Mephistos

I hate to say this about Lunar Pages, who are my current hosting provider and have been the last three and half years, but they have really went down hill the last year or so. The bottom line is the support over the last year so has really just went downhill to the point of almost not existing. Example of my most recent grief will follow, but the bottom line is this: As soon the remainder of my two year contract expires I will be switching my provider.

My most recent experience with the less then stellar support was in regards to a new domain.  This is a domain that I purchased to replace one that I realized that the name did not fit the direction the site was going.  Easy enough process though, I should be able to just add a new the domain to my hosting platform and then switch things over.  Adding the domain was about as far as it went before I ran into problems.  The biggest problem was the DNS on the providers end somehow did not work through the process correctly and instead of getting pointed to the new domain, it instead bounced around a couple of times and went to the Lunar Pages home site as if the domain had not be set up or defined.

As it was after hours, I submitted a support ticket to technical support.  Despite in the original ticket my explanation that it was not on my end, specifically that it was not a cache issue of something left in my system and that I had tried it on multiple systems from multiple points into the network, that was of course the immediate answer.  ”Clear your cache and try again, it is probably just something in the cache pointing to the wrong place.”  A quick response that had been done already and done again to verify, was followed up with no response until the deep into the AM hours, past even my bedtime.

The following morning the response indicated that there was a problem found where something hung on the install and the DNS settings were indeed incorrect (GGGG’s, that is exactly what I said in the beginning).  It went on to say that a correction had been made and that everything tested out correctly on their end.  I still have to wonder if it was tested at all, because it still did not work.  I responded to the ticket with as much and waited.  Indeed I waited over eight hours before getting an additional response.

The additional response was that was going to be pushed up to an admin on the server side, because it was beyond the abilities of the original staff to solve the problem.  That in itself was a good thing.  The admin staff responded a few hours later, indicating there was still a problem, they had fixed it, and that it worked.  Clearly the fact they found a problem was an admission that it had NOT been fixed the previous time when it had been indicated as such.  Despite this, it still did not work – even after clearing on cache and such.

Another addition of LOUD complaint to the ticket about it not working and it really being a big problem as it was now two days of outage for the service for which I had paid in advance.  Eight hours, ten hours, twelve, nearly fourteen and still nothing.  I added my discontent to the ticket with a follow up, despite the fact it was going to change my position in the queue.  Oddly enough, about an hour after that, without any notification, everything was fixed and working.  Suppose if I had not closed the ticket it would still be waiting for a response.

As of this is not bad enough, this my third similar experience of a such a nature since the beginning of year now.  Because of this, as stated I will be giving Lunar Pages theMcAfeed boot and moving to a different provider as soon as my contract expires.

** – Image is Lunar Pages logo.

*** – Originally published on McAfeed.com, August 12, 2011.