Asher,

I've been trying to reach you via email, IM, and phone, but have had no luck. I guess you've been ignoring my emails...

I haven't been able to access http://www.hostcharge.com/ parts of yesterday and all day today.

Similarly, it shows as unreachable when checked via alertra.com, anonymizer.com, etc.

WHAT'S GOING ON? :eek:


(Edit: Can anyone else let me know if they are having trouble visiting hostcharge.com 's as well? Just a "me too" or "works ok for me" would be great. Please just confirm I'm not missing something, thanks!)

I just tried, and it's down for me also.

Good luck,

David

Genaldi Co.

Seems to be down from Michigan as well.

(clicked submit twice)

I can't access http://www.hostcharge.com (Melbourne, Australia)

Also according to http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.hostcharge.com the server is up

Thanks for the confirmation everyone.

Netcaft may be saying its up since it is pingable...

Clock's ticking HostCharge... :angry:

Originally posted by alwaysweb
Thanks for the confirmation everyone.

Netcaft may be saying its up since it is pingable...

Clock's ticking HostCharge... :angry: Everything I use says the servers' up as well.
I just got busy and didn't mention it earlier.

... I got HostCharge's 2nd in command to reboot the server... Its up again.

Asher went on vacation I've been told... I'll consider this HostCharge's one 'forgiven' snafu. Seems fair I think.

Gee, now I need to go enjoy my weekend. :D

it's ok from here - QLD, Australia :)

Originally posted by alwaysweb
Asher went on vacation I've been told...
Half his luck. :D

I think it is down again, because it isnt working for me right now... Washington USA

I know asher is on a business trip to Canada, he left friday morning his time (22 hours ago) and had 2 stop overs, so he should be landing saturday morning I think.

Mike

It appears to be down again...

Yeah, down again...

I've been 'sneaking in' to the Merchant control panel (MCC) with this URL, since obviously I can't access hostcharge.com (again).

https://secure.debitaccess.net/mcc/hc/login.php

"Where oh where is my dear friend asher..."

hostcharge has been down for me for at least the last 4 hours
i have orders i need to process
thats if the orders ever made it to hostcharge!

Easily, use the URL I posted to login and enter your orders (if you decide to stay with HostCharge) *hrmm*

i just got in via https://secure.debitaccess.net/mcc/hc/login.php
but my orders didnt get through :(
the customer filled out their details which is sent to me but couldnt complete the order because hostcharge was down

nothing from Australia too. :eek:

... Any word from Asher?

Kinda dissappointed he leave someone at the realm that is not qualified or does have the server access to keep things running smoothly...

Hey Ronnie,

still nothing from Australia. Maybe the datacenter is having some serious issues or something. That's a long time for a site to be non reachable, IMO. :eek:

I doubt it's the data center having the issue. FWIW, that site can't be loaded from here either, but pings and traces are fine. Connections to the mail server are also working. This looks more like apache failing without a good restart.

I called Clark (Asher's assistant) and got him to reboot the hostcharge.com server (since he had no idea how to even telnet or SSH in)

And, its down again. I guess if they don't care enough to keep their own site up I'm going to stop wasting my breath trying to let them know. :rolleyes:

it seems to be able to process orders now but i already lost 2 customers ,i got the first part of their order but they didnt make it to the hostcharge order form,i emailed the 2 customers who tried to order but as yet no reply

is Hostcharge a "one-man-show" ?

can anyone recomend an alternative to host charge ,i need to move merchant accounts today

thanks

Originally posted by easily
can anyone recomend an alternative to host charge ,i need to move merchant accounts today

thanks

Well do you want a merchant account or another 3rd party billing system? If you want a merchant account and live in the US, then go with an www.authorize.net reseller (best choice) or go with an ECHO account ( www.echo-inc.com ) . If you want a third party billing system then go with www.2checkout.com or www.revecom.com

-Steven

I was going to sign up at Hostcharge but i think i'll go with 2checkout instead :bawling:

Unfortunately the timing is bad, Asher is not on Vacation, hes on a plane to Canada where we will open our offices in the next week.

The problem is a simple one, easily fixed if we could reach our NOC which is not answering the phone, i am calling them repeatedly, needless to say we will be changing providers this week as well.

As AlwaysWeb mentioned, you can get to the MCC with this link and all orders will still be going through in the meantime.
https://secure.debitaccess.net/mcc/hc/login.php


Sorry for the Delay, we will definitely be making it up to everybody somehow to make up for this, i promise you all that.

i am in uk i will take a look at the other 2 companies mentioned ,whether orders are working at hostcharge now or not they still lost me an $89 signup
i am tempted to signup up with freechariot.co.uk
it`s expensive to setup but would probably work out a cheaper alternative than hostcharge in the long term

The problem is a simple one, easily fixed if we could reach our NOC which is not answering the phone, i am calling them repeatedly, needless to say we will be changing providers this week as well.


I know the MCC still works... but www.HostCharge.com is STILL down. I would imagine you'd be able to reach them by now... I mean what's it been... 2 days on and off ?

as mentioned in this thread the server was put back online last night, all it took was a reboot
so we did get through to support last night, the server went down again a few hours later and we've been calling ever since and yes, still no answer

1-206-522-4402
feel free to verify that there is no answer when calling support, only the voicemail

but again, i'm trying repeatedly and will make sure the server is back online as soon as possible

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.hostcharge.com

HostCharge is hosted by Verio

Blame Verio


Oh and I noticed thier server runs Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_ssl/2.8.4 OpenSSL/0.9.6b DAV/1.0.2 PHP/4.0.6 mod_perl/1.24_01
THATS OLD


STILL DOWN
:angry:

Hello,

I have just arrived in Canada, to find a mess of various things. Let me address some concerns that have arisen over the past 18 hours:

- HostCharge is NOT a one man show, there is a complete team behind HostCharge. They have been shifted to Canada (along with me) as its more feasible for us in the long run.

- While the hostcharge.com website went down to due to major server issues, absolutely nothing was wrong with our transaction processing since the TP server was up (though it went down for a while).

- Now that our entire team has been shifted to Canada as planned, we are working very hard to get every thing back to normal.

I realize that this has caused major problems for our clients. But very honestly speaking we did not forsee that any such thing would happen.

I am now available on AIM (as usual) so you may contact me if you have any concerns. Once again I apologise and I assure you that we're working very hard to get things back to normal and we will resume normal operations within 24-48 hours.

Best Regards,
Asher.

Note to easily hosted:

-- You possibly couldn't have lost a $89 order. If your client placed an order using the API it would have gone to the MCC. The debitaccess server never went down to my knowledge. So the only logical explanation is that your client didn't complete the payment.

Regards,
Asher.

I know Asher is working on this, everyone, I'm sorry if I was too harsh in my opening mail.

As Asher re-iterated to me, since the MCC and the API work fine, its not the end of the world. :D

I wish them the best, and I for one am willing to ride it out with them.

Asher
your website is down for 2 days and the api down for some of this time too
you come here and say i couldn`t lose money ,so i`m a liar obviously !
the api was down and yes i did loose a sale ,the client entered their name address email and all other personal details (which are sent direct to me) then they proceed to hostcharge to enter their credit card details ,this was not entered and not recieved ,i tried to place an order my self and it did not work ,yesterday it started to work again although some errors where displayed

so there are 3 possibilities

(1) i`m a liar
(2)my client filled in all personal details submitted to stage 2 and changed their mind
(3) your wrong

- While the hostcharge.com website went down to due to major server issues, absolutely nothing was wrong with our transaction processing since the TP server was up (though it went down for a while).
so it did go down for a while ?

Easily Hosted,

I am not calling you a liar and that was seriously not my intention. You are correct the debitaccess server *DID* go down once the DNS server (which is our hostcharge.com server) went down for a reboot a few times which in turn took debitaccess down whose DNS is served by the HostCharge.com server. During this time, whoever would have tried to access debitaccess (aka mcc server) would have gotten a cannot find server page. However if an order was sucessfully placed (as in credit card data entered, and complete order button pressed and confirmation page displayed) there is absolutely no way that it could disappear so I reccomend you check with your client on that matter.

I know it is upsetting to loose orders, but believe me we didn't intentionally have the server crashed. I am thankful for the business which you bring us, and I would hate to loose a valuable client due to some downtime and trust me when I say this, we are working VERY hard to hostcharge.com back online. This is looking very bad for our reptuation and we would hate to loose future clients who have been considering hostcharge for their credit card processing.

If you have any questions then dont hesitate to contact me on AIM (KyoSakazaki).

Regards,
Asher.

you may wish to check your server again as the hostcharge.com site is currently unreachable from my end, so it looks to be down again.

Asher,
not to throw dirt on you or Hostcharge, on the contrary I wish you success, but I am wondering: what about your secondary name server? Your must have one, right?

-Chris.

It still isn't working from my side, though, like everybody else, I can ping the server all day and all night.
Would somebody please restart Apache properly for once and for all, this is really annoying!
(Asher, are you getting my emails?)

I tested my order page and now I'm getting a 'parameter is incorrect' error! What's that about?

I tried accessing both hostcharge and debitaccess but both yielded nothing but 'Cannot Find Server'. Been like that for the last two days.

I think something should be done about this.

Originally posted by eddy2099
I tried accessing both hostcharge and debitaccess but both yielded nothing but 'Cannot Find Server'. Been like that for the last two days.

I think something should be done about this.
Yes, but what? The link to debitaccess works for me, but if 'customers' can't access the hostcharge site and I get errors... agggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!
It's so frustrating!:bawling:

Good news, our new servers are up, we are already transfering our websites over to them. You should see results very soon.

Regards,
Asher.

Good! Any idea when things will be up and running?

We have already transfered our websites over to our new servers. We'll be making the nameserver changes shortly. So wont be much longer now :)

Regards,
Asher.

Hay

Its still down

www.hostcharge.com:angry: :D :mad: :rolleyes: :eek: :o :cartman: :blush: :confused:

Originally posted by ruvan999
Hay

Its still down

www.hostcharge.com:angry: :D :mad: :rolleyes: :eek: :o :cartman: :blush: :confused:
It's up from here in Australia. :)

Not working here in SRI LANKA

deleted

nothing is working for me not even
https://secure.debitaccess.net/mcc/hc/login.php?e=5



Everything has just come back online

Originally posted by ruvan999
Hay

Its still down

www.hostcharge.com:angry: :D :mad: :rolleyes: :eek: :o :cartman: :blush: :confused:

Did you ever realize that the propagation may not hav reached you? :eek:

did you ever realize that emailing your customers and keeping them updated may have avoided some of these posts?
people have every right to be a little upset your site has been down for sometime
anyway it all seems to be working fine now

Originally posted by easily
did you ever realize that emailing your customers and keeping them updated may have avoided some of these posts?
people have every right to be a little upset you site has been down for sometime
anyway it all seems to be working fine now

Actually, we will be emailing all our clients to explain about the downtime of our website.

- Asher.

Keeping your customers informed about what is happening should be your number one priority.

Yes, and should've been done immediately right after you discovered it. LIke AsAP! :P

-Kyle

I don't know whether to have sympathy on your customers for lack of wisdom for sticking it out OR to admire their patience. I'd been gone by the 2nd day you were down, and never looked back. Credit card processing is too important to a hosting company for it to be down this long (up and down for a week... geez). You no doubt have cost your customer's sales, and perhaps, even put some out of of business.

Didn't you have a back-up plan in place in case that happened? As far as propagation goes, couldn't you have left stuff on the old server until the new one was ready for minimum down time? Not mean as a flame, but it seriously sounds like your business plan was non-existent or flawed.

I also agree that you should have told your customers more as soon as you found out this happened. You are too non-chalant in your responses here to them, in my opinion.

I'm disappointed because HostCharge was one of the companies I was strongly looking at.

I agree Chris. 5 min. is horrible in teh webhosting industry to be down, so anything more that that is horrific. That's so bad. You need to have a backup plan if you have a business. Maybe a class in WebHosting/Business 101. just a thought.

-Kyle

Originally posted by chrisb
I admire your customers patience. Me, I'd been gone by the 2nd day you were down, and never looked back. Credit card processing is too important to a hosting company for it to be down this long. You no doubt have cost your customers business, and perhaps, even put some out of of business.

Didn't you have a back-up plan in place in case this happens? As far a propagation goes, couldn't you have left stuff on the old server until the new one was ready for minimum down time? Not mean as a flame, but it seriously sounds like your business plan was non-existent or flawed.

You are too non-chalant in your responses here to them, in my opinion.
I'm disappointed because HostCharge was one of the companies I was strongly looking at.

Credit card processing IS very important, so just incase you were not aware, our processing NEVER went down. While yes our website died, our processing was 100% ok. And yes we are working to make our website redundant.

Regards,
Asher.

Originally posted by ^Kyo


Credit card processing IS very important, so just incase you were not aware, our processing NEVER went down.
Regards,
Asher.

I understood that you said your processing did not go down, just your website. Fair enough if that is true, but I understood some of your customers to be saying otherwise. I always try to be fair to both sides. Sorry, if I misunderstood.

Originally posted by ^Kyo


Credit card processing IS very important, so just incase you were not aware, our processing NEVER went down. While yes our website died, our processing was 100% ok. And yes we are working to make our website redundant.

Regards,
Asher.
Asher, I'm sorry, but I will not stand for this any longer.
I have not been able to access your site for days. Why? DNS propogation.
Your site went down and the credit card processing did to. How do I know? Because I tried sending an order from a bogus order from my own site.
All I got was an error... You even admitted in another thread that the DNS was pointing to the wrong place!

Chris,

Some people DID think they had some downtime but honestly the only minute the server went down was for a reboot (the mcc server that is).

And to everyone else, OUR MCC DOES HAVE A BACKUP SO IT WONT GO DOWN NOT UNLESS OUR DNS SERVER GOES DOWN, EVEN THAT HAS BEEN MADE REDUNDANT. Even our website will have a backup server this week.

Regards,
Asher.

Originally posted by blacknight

Asher, I'm sorry, but I will not stand for this any longer.
I have not been able to access your site for days. Why? DNS propogation.
Your site went down and the credit card processing did to. How do I know? Because I tried sending an order from a bogus order from my own site.
All I got was an error... You even admitted in another thread that the DNS was pointing to the wrong place!

Like i admitted much earlier, the only reason it went down was for a few minutes due to a reboot, we have 2 dns servers, our idiot webhost rebooted BOTH the servers taking down the mcc, otherwise there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong with the mcc.

https://secure.debitaccess.net/mcc/hc/login.php?e=2

Doesn't seem to be working.

it loads just fine for me!

Originally posted by Kiwi
https://secure.debitaccess.net/mcc/hc/login.php?e=2

Doesn't seem to be working.


Just use this for the time being, since we changed the dns of debitaccess some people are still getting errors (those who tried accessing the mcc a while back that is)

https://mcc.debitaccess.net/mcc/hc

Regards,
Asher.