PSoTD

Gonna have to remember this when we go to Italy next year.

Sorry, just have to vent.

We currently use a company called Velocity.net for a small amount of web hosting, and for whatever reason, they migrated their webhosting to OCHosting.com servers this week. I don't know if it was a business acquisition or a vendor choice or whatever, but what I do know is this:

The result was just freaking pathetic. Here's what they didn't do right...

Provide administrator logins to us, forcing us to call and wait through long hold lines to get that information.
Provide us with the same FTP logins/passwords so updates could be done seamlessly. OR ANY FTP.
Transfer any of our email addresses that existed.
Transfer any or our pre-existing DNS additions, such as MX records, in the transfer.

So... the web site worked, but anything affiliated with the domain - server access, email, administrative accounts - we had to call to get the information. This transfer, which occurred Tuesday with essentially a same day notice that it would occur, was a disaster. I tried calling Wednesday because of problems, there was a 25 call queue, and after 45 minutes it was still 19, so I hung up. I emailed their support email address, and nobody responded. They had a huge freakin' fire in their business, and they treated it as business as usual, with not enough support call staffing and ignorance of email. Finally, yesterday, I called and was 5th in the queue, waited it through for an hour, and even then they would not give me administrator login and password on the phone, but I had to wait for them to email them.

I bet you can tell I despise them by now.

We've had to many problems with Velocity.net in the past as it was, and we've been transitioning sites away from them. But this was over-the-top inept and incompetent and frankly, I don't see why anyone would want to continue service with a team that delivered such a pathetic effort. We won't be. We're leaving, ASAP.

$130K for zimbabwe.com? In the words of Mr. Spock, that's illogical.

Are you wondering whether you're getting all your legitimate email? Couldn't hurt to email your ISP's support, and ask them a simple question:

What percentage of legitimate email is blocked by your spamfilter setup from being received by the intended recipient?

I'm betting that they'll either give you a totally invented percentage, or they can't answer it and provide a non-answer answer. Here's a way to find out if it's a BS answer - ask them how they determine that percentage.

Did you receive a call but the caller did not leave a message and the Caller ID says "Unavailable"? Enter the phone number at 800Notes to find out who is using the phone number - and read the comments of others who have gotten calls from the number as well...

If you look around, you'll find plenty of folks complaining about how Comcast operates. This eventually leads to web sites, such as blogs like Comcast Screwed Us and consumer complaint sites such as this.

In the past, I've been very happy about my service with Comcast, but that's changing, and it's due to the quite arrogant and invasive way they set up their spamfilters to block legitimate email, and the customer doesn't actually get informed of it - only the sender. Their language is something like this:

Our filters have determined that email from the IP you submitted was blocked because it sent email to the Comcast domain with patterns characteristics of spam. Mail servers are typically shared by many users so it may be the case that another party using your mail server has sent spam, even if you have not.

Note the wormy language - they don't say it's spam, they don't say it's the sender, they just say it had some characteristics of spam, which was enough for them to decide to block it. Since it appears that Comcast is trying to be incredibly aggressive in blocking spam, that means items such as legitimate email forwards and group emails can - and are - blocked.

It's funny. Gmail.com, which is free, does, IMHO, a much, much, MUCH better job with how they deal with email and spam. Comcast, which isn't cheap, does as crappy of a job with email and spam as they can get away with in a marketplace they often dominate as the only game in town.

My advice - Comcast users should get a Gmail email account, and start using it. I don't expect Comcast to be doing any further favors for customers in this area anytime soon.

I guess I need to start using bigger words around here.

Be careful out there and try to avoid catching Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

I know, I know! I'll write about it!

So I received this email spam, apparently from Time Warner Cable, with the brilliant analogy:

which then follows with the question

So why go to different companies for your Television, Home Phone and High-Speed Internet Service?

So I thought I'd give some answers.

I also sit on a toilet, use toilet paper and then wash my hands after going to the bathroom. That doesn't mean I want to buy my toilet paper at Lowes or my water through Charmin.

Time Warner Cable isn't in the restaurant business, so maybe I should excuse their extreme ignorance, but... I won't. Going to a restaurant is about convenience - not having to cook, not having to clean up, not having to think about what to make. SO... if I'm looking for convenience, of course I wouldn't go different places for different items. That's just moronic. Is that who you think you're targeting? Those who might be swayed because you just suggested they're a smidge smarter than moronic?

My use of television, phone and internet services are based on my needs and cost assessment for all three of those items. You're not selling any message about bundling them that meets any foreseeable goal of "convenient". You, as a vendor, may see them as connected and more convenient for me to buy bundled. You have not proven it to me as a member of the marketplace. In addition, you provide a bundled price, heavily lauded in your email as discounted. Changing companies for all of these services is definitely not convenient, which means when you boost the price next year to something very close to the line as unacceptable, the inconvenience of changing might make me not bother to change to find what truly is a better deal. But then you're counting on that with this discount.

Here's my biggest complaint about your dumbass ad:

This e-mail is an advertisement. You're receiving this e-mail because you've opted in to receive information about television entertainment products and services. If you do not wish to receive e-mails like this in the future, please click here.

Time Warner Cable: Fuck you. I didn't opt in for any of your shit. Are you actually saying that if someone is interested in television entertainment products and services somewhere, that gives you license to spam me? You ought to be telling Take Five Solutions a big fuck you yourselves, because there's no way I'll be buying any of your crap, at least in part thanks to your reliance on a third-party vendor of email addresses.

You can find a poem about almost anything by using the search engine at PoemHunter.com.