Tyme Posted June 23, 2002 Share Posted June 23, 2002 Before I rant I want to thank everyone who emailed me about my father. He is on the mend. For those of you who did not know, he had a stroke, then had a blood clot in this lung. It had been an uphill battle the past week and a half but he is on the mend and it looks like he will be ok. Everyone who email me was so sweet! Thank you for the kind thoughts and prayers. Ok that being said, I am responding to these threads: https://www.neowin.net/bboard/showthread.ph...&threadid=33405 https://www.neowin.net/bboard/showthread.ph...&threadid=33413 The customer wanted to upgrade their account. Mike dealt with the customer and explained how to upgrade. Now for those you you who are not familiar with the control panel H-Sphere, it has an integrated billing system in it. We do not use it to charge people but we really can not shut it off either. All of our clients are billing using PaySystems, so if a odd charge shows up in the control panel, it may delay a use of a feature (like adding an email account) but it does not get charged on their credit card. I have yet to find a program I trust enough to automatically charge credit cards. While upgrading another account, we found a HUGE billing issue. When an account is upgraded the control panel spits out an invoice and we zero it out. No big deal. Since the upgrade to 2.1, when you upgrade, it spits out a bill, then another, then another. Next thing you know, their account (although not charged) ends up being a really high number, and I (or Mike) have to go through and edit it out again, and again and again. So Mike emailed the client letting him know that there was a billing issue, that PSoft was working on it, and expected to have it completed by Friday. We wanted to get a full back up of the site first, then upgrade on Sat. Which is exactly what was done. Client did not get the email, so he thought we were ignoring him. Client was upgraded yesterday and thanked Mike and asked some more questions which Mike responded to. End of story. Neowin is not a HostTyme support area and never will be. Nor will any other site but my own. What it did was put Neowin in an awkward position because they do not want to jeopardize their hosting. I try to please everyone, but it is impossible. For the most part everyone is happy, so that makes me happy. We experienced a huge growth spurt because of the plans we offer. The multiple domain hosting is extremely popular cause it saves people money and it is easy to administer. The support site now uses Tingle's script and it is much easier to update, so I will begin updating the support site more. One thing I should have done was assigned someone to do it besides me, and that is where I lacked and I apologize for that. Since the switch to the new script, only Tingle and I have admin access (the script is not done yet) so no one else can post updates. I am going to talk to Mike and see if he would mind posting in my absence. That way, if for some reason a customer does not get a response, they can check the support area. In this case, he would have seen upgrades were delayed and would have known when without having to talk to us - if he looked at the site. I am also going to implement Tingle's script exclusively over all the sites (even the HostTyme site) so it will be more interactive. I do want to hear from customers because that is the only way you can really know if your service is good. I do not like forum support because it does not give me the stats I want. I want to know how long it takes for tickets to be answered. Which techs are answering them, how many they answer, how long it takes. I want to know who is slacking. That is why a trouble ticket system is being used for support and one is being beta tested for sales and billing. I want those stats and forums simply were not made for that. With the implementation of Tingle's scripts, it will give clients the opportunity to interact as much as they want and I will still have my stats, so I think it is a good compromise. In truth, a client or potential customer should not have to go searching to find the facts (the real deal) - the facts should be available on the site in question. Every company has ups and downs and a company should not try to hide that. However, the proper place for it is on the site itself, not a third party - in my opinion - which is why I am making the changes I am making. I refuse to be one of those sites that remove posts (we all know of sites who do that) because they are not glowing remarks. If I screwed up, I screwed up. I will admit it, learn from it, and make arrangements so the same situation does not occur again. My nick is not Tyme2BReal for nothing. :) It blows my mind how some companies try to hide stuff like that - like it isn't going to come out anyway? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CustardFD Posted June 24, 2002 Share Posted June 24, 2002 Nice to know there are at least four sane people here :) Sorry to hear about your dad, but I'm glad to hear he?s on the road of recovery. Thanks for the response, even though the problem doesn?t involve me. It just gave me part of that warm fuzzy feeling inside to know that the host isn?t going to pull the plug because of people disclosing that there are problems at his end :evil: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shockz Posted June 25, 2002 Share Posted June 25, 2002 Sorry to hear about your dad. :(. He will be in my prayers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahodes1 Posted June 25, 2002 Share Posted June 25, 2002 Sorry to sound repetitive but I also am sorry to hear about your dad, he will be in my prayers as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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