Well, the site if finally back online. I’m still moving a lot of the content over, but most of the vids are online again.
This whole debacle was caused by GoDaddy. MidnightDBA.com has been up and running for 2yrs and for no reason whatsoever, it just stopped working last week. None of my .net controls would work, so the menu and datagrids were all returning errors. I tried to see if something went wrong on my end, and even pulled in the best .net guy I know from work, and nothing fixed it. My work guy said that it seemed like GoDaddy was blocking .axd files and that’s why the content wasn’t working. I finally got on with GoDaddy support, something I always dread because every time I’ve ever called them they’ve been absolutely useless. Oh they’re polite, but every tech I’ve talked to with GoDaddy has been completely worthless and they do nothing but try to find ways to boot the call the second they start talking to you.
So anyway, I called support and no matter what I did I heard the same song again and again… “We don’t support custom coding.”
I tried and tried explaining to them that it’s not custom coding and that the site had been working for 2yrs. And they insisted that nothing was wrong with the server and that my code had to be bad. And to prove it they pushed a stupid little text file up and since they could read it, they used that as justification to try to close the case. So I had the ticket escalated and talked to a couple managers. The problem is with me at this point… for some reason I actually expected a different result. I didn’t get one though. The advanced escalation team fed me the same line of BS. I even went around and around with them showing them a simple test page, and how the site worked on 3 other web servers, but they refused to listen to the simplest logic. None of their support people know even the most basic principles of .net so they only gave me assinine ideas. And that’s if the idea were even an idea at all. The first guy I talked to went to his 2nd-level support guy and came back and said, “He said you have to push a ticket to your web.config file and do something I didn’t understand.” Now, I have no idea what ‘push a ticket to your web.config’ means, but even if it meant something just the fact that he couldn’t finish the sentence means something doesn’t it? He should have at least gone back to the guy to ask for more details, but he wouldn’t. He was more concerned with booting the call because he doesn’t support custom coding. And of course, I’m not allowed to talk to the 2nd level techs because I’m on a shared host and we’re not important enough to talk to the higher level morons. So I was refused and was only allowed to talk to 1st-level guys. And every time my tech would go away to ask someone something he’d be gone for around 30mins.
I did talk to one manager who actually got what I was saying though and she really went to bat for me. Unfortunately, she works in a sea of morons and there’s just no way she’ll ever make a difference. So after a week of being down, I signed up with another host, and amazingly the site came online right away. I guess my code just decided to work again and it really didn’t have anything to do with GoDaddy’s servers, huh? I mean, it must have been my mistake for thinking that code would run on their servers through whatever they do to the box. It certainly wasn’t because they were blocking .axd files all of a sudden. Because if they had for some reason decided to start blocking those file types, I know they would be responsible enough to tell their customers they were making a major change like that. So I know now that it HAD to be me. I didn’t do something right in my code. So the code that I thought was solid and had been working for 2yrs just stopped on its own. How could I have been so stupid?
This is a warning to anyone who’s considering putting their site on GoDaddy. If you do you’ll be sorry because they make changes on their servers without telling you about it and then blame you when something goes wrong. If I hadn’t gone to another host, my site would have to be completely re-coded to use nothing but static HTML or classic ASP. It’s ridiculous, unprofessional, and shows a real apathy for their customers. GoDaddy has proven to me again and again that they don’t give a crap about their customers. We’re just a paycheck to them. But you know what? If they keep this up we won’t be a paycheck much longer. CIHost pulled a bunch of the same crap and look what happened to them.
SO DON’T GO TO GODADDY FOR ANYTHING!!!
Sooooo, my own godaddy contract runs out in <60 days. Do you or your readers have any recommendations for a new host?
I just went to SQLServerMart.com. It’s only been a day so we’ll see how it goes.
I run some sites on A2hosting – fast responses to problems. My wife is a freelancer and getting the client off of GoDaddy is normally the first suggestion that is made.
I’ve had good results with Blue Host. Wait; GoDaddy doesn’t allow custom code? or just specific formats? That is so bizarre.
Well, officially they allow custom scripting they just don’t support it. And of course, custom scripting means anything you wrote, right? But unofficially they no longer support .axd files. That means that any of your .net controls that have any kind of expansion or the like won’t work. So datagrid, treeview, etc. are completely out. And forget 3rd party controls. They all use the same .axd under the covers.
DreamHost is excellent. I’ve called their support several times and they were actually helpful, knowledgeable and solved the problems.
I like the site much better now. It’s much cleaner.
Nice detailed post about why you feel Go Daddy Sucks. Your description does not sound out of the ordinary from any other company with bad customer service. Usually, the level of incompetence you experienced is the symptom of things going bad internally at a managerial level. Obviously they do not have the right staff on level 1 to provide an adequate level of support. It seems like level 2 doesn’t have the right attitude since they didn’t go the extra mile to solve your problem. It sounds like level 2 was engaged more than once by members of level 1 and both teams failed miserably. Now, the managers you spoke with have no excuse for failing to provide good customer service.
As a Go Daddy suit, I would have the person in charge of tech support contact you directly and bend over backwards to fix the problem and keep the account –even if it means a service upgrade. I will also find out if the shared hosting business is worth keeping or just a headache that is hurting the company’s image. Perhaps they are not making enough money with that service; therefore, their technical support staffing is not up to par for the task.
The irony here is that more often than not, these kinds of problems don’t reach the highest level of management until is too late. In contrast, companies with good customer service will demonstrate a culture of caring for their customers and making what is necessary keep their promise –which in this case is:
Go Daddy has become the world’s #1 choice for domains by providing innovative, competitively-priced products, delivering the highest quality customer service, and by always appreciating and listening to its customers!
Now I have to start my research again to find a reputable web hosting company to host my blog!
I am new to go daddy the last to times I called I felt like I was being talked down too by some snotty script reader!
Godaddy seems to be way slower these last weeks. We are thinking of switching to bluehost.com Not sure if this will be a solution since we are just trying it out with other domains first before we transfer our core site rnrassociates.com.
Its 23rd of March. Thsi should take a day or two. We will be testing it with trudimension.com. Basically a mirror page of rnr. I hope it works.
RNR
I host with GoDaddy…right now anyway. I am moving back with a hosting company that I have had much better success with. I don’t want to spam your comments, so I will just say the other company is recommended by WordPress and uses a primary color as the name of their hosting company… (wink, wink)
My site goes down EVERY SINGLE DAY. Never more than 10 or 20 minutes, but it goes down nonetheless. Customer service is bad…even reckless. The last time I called and told them that I was sick of this happening and it never happened with my other hosting company, and the rep told me that I should go back to using the other hosting company.
I have been with godaddy since 2002. My conclusive experience is that if you are not able to solve your own problems don’t count on them.
In addition if is true that they change their setup without warning, for example the stats of my site were just erased one day. When I did enquire about the missing data they told me that I had to backup my own data. So I lost 3 years of stats.
Each time I did try to ask for a technical info, I got a zombie returning my question.. without answering. Maybe a robot?
This year I am going to move either on another host, or set my own box here at the gallery.