About a year ago we decided to outsource our web site in addition to Exchange services. We had been running it on a server in our office but our building’s power supply left a lot to be desired.
Once they told us they would be doing some maintenance over the weekend. What they didn’t tell us was that power would be off for an hour, far exceeding the capacity of our UPS systems. Not only was our website down but people couldn’t work from home until I realized the problem and went in to fix it. The people that run the cafe downstairs were even more upset. They had a lot of food go bad since the refrigerators were off.
On the advice of a friend I made the switch to 1and1.com. We have a tricky setup in that our domain is registered by one company, another company handles DNS, and yet another handles Exchange services. I did not want to transfer DNS control to 1and1. This didn’t seem like a problem since they have a spot in the control panel to plug in your own DNS. In fact things worked quite well for months.
This past November we switched our phone system to VOIP, which involved getting a T-1 line to replace our DSL connection. This also meant moving our DNS services since our ISP provided that service for us up to then. Unfortunately this is where things went south with 1and1.
They started sending me emails that said the following:
It has come to our attention that the name server settings for
bristolassoc.com are incorrectly set to:
DNS1: ns0.dnsmadeeasy.com
DNS2: ns1.dnsmadeeasy.com
DNS3: ns2.dnsmadeeasy.com
DNS4: ns3.dnsmadeeasy.com
With these settings neither your website nor your e-mails can be reached reliably via the mycompany.com domain.
For the domain to work properly please make sure that following name servers are set:
DNS1: ns0.dnsmadeeasy.com
DNS2: ns1.dnsmadeeasy.com
Ohhhhhh-kay. They’re telling me to set my nameservers to what they already are. What to do? Well I did the logical thing which was nothing. WRONG ANSWER! After ignoring the emails telling me to do nothing for two weeks 1and1 actually removed our website automatically. I put it back up only to get the same emails again. Every time I called tech support I got a different answer for why it was removed. Tech support is in Singapore which was another problem. I’m sure the country of Singapore has contributed many wonderful things to the world despite the fact that they outlawed chewing gum, but I still don’t want to speak to any Singaporians/Singapornos/Singapornites/whatthefuckevers when I need help. They spoke English but without common sense. There was nothing I could to make them understand what I was saying. They ended up taking our site down three separate times before I finally said enough is enough.
Bottom line is I switched the web site to Intermedia and they have been spot on ever since. 1and1….I hope a meteor hits all your data centers at the same time. The most useless excuse of a company ever.