I came home early from CPR training yesterday to find that a number of my domains were offline. I dutifully ran traceroutes only to find that the server was alive and answering ICMPs but the web daemon was dead.
(Before Sparky gets all puffed up with an ‘i told you so attitude’, let me remind him that he left because he didn’t like the 1and1 template builder which he had to resort to do to lack of HTML knowledge. Sparky would use the marque tag if it was still around!!!)
My first call to technical support was uneventful. “Sir, I appologize, we have no ETA on repairs. Call back in an hour, we might have more informations (sic) from the ‘admins’” Oh, and ALL the supervisors are at lunch. I get “disconnected”.
Hrm, interesting approach to customer service. I call back, only this time, I find sales. Nice guy answers (did I mention he speaks ENGLISH?) and gives me a fax number to send complaints to. He looks into the matter. Seems to be a problem with just the server I sit on. All information I know, but its nice to actually talk to someone I can understand and who understands technology.
I’m a patient guy. Technical issues happen. We live in a fallen world. Two hours later I call back. No ETAs. No clue in technical matters. I ask to speak to a supervisor. They are all in a meeting with the admins. Ok, wait. I know that technical support is in the Philippines now. Now the ‘admins’ are there as well? Support hangs up on my after explaining that once they discover the issue, they have my account information and “it will be implemented to me”. I ask to escalate the issue to level 2. She assures me that I will receive a call back from a supervisor.
I head out to dinner at 5pm. Sites have now been done (as far as I know) since 1pm. I call back around 7:30pm when I get back to see what is going on with that promised return call from a supervisor. All the supervisors are ‘busy’ now. The ‘admins’ are fixing a part on the server. Wow! I am impressed. You see, I can ping the hardware. I am SSHd into the box. Yet they are hot swapping parts. I am impressed. Talented admins. I ask for a supervisor. *click*
The server is back up this morning. No apology from 1and1 explaining what happened. No call back from a supervisor. 1and1 is great when they run. Just don’t expect real answers from the technical support staff. I wonder if they actually know what a computer is.
The missing Titus posts will be restored when I get back in later today.
[...] Original post by Feather’s Falchion [...]