Blog Problems with VON - Again
20090124.0800 - Cecilia noticed my blog post and contacted me. VON has made repairs. Things are improving. Although things are still not working smoothy and I’m finding places where data was lost I’m cautiously optamistic that the site is back. Some incoming email and comments were lost as well as two posts so if I didn’t respond to you, contact me again.
20090125.1128 - Test: If this appears then my web site is working once again.
20090127.1706 - I’m still having problems with some of my domains not functioning on VON.
20090128.0739 - Problems continue. It has now been seven days since I first reported the problems to technical support and the original problems are not yet fixed.
20090129.0749 - All problems seem to be resolved.
20090205.0348 - Not all is well. I’m still getting intermittent site failures that bring down the web sites and email. This latest time all of VON/4HostHelp seemed to go down too. Not a good sign.
I’ve had a bad day. This is a rant. This is not a rant about the USDA, government or technology. This is a rant about bad service.
VON is my web host. They also go under the name of Vision Online Networking, VONetwork, Vonetwork.com, Vonetwork.net, LiveWired, Cecilia Hanif and who knows what else. This is where you connect to when you call up one of my blogs.
VON used to be a very good web hosting service. The operative tense is in the past. It was sold some time, about a year or more ago. Since then the quality of service has greatly declined. I STRONGLY recommend NOT using VONetwork.
At this point I am extremely pissed with them. They have wasted a large part of my day. They did this for several days back in December. Again earlier in the fall and several times periodically before that since they’ve taken over what used to be an excellent web host.
The latest problem was that back in December they moved my server, with virtually no notice. At that time they asked me to update my nameservers, the info that directs your request for NoNAIS.org to the appropriate web server. Today it stopped working. Again. I contacted them and a different person at VON had me switch the nameservers. Apparently she had me switch back to the old server. The result being that for a while it appeared that everything since mid-December was lost and all the mail since then came in to me in duplicate loading down my network and local disk space forcing me to sort through it again.
To say I’m pissed is to put it mildly. VON is screwing up over and over again. I need to switch to a new web hosting company but my problem is lack of time. So, who ever is responsible for the number of hours in a day, please increase it.
Another issue is that I pre-paid VON, just before they changed hands, for a multi-year contract. Don’t do that. Now that they have my money they apparently have no incentive to provide excellence in service. I hold no power in negotiations, other than to write here about how badly they are treating me. So buyer beware, don’t pre-buy, especially not from VON or any of their associated businesses or people.
The other problem is that I’ve been through this before, twice, with other web hosting companies since the early ’90s. They’re great for five or ten years and then they get sold or graduate from college and the service goes down hill. This means that simply switching to another web hosting company is not a total solution. It just puts the problem off again for a few years.
*sign*
