rawsushi
03-09-2007, 03:50 PM
don't... you'll be sorry
FYI: i'm not including a COMPREHENSIVE list of my correspondence ... for 2 reasons-
... i sent them more than 100 emails for support ... a small percentage got anything but automated replies ...
... some of the replies (the ones I wish I could show) had the 'don't share this reply or we'll sue you' type language at the bottom ... The ones that I've shared had no such language.
Finally, for those analytical people ... i've some links for you to check out ...
and irony of all ironies ... www.ResellerZoom.com (http://www.ResellerZoom.com) is having major issues with my site over there ... http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=589851 (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=589851)
Anyway, once they figure it out ... i'll put the links in ... i've already FTPd the files to www.einsteinhosting.com/hd/ (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/hd/)
Onwards and upwards:
I suppose this is as good a place as any to start...
WHile there IS more ... I'm tired of cutting/ pasting to put it chronologically.
I'm doing this so no one else enters into a relationship with these people without knowing MORE about their past.
You'll wanna refer to the PDF files that I've uploaded to get a clear picture ... but I wrote in the 20070120....pdf as there are GIFs in the email
From: Albert Einstein @ EinsteinHosting.com [mailto:Albert@EinsteinHosting.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 1:35 PM
To: 'qa@hostdepartment.com'
Cc: 'mike@hostdepartment.net'; 'ivy@hostdepartment.net'; Justin Masson (Justin@FusionOnTap.com)
Subject: FW: Daily Monitoring Summary for xlnte
HostDepartment:
Clearly this is unacceptable.
I look forward to your feedback. I’d like to know when to expect the AVAILABILITY to be 100%, as well as a lower Average Response Time.
In running a web performance test on the site… it is clear that your image server is inconsistent: For example, the bg_rightcolumn.gif is only 49 characters in size (extremely small) – however it took four seconds to be served by your server.
Their reply was a form email.
Ivy/ QA Manager:
The time stamp on http://www.hostdepartment.com/netstat/index.cgi concerns me - it says: 2007-01-19 17:45:19 PST
Is this the time when the issue was first noticed by HostDepartment.com staff?
I ask because if you check ticket number 1120249 you’ll see that I logged the ticket at 10:46 AM PST …
#1120249 server down - nonresponsive - again Jan 19, 2007 10:46:53 AM Jan 19, 2007 10:46:53 AM Generic New Close
As you can see below, I have subscribed to www.Alertsite.com (http://www.alertsite.com/) ‘s Site Monitoring system. Their system monitored 132 errors starting 1/19/07 00:04. ß this email is posted at the bottom.
This means that there has been virtually 18 hours of HTTP downtime.
This is unacceptable. I’d like to know whether this is normal, and what the issues are. I’m going to need to explain what is going on at the hosting company to my customers … and ‘we’re working on it’ for 18 hours is extreme.
For your technical staff, www.Coradiant.com (http://www.coradiant.com/) offers a FANTASTIC network monitoring and analysis system – which is 100% nonintrusive and provides fantastic visibility into the REALTIME status of your network. If you contact them, let Cary know that I referred you; he’s a personal friend. http://coradiant.com/products/deploying.html
I await your reply with more detail as to the causes of the current outage.
So they replied with this - imo - lame response - especially considering how bad it got in the future.
From: HD Quality Assurance [mailto:qa@hostdepartment.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2007 6:56 PM
To: Albert Einstein @ EinsteinHosting.com; ivy@hostdepartment.net
Subject: RE: Concerns Continue / FW: [AlertSite] Site/Device Alert (ST=2) - www.einsteinhosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) (Ticket ID: LTK9102208209X)
Hi Parker,
The time stamp on http://www.hostdepartment.com/netstat/index.cgi is a notification for the clients if our server have a downtime issues for +/- 10 minutes time.
Our server can't be down for 18 hours and usually the downtime issue only happen in a few hours. This downtime issue happen because of two things:
1. Maybe there are some glitch in our server that affected the performance and loadtime. Usually this issue only happen for a few hours and will be up again no more than 24 hours.
2. There are a heavy traffic connection in your current server, but because our sysAdmin always maintain our server everyday then they can stabilize it as soon as this issue occurs.
Thank you for your valuable input and I will notify our Operational Department regarding the product that you suggest to us. We will refer your name if we interest to purchase the products :-)
Thank you for contacting us at hostdepartment.com.
Best Regards,
Scott Ryan
Quality Assurance Team
Host Department, LLC
45277 Fremont Blvd, Suite 11
Fremont, CA 94538
USA
So, i escalated it ... to little avail:
To: 'HD Quality Assurance'; 'ivy@hostdepartment.net'
Cc: 'boone.stanton@hostdepartment.com'
Subject: RE: Concerns Continue / FW: [AlertSite] Site/Device Alert (ST=2) - www.einsteinhosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) (Ticket ID: LTK9102208209X)
Importance: High
Scott:
In the short amount of time I’ve been hosted at HostDepartment, I’m extremely POSITIVELY impressed by the staff, and their dedication to replying to issues. Technologically though, there seems to be a consistent problem.
I hope that HostDepartment’s position is one that there is apparently a problem, and that HostDepartment wants to resolve it. Is that, in fact, the situation?
I hope it is – because the model that HostDepartment portrays on its website is exactly what I’m looking for.
It is my belief that the MOST important perspective on the availability of www.EinsteinHosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) is neither mine, nor HostDepartment's. It is the customers and prospects of EinsteinHosting.
Therefore, I’m using two tools that have that perspective. First, a subscription to www.AlertSite.com (http://www.alertsite.com/) . Second, a free website that specializes in web performance – www.ITScales.com (http://www.itscales.com/)
If you’d like – I’d be fine with providing my Username / Password for alertsite.com. You can see the three files attached.
The DailyAnalysis pdf shows the substandard AVAILABILITY.
The AlertsiteDetailReport shows the times of the failures … I believe the timestamps are GMT.
Are ALL of the servers as inconsistent as this one? What are the issues that we are dealing with. As seen in my resume – I’m quite knowledgeable in this area … and I’d like to have the name and email address of the person with which I should correspond.
Thanks,
To which I got a pathetic reply:
From: Scott Ryan [mailto:qa@hostdepartment.com]
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 8:18 PM
To: Albert@EinsteinHosting.com
Cc: ivy@hostdepartment.net; boone.stanton@hostdepartment.com
Subject: [QA #NBJ-445702]: RE: Concerns Continue / FW: [AlertSite] Site/Device Alert (ST=2) - www.einsteinhosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) (Ticket ID: LTK9102208209X)
Hi Parker,
If you want more information about our server performance, you can login to our live chat and ask our technical support about your queries. Actually sysAdmin have more knowledgeable regarding server issues, but we can't give their name and email address to the clients (internal policy).
If you login to our live chat, you can contact Mike Brown or Boma Hartford. Hope they will provide you more clearly and technical information regarding the issue.
Thank you,
Scott Ryan
Quality Assurance Team
Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: NBJ-445702
Department: Quality Assurance
Priority: Low
Status: On Hold
So, having entered the rabbit hole ...
From: Albert Einstein @ EinsteinHosting.com [mailto:Albert@EinsteinHosting.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 8:48 PM
To: 'qa@hostdepartment.com'
Cc: 'ivy@hostdepartment.net'; 'boone.stanton@hostdepartment.com'; 'mike@hostdepartment.net'
Subject: RE: [QA #NBJ-445702]: RE: Concerns Continue / FW: [AlertSite] Site/Device Alert (ST=2) - www.einsteinhosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) (Ticket ID: LTK9102208209X)
Importance: High
Scott:
This is not a question about one instance.
As I've subscribed to ALertsite - which monitors both the TCP service as well as http of www.Einsteinhosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) in a test every five minutes, I'm provided quite a bit of information about the availability.
That is ALL of my concern. It's a business concern, not a technical one off concern.
As I started my last email – pasted below –
Scott:
In the short amount of time I’ve been hosted at HostDepartment, I’m extremely POSITIVELY impressed by the staff, and their dedication to replying to issues. Technologically though, there seems to be a consistent problem.
I hope that HostDepartment’s position is one that there is apparently a problem, and that HostDepartment wants to resolve it. Is that, in fact, the situation?
I am more than interested in resolving this – as I am not sure if you dispute the Alertsite data which states that they are unable to connect to the machine on, what has unfortunately been, a consistent basis; emails to be provided for your review.
Finally, I REALLY want this to work – as I love your model… and just want to have better up time. I consider this a business issue – and not a tech issue.
As I drive past the California office, who would I communicate with there – as it is 9 miles from my house.
CALIFORNIA OFFICE
Host Department LLC
45277 Fremont Blvd, Suite 11
Fremont, CA 94538
United States
Thanks,
From: Mike Brown [mailto:tl@hostdepartment.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 12:42 PM
To: jessica@hostdepartment.com
Cc: Albert@EinsteinHosting.com
Subject: [TL #XZL-630516]: Move to stable server
Dear Parker Fairfield,
We have started your account movement process. It's being moved from webster server to web11. These are the conditions of the account movement process :
1. During the movement process, site will not goes down but you will not be able to make any changes (thru CP, FTP, etc).
2. The movement process could be completed in 24-72 hours.
3. It will move the webserver only (Mail and Database server will not moved)
Should you want to check your account movement status, you can contact our technical support representative on Live Chat.
Should you have any problems, do not hesitate to contact us anytime.
Thank you for contacting us at hostdepartment.com.
Best Regards,
Mike Brown
Technical Support
Host Department, LLC
45277 Fremont Blvd, Suite 11
Fremont, CA 94538
USA
==========
-----Original Message-----
From: noreply@hostdepartment.com [mailto:noreply@hostdepartment.com]
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 10:14 PM
To: parker@xlnte.com
Subject: Network wide outage
Dear Valued Customer,
In our on-going program to improve our service level, we are optimizing our local network switches configuration to establish a more robust backup system.
During the optimizing process, the ARP settings at the CORE switch had duplicated entries and caused incorrect routing to the network. This resulted in the access to the network to become sluggish. However, the issue has been fixed now and everything is back to normal.
Host Department would like to apologies for the inconveniences caused by yesterday's network outage. Thank you for your kind consideration and support.
Best Regards,
Host Department LLC
--
From: Randy Caesario [mailto:hostingsupport@hostdepartment.com]
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 12:50 AM
To: parker@fusionontap.com
Subject: [TS #BSH-254162]: server down again
Dear Parker,
I would like to inform you that one of our servers, Wangler, has encountered several technical issues which resulted on a downtime status up till now since Wednesday, March 07, 2007, 19:01:48 PST
One of the hard-drives in the server box was corrupted, and when the RAID was running its scheduled tasks, it copied the corrupted data in.
The malicious attack earlier on caused several of our servers to be down with an intermittent, and Wangler is one of them.
When our technical engineer rebooted the servers and restored data back to all the affected servers, the corrupted data from Wangler's RAID refused to
reboot properly - the server hanged.
If your account were previously located on Wangler, we would like to assure you that your accounts and the data within are SAFE and NOT LOST due to the hard-drive corruption.
Only the server's Operating System is affected.
We have moved all accounts from Wangler to our Web5 box.
The Wangler server has already been fixed physically by replacing the corrupted hard-drive with a new one, and a new Operating System is currently being installed.
ETA for completion is still not known for the moment.
On behalf of Host Department LLC, I like to offer my sincere apologies for the downtime and any inconveniences that you might have encountered.
I wish you a great day ahead.
===================
Regards,
Technical Support
Hostdepartment LLC
Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: BSH-254162
Department: Technical Support
Priority: Critical
Status: On Hold
FYI: i'm not including a COMPREHENSIVE list of my correspondence ... for 2 reasons-
... i sent them more than 100 emails for support ... a small percentage got anything but automated replies ...
... some of the replies (the ones I wish I could show) had the 'don't share this reply or we'll sue you' type language at the bottom ... The ones that I've shared had no such language.
Finally, for those analytical people ... i've some links for you to check out ...
and irony of all ironies ... www.ResellerZoom.com (http://www.ResellerZoom.com) is having major issues with my site over there ... http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=589851 (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=589851)
Anyway, once they figure it out ... i'll put the links in ... i've already FTPd the files to www.einsteinhosting.com/hd/ (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/hd/)
Onwards and upwards:
I suppose this is as good a place as any to start...
WHile there IS more ... I'm tired of cutting/ pasting to put it chronologically.
I'm doing this so no one else enters into a relationship with these people without knowing MORE about their past.
You'll wanna refer to the PDF files that I've uploaded to get a clear picture ... but I wrote in the 20070120....pdf as there are GIFs in the email
From: Albert Einstein @ EinsteinHosting.com [mailto:Albert@EinsteinHosting.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 1:35 PM
To: 'qa@hostdepartment.com'
Cc: 'mike@hostdepartment.net'; 'ivy@hostdepartment.net'; Justin Masson (Justin@FusionOnTap.com)
Subject: FW: Daily Monitoring Summary for xlnte
HostDepartment:
Clearly this is unacceptable.
I look forward to your feedback. I’d like to know when to expect the AVAILABILITY to be 100%, as well as a lower Average Response Time.
In running a web performance test on the site… it is clear that your image server is inconsistent: For example, the bg_rightcolumn.gif is only 49 characters in size (extremely small) – however it took four seconds to be served by your server.
Their reply was a form email.
Ivy/ QA Manager:
The time stamp on http://www.hostdepartment.com/netstat/index.cgi concerns me - it says: 2007-01-19 17:45:19 PST
Is this the time when the issue was first noticed by HostDepartment.com staff?
I ask because if you check ticket number 1120249 you’ll see that I logged the ticket at 10:46 AM PST …
#1120249 server down - nonresponsive - again Jan 19, 2007 10:46:53 AM Jan 19, 2007 10:46:53 AM Generic New Close
As you can see below, I have subscribed to www.Alertsite.com (http://www.alertsite.com/) ‘s Site Monitoring system. Their system monitored 132 errors starting 1/19/07 00:04. ß this email is posted at the bottom.
This means that there has been virtually 18 hours of HTTP downtime.
This is unacceptable. I’d like to know whether this is normal, and what the issues are. I’m going to need to explain what is going on at the hosting company to my customers … and ‘we’re working on it’ for 18 hours is extreme.
For your technical staff, www.Coradiant.com (http://www.coradiant.com/) offers a FANTASTIC network monitoring and analysis system – which is 100% nonintrusive and provides fantastic visibility into the REALTIME status of your network. If you contact them, let Cary know that I referred you; he’s a personal friend. http://coradiant.com/products/deploying.html
I await your reply with more detail as to the causes of the current outage.
So they replied with this - imo - lame response - especially considering how bad it got in the future.
From: HD Quality Assurance [mailto:qa@hostdepartment.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2007 6:56 PM
To: Albert Einstein @ EinsteinHosting.com; ivy@hostdepartment.net
Subject: RE: Concerns Continue / FW: [AlertSite] Site/Device Alert (ST=2) - www.einsteinhosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) (Ticket ID: LTK9102208209X)
Hi Parker,
The time stamp on http://www.hostdepartment.com/netstat/index.cgi is a notification for the clients if our server have a downtime issues for +/- 10 minutes time.
Our server can't be down for 18 hours and usually the downtime issue only happen in a few hours. This downtime issue happen because of two things:
1. Maybe there are some glitch in our server that affected the performance and loadtime. Usually this issue only happen for a few hours and will be up again no more than 24 hours.
2. There are a heavy traffic connection in your current server, but because our sysAdmin always maintain our server everyday then they can stabilize it as soon as this issue occurs.
Thank you for your valuable input and I will notify our Operational Department regarding the product that you suggest to us. We will refer your name if we interest to purchase the products :-)
Thank you for contacting us at hostdepartment.com.
Best Regards,
Scott Ryan
Quality Assurance Team
Host Department, LLC
45277 Fremont Blvd, Suite 11
Fremont, CA 94538
USA
So, i escalated it ... to little avail:
To: 'HD Quality Assurance'; 'ivy@hostdepartment.net'
Cc: 'boone.stanton@hostdepartment.com'
Subject: RE: Concerns Continue / FW: [AlertSite] Site/Device Alert (ST=2) - www.einsteinhosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) (Ticket ID: LTK9102208209X)
Importance: High
Scott:
In the short amount of time I’ve been hosted at HostDepartment, I’m extremely POSITIVELY impressed by the staff, and their dedication to replying to issues. Technologically though, there seems to be a consistent problem.
I hope that HostDepartment’s position is one that there is apparently a problem, and that HostDepartment wants to resolve it. Is that, in fact, the situation?
I hope it is – because the model that HostDepartment portrays on its website is exactly what I’m looking for.
It is my belief that the MOST important perspective on the availability of www.EinsteinHosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) is neither mine, nor HostDepartment's. It is the customers and prospects of EinsteinHosting.
Therefore, I’m using two tools that have that perspective. First, a subscription to www.AlertSite.com (http://www.alertsite.com/) . Second, a free website that specializes in web performance – www.ITScales.com (http://www.itscales.com/)
If you’d like – I’d be fine with providing my Username / Password for alertsite.com. You can see the three files attached.
The DailyAnalysis pdf shows the substandard AVAILABILITY.
The AlertsiteDetailReport shows the times of the failures … I believe the timestamps are GMT.
Are ALL of the servers as inconsistent as this one? What are the issues that we are dealing with. As seen in my resume – I’m quite knowledgeable in this area … and I’d like to have the name and email address of the person with which I should correspond.
Thanks,
To which I got a pathetic reply:
From: Scott Ryan [mailto:qa@hostdepartment.com]
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 8:18 PM
To: Albert@EinsteinHosting.com
Cc: ivy@hostdepartment.net; boone.stanton@hostdepartment.com
Subject: [QA #NBJ-445702]: RE: Concerns Continue / FW: [AlertSite] Site/Device Alert (ST=2) - www.einsteinhosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) (Ticket ID: LTK9102208209X)
Hi Parker,
If you want more information about our server performance, you can login to our live chat and ask our technical support about your queries. Actually sysAdmin have more knowledgeable regarding server issues, but we can't give their name and email address to the clients (internal policy).
If you login to our live chat, you can contact Mike Brown or Boma Hartford. Hope they will provide you more clearly and technical information regarding the issue.
Thank you,
Scott Ryan
Quality Assurance Team
Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: NBJ-445702
Department: Quality Assurance
Priority: Low
Status: On Hold
So, having entered the rabbit hole ...
From: Albert Einstein @ EinsteinHosting.com [mailto:Albert@EinsteinHosting.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 8:48 PM
To: 'qa@hostdepartment.com'
Cc: 'ivy@hostdepartment.net'; 'boone.stanton@hostdepartment.com'; 'mike@hostdepartment.net'
Subject: RE: [QA #NBJ-445702]: RE: Concerns Continue / FW: [AlertSite] Site/Device Alert (ST=2) - www.einsteinhosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) (Ticket ID: LTK9102208209X)
Importance: High
Scott:
This is not a question about one instance.
As I've subscribed to ALertsite - which monitors both the TCP service as well as http of www.Einsteinhosting.com (http://www.einsteinhosting.com/) in a test every five minutes, I'm provided quite a bit of information about the availability.
That is ALL of my concern. It's a business concern, not a technical one off concern.
As I started my last email – pasted below –
Scott:
In the short amount of time I’ve been hosted at HostDepartment, I’m extremely POSITIVELY impressed by the staff, and their dedication to replying to issues. Technologically though, there seems to be a consistent problem.
I hope that HostDepartment’s position is one that there is apparently a problem, and that HostDepartment wants to resolve it. Is that, in fact, the situation?
I am more than interested in resolving this – as I am not sure if you dispute the Alertsite data which states that they are unable to connect to the machine on, what has unfortunately been, a consistent basis; emails to be provided for your review.
Finally, I REALLY want this to work – as I love your model… and just want to have better up time. I consider this a business issue – and not a tech issue.
As I drive past the California office, who would I communicate with there – as it is 9 miles from my house.
CALIFORNIA OFFICE
Host Department LLC
45277 Fremont Blvd, Suite 11
Fremont, CA 94538
United States
Thanks,
From: Mike Brown [mailto:tl@hostdepartment.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 12:42 PM
To: jessica@hostdepartment.com
Cc: Albert@EinsteinHosting.com
Subject: [TL #XZL-630516]: Move to stable server
Dear Parker Fairfield,
We have started your account movement process. It's being moved from webster server to web11. These are the conditions of the account movement process :
1. During the movement process, site will not goes down but you will not be able to make any changes (thru CP, FTP, etc).
2. The movement process could be completed in 24-72 hours.
3. It will move the webserver only (Mail and Database server will not moved)
Should you want to check your account movement status, you can contact our technical support representative on Live Chat.
Should you have any problems, do not hesitate to contact us anytime.
Thank you for contacting us at hostdepartment.com.
Best Regards,
Mike Brown
Technical Support
Host Department, LLC
45277 Fremont Blvd, Suite 11
Fremont, CA 94538
USA
==========
-----Original Message-----
From: noreply@hostdepartment.com [mailto:noreply@hostdepartment.com]
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 10:14 PM
To: parker@xlnte.com
Subject: Network wide outage
Dear Valued Customer,
In our on-going program to improve our service level, we are optimizing our local network switches configuration to establish a more robust backup system.
During the optimizing process, the ARP settings at the CORE switch had duplicated entries and caused incorrect routing to the network. This resulted in the access to the network to become sluggish. However, the issue has been fixed now and everything is back to normal.
Host Department would like to apologies for the inconveniences caused by yesterday's network outage. Thank you for your kind consideration and support.
Best Regards,
Host Department LLC
--
From: Randy Caesario [mailto:hostingsupport@hostdepartment.com]
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 12:50 AM
To: parker@fusionontap.com
Subject: [TS #BSH-254162]: server down again
Dear Parker,
I would like to inform you that one of our servers, Wangler, has encountered several technical issues which resulted on a downtime status up till now since Wednesday, March 07, 2007, 19:01:48 PST
One of the hard-drives in the server box was corrupted, and when the RAID was running its scheduled tasks, it copied the corrupted data in.
The malicious attack earlier on caused several of our servers to be down with an intermittent, and Wangler is one of them.
When our technical engineer rebooted the servers and restored data back to all the affected servers, the corrupted data from Wangler's RAID refused to
reboot properly - the server hanged.
If your account were previously located on Wangler, we would like to assure you that your accounts and the data within are SAFE and NOT LOST due to the hard-drive corruption.
Only the server's Operating System is affected.
We have moved all accounts from Wangler to our Web5 box.
The Wangler server has already been fixed physically by replacing the corrupted hard-drive with a new one, and a new Operating System is currently being installed.
ETA for completion is still not known for the moment.
On behalf of Host Department LLC, I like to offer my sincere apologies for the downtime and any inconveniences that you might have encountered.
I wish you a great day ahead.
===================
Regards,
Technical Support
Hostdepartment LLC
Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: BSH-254162
Department: Technical Support
Priority: Critical
Status: On Hold