BigRedCouch: May 2005 Archives

I am looking at my daily stats as I type this. You people rock!!! Won't you please take a moment to say, "Hi"? Please? I really would like to meet you! You are important people to me. Who is from: Australia? Canada? France? Germany? Netherlands? Seychelles (I thought this was France)? United Kingdom? USA? I know I am setting myself up for failure here because it takes more than a request for the silent masses to actually type something. But I REALLY want to know. Please, please, please, won't you say, "Hi"? P.S. To the person who did the Wget on my journal: YOU ARE AN ASSHEAD!!! Do NOT steal my words. That is just plain wrong and in my opinion sleezy. It is a real lowlife, underhanded thing to take everything off my site. Go write your own words if you need content! This domain belonged to some else before me. I am not that person! If you have to steal what is here you are disgusting. I hope something from the horrors of Steven King's mind comes and gets you at night while you sleep! I know you are a Linux user! Get your head out of that penguins ass and think for yourself!

I figured it's about time to tell the saga of my old red couch and this new red couch. On April 23rd I finally submitted a ticket to the hosting company for my website bigredcouch.org inquiring as to why my web stats were 'unresolved' for the past 6 months. 'Andrew' replied that the situation would be looked into ASAP. Five days later there was still nothing resolved so I opened that same ticket again. This time 'Nitin" replied that my stats were working 'fine'. He closed the ticket. I opened the ticket again and explained they were not working fine as nothing was resolved on the page I was seeing. On this same day, April 28, as many of you know, any attempt to access bigredcouch.org came back with the 'cannot find page' message. After the entire day of this I submitted yet another ticket for trouble with my site. The reply came back from 'Steve' that the DNS was updated on the server and as such it would take 24 - 72 hours for my domain name to filter through the WWW. WTF? My website was existing before the DNS update and it in no way should have to resolve AGAIN. My super geek husband, also named Steven, came to the conclusion that due to technical issues on their part the only explanation was they had opened a completely new account for my website. I responded to the reply and asked how I would be compensated for the days of down time because I was guaranteed 99.99% uptime when I contracted with them for hosting service. Every response thereafter to my questions was a copy and paste of the answer of DNS updating and domain name resolution. I was getting very angry and sent off a gritted teeth reply to them dancing around the issue and not coming clean with whatever was going on. No answer. The ticket was closed. Now mind you, there is no telephone support from the hosting company, much to my surprise! They had removed all their contact information from their website and the only way to communicate was to submit trouble tickets! Grrrrrrr! I submitted another ticket.

Posted on 01 May 2005 01:43 AM My website has been down since early thursday morning, 28 April. At which time I was told the server DNS had been updated. The stats have not updated since 28 April, which strikes me as odd. Although there has been no traffic, the stats for April 29 and 30 should read 0 but there is no stats beyond the 28th. The ftp stats have not been generated since 22 April. I would like a clear and concise answer as to when my web site will be available using the domain name URL http://www.bigredcouch.org. I would also like to know how I will be compensated for the loss of not having my web site function as it should.

This was the reply:

Sri Harsha Posted on 01 May 2005 02:21 AM HI, Your domain "bigredcouch.org" in under redemption period,So it is not availabel to renew now. We will refund the amount paid by you.

WTF? Under redemption? This means one thing!! They gladly took my money in March when it was time for renewal but they did NOT register my domain again! MutherFuckers!!! Grrrrr Now I am not one to put up with slackass jobs and by looking at the times on the trouble tickets the hosting company who is supposed to be in Washington state has obviously farmed out all their work and the people handling my account are overseas! By most of their names they probably barely speak english. After several heated replies back and forth I got this reply. I was right! Whomever is handling the IT can barely speak much less write english.

Posted on 01 May 2005 06:22 PM Dear Customer, Sorry for the trouble. Please be patiance for 2 days, your domain is under registrar hold. We are sure, your domain will come to market for sale with in 2-3 days. We will register your domain by using your renewal fee. Once again sorry for the trouble. For further assistance, please get back to us. We will be glad to assist you. Thank you, Daniel, Sales and Billing - Level II

I was fuming mad!! So I did what any other reblooded American with a credit card can do. I found another hosting company and thus BigRedCouch.com (the name I wanted in the first place) was born. It is now May 6 and bigredcouch.org still has not resolved. I have demanded a refund of my money and was clear in my communications there was no way in hell I would EVER refer anyone to their company for hosting services. My site is now hosted by Liquid Wed. They have excellent rates. They offer so much more by way of scripts to be installed on demand and the best part is they have 24/7 telephone support! Yahhh for me!! Thank you one and all dear readers. Thank you for not giving up on my site and thank you for coming over to the new site. Angie has a new red couch and each of you are welcome to have a seat, prop up your feet, watch some tv (do not hog the remote), drink some diet coke with lime or a cup of coffee or tea and we'll talk. If you are really nice I'll let you look at the screen on my laptop ;-).