February 26, 2007
Server provider threats
The owner of my server provider Webtapestry has sent me yet another email telling me how fortunate I am not to be paying more money with them. They use this as a get out clause for any problems with the service. Whenever I complain about an issue to do with any aspect of their service or any financial matters, I get the same gumph...
Here is a copy of the email I sent him regarding the monthly payment of lacklustre server-side Spam filtering services:
1. I complain about your service
2. You just tell me how "lucky" I am not to be paying more.
Q. Is this a good way to keep your clients?
A. NO!
If I wanted excellent value for money, I would use Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo which have free email filtering services. I have an increasing number of clients who don't bother using their domain's email address because of the lack of control on the spam (and the lack of decent webmail).
I pay £20 a month to remove most of the hassle of spam getting to important email accounts that would otherwise be plagued by large quantities of crap. Every time your service falls down, I get a number of agitated phone calls and complaints from my handful of customers that are paying for the service. The few remaining customers cancel their trial period leaving me with the majority of the bill.
I do want to continue with the service as it is better than no filtering, but the price bears no resemblance to the quality I, or anyone else, expects.
Giving you money for a supposedly professional service which is this unreliable just doesn't add up. You should stop charging anyone for this until you can get it working for a month without any problems. Anything else is dishonest.
What difference does it make where I register my .com domain names?
When I first ordered the dedicated server, I was presented with two equally priced options:
1. The easier option: leave WT to manage the emails
2. At the time, the harder option: Have emails managed on the server
I have never been formally presented anything relating to these charges you talk about. I just receive the occasional mention of this awesome free service that would normally cost any other user a fortune. So, present all the charges that I should be paying, rather than using this as an ongoing threat.
I hope I have made my situation clear.
Posted by Nahoo at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2006
Annoying ISP
I just had a talk with one of my server providers. Their inability to listen to my demands (as a customer) and their constant threat of new charges for mundane services is really starting to piss me off. It is simply not acceptable to talk in a condescending way to your customers, especially when that customer pays you several thousand pounds a year. If there is one reason why I change ISP, it is because of one person and his (in)actions.
If you have any comments on very good or very bad server providers, please let me know!
Posted by Nahoo at 06:15 PM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2006
New UK server
I got a new web server in the UK to replace the previous one that had a bad kernel and one of the drives in the RAID array failed. This one is a HP P4 3.2GHz 64Bit CPU with 2GB RAM, 250Gb SATA RAID 1 and unlimited data-transfer on a 10Mbps connection. Some of my clients have contacted me about the noticeable improvement in speed.
One of the best bits is that I can pay for this 6-monthly at the same rate of the annual cost. This makes it much more affordable than it would be otherwise.
Posted by Nahoo at 05:25 PM | Comments (0)
July 22, 2006
nVidia graphics on SuSE 10.1
As I want to move some of the more CPU intensive scripts away from live web servers, I have installed SuSE 10.1 on my own computer. Unfortunately, the graphics card didn't have the Linux drivers available on the installation disk, making 1600x1200 resolutions unavailable. One thing that I must have on my 20.1" LCD screen is the native resolution for an OS - otherwise it annoys the hell out of me.
The information available on the Open SuSE website doesn't deal with an important factor: the install program: YaST.
If you are running SuSE 10.x and cannot realise the potential of your nVidia graphics card, please go to the Novel Cool Solutions page for the proper walk-thru. If only I knew this earlier, I would have saved myself hours of trawling other websites to dicipher the errors from the Open SuSE instructions.
With the standard install of SuSE 10.1, you simply need to know this: go to the YaST control centre, click "Software Management", search for kernel-source and tick the box next to the kernel-source package. Now, you'll be able to install the nVidia Linux drivers.
Posted by Nahoo at 06:31 PM | Comments (1)