ERT.COM SITE DOWN --- a new definition of stupid!

[COBOLdinosaur]

If you go to the content site you will not see ERT pages.  Instead you will get an ad stuck on there by the domain registrar. 

When I renewed the hosting, I included the domain renewal. The host has not processed the renewal.  I have their invoice that list the domain renewal along with the hosting renewal... a seperate, specific entry on the invoice. The invoice has a status of verified and PAID.

But the host says they have not been paid so they can't put through the renewal I paid for.  The control panel shows everything paid until Sept 2007, but the domain manager says the domain renewal is "pending".  They are on the same invoice and the invoice is PAID in full.

I have the confirmation from Paypal that the invoice was paid.  It does not matter, the host's records show the renewal has not been paid.  How can you have two items on the same PAID in full invoice... one paid and one not paid?

Host billing rep: "yes well there is problem with that but we can't do the renewal until payment is received"

??????

Okay Paypal can re-confirm it;  right ... uhm not quickly ... they now want to verify that the echeck cleared...  HELLO, I have a verified account... is anyone from planet Earth listening.

Well don't worry we will get it all straightened out. It should all be cleared up by Monday...   Monday; MONDAY!  THAT IS 5 DAYS.  I can sened a confirmation by pidgeon in that time... you do have email; right?

The final response from the host:

"I am really sorry to hear that, but there is nothing I can do about the problem.

Thank you very much for the understanding - I will forward the issue to our manager in order to revise the whole case and improve the offered service."

I think I need to move to a new planet.  Things are just getting too stupid here.  Meanwhile the site is down until Monday unless I can convince the host that they have been paid, or my lawyer can convince them that it would be in their best interest to resolve the issue quickly.

Cd&

[Huntress]

Ouch!  They must have had an extra bowl of Stupid this morning.  Grrrrrrrrrrrr

[COBOLdinosaur]

My lawyer has sent them an email but i'm not sure any of them can speak English.  Most of the responses on problem tickets look like they come from the Google interpreter.

When they have things running right the site is fast and does not have any problems, but they just keep screwing thing up and you can't get past the morons on the help desk.

Last month when the file manager screwed up they argued with me for a day and a half that the problem was my browser, before I finally convince one of them that he should have a developer look at it.  A half hour later it was fixed. :^(

I have been thinking we should have a back up site anyway.  There is nothing I can do with the domain registration until this gets straightened out because they own the registrar with the renewal as well.

Once it is cleared up I am going to take over te registration myself and move to ICANN.  They cost more, but there is a lot less nonsense.  Then I am going to get another host.  And move teh name servers to a nameserver host.  Then if there are any problems I can just switch back and forth between host servers.  I will have to keep the two sites in synch, but it will avoid downtime, and I will use this one for testing DB stuff, php background jobs, and use the server for mail, and image hosting.

If my lawyer scares them, we might get backup tomorrow, otherwise it will be Monday at least.  Any longer than that and I will file a lawsuit and get an injunction if I have to.  I'm not sure how much this is going to hurt our rankings on Google.  We are actually still geting some traffic through from Google.  Think probably because they are getting served up from the Google cache.

Cd&

[coral1]

Ohhhhhh....

That explains the earthquake we had in Florida. Dino having a hissy fit....

[VGR]

paypal is perhaps the source of the problem. I stopped using it years ago when it came unable to have premium (pro) accounts in "foreign" currency (euro not to name it). A money transfer is faster and cheaper, and you know instantly (and yourself) that it has been "paid".

good luck

[COBOLdinosaur]

Yeah Paypal is part of the problem I think.  They are slower then surface mail.  I have problems communicating with them by email, because my primary email account with them was and ERT mailbox, and of course the mailserver can't receive any mail as long as the domain is block.  They should be sending to the secondary but they haven't so now I have switch the primary to another email server and maybe I will be able to get a better handling of the dispute from them.

Cd&

[COBOLdinosaur]

Okay it is back up.  I reloaded the sitemap to Google, so it should quit using its cash once it re-indexes.  I won't know for a few days whether this crap hurt our rankings or not.

I'll add some new content over the next couple of days to keep the spiders on the site, and hopefully any users who got the crap ads while it was down will realize there was some kind of a problem and come back; I hope.

[Huntress]

Hopfully it didn't do too much damage expecially this early on in the game.

[COBOLdinosaur]

We will see how it comes out i guess.

Now if one of the development team has time you can remove the notice about us being done from the forum home page.