City Update

[prevail]

Based on your "M" & 70% how much longer?

[lloydcodrington]

Dear City Users & Support Team,
I personally was very pleased with the service that Hostgator had given me over the past seven months or so. Indeed my other server in London England's Docklands had some type of outage every two to three weeks lasting on average 45minn to an hour. That and the fact that they wanted more money to create each and every MySQL database was the reason I spread my clients web sites about.

I was about to start some work last night at 10:45PM GMT when I found out the system was down and was then told it would be an hour or two before it was recovered from it's error. After three I live chatted again to support and was told 'another hour'. After two this time I contacted support again was told 'about two hours' this time. So after waiting almost seven hours I contacted support again and was informed that the outage was so bad backup were going to have to be restored.

But now that the restores are done I see the whole of my client and hosting setup is lost. All my package setup is lost, all my features list for clients cpanels are lost, all my client files will need to be completely re-uploaded, I am looking at around two days work because I can't even access the newly created sites until the dns propagates. My Fantastico setup is now also corrupt. It no longer correctly displays my installed add-on scripts.

All that Hostgator backed it seems up was my base account, just my web site and not my hosting setup. If my whole package was backed up as I would have and indeed did expect was happening I would not now be contemplating another sleepless night restoring my clients website. I had just moved another site from the Docklands server to the City server because it was running with zero defects for so long.

Now with all this work just restoring let alone before I start to play catchup on the work I wanted to do sixteen hours ago I am looking at some very unhappy clients and some serious telephone apologies. And all Hostgator think we deserve for being loyal customers is one months credit for our troubles. Alright they say the are committed to us and for seven months I have had not a single problem, even when things were wrong because they would deal with it and kept to their estimated time to repair. This time I waited eventually all nigh and still now find that I may not sleep until next week if I want to help my clients find their web sites.

I think Hostgator should really think about some exceptional compensation package for clients effected by this city outage because it seems like it was a catastrophic failure when you have to change the whole chassis and as a consequence Hostgator's clients have to work flat out just recovering data.

This is Hostgator's moment to show us how they appreciate us. With the issue as catastrophic as is was they deserve credit for having the data centre completely change chassis and recover what they have. I can't even imagine dealing with the amount of support calls they must have had in these past 18 hrs. But now Hostgator can stand out from the rest by saying for instance: we are sorry and are giving you guys, our loyal clients, this by way of apology.

Thanks in anticipation
Lloyd Codrington - Bluespot Network Ltd
Typing in his sleep because he had a funny kind night (GMT Time)

[prevail]

They have not even gotten around to re-establishing my base account yet... you mean I will have to redo the hosted accounts... WOW! This is a unbelieveable.

[ltrump]

Why dont you all wait until all of the restores have been done and THEN take a look at things?

As for wanting MORE than what you are entitled to, WHY?? What makes YOUR problem any worse than anyone elses? You are in business giving YOUR customers the service that THEY want. HG is in business giving THEIR customers what THEY want. The ONLY guarantee that HG has ever promised was a 99.9% uptime guarantee and a 30-day money back guarantee. They are living up to their end of the guarantee by giving you credit for the months that didnt have 99.9% uptime.

You say that for 7 months you didnt have a single problem with the server, and now that hardware failures have pretty much toasted your server, you EXPECT something more for YOUR troubles?

Give me a break.

I can totally understand the frustration that you all are feeling, but its ONLY 24hrs out of 1 month that the server hasnt been working. If you really want to feel silly, calculate how much money you are actually out for that 24hrs. It is WAY less than the amount of your monthly payment. Yet, HG is giving you a FULL refund for the month. They could just give you the little bit of money that you are actually out, but no, they give you the full month.

And before you go off on how many customers you have lost or how many phone calls you have to make to your customers. THATS PART OF BEING IN BUSINESS. Stuff happens all the time. Hardware only lasts for so long. And guess what? NONE OF IT CAN BE PREDICTED.

If you had ANY idea of how computers work, or how intricate everything is inside a computer, you would realize that this in no way could have been prevented. HG does what they can to prevent issues, but on occasion, things like this will happen, and you need to understand this, and you need to convey this to your customers and HOPE that they understand it.

You are in a customer service oriented business. Get with your customers, explain that this is NOT something that happens regularly (and you have 7 months of proof) and that you will do what you can to get things back to normal in the quickest amount of time.

Coming here, and trying to guilt HG into giving you more than what you deserve is just plain ridiculous.

You chose to be in this business, whether you understood what could happen or not. DEAL WITH IT. This is what you do. Now quit trying to bully HG into giving more than what you deserve and get back to your customers, fix the problems that you can fix right now, and get happy that HG is atleast fixing the problem and not just closing down that server for good.

You arent out any money.

[prevail]

GIVE ME A BREAK!!! It all depends I guess on the level of customer satisfaction that you feel is important.

While YOUR operations may not be out any money...both mine and my client's who rely upon this service are. Don't try and state things as FACT that you have absolutely no clue about! It makes the rest of your arguement less compelling.

We rely upon their promises and commitments and inturn make our own based on them. You may find this acceptable service and maybe your clients do as well .

I find it appalling and my clients do as well!

[lloydcodrington]

Just for your information Mr Itrump

I don't promise any of my clients any uptime guarantee, but as soon as I got the months credit and the forth estimated time of recovery I emailed them all and informed them that I was adding a months free hosting to their package for the problems caused.

No one asked I just gave. You see I'm not greedy and did not try to profit from this catastrophe. I bet you'd tried to sell tent to Katrina victims. Well not me.

If someone kept giving you the wrong information to pass on to your clients then to keep your clients happy your should expect better from your supplier.
Read carefully before you comment mate. I think that Hostgator have helped me well and said so. But that does not mean that if something goes wrong in a business relationship you site back and take it without defending yourself and your clients that effectively pay your bills.

It's not about guilt trips, else I would not have complimented the work they have done. It's not about profiting from catastrophes else I would not have passed on the one months credit within an hour of the credit being confirmed. It's a point of adding value to your own morals.

My moral standpoint tells me that life is not all about grabbing money its about helping others where you can.

And read the message I wrote and judge the tone. It was a letter of suggestion not threats of withdrawing custom or anger at the issues causing the problems. It was a message that should get them to be more honest about issue ( I was told four times it would take 'another hour or so'). I passed these estimates on to my clients via email because they wanted to know when what they paid for was going to be delivered. As I am not at the sharp end I take my information from the guys that are and until last night it was perfect estimates which is why I passed on last nights estimates.

And by the way I am a computer engineer and know how to build them so don't comment about who you don't know. VERY RUDE MY LITTLE FRIEND

And Mr Prevail WELL SAID

[lloydcodrington]

Originally Posted by prevail

They have not even gotten around to re-establishing my base account yet... you mean I will have to redo the hosted accounts... WOW! This is a unbelievable.

Hi Prevail it seems like I have got something wrong earlier. I have just looked in my whm and found an account there. It is not fully complete but apparently the system is begin fully restored to Sunday last including all your clients files. So from Sunday to error start time data has to be uploaded yourself. The rest will be recovered.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[prevail]

Thank you for correcting that. Glad to see you got most of it back. Hopefully they will work their way to me sometime soon.

[lloydcodrington]

Hi Prevail,
What letter does your account start with? I have clients in the o's and got m's around three hours ago.

Lloyd

[prevail]

"N" hmmm doesn't that beat all thanks for the info.

Hi,

City is currently going through the P usernames. We expect the restore to complete this evening. We apologize for the delay and thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter. The majority of the websites are online but once again I will not rest until the last account is completed.

[prevail]

Get this.... It is not the account name that you registered but your log in name they are using to bring everyone up. Remind me to change my login to AA I just call support and they told me there are only 10 left to be brought up.

Of course mine is still offline.

Hi,

Unfortunately Reseller Username's cannot be changed due to a limit by cPanel.

[prevail]

Next time go in reverse order

[lloydcodrington]

Think you better check that numbers don't come before they start working down the alphabet.

Lloyd

[eth72]

Hi HG,
Many thanks for the hard work you're doing... I'm very appreciative that my customers are understanding and not stressing me out and of course am paying the same courtesy right back at ya Just a couple of questions - my MX records that I've modified long ago for some of the domains that are getting restored are set back up as the defaults. Do you think that will get restored at the very end or should I start readjusting them now? Also, some of my ecommerece sites and mambo sites aren't working as they're getting php.ini errors, etc... Hopefully they probably start working as the restoration completes? I'm guessing you're restoring the home directories first and then maybe everything else (/usr /etc, etc. (no pun intended) at the end? Thanks again for doing what I feel is the best job you can do under the circumstances!

Scott

[prevail]

Not all the accounts have returned. What happened to them?

[etouffee]

Originally Posted by prevail

Not all the accounts have returned. What happened to them?

Same here. I got my reseller account and most of my domains, but one is still not showing up. Please tell me it's not lost. BTW- we're at 24 hours downtime for that domain. I know you're doing the best you can, but 24 hours...yikes.

[GatorChad]

Good news... the restore is over 90% complete now.

[lloydcodrington]

Originally Posted by GatorChad

Good news... the restore is over 90% complete now.

Hi GatorChad,
On my site I created a couple of web sites because they were created after the Sunday backup you are restoring. But I can not now access them. Do you have any idea why?

Lloyd

[etouffee]

What's the status? I'm apparently the last one on the list or something. 27 hours down, and counting.

[eth72]

Originally Posted by etouffee

What's the status? I'm apparently the last one on the list or something. 27 hours down, and counting.

I'm still waiting for an answer to my MX questions, etc., but optimistic... Also have some remaining domains, an "s", "t", and a "v" which are still down...
Scott

[dutcheagle]

I'm afraid you are not the only one. My reseller domain is still down. (user name starts with U) also two other domains with V and one with W.

This restore takes a ridiculous amount of time.

I think they need more Gatorade or a better backup/restore infrastructure. Next time they better isolate the box do a restore without running websites and be done with it quicker. Having users on a server while restoring takes way longer. I only hope i will not be part of the "next time"

[esl]

I am not on City but I have read over this thread and I would like to complement HostGator on the way they are handling this situation. I love companies who honor their guarantees. Keep up the good work HG!

[esl]

Originally Posted by lloydcodrington

Hi GatorChad,
On my site I created a couple of web sites because they were created after the Sunday backup you are restoring. But I can not now access them. Do you have any idea why?

Lloyd

If they were created after the backup they are restoring you will need to re-create the account. As Serra mentioned, you should not create accounts when they are restoring a backup. Wait until the backup is complete to see if the newly created ones show back up.


If you have opened a trouble ticket related to this issue please be patient, as HostGator can only do so much at one time and it is especially hard to help users on a server that is still being restored with technical related issues. Please wait until the server is fully restored to open a bunch of technical trouble tickets, time can solve a lot of problems.