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Wow. I don't care whose fault it is, I don't care if a customer is many months past due... if your Customer Service Manager says \"Goto fucken hell you piece of shit\" to a customer (complete with paper trail) and you don't immediately fire him, your customer service, company-wide, is an abject failure.
Why not go to GoDaddy.com (or any other) and initiate a transfer of the domain name? If it's successful, it'll cost her around $7, but at least she'd be out of that little slice of hell. It's worth a shot; if it doesn't work, she won't have to pay:
(From GoDaddy.com)
\"Your transfer is absolutely risk-free. If it fails to go through for any reason at all, we'll refund your fee, no questions asked.\"
Don't need to hear any of their excuses. There is NO excuse for treating your customers like that. I will not be using VistaPages, ever. And I will be telling everyone I know as well. Even if it was all her fault. The responses from the CS Manager and the DoO are unacceptable.
I dunno, it seems there's something deliciously unethical about the hosting/registration business anyway. I just lost a domain (my fault, I was on vacation when I should have renewed), and it went to a spammer super-quick. I guess being short-sightedly mercenary is hardwired into their brains.
His crediblity would increase if his grasp of grammer came close to matching his irrate customer's. That is one company I shall be avoiding.
I'll only say that Kaumil and Chris' online dictions seem awful similar to one another.
Anne writes:
\"Ben,
Thank you for posting my complaint and for contacting the company... what they responded with was pretty much the same run-around answer they'd been giving me through the entire exchange. And really, really interesting to hear the allegations that the company is just one person! I wouldn't be surprised if it's true...
I'm heading over to godaddy.com to try and get my domain name back. Thanks again,
Anne\"
Edward writes:
\"The VP or whoever seems to have a major identity crisis...apparently he's Sandip as well.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/thread/410885-1.html...
I love that he keeps repeating that she was overdue, never addressing that they took the site down when she had 5 days left to pay. Whether or not the TOS say she needs to give 30 days notice, they must have breached the contract first by taking the site down before the period she had paid for was up.
Oh, and threatening the Consumerist for posting \"false statements\" definately doesn't help the guy's case. Everything here is phrased as \"a reader sent this story and these e-mails in,\" which is absolutely true, whether or not the information the reader sent is true. It also doesn't seem likely that a court case will go over well when all the reader needs to do is submit the e-mails on her computer as evidence...
Latepost(TM): This masterpiece of customer service is, as I write this, hit number eight in a Google search for the name of the company.
Excelsior!
There is absolutely no justification for that tone.
I think it's the same guy, just after he's had time to realize he committed a horrible wrong and so he sat down and smoked a bowl. Look at how consistently her questions are ignored? Same dude, never wanting to admit error.
If he was smart, he'd say that he fired the cusser and offer her a free year of service to erase the stigma.
All I can say is that I empathize with Anne. I had a horrible experience with VP last year, in which they double-billed me, and when I canceled, they stole my domain (even though they did refund my money about two days before they would have been hit with a chargeback). Now, they're trying to bill me for renewal of service that I canceled nearly a year ago, and the only thing that's stopping them is that my Visa card was reissued this year with a different number.
As far as Kaumil's response to Anne, I don't care who you are or how great you think your business is....you DO NOT speak to a customer in that manner That language is simply inexcusable in customer relations. If the manager of a retail establshment talked to me in such a manner, rest assured I would never again set foot in his/her establishment. I am so glad there are sites like which expose such ridiculous and rude behavior!
We are company from Europe which two months ago bought hosting solution VPS2 from www.vistapages.com, under this agreement:
As you can see they guarantee uptime of 99.9% percent.
Everything start with their awful user support... Then it continue further more...
On Friday our site went down and comes back on Monday.
Also, in meantime they wrote these letters to us:
\"Greetings,
The entire server was corrupted. We believe it was due to ex-employees of Vista Pages who implemented an exploit within the server to bring it down. However this has been corrupted and their IP's have been blocked from our network. We will be reinstalling the VPS and restoring accounts this weekend, everything should be back up and running smoothly on Monday. Please do email billing@vistapages.com to get your FREE months of service due to the inconvenience caused.
Regards,
Mike\"
\"We do have spare servers and are currently rebuilding the server, we started this process yesterday and it should be ready for Monday if not sooner. Regarding the 99.9% uptime guarantee we do offer it and try our very best to meet it; however at times unavoidable things happen like this. You can email billing@vistapages.com to receive your free month of hosting.\"
So, they managed to delete all of our data and bring the server down for more than 70 hours. And this is not first time. We have had downtimes of 15-45minutes twice a week every week from the start.
But that's not end. After two days up, it went down again. This time here is the response:
Me:
\"Today my server is not responsible(VERY SLOW, unusable), it seems that your network is down again.
PLEASE HELP!!!\"
Vista:
\"Greetings,
At present a server within our network is under a dos attack. Our Network Administrators are currently working on mitigating this attack.
Regards,
Mike\"
\"Valentin,
Please be patient as we're moving to a better network. Updates will be posted at [status.vistapages.com.]
Regards,
Nathan\"
Me:
\"http://status.vistapages.com/ it is saying network migrated. So what is the problem with my site?\"
Vista:
\"Valentin,
Although the servers are up and running we are in the process of recreating the zone files for each account which will take 2-4 hours to propogate.
Regards,
Nathan\"
Me:
Today my server is not responsible(VERY SLOW, unusable), it seems that your network is down again.
PLEASE HELP!!!
Mike C.
Posted On: 10 Oct 2007 03:06 PM
Greetings,
At present a server within our network is under a dos attack. Our Network Administrators are currently working on mitigating this attack.
Regards,
Mike
Valentin Gjorgjioski
Posted On: 10 Oct 2007 04:23 PM
So would you like to employ me? Obviously is too hard for you to manage this dos attacks. You will lose everything if you continue with this service.
Let me know when you manage this.
And one more thing Mike, your hosting really s****
Mike C.
Posted On: 10 Oct 2007 05:41 PM
Greetings,
We are in the process of moving networks to improve our service stability. More updates to follow at [status.vistapages.com]
Regards,
Mike
Valentin Gjorgjioski
Posted On: 10 Oct 2007 05:59 PM
I checked the status page. Interesting there is nothing about box11 there, which had also corrupted file system. So corrupted file systems is very common at your place.
Good luck in migrating, we will also migrate to another provider if you continue... So another 24 hours my services will suffer. Nice, in one week they suffer 84 hours...
Valentin Gjorgjioski
Posted On: 10 Oct 2007 07:41 PM
Again down :( ;(
Nathan P.
Posted On: 10 Oct 2007 08:00 PM
Valentin,
Please be patient as we're moving to a better network. Updates will be posted at [status.vistapages.com.]
Regards,
Nathan
Valentin Gjorgjioski
Posted On: 11 Oct 2007 04:47 AM
How long? I'm loosing money every day because of you. I don't understand... really....
Valentin Gjorgjioski
Posted On: 11 Oct 2007 07:18 AM
[status.vistapages.com] it is saying network migrated. So what is the problem with my site?
Nathan P.
Posted On: 11 Oct 2007 07:21 AM
Valentin,
Although the servers are up and running we are in the process of recreating the zone files for each account which will take 2-4 hours to propogate.
Regards,
Nathan
ME:
Valentin Gjorgjioski
Posted On: 11 Oct 2007 07:28 AM
I do not understand what is the connection between zone files and ssh on my server by ip.
ssh 64.86.164.109
Please check once more. Thanks for really quick reply.
Vista:
Valentin,
Sorry that was a canned message due to the volume of requests we have within our desk. Your IP for the VPS would have to be re-assigned and it will be done shortly. I am forwarding this ticket to our Activations Team so they can notify you of your new IP.
Regards,
Nathan
Me:
What is my new ip?
Vista:
Greetings,
We have successfully migrated to a new network and are currently recreating the dns zone files which should propogate within 2-4 hours approximately. Thank you for your continued patience.
Regards,
Mike
Me:
I still cannot UNDERSTAND what is the connection between YOUR DNS ZONE FILES and my ip address. Let me know, IP address of my VPS server. I DO NOT NEED DNS.
Vista:
Greetings,
That was a canned message due to the volume of requests we have been receiving regarding our network move. You will be emailed your new IP shortly once our datacenter technicians assign it to your VE.
Regards,
Mike
And.... much more.... Even I'm tired copying pasting ... to give you full story... BUT IT IS AWFUL and PAINFUL believe me.
We were running community site and we have had registered about 2000 users in a month, and about 2000 visits per day. This means catastrophic failure for us.
Guys just stay away from vistapages, and if there interested for lawsuit let me know at my email gjorgjioski at gmail.com. We are already two. We should form club of vistapages former \"satisfied\" customers.
It really depends if the domain name was registered in Anne's name or in the company's name. If it's in the company's name, she's pretty much at their mercy to release it. If it is in her name, a letter from a lawyer would be in order. This is a good lesson, though: Never register a domain through a host since there can be ownership issues down the road.