee based service.

I don't agree with you statement about needing to go elsewhere if you're "That big a deal". If you have a corporate account with one backup, you're already paying entry level vps or dedi money. These are reseller accounts. I don't think a secondary method of notification (whatever it may be) is out of line, especially if its fee based.

thewave, yes, I missed the part about being fee-based. A big problem I see with that is that having a system in place to deal with something like automated notifications is not a low cost venture. Additionally, adding the administrative overhead of such a system/process is an additional cost that I truly think is prohibitive given Dathorn's enviornment and targeted customer base.

As for my comment about "that big a deal", the corporate account is still only $40/mth. Spending $40/mth for a service for a business is nothing and honestly, if I were looking for more of the "hand-holding", I would be spending a lot more than $40/mth to ensure that my information was up and operational.

My $0.02 worth...do what you want with it.

[AndrewT]

A text message to a cell phone is fairly easy. Many, if not all, cell phone providers have an e-mail address that you can send to and receive the message as a text message on your phone. I've used this a lot with Sprint and Cingular. You can then simply set this address as your contact e-mail.