IX Webhosting drops the ball

by Duf Anything and Everything

I just got done email ranting to my support “hero” at IX Webhosting.  With my server transfer I had to clear a number of hurdles in the process, many of which required assistance from their staff.  They managed to handle my issues efficiently and quickly.  Ironically the only one that didn’t was my “dedicated” support hero.

IX instituted this hero plan early in 2010.  Basically the idea was there was one person that was your go to guy if you had an issue.  They were assigned to your account specifically.  Well my guy is some kid named Brandon.

After my server transfer took place I was contacted by one of my users saying he had some email in a folder on the old mail server.  He was asking if I could get it moved over to the new mail server.  Sure, that shouldn’t be a problem, I’ll contact my “hero”.

Well Brandon was out of the office for extended periods of time during this process.  He hadn’t thought it would be important to do something as simple as put an Out of Office message on his email account so customers would know he was out and not simply ignoring their request.

You see time was at a premium because after you transfer servers you only have two weeks until the old data is purged.  Well eventually Brandon responded to my request but said it had to be forwarded to a senior tech that had access to pull the old mail.

The senior tech pulled some of the mail but not all of it.  I asked that the rest be pulled over.  Now this senior tech was out of the office and Brandon acted like this tech was the ONLY person that could do this, indicating there was nothing he could do personally.  Well obviously IX has more than one administrator with this ability but Brandon didn’t want to “bother” them.

So after a few more days of nothing happening I again follow up and get this reply from someone at their Romanian help desk.

Dear Shawn,

Thank you for update. We were able to move previous folder because we were able to get needful files from the old mail server. Unfortunately our system has already started to remove old files due to time passed from control panel migration. Sorry for possible inconvenience.

Basically he was saying sorry, you are f’d.

I was extremely annoyed and responded that the folder was lost because IX drug their feet in addressing my request for a week or more.  Brandon himself responded with an apology that wasn’t an apology.

He basically said that I was told that I had to back everything up and since I didn’t back up this user’s email folder that was my problem, not theirs.  Never mind that I contacted IX way before the files were no longer available.

Well as you can imagine, I didn’t react well to this.  After a series of angry emails to my “hero” I finished up with this.

The more you say the worse it sounds. You apologize and then basically say you don’t apologize.

Let me give you a comparison. Let’s say you traded in your car for a new model.  You thought you had everything out of the car but you realized you left something in the glove box.  You contact your salesman and ask them to retrieve the item for you.  He isn’t there and you leave him a voicemail.

He doesn’t return your call for several days, he was out of the office.  He didn’t take any provisions to let his customers know this.  You tell him your issue, he says he will take care of it.  Well after another 4 or 5 days you still have not gotten your item back.  You find out again the salesman was out of the office and nobody was following up in his absence.

When he comes back a second time he contacts you and tells you “So sorry, your car was sent to the crusher, your item was destroyed, it’s your fault”

Now put yourself in my shoes, perhaps you can understand my anger.

I am hoping to get assigned to a different support hero that is a bit more responsible. I’ll ask Phil for this.