Tuesday, 31 May 2005

RIM BlackBerry 7100g Phone (Cingular)
List Price: $399.99

Features:

* Large, high-resolution portrait LCD color screen (240 x 260 pixels)
* Supports Internet e-mail (POP3/IMAP4) with BlackBerry Web client…
* SureType QWERTY keyboard and built-in speakerphone
* Bluetooth capable; also includes BlackBerry handheld software
* Quad-band world phone operates on 850/1900 and 900/1800 MHz GSM/GPRS networks
* Unit Weight: 4.9 oz.
* Size (in inches): 2.9 x 4.4 x 0.94

Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description
The BlackBerry 7100g is the first of its kind– a fully-featured mobile phone that delivers the power of BlackBerry e-mail. This is one sweet little phone, loaded with all of the cool features you want, like integrated Bluetooth connectivity, speakerphone, and downloadable ringtones. Plus, surf the Web the way it was meant to be surfed with an ultra-large, high-resolution color screen.

Click here to

Friday, 20 May 2005

I received an email from godaddy expressing dissapointment that I cancelled my hosting account and asking me to fill out a quick web hosting satisfaction survey. I took the time filled out the form, pasted in my comments (most of the open letter reprinted below) clicked the “submit” button and got a “Survey Temporarily Unavailable” error message. Ok, so 5 minutes later it worked, but geez if that isn’t a good tiny example of my experience with godaddy webhosting I don’t know what is.

Friday, 20 May 2005

I sent this letter to godaddy.com’s customer support but since there’s no way to know if the email will get any further than that, and in the grand tradition of tilting at windmills at night when no one can see you, here’s my letter to godaddy.com expressing some of my frustration at how bad their web hosting product and support are.

I don’t know if you will get this or not, but as a former fan of godaddy I get the impression you care about your company a great deal so I wanted to tell you my experience with godaddy.com over the past 2 weeks.

In a nutshell, I am very dissapointed in godaddy’s webhosting service, the sales support, and the technical support.

For some background I am an IT professional, and fairly web savvy and have been creating websites since 1995 and I know my way around domain registrations, DNS, scripting, etc.

A couple of weeks back I was looking to move some existing sites to a new webhost and I thought of godaddy since I have my domains registered through your company. I called and talked to a sales rep on the phone and after explaining that I needed to test my websites before I went “live” I was assured the economy plan would meet my needs. After signing up for a 2 year economy hosting plan, I started transfering files from my existing site to my new goddaddy host and then had to call tech support because I couldn’t figure out how to view my new site. I found out from tech support that I was unable to view my website unless I switched the Domain Name over to godaddy FIRST. In the initial conversation BEFORE I committed to the 2 year plan I specifically told the sales rep I needed to test my website BEFORE I switched the DNS references to godaddy. I feel like I was lied to in this conversation.

I was then told that the ONLY way I could test my website before switching the domain name to the new host was to upgrade to a delux/cgi plan which cost $10 / month (which was almost 1/3 of a year’s worth of what I was spending for the 2 year economy plan). Rather than pay for two hosting accounts at the same time I set up a new deluxe account and cancelled the economy 2 year plan - I was assured I would received a refund for the full 2 years since I only had the 2 year plan for a couple of hours. I did receive a refund for one of the two years. I sent an inquiry the next day about the 2nd year of hosting and was told it would be refunded to me. A week went by with no refund showing up on my godaddy billing summary. I called *again* and finally got someone to give me the remainder of my refund.

Now back to my deluxe account. After moving all my files to my godaddy account I discovered that I was unable to test any of my hundreds of php web pages because they use relative pathnames (e.g. /images/mylogo.gif ) and the ONLY way I could get my web pages to display correctly was to go in and change every single php include line in every one of my hundreds of web pages to use absolute urls of the
‘http://godaddy.ip#.here/m/y/u/myusername/public_html/images/mylogo.gif” kind.

It is beyond belief to me that I can’t view my webpages unless I either switch my DNS reference to my godaddy site or hardcode an absolute path into every single file reference in every single php script. No one who write good code is going to hardcode absolute pathnames precisely because it is such a pain in the ass to change when you move directories or move an entire web site.

I am really dissapointed by your tech support - apparently because of some problems in the tools your support staff use and because I had one account and now have another account, both times I called tech support for assistance your staff were unable to even view the files associated with my account. When they tried to look at my account they could only see the directory and files associated with the cancelled 2 year economy hosting plan, they could not see the current account or the files I had uploaded into the deluxe hosting plan/account. Both times I called for tech assistance your staff had to escalate the call to a line supervisor who had to ask me for my site password and log on as me just to view my files. I do not feel comfortable giving out my password everytime I have to call tech support and I don’t want to have to change my password everytime I call to be sure it is secure.

Because of the misrepresentation of services from sales and technical support, the inadequacies of your tech support tools, and the fact that after all this I still can not test my website I have cancelled my web hosting account with godaddy. For what it’s worth, in a couple of hours of searching online I found a provider who offers more storage and features for less money, has an equally good reputation as godaddy.com and whose architecture allows me to test my webpages before I switch my DNS references.

I don’t expect a refund since I’ve had my one month deluxe godaddy webhosting account for several days, and I am not asking or fishing for one, but I did think you should know just how unpleasant this experience has been for me and how unsatisfied and dissapointed in godaddy I feel. I have been a fan and satisfied customer of godaddy for a number of years because of your domain name services and I applaud your FCC views, but after this experience of misrepresentation (or lack of knowledge) by both your sales and technical staff, my needing to make multiple calls to get a refund I was told I would get in full, and your technical staff not having the tools they need to do their jobs, I can not in good conscience recommend your company to anyone.

I hope you are able to address these concerns in the future as I don’t see godaddy remaining a leading internet services provider if my experiences were at all typical.

regards,

vr

Thursday, 19 May 2005

My godaddy invoice history still shows that I am being charged for one of the two years of my two year plan I cancelled after having it for only 2-3 hours. Why?

I got 1 year refunded within the day I cancelled but not the second one. I sent an email to sales support the next day and asked about this and was told I could definitely get the 2nd year refunded that it should show up on my godaddy account very soon and on my credit card in the next week. I got a confirmation email telling me this good news.

8 days later I still have only half my refund. I called back and after waiting on hold for 15 minutes got a helpful support person who refunded me the other $33.

So, it only took me 2 phone calls, a combined 30+ minutes of waiting on hold, and the time to write an email message to get my refund. THAT’S SERVICE!

Thursday, 19 May 2005

With all the hoopla about the the remake of the old Gene Wilder “Willy Wonka… movie starring Johnny Depp I am really wanting a crossover movie hybrid in which the undead pirates from Pirates from the Carribbean come back from (un)death and track down and slaughter the annonying winners of the chocolate factory tour contest and some oompa loompas, because it turns out that one of the aztech/mayan gold pieces attached to the curse was used to make the gold foil wrapper that Willy Wonka used as winning contest markers.

Now THAT would be a movie I would watch.