Ahh, My Baby!
Lookie, I’m home. It’s good to be back. It’s almost sad how dependant one becomes on their e-mail and web space. I can go on holiday and not care, but the second it is deprived from me through no choice of my own, I feel exploited 
Just to give you a rough indication of what’s been going on… on Monday (22nd) last week, Karl received an email mentioning we’d be migrated from our “antiquated” server to a new one at The Planet in Dallas. I did not get a copy of the mail (despite being a listed contact, and having received all other notices from site5 in the past). No specific date was given for the actual move though, so I had assumed that we would receive another e-mail giving a more specific date/time closer to the move. When my website started going bananas (domain pointers pointing to my own clique) on the 24th I thought my account had been compromised.
I created a support ticket reporting the problem, realised the problem was likely migration related a couple of hours later, but, when the problem with the domain pointers had not been fixed I posted in the ticket again. A site5 tech promptly replied, fixed the problem with tutorialtastic — my most important domain pointer — and removed the dns zone for one of the other domains I was having problems with so that I could re-add it.
Mid-25th I reported that the remaining domain pointers were still not fixed, and while another tech made an attempt to fix the problem nothing changed. On the evening of the 25th I sent in a lengthy response detailing my ongoing problems.
The original tech replied again but I was in bed by that point (GMT) so could not reply until the next morning. By which time, my entire domain, all pointers etc had been down for around 4 hours I approximated. Pings timed out, a manual DNS cache flush was doing nothing, it was well and truly screwed. I replied to the techie telling him this.
2 hours later, a 3rd tech replied asking me to which IP my site should be pointing. Given that I’d just been moved server and have had ongoing problems since, I’m wasn’t even 100% sure what the name of my server was let alone what the IP should be! I replied saying as such. I also included my IP in the ticket so that he could check that I wasn’t being banned by the firewall. At this point I asked Snarkers to check my site too, and within a couple of hours I had 19 responses from people who couldn’t get to my site, some of whom had checked in multiple locations.
By Saturday 27th, my site had been down for well over 24 hours, and a further 13 people had told me that they also can’t get to the site. My ticket hadn’t been responded to since the guy had asked me for the IP of my server. By this time I’m getting pretty desperate, and I created a temporary googlemail account, and a temporary blog; thank you to all who kept me company over at jemjabella @ wordpress (I’ll be keeping that up in case of future emergencies).
The evening of the Saturday, I spoke to a support assistant in Site5’s live chat support, asking them what the hell was going on and when my website was going to be fixed. Bear in mind that Site5 advertises 24/7 support, I was annoyed to discover that this only applied to minor problems — I apparently needed a senior tech and they take weekends off — what a fucking swizzle.
Monday morning comes around, I’ve got to work and I’m assuming these guys are around 5 hours behind me (EST I think) so I wait until my lunch break before poking the support ticket to find out if this was going to be fixed. By 5pm my time, I’d had no word from Site5 since early Friday, and my site had been down for about 4 days. I created another live chat session, explained to the support guy what was going on and he told me he’d check my ticket and come back. An hour later, he still hadn’t come back and the chat session timed out.
So I get home, Karl and I talk about our day a bit, bla bla bla.. at around 10pm I finally get the chat to connect to another support guy. I almost beg him not to abandon me in the chat like the other guy, and tell him that I’m having serious withdrawal symptoms for me website (by this time I’d tried polite, I’d tried blunt, I was willing to take the desperate emo route). I also explain to him some other factors that were briefly mentioned in the ticket, but everyone else seemed to be skimming over. He seemed to have a “EUREKA!” moment, buggered off for a few minutes, came back, and tada.. a couple of hours later people could see my website. 
For the technically inclined, all he had to do was reset my DNS zone file. How bloody stupid is it that this could not be done on Friday, by the level 3 tech, or in either of the other 2 live chats?
I’ll be contacting Site5 billing this morning to get a refund for this month’s hosting. I’ll also be removing the Site5 affiliate link from my About page: I can’t recommend a host that takes 3-4 days to sort a basic problem with all good faith. This may have been the only problem I’ve had in 3 years, but it was handled appallingly. They need to build up my trust again.
So there you have it, I’m back, all is well. 
Sep 30th, 08 @ 08:46 
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Welcome home Jem, it’s good to have you back :o)
Ah! You’re back! I fruitlessly typed in “jemjabella.co.uk” (which quickly became the “most visited” link on my Firefox) and even .com (shock) for the past couple of days with a slight ebb of confusion as to where you where. I hadn’t read your previous post about the site migration (although I did manage to find it) and so figured you’d packed up and buggered off. So great to have you back
OMG! You mean you didn’t leave the internets 4 eva???!?!??????///?
Welcome back Jem. The support seems really bad. :/ I still can’t believe they took 4 days just to reset your DNS zone file.
Welcome back
Welcome back! I have been checking your site a few times daily…I wanted to message you and let you know that I’ve been having a shitty time with Site5. This is because you have influence over a lot of people, and I thought if might be helpful for you to know. But nevermind, you’ve already let people know that Site5 are fuckups.
My sites have been down about four times since I got hosted by them, about 2-3 months ago. It really takes the piss. x.x
Oh waits. make that five times, as they’re down again. O.o
And here I was thinking you’d been scared off the Interwebs by Swimchick!
I still can’t see your website without a proxy, but for some reason my ISP takes forever to update DNS and such. And yes, I have flushed my DNS cache and restarted Firefox.
I’d be really pissed to find out a small problem took so long to fix.
Yay you’re back. It is awful how Site5 handled this. Let’s hope they can get back in your good books.
You’re back! Welcome back. I was really confused that your site didn’t load all weekend. Kind of crazy that you had to go through all that.
Welcome back. Support can be rather annoying at times.
Thank fuck your shit is back! I’ve missed it dearly.
Yay, you’re back!
It’s a shame I didn’t know about Jemjabella @ wordpress. It seems that Tutorialtastic and Jem*me are still redirecting to the “my own.” thing. I hope they’re up soon!
Hoorah, Hooray, let’s celebrate! Now the next thing I would like to see, when all settles, is some pants!! No rush, no rush. Get settled and such. *evil grin* Look what you have done to me! Ha ha! I am really sorry about this Site5 shit, though. I don’t see how anyone thought it to be acceptable in any way. Especially the tech that “disappeared” in your chat. Can you report him or anything? Get him in trouble? That would be nice.
Yay!! Your back. I can get my Jem fix again. I missed you.
I have been very disappointed in Site5 support as well. I recommended this to my work (a car dealership) and I OFTEN have DNS issues and they take forever to respond. Our domain pointers often change, depending on the sale going on and Site5 has to flush the DNS everytime. (I don’t understand why they don’t give us this option.) As you said, the live chat is a joke, 4 out of 5 times, it times out before I get a response or a fix. And many of them have no idea what they are talking about. If I had to recommend a web host again, it wouldn’t be Site5.
Welcome back!
It’s good to have you around again.
Welcome back! Hopefully Tutorialtastic is back up soon as well. I was confused when I went over there and it took me to the web directory.
Yaaay you’re back!! woo!!
Good to have you back!
Glad to have you back
Hi, lady.
How frustrating! Glad to see you’re back, though.
Welcome back Jem!
HOLY AMAZING NEW LAYOUT BATMAN!