New Vessel... and What Does "Service" Mean To You?

This has been an extremely busy week for me in the teaching department! I taught a class on Tuesday evening, provided a "bead making experience" for a group of about 40 women on Wednesday morning and afternoon, taught a class that same evening, then taught a class again last night. During my "down time" between those classes, I managed to finish this vessel. It's a small one - I don't make small stuff very often - but it turned out very nice. Better pix are on the way...

Regarding "service", I'm a bit irritated (understatement) with my web hosting service. I guess you could say they provide a service. I mean, hey - there's good service and then there's bad service. In which category do you think my recent experience belongs? Here's what happened:

My web hosting service "upgraded" me. This past Wednesday evening, after I got home from a very long day of teaching (started at 10 a.m., finished at 10 p.m.), I went to check my email. I couldn't log in to my web hosting account. I checked my Yahoo email account, and there was an email that I had received at 9:59 pm welcoming me to my new upgraded account. Using the new login information, I got into the new interface and found my email. OK, so I can still receive email - great! There was also information in the welcome email that talked about this upgrade. Isn't this wonderful - they migrated all my email to the new email system, but not my address book. What???!!! So... my email address book is gone. Just flat gone. The upgrade email does tell me, "You will however, have the ability to create a new Address book once the move to our Advanced Email Platform has been completed.". Well isn't that nice?! I mean, gosh, how many email systems are there that DON'T let you create an address book?

So then I go to my website and see this lovely message rather than my splash page:

I thought, "OK, tomorrow this message will be gone and my website will be back up.". HA! - Not. So around 3 p.m. on Thursday I called tech support. I told the guy about this message and asked him how to get my site back up. He started looking at my website (he's tech support, he's got access) and then he started reading the content of the splash page to me. Then he told me to wait a few hours, that my site would be back up. I told him that it had been down since the prior evening and he rudely started reprimanding me, saying, "We upgraded 9,000 sites, what do you expect?!". Huh? Then he said, "Do you want me to read more on your website to prove that it's still there?". OMGosh, this is tech support?

Fast forward to Friday (a couple of hours ago). I go to my site, still not up. I call tech support again and ask them what's going on. This time I talk to "Steven". He tells me that the guy I talked to yesterday didn't know the answer to my questions. Yeah, no kidding! So "Steven" tells me that in order to get my site back up, I have to contact the company with whom my domain name is registered and have them change my primary and secondary name servers. I asked "Steven" why this information wasn't in the welcome email. Response: "Because they didn't put it in the email". (GROAN.....)

I'm hoping that my site will be back up some time in the next few days. In the mean time, perhaps it's time to start looking for a new web hosting service. Although these days, the "service" portion of that expression is questionable, regardless of who the host is.

I'm off to the torch now - go have yourselves a happy and creative day!