Fasthosts "support"
My conversation with Fasthosts support earlier:
Me: "Oh hi... I'm having big problems with my site. I'm getting loads of 404 errors and just now I've noticed that the home page isn't there"
Support Guy: "I've just looked, the reason why you're getting that message is becasue there is no home page. Someone must have deleted it in FTP."
Me: "Oh. Okay. Thanks." [Goes off worrying that Blogger, or a hacker, or worse, has started deleting files on my site.]
Now admittedly, that's from memory, but I'm pretty sure he didn't say:
"Oh, by the way, we've recently moved your entire site to a different web server, on a different I.P. address which will mean that the DNS servers will be misreporting you for a while. And we've forgotten to copy across your ODBC settings, and possibly turned off your .NET service..."
I would have remembered something like that.
What started off looking like something I had to fix, is starting to look very much something like Fasthosts should have fixed. And if that support guy had been intending to do support work and looked into my problem properly rather than fobbing me off with the first easy answer, I wouldn't have spent my lunch hour and the best part of the afternoon panicking that I had a security hole and changing all my passwords!
I'm not sure why Fasthosts decided to shift my site to a different server but it's becoming more likely that it's related to the sudden disappearance of a load of files from my site. I intend to have words with their support department when I get the time.
Me: "Oh hi... I'm having big problems with my site. I'm getting loads of 404 errors and just now I've noticed that the home page isn't there"
Support Guy: "I've just looked, the reason why you're getting that message is becasue there is no home page. Someone must have deleted it in FTP."
Me: "Oh. Okay. Thanks." [Goes off worrying that Blogger, or a hacker, or worse, has started deleting files on my site.]
Now admittedly, that's from memory, but I'm pretty sure he didn't say:
"Oh, by the way, we've recently moved your entire site to a different web server, on a different I.P. address which will mean that the DNS servers will be misreporting you for a while. And we've forgotten to copy across your ODBC settings, and possibly turned off your .NET service..."
I would have remembered something like that.
What started off looking like something I had to fix, is starting to look very much something like Fasthosts should have fixed. And if that support guy had been intending to do support work and looked into my problem properly rather than fobbing me off with the first easy answer, I wouldn't have spent my lunch hour and the best part of the afternoon panicking that I had a security hole and changing all my passwords!
I'm not sure why Fasthosts decided to shift my site to a different server but it's becoming more likely that it's related to the sudden disappearance of a load of files from my site. I intend to have words with their support department when I get the time.
BTW, what's your record for position in their tech support queue? Mine's 24.
Redressing the balance, I've had very good service from their domain management system, UK REG, and continue to use it to retain independent control over the domains I look after. Having been caught out more times than I wish to recall, no hosting service I use ever gets control of the domain! But this is an issue I could bore anyone to death with given half a chance, so I'll shut up now.
Hope you get your issues resolved shortly.
S'not good Becky, if you want to write a snot-o-gram I'm very good at them. I get a lot of practise at work.
I wish I had seen your blog a year ago before I bought 28 domains through UKREG and FASTHOSTS.
Today, 14 June 2007, their control panel has now been down for over 24 hours, with none of their forwarding facilities or services for domains working.
No forwarding, no mail, nothing and all they can say is: "We are working as fast as we can."
Anyone would think that a professional company would have a back-up system to continue with their services.
It is amazing though that their servers are working so that they can continue to trade and do business,while their clients are left in the lurch and in the dark, losing revenue and customers with our telephone lines becoming jammed up with calls to inform us that our clients cannot access our websites.
In trying to call them this morning, the holding time listening to their daft, ridiculous tune was 48 minutes.
Anybody thinking of using FASTHOSTS or UKREG for professional domain hosting and purchasing needs to think again and find another registrar. FASTHOSTS is RUBBISH!
Rgds
SL
I used to think FastHots were able to provide a decent service to most of the people most of the time. In most cases, this was indeed the case. However, little cracks are beginning to appear in their steel chasiss and its mainly down to customer relationships.
I was intending to build a whole business project using FastHost dedicated servers. However, it become quickly apparent that they just were not the right choice due to several reasons:
1. Billing errors.
2. Hard to understand discount programs.
3. Technical support teams that understand very little.
4. Arrogance that they (technical) know better then anyone else on the other end of the line.
5. Unexplained outages which they deny happen yet £1,500 monitoring software can proove.
In the end, it was decided to move one part of the business to another provider (sanechoice) which can deliver what it promises.
I am not saying FastHosts are the worst company out there, but they do make 'avoidable issues' which generally only stem from lack of good customer service and core knowledge.
Just to put this in perspective, FH lost around £6,000 worth of business and I wont be going back soon.
- GS
Month 3 hard disk drive fails everything lost !
Them: Did you pay for our £75 per month back up system?
Me: No I didnt
Them: We cant help you you are on your own unless you want to pay £60 per hour for an engineer.
Me: do you mean I have to set up all domains etc from scratch.
Them: Yes, fraid so.
2 weeks later a domain disappears they told me it was my poor set up, 3 days later I finally found one of their engineers had bound the IP to the wrong domain.
and Today All email accounts have disappeared.
GET ME OUT OF HERE !
I need a dedicated server at reasonable cost and good reliability can someone suggest a company please?
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=buy+uk+hosting&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB
Plenty out there!!
Cheers GA
I am currently on hold as they seem to automatically bounce all emails regardless of how they are formatted.
The irony is that I have forgotten my password for my log in details but there forgotten password feature is broken on their site.
What a useless company!!
They're phone lines also appear to be down, so no luck there. Contacting them via their other online form (via sales in the hope it will get through), gives me a ASP scripting error, when I click send!
What idiots.
Seriously thinking of moving my domains away, assuming i ever manage to log in again!
As one of there customers all I can say is this...
In going to the expence of using Royal Mail to notify their customers of new passwords Fasthosts are publicly declaring a Vote of no confidence in the security of their own eMail Servers.
Further more by not notifying there customers of the security breach and sending out eMail's requesting a password change it has left hundreds of customers potentially at risk if their data has been stolen as the attacker will now be in possession of potentially hundereds of peoples details and their passwords to their computer systems.
I have been thinking of using fasthosts for a number of weeks now but after reading about all of their problems I have come to the conclusion to find a decent hosting service... Trouble is I cannot seem to find an E-commerce host that is easy to use... Does anyone have any suggestions??
Please Help!!
sales@honeybvalentine.co.uk
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