My email to Matt (the CEO) [Archive]

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Dan Browning

08-14-2006, 11:56 PM

Note to mod:I took your advise and emailed Matt. I know you will delete this but not before several folks read it. If only two or three read it then I'm happy.

Matt, (CEO) *head man in charge*

I'm very disappointed in the level of service I have been receiving since I joined. Less than 90 days ago I got sick and tired of Powweb.com's poor service after 5 years, and switched to your hosting company. I wanted to leave Powweb 2 years ago but I didn't have the knowledge to do it until May 28th 2006. That's when I moved to Bluehost.

The Move went pretty much flawless. I wish I had of done it 2 years earlier! Soon after I got everything up and running you had an DOS attack on June 20th which resulted in downtime. Then on July 15th you had a power problem that caused downtime. Soon after than I noticed several times that the site was down for 10 or 15 minutes but it came back up. Then on Monday Morning August 14th the server goes down and it's been down over 18 hours now. 18 HOURS! This is unacceptable. I know you are covered in your TOS agreement but it's really sad to see a host as big as Bluehost take this long to fix a problem. Short of the building burning down there is no excuse.

I know you really do not care but I'm a photographer. I make 100% of my living from photography and my website is my advertisement. Not only that, it's where I show my clients pictures. I actually host them at photobiz.com but it's hyperlinked from my website on Bluehost. It just so happens that we are at one of our busiest times of the year and we have a bunch of clients images hosted right now. I know my website isn't all that, but it's a very big part of my business and it puts food on the table and pays the bills.

My email is even more important to me than the website right now. People are going to be emailing me like crazy trying to find out why my site is gone and of course it's going to bounce back as if I've closed my doors and left town. I'm sure a few of them will call but most just email because it's easier. I'm emailing you from a old Yahoo account that I've had for years because I can't email from my account at Bluehost.

My website generates inquires for weddings and portrait sessions. We average sending out a information packet every week and book one out of three inquiries for weddings. If we miss a email on a potential bride we are missing $1300 to $2500 for that wedding. Again I know your TOS covers you in this but I want you to realize how important my website is to me. We are a still a 3.5 year young business and we need every dollar we can get as I'm sure you do too.

That being said, I would like to know a timeline of when this server problem will be back up and running. I'm shopping around right now and I really am thinking about finding a hosting company with redundancy servers. I can have my website moved in a matter of and hour and it will be propagated through the name servers in 48 hours. I need to know, do I need to switch now, or is this server going to be back up in a couple of hours? What measures are you going to take to see that this doesn't happen again and if it does, how can it be fixed MUCH faster. I'm no Administrator but I know there is no reason this should take this long.

Dan Browning
www.DanBrowningPhotography.com

areidmtm

08-15-2006, 12:07 AM

Like I said, I DO NOT DELETE EVERY BAD POST. Only ones that are not relevant. This subject however has become relevant. And honestly, there is nothing bad or wrong in this post. You are completely justified and have every right to share with us. Complaining, griping and flaming about outages are still not relevant.

Matt is a VERY open minded man, and he will listen. That is the best way to get his ear, send him an email. Yelling on the forum will only put defenses, as I’m sure not meant to hurt anyone.

Silverado05

08-15-2006, 01:31 AM

I think this post should clear up and answer some of the questions you are having. Just know that this is being worked on to be resolved as quickly as possible. I have 2 sites hosted here and they have been nothing but good to me.

http://bluehostforum.com/showthread.php?t=1835

promoti

08-15-2006, 06:44 AM

Sorry that post doesnt answer the question to why for the current 24hr plus outage, This is the answer I received last night:
The server you're on, Box 126 had its Kernel crash. We have been
rebuilding the server throughout the day. I understand that this is an
inconvenience but we are focusing on ensuring no data loss rather than
having to restore from a backup that may be a day or two old, which would
result in a loss of email and any recent modifications. We are
currently in the final stage of the rebuild, and it should be up in the next
few hours. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and please know
that our Admins have been working nonstop to restore the server as soon as
possible.
Please let me know if you have further questions.

JoeP

08-15-2006, 06:46 AM

As a Bluehost subscriber, I believe that all posts having to do with availability, support, features, and services are relevant. The topic heading "General Questions" seems like a perfectly appropriate place for issues of this nature to be brought up.
If the moderator would like to change the Forum heading to something more specific, or add a more specific forum to these types of issues, I am sure no one (or few) would object to having threads moved as long as a pointer is left in place.
Deleting threads or closing threads merely because they are critical is an extremely bad policy. It not only offends the thread participants, but it conveys an attitude of secracy and dishonesty wether true or not.
Word of mouth has always been a powerful thing. Best not anger your customers.
just my 2 cents,
joe

promoti

08-15-2006, 06:48 AM

Or like I posted in one of the 3 or more deleted threads in the last 24 hrs, have a Customer only section, Hasweb and Hostdime do this, it works great, and relieves the poor people in tech support of then repetition of questions they get while trying to fix a problem.

mrorange002

08-15-2006, 06:51 AM

All I can say is bluehost has been horrible and having my website down for over 24 hours is NOT OK. I'm also a photographer, and I had 4 customers call me yesterday asking why they can't access their wedding galleries. I'm switching as soon as the nameservers are transfered. The customer service here is bad, they have erased forum posts claiming that complaints are not relevant, don't they realize word of mouth is powerful, and there are many places online to rate the service here?

it's been 28 hours and still NOTHING???

areidmtm

08-15-2006, 08:46 AM

areidmtm

08-15-2006, 09:08 AM

Box126 is now back up.

mrorange002

08-15-2006, 09:20 AM

If you are having so many major problems, then the thing to do would be to try another host. I hate to say that and we dont want you to leave. Bluehost is the best out there and I will stay with bluehost as long as I am doing web stuff. They are working on the problems and will have then fixed soon. IF you are not happy with a business, there is no need for you to stick around. Find some place where you will be happy and things will work out for you.

yeah you think?
Bluehost is obviously NOT the best out there. I've just switched to a different server, and as soon as the nameserver transfer is complete, i'm out of here. The admins deleted several of my posts in the forums, but they can't delete the reviews I'll be leaving on 3rd party sites. The LEAST the customer service center could have done was to offer a discount, or even allowed me to upload my site onto a different box.

Hello? they advertise backup servers (which I doubt they even have) and up time of 99.9% which they obviously can't really provide.

And they'll just delete this post to, to lure new customers into only reading the "positive" feedback.

buckidref

08-15-2006, 10:12 AM

areidmtm

08-15-2006, 10:20 AM

you'd still be able to change the nameservers for you domain and point them somewhere else. If you still cannot do that, then obvioulsy you'd have to wait until the issue with the bax is fixed and then change. Again I dont want anyone to leave, and I am sorry that there was down time. I really do feel your pain, I've been there.

nicco

08-15-2006, 10:24 AM

I read in another post from buckidref about DNS. i'm guessing he registered his domain with BH and therefore couldn't change it until everything is back to normal... or could you request a dns change while server is down?

As another memeber stated, by using your own registrar like godaddy, you could change your DNS at any time.

nicco

Dan Browning

08-15-2006, 10:26 AM

yeah you think?
Bluehost is obviously NOT the best out there. I've just switched to a different server, and as soon as the nameserver transfer is complete, i'm out of here. The admins deleted several of my posts in the forums, but they can't delete the reviews I'll be leaving on 3rd party sites. The LEAST the customer service center could have done was to offer a discount, or even allowed me to upload my site onto a different box.

Hello? they advertise backup servers (which I doubt they even have) and up time of 99.9% which they obviously can't really provide.

And they'll just delete this post to, to lure new customers into only reading the "positive" feedback.

I've been looking too. Even though mine is backup after 29 hours, I'm looking for a host with redundant backup servers. If I can find one for around $100-$150 a year, I'm probably going to jump on it this weekend. I really thought I made a good decision when I picked Bluehost. I really love the ease of use here but 3 outages in 3 months can't be good track record.

Plus the secrecy of the mods deleting our gripes and complaints so that other users won't see the bad side, makes me wonder how much this really happens

areidmtm

08-15-2006, 10:28 AM

If you registered with BH, you can get into your domain manager at any time. It is not tied to your box and you dont need to login to the cPanel to do so.

https://www.bluehost.com/dm/domains_list.html

By the way, I like your picture, nicco

Also, you guys are not understanding that there still are bad, critical and negative posts about bluehost still here. Not every bad thing gets deleted, only those posts just meant to be unconstructive.

nicco

08-15-2006, 11:00 AM

i didnt know about that link to change the dns. then again, I didnt buy any domain at BH so I guess if i did see that info, my dns info wasn't there to change.

and that avatar is my big skulled dog.. he's a little short tempered sometimes,.. like the owner ;)

i like your cube with the initials, so i thought my doggie pic was a little boring. maybe i'll get another pic on there soon.
ok, so growl for the camera, dog!!

nicco