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I'm still here; I've been mostly lurking lately. I haven't had any SCs (knock on my wooden desk) and my own life has been mostly unventful...just the way I like it, thank you very much.
So anyway, a customer emailed me yesterday to let me know that he hadn't been able to reach our web site for a few days.
I checked and indeed our site wasn't there. I also googled the name of the company which hosts our name service and saw that a whole lot of folks were in the same boat. It seems the owner stopped coming to work and his servers went down one-by-one over the last few weeks. There were a ton of bad reviews and complaints from folks who had been happy with that company for years.
Coincidentally I noticed that someone with a user name similar to that company name seemed to be registered on a lot of gambling sites, but there's no way to really prove a connection.
Anyhow, this was causing problems for our customers who needed to download updates, find prices, etc.
So I went onto our user forum and our newlist and posted an annoucement that our site would be down for a few days while we found a new host service.
I received 7 responses from customers:
2 were recommendations for a host service the customers had been happy with.
4 were expressions of sympathy and wishes for good luck.
1 was from our UK reseller offering space on his own servers if we needed it.
Not one was a complaint. Not one.
I also got this email from a customer today.
"Thanks so much for your help! Ya'll have got to be the fastest responding company I have ever dealt with, and that helps a ton when you need the answer yesterday!"
Getting that felt good. I'll have to make sure to pass the praise forward next time I get good service someplace.
So anyway, a customer emailed me yesterday to let me know that he hadn't been able to reach our web site for a few days.
I checked and indeed our site wasn't there. I also googled the name of the company which hosts our name service and saw that a whole lot of folks were in the same boat. It seems the owner stopped coming to work and his servers went down one-by-one over the last few weeks. There were a ton of bad reviews and complaints from folks who had been happy with that company for years.
Coincidentally I noticed that someone with a user name similar to that company name seemed to be registered on a lot of gambling sites, but there's no way to really prove a connection.
Anyhow, this was causing problems for our customers who needed to download updates, find prices, etc.
So I went onto our user forum and our newlist and posted an annoucement that our site would be down for a few days while we found a new host service.
I received 7 responses from customers:
2 were recommendations for a host service the customers had been happy with.
4 were expressions of sympathy and wishes for good luck.
1 was from our UK reseller offering space on his own servers if we needed it.
Not one was a complaint. Not one.
I also got this email from a customer today.
"Thanks so much for your help! Ya'll have got to be the fastest responding company I have ever dealt with, and that helps a ton when you need the answer yesterday!"
Getting that felt good. I'll have to make sure to pass the praise forward next time I get good service someplace.