-- Update
-- This post refers to an incident which occured in January 2008.
-- Water has passed under the bridge.
-- I've since met with Iomart, we were considering outsourcing some hosting to them,
-- they 've made a lot of changes since I wrote this piece
-- and I agreed that I would add a caveat at that start.
-- This is it: don't let a story of a single incident from Jan-08 unduly affect your opinion.
-- Likewise don't forget - caveat emptor.
-- I take no responsibility for anything that happens to anyone as a result of reading anything.
-- Ever!
Iomart have screwed us up royally today. The Glasgow based hosting provider who's website boasts "100% uptime guaranteed" Have screwed up.
On thursday we got an email from subsidiary easyspace saying:
As part of our ongoing improvement to our Network and Infrastructure, we are in the process of moving services between datacentres. This migration is a simple physical move between two facilities and while no action is required by you, some customers may experience website and/or email downtime. In order to minimize customer impact, the move will be carried out over a 6 hour period from midnight on Saturday 26th January 2008 until 6.00 am Sunday 27th January 2008.
6 hours, complete by 6am you note.
It went on to say:
Mail & web services with the following IP Ranges will not respond during the outage:
84.22.184.XXX
84.22.161.XXX
84.22.162.XXX
Imagine my surpise when a machine with an address in the 84.22.180.xxx range wasn't responding at noon today, 6 hours after this downtime was supposed to have ended.
(In the past two months we've also been aware that they've wiped complete DNS zones for two of our clients, claiming unpaid bills or something when nothing of the kind was true.)
Whats worse is that I've spent all day trying to get in touch with them and they aren't answering the phone, or responding to emails, or support tickets. Our account manager is out of the country and not answering his mobile. I drove the 30 miles to their head office, it was empty and shut up for the weekend.
Iomart, you bastards.
1/ I wasn't expecting this machine to be affected
2/ Two days isn't enough time to do anything about contingency even if we had expected it
3/ What the fuck is going on? I can't even get in touch with you. Our clients are loosing money.
So in summary, you useless shower of twats, forget any more business coming your way from this direction.
Anyone else reading this, I suggest you look for a reputable company, I know I will be come monday morning.
Update: Its now 8 days since the "event", and although Iomart are reading this blog, we still haven't had a satisfactory explanation.
Actually we haven't had any explanation at all. Way to do customer service guys.
Comments:
Danny, I know exactly where you are coming from. See my blog article
here
Tony
I have had some bad experiences with Domain Hosting companies. I used to use freeparking, then 123-reg and neither where great. I then switched to heart internet who so far have been fantastic. They answer the phone 24/7 I highly recommend them
See IOMARTSURVIVORS.COM
Update Iomart respond: http://blog.killerbees.co.uk/2008/02/iomart-responded.html
Iomart/UfindUs/Easyspace are assholes. Check out www.ritchiehicks.co.uk/iomart to learn more.
Customer street
I have also had nothing but trouble from this company,
I was contacted about a year ago from this company for the first time but from Customer street (same company with many names), Now my first call from there agent started well, she gave me the Info and what was involved etc. After 10 mins of listening to her sales pitch I said to the girl that I was Interested but I needed to research this for myself and asked if I could get back to her the next day or she could call me. Thats when the call turned bad, she started coming out with things like she can guarantee 5 leads a day and a top posting on Google. But this offer was only open to one Plumber in the area and she had to get a credit card payment on this call, "NO way I said". After five more mins of what sounded like begging to me to me she agreed to call back.
After a quick Google search it became very clear to me to stay well away from this outfit and most of the things I was told was plane lies. I found that you cant promise a top place on Google as Google don't allow it. so I blanked the next call.
That same day I received yet another call this time from a land land number. guess who. I was actually under the floor of a house at this point so I canceled the call. 5 mins later i get a call form a mobile number, ahhh a job. NO guess who. At this point I said take my number off your lists and dont ever call me again. This was followed by the girls saying "F you".
So I thought it would be over now. 1 week later I get a call from the same company but a man thi time. I told him what had happened and I wanted taking off there lists. "OK" he said.
around 10 more calls I have received since that call from the same company posting under different names. It became clear to me that this was just one more tacky telesales company after a quick buck.
If this company was so great and the product so good, then why do they need a credit card number on the first call.
Before you sign up with this company I suggest you Google them first, out of 100's of threads and forums post I found about 5 good reviews. I mean there Blagger rating on this site says it all.
I will post this on the other Blagger.com forums concerning this company so everyone can read my experience
I have found Customer Street, Ufindus.com and SmileLocal so far, all the same company
Thanks for reading
More Iomart customer experiences here
Toptable.com send solicited email correspondence to folks whoa e hosted at Iomart - sadly iomart SPAM all all email from toptable, Danny do you have the contact of someone in authority at oimart we can talk too - they just ignore us
Paul
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