Mail down 24 hrs, no response from customer servic

#1

I’ve been a customer almost 5 years. In the beginning, you could not beat the bang for the buck. Trouble tickets were answered quickly. Something has changed. Our email has been DOWN FOR OVER 24 HOURS! No response to multiple service requests. I think it is time to look for alternatives.

A quote from one of the service tags that sums up the current attitude.

"I think it is interesting that in the FAQ about moving from shell to a separate email service, they insult and belittle the customers that have been with them the longest. In my business, those are the ones we take care of.

It was not my choice to have mail in the shell account. That is how they did it when we joined. It was not my choice to have it screwed up by Dreamhost in the move to a separate server. I’m not an idiot for staying with shell email, the purpose of having a ISP is to not have to worry about the technology.

It would not have been that hard to address this long before the server crashed. All I would have needed was to backup the email directory in the shell before they tried to move it."

#2

I’m a bit confused on a couple of issues. You’ve been a customer for 5 years, yet this is the first time you’ve ever posted to the forums. You’ve not even posted asking for solutions for the email outage. Email being down for 24 hours can mean a number of things, either inbound or outbound, which you haven’t clarified. Also, as a customer for 5 years, you should know that there’s no need to submit “multiple” service requests in a 24 hour period, as that just clogs up the system.

-Scott

#3

Scott,

I resent the tone of your response. We have been a reliable customer for several years, and deserve better treatment from Dream Host.

With a few exceptions, Dream Host has been a good provider. I have been a customer for 5 years and there has been only one other time that I had to contact customer support. The responded to my initial email within 45 minutes and the problem was resolved within a day. Not bad.

This time we have an absolutely critical problem of no email for 18 hours, and total loss of email content before Saturday morning. I waited patiently until this afternoon, figuring that the problem would be resolved by the support team before filing the first support request.

Then I posted a critical request. Follow on requests contained alternate solutions or additional contact information.

I HAVE NOT GOTTEN ANY RESPONSE AT ALL!

We run a small business that is very email centric. Part of the reason that I choose Dream Host several years ago was their reputation for up time and support. Our employee who was administering our servers made the recommendation to switch to dreamhost, and it was the right choice at the time.

If you have a solution, it would be welcome. There are many choices when the files are stored in a place with shell access, but few when they are locked away on a dedicated email server.

Dave

#4

My tone is due to far too many non-customer trolls popping in here trashing DreamHost when they don’t even use the service. My apologies to legitimate clients.

“No Email” doesn’t do much to describe the problem. I’d have to guess that you’re not getting stuff people are sending you. Are they getting bounces? Have you tried the webmail interface?

There is a current mail issue as stated here:
http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2009/11/21/a-handful-of-customers-missing-mail-data-temporarily/

This issue looks like they’re working on it and expect to restore the data “soon.” How did this “total loss of email content” present itself? Is this on IMAP clients that you have? If so, then they typically don’t dump all of their email when a mail server hiccups.

Personally, I forward all of my mail to Gmail, which lets me use the verified return address of my choice. It’s pretty slick and typically very reliable. And forwarding mail means my mail here is retained should Gmail suffer an outage.

-Scott

#5

Hello Again Scott,

What is your interest in protecting Dream Host? Are you an investor or an employee? Their performance handling this issue has been unacceptable, bordering on negligent.

If you are an employee, I’m glad that there is some line of communications open. There has been absolutely none through official channels.

“Total loss of email content” means that the content of all email folders before Saturday are not accessible. I suppose they are still backed up, but have not even received any assurance of this.

The reason that we chose Dream Host in the first place was so that we would not have to focus on managing our email and web content. Having to forward to another service to insure this might work for a single technical person, but does not make any sense for a small business.

Just the fact that you are doing this is an indication that you do not trust Dream Host with your email content either.

Dream Host does have a post about the problem. It has not been updated in four days despite posts from several customers about how critical the situation is for them

#6

First response from a Tech support person came an hour ago after waiting since Saturday (it is the following Tuesday). The email said “we should be done with it in the next few days”

I have received two other emails from a non technical person in the last 24 hours also.

No progress, but at least some contact.

#7

My post was completely transparent and you’re reading more into it than exists. If I were an employee, my name would have the yellow Admin bubble after it. It’s employee owned, so I’m not an investor, either. As a customer not affected by this outage, I have not been following it closely. I use IMAP and store my mail locally which prevents data loss should the server suffer an outage.

-Scott