Up until last night.... [Resolved]

[dodgeboard]

Well, up until last night, I've had pretty good service from HG. But then this morning, the nightmare happens.

I open my sight (a Xenforo forum site) only to get an error). What the heck. It appears that I have some mismatched files. How could that happen. Last upgrade I did was on the 16th when I upgraded 1.0.2 to 1.0.4.

I contact the host via live chat to ask if they did a roll-back. The support person says "No - we have not done anything to your server."

I contact Xenforo - Mike says "You have old files on your server - you need to upgrade them" How could I have old files? I upgraded them on the 16th and it's been working fine for two weeks.

I contact HG again, via the email ticket system EBP-15810565. Once again I am told, NOTHING HAS CHANGED (Josh C). These communications continue because Xenforo is telling me that HG must have done a roll-back to cause this.

Still in contact with Xenforo Mike says to upload my 1.0.4 files over the top to correct the issue, making sure to overwrite the old files. I log in to Filezilla and upload all new files, taking care to overwrite the old one ones. Then I check with Mike. He tells me there are still old files on there. I end up doing it 6 times over the next 3 hours, to no avail. I am checking the filezilla (which I have used a jillion times) to make sure everything is set to "overwrite".

Finally, I convince the Xenforo developers that I have done what they asked and that something must be wrong with their script. Mike from Xenforo asks for my credentials and logs in to upload the 1.0.4 files to my site - IT WORKED!!

Come to find out, I was using my IP address and Mike used the sitename.

SO what happened? Apparently HG upgraded my site overnight, changed the IP address, put an old backup on the new server (from prior to the 16th) and then failed to identify the problem after I reported the issue. THen they left the old server online and accessible at the old IP so I was trying to fix the wrong site.

They were less than worthless. I am just appalled that this could happen and HG fail to identify it on numerous support tickets.

Now I am told that "the confusion" is my fault for not signing up for notifications. HG, you got some big cajones!

It wasn't until I identified the problem that HG fessed up:

I apologize for the confusion. In an effort to keep our servers state of the art we have been migrating servers to new chassis. In most cases this is a seamless transition, however, there are times where this causes some confusion. This appears to be one of those time. Last night we migrated Gator55 to a new chassis. Since the move was to an entirely new server the IPs on the server changed. This is the cause for the "roll-back" symptoms you were seeing. The correct IP for your account is 216.172.171.51.

So why was the change made? The old Gator55 was an older dual core server with 4G of RAM. The new server is 16 core with 12G of RAM. This is a much more powerful server and provides all of our customers with an improved hosting experience.

To prevent any confusion from occurring in the future we recommend you sign up for notifications at http://forums.hostgator.com/usercp.php Please note you will need to sign up for the forums to receive notifications.

I apologize if this has caused you any confusion. I can still forward this ticket to Brent if you would like me to.

Best regards,

Anthony Kempski

Notice that I AM THE ONE that is confused. 5 times you told me NOTHING WAS CHANGED!

Very disappointed in HG!

[GatorJMartin]

Good Evening,

First and foremost I'd like to apologize for the frustrations you're facing currently. I've spent time just now reviewing your ticket regarding this matter. I replied to that ticket with information regarding the migration process.

I've also requested that you provide more details in regards to what has taken place since this migration took place. Once I have more details, I'll be better able to determine what exactly did take place and how we can fix this. I'm very confident however that we'll be able to get these problems corrected for you. Look forward to speaking further with you.

Best Regards,

[dodgeboard]

Please DO NOTHING to my site - It is FIXED NOW, no thanks to HG.

After several hours getting nowhere with HG and getting the "We made no changes" line, I went to the software developers Kier and Mike. They found out what had happened and fixed the problem. Up to that point HG repeatedly replied that nothing had been done with/to my server. This is what is so frustrating to me. If you are really interested in following the event timeline as it occurred, I invite you to read this thread, which details things pretty well:

http://xenforo.com/community/threads...pgraded.18303/

Like I said the thing that frustrates me most, is the support respondents apparently could not find out that my server had been swapped out and that the IP had changed. Forget about letting me know ahead of time...I couldn't even get a "what happened" after the fact.

Then I'm told to subscribe to these forums to "lessen my confusion in the future". How dare HG say that to me. This method would require me to read through 16,800 posts that don't apply to my server. And let's forget about the fact that nothing was or has been posted about gator55 having any sort of outage.

I mean, it just gets crazier and crazier. I've told myself that I will wait until tomorrow to post my review over on WHT Forums. Cause right now, I'm still to pissed to remain civil and write a non-emotional review.

What I want to hear right now is; "You're right, we dropped the ball. We should have notified you, we copied old files, procedure was not followed, we've identified the problem, some heads rolled, and we've implemented some new procedures to keeping this from ever happening again. We messed up your valuable data, things could have been worse but thank God it wasn't. Here's a three month credit for all that you've been through today. Something along those lines.

I don't want to hear why it's my responsibility because of (insert lame reason here). That's just going to make me more pissed.

[GatorJMartin]

Good Afternoon,

I'd like to first apologize again for the troubles you experienced. I attempted to call you today to discuss this all further, however was not able to reach you.

I've instead replied to the open ticket you have with us discussing the specifics of what took place, as well as what's being done to ensure something like this does not occur ever again. I'm quite confident through further communication we'll be able to resolve this completely for you and most importantly to your satisfaction. My apologies again for the troubles and I look forward to speaking further with you.

Best Regards,

[dodgeboard]

Thank you, Josh for taking the time to investigate this and for also trying to personally reach me. I have read your letter and I have to tell you, it went a long way to alleviate my frustration. You very accurately identified exactly the events that occurred and I appreciate you not kicking the responsibility back on me. This is exactly what I was needing to hear.

As an engineer myself, I am fully aware that sometimes things just slip through the cracks. You assured me that you are using this incident to improve on your processes in the future and I can accept that.

Everything you said was exactly what I needed to hear to feel better about the situation. Thank you for your honesty.

In all fairness, Hostgator has been an excellent host. I've been with you for I think 7 or 8 years and in all that time, HG has only had a couple issues like this (with me).

I was pretty upset when I wrote this and taking a step back, I can now see that for the most part, you guys have done a very good job. After reading your letter, I can honestly say, we are well on our way to forgetting about this incident. Nobody knows what the future holds, but for now, I plan to stick with HostGator for the foreseeable future.

Thanks again for your letter. It meant a lot.

Dodgeboard.com Administrator

[GatorJMartin]

Good Afternoon,

It was my pleasure to look into this further for you in an attempt of offer further clarity of what took place. Thank you as well for your understanding regarding the entire matter. Definitely not something we like to see, though when issues do arise we make every effort we can to ensure they're resolved in a timely and efficient manner.

We look forward to continued business with you for years to come! If there is anything at all I can assist you with, feel free to contact me.

Best Regards,