Re:
I'm now back to looking for a new host.:sad2: I signed up with Avail Networks just over a month ago and I never got my site up. After I finished signing up with them and after I entered my billing information, I was denied my account being created because it said that the street address I entered didn't match the billing address of the cardholder (me). I was entering the right address so I contacted Avail Networks support regarding this issue and they activated my account while saying that they would solve the billing issue later. I never heard anything more about that since then so I contacted them once later last month asking them what's the status on solving my billing issue and they ignored me. Also last month, I got the E-mail address I wanted set up at my domain but just couldn't get it working with Netscape, so I contacted them yesterday asking them for support and then Reed Murray, their staff member who I've been dealing with, sent me a rude reply.
Now, I would have posted the rude reply and all of his and my replies after that below but all of a sudden he changed their helpdesk system so I can no longer access all the old tickets I submitted (Damn, I knew I should have saved all those old tickets to my hard drive before something like this happened). I also can't log into my E-mail and bring out all the old tickets I submitted because I use to receive an E-mail each time I got a reply to one of my helpdesk tickets after I first started using Avail Networks's helpdesk system, but then for some reason I no longer received E-mail notification to the replies. Anyway, this all started with them having just too many things wrong with their helpdesk system to start with:
-it wouldn't function in Netscape.
-Reed would miss my replies so my only way to get a hold of him would be for me to start a new ticket each time I wanted to add a reply to one of my previous tickets. I also didn't receive E-mail that he sent to my address (when he tried to reply to E-mails that I sent him) so I couldn't E-mail him, so again my only way of contacting him was to start a new ticket each time I wanted to add a reply to one of my previous tickets.
-Again, for some reason I stopped recieiving E-mail notification whenever a new reply was added to one of my tickets even though I did receive E-mail notification to start with.
-Whenever I tried to attach a file to one of my tickets, the file didn't attach once I submitted my ticket.
So anyway, after several attempts of trying to get a hold of him via the helpdesk system, he told me to E-mail him since the helpdesk system wasn't functioning at the time. So I E-mailed him and I jsut thought he didn't reply at first so I added a reply in the ticket to the reply where he told me to E-mail him asking him why he didn't answer my E-mail and he missed that reply to the ticket. So because he missed that reply, I started a new ticket asking him why he didn't reply. This is the ticket where he then added the rude reply. In the reply, he said things like he considers me starting new tickets instead of replying to previous tickets as spam and that I should either just E-mail him or use the helpdesk system instead of doing both. Wasn't it obvious to him that the only reason why I kept starting new tickets and using more than one contact method was the same reason why I said above that I did that? And I'm confused because he said several times in the rude reply as well as in his reply after that one that he was confused as to why I keep starting new tickets and why would he say that after he said in his first reply to my ticket before that one something like "Thank you for starting a new ticket, I missed your reply to your previous one." Those aren't the exact words he used, again I no longer have access to those tickets. The first time I found out that he did reply to my E-mail was when he told me in the rude reply that he replied to it.
Reed didn't seem very flexible about me not receiving E-mail from him or from their helpdesk system once they stopped sending me E-mail notificaiton and about them missing my replies to helpdesk tickets.
If I was able to show you the rude reply and the first reply I added after that one, I don't know if you'd think that I was being rude to him. He said in his next reply which came after that reply of mine that he was doing all that he could to help me and that he was doing the best he could and everything he could to help me, but I don't know if you'd agree with that. Do you think I should write a bad review about him and warn other users not to host with him?
Now, I should try to find a host that has everything set up as soon as I get there and who's staff are familiar with configuring E-mail to work with Netscape. By "a host that has everything set up as soon as I get there," I mean that their helpdesk system should be 100% functioning as soon as I finish signing up with them and my account is activated. And I don't know if you'd agree with me on this one because you might think differently than the way I do about this, but I think that it would make sense that most hosts do not allow activating their accounts until the first payment is successful. If possible, I would like a host where I don't have any problems with my credit card when trying to sign up. And I don't want to configure my E-mail address to work with Thunderbird or "Outlook Express," before I signed up with Avail Networks I asked that my E-mail be configured to work with Netscape.
And lastly, when I said above that Avail Networks changed their helpdesk system, Reed did say in his first reply after the rude one that they were going to fix their helpdesk system so that I wouldn't have all those problems that I described above. Maybe that's why it's different now. At first before then, I thought maybe I should not trust him when he said that he was going to fix their helpdesk system.
-Neil