Status page for ALL UK Shared hosting servers

[byteme]

Actually, I do not want the staff to post on the forums at all, it is a waste of time. What I would like is a non discussion webpage with date, time and error when it affects more than one account, i.e. it is either server wide or global.

See example:http://www.hosting-status.pipex.net/

BTW I believe £39.99 pm as a VAR deserves on both sides this page, albeit provided with a simple password if you want.

When running as a VAR (Value Added Reseller) operating many different domains for many companies it is valuable to have this feature and Will Save You Money Admin!!! and time.

If your customers go into a panic, it is through lack of good solid info.

Let me know what problems you have faced in communicating with our staff. Our Service has never gone down due to language barrier. Grammatical mistakes can never bring your website down.

I am happy to pm on this quote and I did pm you at the time.

However chat seems to have improved on the language side.

[jon123]

Yeah that pipex status page really helped me and hundreds of others who were pipex customers when their server (aptly named 'raspberry') was being upgraded for over 5 months. No mention of it at all.
Their support at 50ppm was a joke as language wasn't a problem, understanding a deep indian accent was! Not to mention the arrogance you had to put up with.
I understand you are not discussing pipex here and I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, or that webhosting wouldn't do a better job with a status page, just that I would prefer email alerts for outages or planned maintenence, as I have already mentioned previously. That way we are always informed and could also forward the email to clients

[Administrator]

Originally Posted by jon123

Yeah that pipex status page really helped me and hundreds of others who were pipex customers when their server (aptly named 'raspberry') was being upgraded for over 5 months. No mention of it at all.
Their support at 50ppm was a joke as language wasn't a problem, understanding a deep Indian accent was! Not to mention the arrogance you had to put up with.
I understand you are not discussing pipex here and I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, or that webhosting wouldn't do a better job with a status page, just that I would prefer email alerts for outages or planned maintenance, as I have already mentioned previously. That way we are always informed and could also forward the email to clients

You have a cPanel VPS so you can configure Monitoring Alerts from your WHM itself. Having a status page accessible to all customers is not all a good idea as we get signups from all Countries and we can never trust all customers. Maybe I can trust few customers who are part of this forum but paying for a small shared hosting plan wont be a big deal for someone to have Access to the status page.

We get signups from all countries and it is difficult to trust all those who signup. This crooks work for months to design scripts for mass injections on servers and its not worth to provide them list of your Shared Servers, Dedicated Servers and VPS nodes.

Basically you know that if your VPS or the node goes down then there has to be some reason and our staff must be dealing with that problem. Giving any sort of ETA is difficult most of the times as knowing ETA means you know what the problem is and if you know what the problem is then it can be sorted immediately

[byteme]

I would prefer email alerts for outages or planned maintenence, as I have already mentioned previously. That way we are always informed and could also forward the email to clients

Whatever it takes, but email might take up valuable server resources, hence the status page idea, do it once uploaded it and viola!

I know that pipex do not mention the sh*t when it hits the fan, lol, but if hosts were more informative, we could run a good service between us.

jon123: what do you do for holidays?? with VAR accs?

[Administrator]

Originally Posted by byteme

Whatever it takes, but email might take up valuable server resources, hence the status page idea, do it once uploaded it and viola!

I know that pipex do not mention the sh*t when it hits the fan, lol, but if hosts were more informative, we could run a good service between us.

jon123: what do you do for holidays?? with VAR accs?

I am reluctant to do so as I've been slapped once by the hacking kids and I wont like to see any new group planning anything similar. Last time we ruined their Business completely but thats not worth if you keep on giving opportunity to them.

There are some third party website monitoring service providers and some are free. You can consider those to monitor your website.

[Cassie]

Originally Posted by Administrator

Let me know what problems you have faced in communicating with our staff. Our Service has never gone down due to language barrier. Grammatical mistakes can never bring your website down.

The problem with communicating with staff who do not have English as a first language is that we (the paying customer) often have to send lots of emails (Chat has not worked on my computer for months so email is my only support) because we can't understand what they are actually saying. Therefore problems take 3 or 4 times longer to get sorted. I did try phoning once - the line was bad with lots of clicks and I really had a job understanding what he was saying because of his very thick Indian accent and bad english. It's not just your staff I must say - I have had the same problem with BT non-uk call centres and others - but they will put you through to a UK call centre if you ask them to.

English is a hard language to learn because often the same words mean different things if said in a different order or without the correct punctuation. Now I don't profess to know English inside out (its over 25 years since I was at school) but some of the examples quoted in other threads on this forum show you the problem.

We are not asking you to put sensitive information on the status page and, as stated in other posts, emails when there is a problem obviously has not worked in the past.

Posting in the forum is not really helpful - I vaguely remember Admin stating elsewhere on the forum that very few of your customers actually visit the forum. I myself only came across it by accident when I was looking at hosting with you.

The point I am trying to make is from the customers point of view - if a company contains UK in the title of their business they would expect it to be wholly run and supported from the UK by English speaking employees. That is what I assumed when I signed up and it was not until I phoned (see above) that I realised you were not.

[byteme]

OK in an effort to show you what we the customer have to put up with I am going to pm you with my latest chat transcript. It is unhelpful.

Extracting information which is IMPERITVE to a VAR's business is extremely difficult, especially when after 24 hours of an open ticket still remaining OPEN and customers squealing about no mail, it is no wonder we want information.

[jon123]

jon123: what do you do for holidays?? with VAR accs?

Although i don't have many clients to worry about as most domains are for 1 person, i do however have a few.
I entrust the VPS to my son who basically just checks that the websites are up and running. Anything else he would phone me. Apart from the downtime last month, which I was home for, I have never had any other problems (touch wood).

He knows the basics as in how to restart the vps etc.

[Administrator]

Originally Posted by byteme

OK in an effort to show you what we the customer have to put up with I am going to pm you with my latest chat transcript. It is unhelpful.

Extracting information which is IMPERITVE to a VAR's business is extremely difficult, especially when after 24 hours of an open ticket still remaining OPEN and customers squealing about no mail, it is no wonder we want information.

Please move your account booksfored***** on some different server. It wont be possible for us to host this domain.

We will proceed with termination of this account in next 2 hours.

[Cassie]

Good God - thats a bit extreme - what on earth did he say in the chat transcript !!

[Administrator]

Originally Posted by Cassie

Good God - thats a bit extreme - what on earth did he say in the chat transcript !!

He didn't say anything wrong in the chat and he is a polite customer

Main problem with his account is a domain hosted by him which is constantly attacked. Previously this happened on Mirage and now thats on lancer.

Our Dictionary Attack prevention scripts are constantly blocking IPs of networks bombarding emails on his domain but thats not a solution. Email service on that domain needs to be stopped permanently to sort this problem.

[byteme]

All will be glad to know I have changed the DNS on all of the records to 127.0.0.1 for this domain and so Lancer should return to normal operations soon.

When it quietens down we can discuss what can be done to help my customer as this attack is for no reason and I suspect some idiots think it is funny.

P.S. I am actually a She, not a He lol !

[Administrator]

Originally Posted by byteme

All will be glad to know I have changed the DNS on all of the records to 127.0.0.1 for this domain and so Lancer should return to normal operations soon.

When it quietens down we can discuss what can be done to help my customer as this attack is for no reason and I suspect some idiots think it is funny.

P.S. I am actually a She, not a He lol !

LOL

I never thought any Woman could be that aggressive. Even our phone support people said "She" called but I thought you must have got someone else to call for you

Lancer is in good shape right now. Lets wait for a day and then we can point the domain back on Lancer.

[Cassie]

Originally Posted by Administrator

LOL

I never thought any Woman could be that aggressive.

You need to get out more - too much screen watching - there are lots of us around

[Administrator]

Originally Posted by Cassie

You need to get out more - too much screen watching - there are lots of us around

Some of our Spanish female customers are quite difficult to deal with as I had tough time on phone couple of times. British womens have always been sweet on phone / chat / tickets and so far I never had to deal with any harsh British female customer.

I guess I need to freak out now as I have spent close to 5 years with Servers and nothing else