PUREHOST

Just a reminder with a bit of history:
From www.infoworld.com

"...Host Traumatic Stress Disorder: Former DellHost denizens found themselves forcibly deported when DellHost’s new owner, VeriCenter, sold their accounts to Purehost. [link removed on pupose] Unfortunately, some of their Web sites and e-mail failed to make the trip. One Cringelican reports he lost three sites he’d had on DellHost; when one of them was finally restored, it was a six-month-old version. He still hasn’t gotten all his e-mail back. CEO Steve Sydness apologized for the transition snafus, which he estimates affected about 200 [try 2000, dickhead!] DellHost customers. Wonder if he’d consider changing the company name to PureHell...."
(Reposted, with apologies.) If Sydness estimates like that in reality, then he should consider a career in career counseling. Or Tech Support for his own companies. Teh diskhead never apologized to me.

Purehosed again. On Saturday to Sunday 8am last (July 15-16th) - actually with a heads-up warning from, the usually most incompetent company ever spawned on this Earth, Purehost - Purehost upgraded their Servers ! Ohio, I get so excited to hear that! Yeah, right.

Since 8am Sunday the 16th, signing into our clcradio.org account for live editing purposes was flawless for the first time EVER, since April 2004 (after the migration from HELL). A usual expected and CONSISTENT ten minute window occurring from 7 minutes passed to 17 minutes passed ANY given hour of ANY day, we would be BLOCKED from signing in to the account using the Fronpage client, but only for those precious few minutes. That, foolishly and sheepishly, I could deal with. I could rationalize that.

Then, for no apparent reason, as of 6am Wednesday morning (July 19th), we were prevented from signing in AT ALL at ANY time we tried. I would call support each and every time as SOON as I was blocked The connection would last about 5 to 10 minutes once they ran their ever-famous "Fix Permissions" program. This "fix" can take as long as "sixty minutes" once started. The program is either triggered directly from a Level 1's desktop OR they have to "get permission from a Level 2 tech BEFORE they do this" OR a combination of the two? (I have never received a credible answer to which).

Unfortunately as of Sunday afternoon, the Level1 techs have reported to me that they now get errors when trying to run the Fix Permissions program - local errors. 5 L1 techs told me that it is a local (their local) issue and that for the time being another support ticket would have to be sent up to Level2 for them to do the Fix Permissions from the server side. Oh, Joy! Hey, reader, is your ass hurting from the pain yet? One level tech today earlier told me that the issues for the 503 errors they were getting locally was specific only to my account! I think she just didn't have a clue, and I am inclined to side with the 5 other barely trained L1 techs in this particular.

Yesterday, Tuesday night at about 10pm, I stopped receiving countless Username Password requests, and received only the following (but not consistently) Error from their servers:



In case the pic isn't big enough the error is: "(Child window title is: "Microsoft FrontPage"), the error is:
Server error:Error 2 opening registry key "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\Ports\Port 80".


Well? Yes, of course I googled it! And, it turns out that this error first appeared in one and ONLY ONE place in the KB articles of Microsoft's warehouse of mistakes, and could be the result from only ONE possibility.

You guesses correctly! SERVER2003 service Pack 1 update. The error first appeared minutes after people updated on January 3rd, 2006. The error has a KB date of January 6th !!!
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;264922
Also integrated with this problem, see:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/873148

At the same moment I received this error, my FTP viewing brought forth another surprise - missing the postinfo.htm and the _vti_pvt.htm files from the ROOT directory !

HA!. Purehost is the biggest mistake I have ever made (except for that time I drank yeast beer and my girlfriend....nevermind, you get the connection and the regret!).

Today, they said they would be re-installing the Frontpage extensions - this generally takes 3 to 4 hours on a UNC share which is what they have - and asked ME if I had a backup of the site. I said, "Of course I do , it's 6 days old now, then again it hasn't changed for 6 days because I have not been ABLE TO SIGNIN FOR 6 DAYS". Morons. I also asked the Level 1 tech why I needed a backup so badly since Purehost keeps "Daily backups for 48 hours"? That is most likely a BIG FAT LIE FROM PUREHOST. Especially considering their pat answer to ALL support ticket "resolutions" is, "...the turn around time is 24 to 48 hours..."! Big fuckin' joke.

Purehost techs and billing departments have promised me 4 months free credit (or "non-billing", their words) from these constant issues I have been blogging only about 1/5th of (so as not to bore you with their idiocy), and the records show since April 2004 I have not been given this credit.

I would settle out of court for either:
ALL the money I have EVER paid Purehost multiplied by 3 PLUS my attorney's costs and his/her and my travel and Hotel SUITES back and forth to the trial or mit,

OR

let me put the top 5 muckity-mucks of Endurance international (Purehost's parent company) in the Der-Dunker tank and just let me walk up to the paddle and BASH IT. The water must be 55 degrees Fahrenheit and the event must be broadcast live on G4TV and ESPN 2 or 3 - I don't care which. The event must also be publicized in at least one major Boston newspaper, one major Boston Radio station, and One Major Canadian TV station as well as regularly on ESPN 1, 2 AND 3. All production content will be mine, all expenses will be paid upon my executive approval, and all ads will be paid for by Purehost and approved or disapproved by me.

I know that is not too much to ask.
I am so pissed.