Last Friday, thousands of small-business web sites are down for more than 6 hours.
Microsoft claims that's hardware problems.

From the following news post, it seems the webmasters can't get any information update from bCentral/Microsoft.
Is this normal (bad services) for BIG webhosting company?

http://news.com.com/2100-1019-990675.html

Originally posted by NelsonT
...From the following news post, it seems the webmasters can't get any information update from bCentral/Microsoft.
Is this normal (bad services) for BIG webhosting company?


No, it is just the typical level of support you can expect from Microsoft. I've used Microsoft's system-level support services since the mid-1980's, and it has always been a problem to get past the finger-pointing and find the real cause of the problem.

It is really humourous to see that each wave of new Microsoft customers has to find out for themselves just how bad Microsoft support is.

This also leads to another question: what does Microsoft intend to do to reimburse customers for the lost prosperity? Since there doesn't appear to be any TOS or SLA, it would appear that Microsoft can simply say "to hell with you" and the customers will just have to swallow the loss. Should be interesting to see how this plays out.

And as far as a hosting company's service is concerned, the size of the company doesn't necessarily imply a good service level overall. A few larger hosting companies (e.g. C_I_Host) are notorious for providing poor customer service, as well as many smaller companies. I wouldn't say it's typical behaviour personally, but bad customer service is certainly far from a non-existant issue at any level.

As much as Microsoft is at fault for the situation, it's not completely their fault. Some of the responsibility has to lie with the customer as well. Renting web hosting is very much like renting office space; you're using it to establish or enhance a business, and availability and reliability of said space is crucial to said activity. The customers, as a result, should have taken some time and done more homework than they did to select a hosting company that was more reliable and suited to their needs.

As far as Microsoft's support is concerned, I haven't used any of it besides their network of websites, so I can't totally speak for or against it. However, I've found that being equipped with as much information about the problems I've had, directly or otherwise, with various Microsoft products has led to me being able to quickly and accurately find the solution to said problems. This is especially true when I've looked issues up using the hexadecimal error codes. My only beef that way is that they use the same code for seven or eight programs so sometimes I have to surf through two or three pages of results before I find what I want.

In other words, I guess what I'm trying to say is that what happened to Microsoft's many bCentral customers is unfortunate, but preventable on the part of both parties.

Originally posted by Mike the newbie
No, it is just the typical level of support you can expect from Microsoft. I've used Microsoft's system-level support services since the mid-1980's, and it has always been a problem to get past the finger-pointing and find the real cause of the problem.

It is really humourous to see that each wave of new Microsoft customers has to find out for themselves just how bad Microsoft support is.

Webhosting is different from their original business; hosting is a true service oriented business, not like selling Windows O/S, Office software, etc.

In the very early age of MSDN (Windows 3.1), Microsoft provided s/w developer much infomation and kindly support. Few years passed, MSDN became a standard package, no support since then.