how do we subscribe to announcements?

[thnet]

well, today, [2008-05-17] 21:14:07 my monitor send me an sms that
server was down. it seems the whole HIC network was down
for 2hrs 29mins 57secs --- until [2008-05-17] 23:44:04, then, I finally got
into the bbs, & see the announcement of the dos attack & upgrade.

may i suggest a way for all customers to subscribe to such announcements,
so, i can keep what little dark hair i have from turning grey or falling out?

on another note, thanks for the quick upgrade & recovery of the systems.
if there was a "thumbs up" icon, i'd sure use it right now..

good nite all, past my bedtime.

[Robert.S]

Likewise - I was on the webhostingtalk forums the last few hours where a whole stack of hostican VPS clients including me had no idea - we thought you guys had gone belly-up. I've now subscribed to the Announcement forum which will help, but an auto-email for such things would be far better please Denis!

Cheers,

A-now-less-worried-Robert

[thnet]

Originally Posted by Robert.S

Likewise - I was on the webhostingtalk forums the last few hours where a whole stack of hostican VPS clients including me had no idea - we thought you guys had gone belly-up. I've now subscribed to the Announcement forum which will help, but an auto-email for such things would be far better please Denis!

Cheers,

A-now-less-worried-Robert

yes, there is a choice under forum tools (ok, like, i'm not that familiar with VB)
however, seems there should be an option to subscribe to instant email notice, so we can be as "in the loop" as EARLY as possible.

[roger]

Yesterday I found out the servers had gone down again. And, after the fact found out there was a notice here: http://forum.hostican.com/announceme...rk-update.html

That notice clearly said "...we are experiencing issues within our VPS Network..."

As a side note: I agree with the post here from thnet, there should be a better communication method in place for VPS and Dedicated clients - Since I started with Hostican, the communication, in my opinion, has become just as bad as "some others" and over the last 2 months the service has become much worse and I've lost clients and money. I can track every one of my (2 VPS's and 1 Dedicated) up/downed VPS or Dedicated using pingdom.com.

Also, I've said this before and I'll say it again: "Hostican should have taken the lead! (In terms of communication). And informed all of us. We should have been contacted, not us having to contact Hostican and finding out that all methods of communication were shut down, with the exception of support tickets (and rumour on the Net suggests ticket answers were not being received when needed). Lack of communication appears to have been a primary issue yet again. With respect, I expected more out of Hostican. I though they were better than the norm, that they were going to be an outstanding operation that took the lead."

However I am somewhat concerned because only the VPS servers should have gone down as described in the announcement post. The post title clearly said "VPS Network Update" and the body clearly said "...VPS Network...". In fact, my dedicated server also went down for the same two and a half hours that the VPS servers were down!

What conclusions would any of you draw from this? If the announcement said VPS, then why is a Dedicated also going down? I don't see any notices from others who had a downed Dedicated server at that time. If this is true, then again, it begs the question of how a Dedicated could be taken off line for the same period as the VPS? Is VPS space being sold off the Dedicated that I cannot see? Is the Dedicated really a VPS and I cannot see that? I don't know the answers, but attempts to contact Hostican to discuss this have failed as they appear to be unavailable.

[technabob]

I'd like to suggest that Hostican simply sends out an automated message to all of its affected customers (admin contacts) as follows:

-When there is an anticipated outage (reason and anticipated duration)
-When there is an unexpected outage (any update on the cause and anticipated duration)
-When service is restored

There should also be consideration for the fact that Hostican-provided e-mail domains are often down during these outages, so we should be requested to provide an external e-mail box for these type of messages.

I'm not really happy with the fact that my site has had three outages this month, but I'm even less happy with the fact that there was no decent, proactive communication. If there were, I wouldn't be quite as concerned.

[roger]

Originally Posted by technabob

...I'm not really happy with the fact that my site has had three outages this month, but I'm even less happy with the fact that there was no decent, proactive communication. If there were, I wouldn't be quite as concerned...

And I would not be complaining! I cannot make stuff up as excuses for my clients, they are a bit too smart for that. But it's very bad, when I'm not given information that I can pass on. The terrible communication is causing the biggest issues. And... my perception is that Hostican treats me as persona non grata simply because I am outspoken.

[thnet]

Originally Posted by technabob

I'd like to suggest that Hostican simply sends out an automated message to all of its affected customers (admin contacts) as follows:

-When there is an anticipated outage (reason and anticipated duration)
-When there is an unexpected outage (any update on the cause and anticipated duration)
-When service is restored

There should also be consideration for the fact that Hostican-provided e-mail domains are often down during these outages, so we should be requested to provide an external e-mail box for these type of messages.

I'm not really happy with the fact that my site has had three outages this month, but I'm even less happy with the fact that there was no decent, proactive communication. If there were, I wouldn't be quite as concerned.

I already utilize a gmail account for administrative messages, use gmail for domains for some of my domains so, in the event of outage on the vps, my cutomers can still reach me via my email that is still accessable.

Originally Posted by roger

And I would not be complaining! I cannot make stuff up as excuses for my clients, they are a bit too smart for that. But it's very bad, when I'm not given information that I can pass on. The terrible communication is causing the biggest issues. And... my perception is that Hostican treats me as persona non grata simply because I am outspoken.

particularly troubling, is, less than a month AFTER I signed up with HIC, their BBB rating went from satisfactory to revoked which, IMHO is a reflection of the downhill slide of poor service, lack of answering the phone, the inane recording about how "busy" they are, the lack of return of phone messages, the deletion of BBS threads & banning of those they consider troublemakers. I'm concerned that HIC will not be around much longer unless, they change their ways, & resolve issue(s) that caused their BBB Accreditation to be revoked. I certainly would not have signed up knowing their BBB Accreditation was revoked, & there is so much static on the net about their poor service, that they likely lose potential customers because of it.

Please, HIC & Jeff Stevens , C.E.O. examine your practises, revamp the company, get some heads rolling & hire caring folks with company growth in mind. Put EVERY customer on notification list, rather than expect us to visit the announcements BBS daily to find out forthcoming maintenance. Restore the "service status" page that disappeared after I signed up. Make customer communication top priority.

Regards,
thnet


.

[technabob]

I'm really surprised that nobody from Hostican has responded to this thread. You'd think they'd want to reach out to us and let us know how they can do a better job communicating with their customers.

[thnet]

Originally Posted by technabob

I'm really surprised that nobody from Hostican has responded to this thread. You'd think they'd want to reach out to us and let us know how they can do a better job communicating with their customers.

ah, yes, you expect them to COMMUNICATE to us the details of how they will do better COMMUNICATION..

unfortunately, their only method of COMMUNICATING their response to posts pointing out problems with service & COMMUNICATION is to delete posts, and ban users who complain. Like, ignore it, it'll go away, unfortunately the customers go away, whilst the problems remain. Just google their company name, see what comes up.

sad

but

true

.

.

.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by thnet

ah, yes, you expect them to COMMUNICATE to us the details of how they will do better COMMUNICATION..

unfortunately, their only method of COMMUNICATING their response to posts pointing out problems with service & COMMUNICATION is to delete posts, and ban users who complain. Like, ignore it, it'll go away, unfortunately the customers go away, whilst the problems remain. Just google their company name, see what comes up.

sad

but

true

.

.

.

What is true is that a handful of people, disgruntled customers suspended because of server abuse, have made it their life's mission to post nasty stuff about us. If you examine those posts and the real sources, you'll see what I mean. We didn't suspend them for frivolous reasons, but to ensure stability of the network and the other customers on the affected servers.