The “Service Economy”–Ain’t

As a few folks have commented while commiserating with me via email about the crappy service I’ve been experiencing with my hosting service recently (the hosting service shall go unnamed, but its initials are F-a-t-c-o-w) to the effect that, as one person put it, “Seems there’s no such thing as ‘customer service’ in any realm, anymore.”

Well, duh.

🙂

What my hosting-service-that-shall-not-be-named substitutes for customer service is front end “warm voices” that can effect no substantive changes themselves but are merely “cover” allowing crappy service to continue on the back end.

See my post here for the scant info I had up earlier today at a WordPress.com blog where I had to redirect my domain because of stupid,irresponsible, dumbass actions taken by the hosting-service-that-shall-not-be-named (with the initials, “F-a-t-c-o-w”).

All along, I’ve been able to talk to warm personalities who promise to “do all I can” to rectify the situation (but who, when pressed, admit they can do nothing). Meanwhile, I get emails from people claiming to be “Technical Specialists” indicating

a. They have not read the trouble ticket
b. They have not read my email answers to their queries/emails
c. They are idiots simply playing CYA games.

And the backend problems caused by the hosting-service-that-shall-not-be-named (with the initials, “F-a-t-c-o-w”) continue.

BAck last January, I switched this blog from a hosting account generously provided by a benefactor to the hosting account I’m using now. The old hosting account was on Fatcow, so methought, “Hmm, should be easiest to just get my own hosting account with the same service and switch it over.”

Wrong. Those of y’all who were around then may recall that it took a week for the backend guys to stop screwing around.

*sigh*

Let’s see if this posts. If it does, maybe I’ll continue to be hosted on hosting-service-that-shall-not-be-named (with the initials, “F-a-t-c-o-w”)… for about a week or so more.

When things settle down, I’ll get back to regular curmudgeonry.

Oh! The latest offer from hosting-service-that-shall-not-be-named (with the initials, “F-a-t-c-o-w”) was to restore the data NUKED by some idiot techie–material destroyed from Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Of course, when (IF) they actually do that, they’ll destroy everything (you can bet on it!) that’s come in since that conversation… and more.

Bet on it.

Idiots.

[pre-posting update: I had just finished this post and was ready to CLICK “Publish” when… yep. “Error establishing a database connection”. Yep, the hosting-service-that-shall-not-be-named (with the initials, “F-a-t-c-o-w”) has still not done anything useful to correct the problems caused by its server “upgrades”. Took a 30 minute wait, with multiple tries reloading, to get back this far. WTG, hosting-service-that-shall-not-be-named (with the initials, “F-a-t-c-o-w”)!]

OTOH, there are a few companies left that combine at least minimal competence and customer service. One of my broadband company’s nodes went down, affecting my service yesterday. I called. Was told, “We’re working on it,” and… they were. Back in service within 30 minutes. There are a few companies like that. A few.

UPDATE: As I predicted to the so-called “level 2 tech” last night, the hosting-service-that-shall-not-be-named (with the initials, “F-a-t-c-o-w”) has managed to completely misunderstand simple English (or is simply being obtuse). Instead of doing the impossible, as promised, and resoring the days nuked by incompetent “techies” the so-called “Technical Specialists” have struck again: “I have restored the site from snapshot four days back, i.e. 28th September 07”. Naturally the “Technical Specialist” did not restore the missing post and other data that another “Technical Specialist” had destroyed. Cos it was GONE.

Dumbasses.

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