Webmaster forum - Page-Zone sucs

Author

Page-Zone sucs

plato

2007-01-10, 7:37 pm

If you're thinking of using page-zone as a web host....save yourself the
heartache.... been with them for over 5 years....but they have gone to the
pack....prices are good BUT service is crap, knowlwdge of operators is
really bad and you will spend more time with problems than free of
them...OHHH I should mention the positive...they are more than happy to
ensure your monthly subscription is received and will respond by cutting
your access off instantly once it doesn't arrive.....within the day... so be
aware if you credit card expiry day nears the end come a
subscription.......LOOK ELSEWHERE

Blinky the Shark

2007-01-10, 7:37 pm

plato wrote:

> If you're thinking of using page-zone as a web host....save
> yourself the heartache.... been with them for over 5
> years....but they have gone to the pack....prices are good BUT
> service is crap, knowlwdge of operators is really bad and you
> will spend more time with problems than free of them...OHHH I
> should mention the positive...they are more than happy to ensure
> your monthly subscription is received and will respond by
> cutting your access off instantly once it doesn't
> arrive.....within the day... so be aware if you credit card
> expiry day nears the end come a subscription.......LOOK
> ELSEWHERE

For the last month or month and a half, there have been plenty of
reports here that the changeover to new servers had been a very
rough process for their users. Blinkynet just went through this
last weekend and was down for a few hours. When it came back up my
site root directory had been renamed so some scripts didn't work
until I did some tweaking, but that's the only issue that was
created. I received two lengthy emails from them regarding new IP
addresses and reminding me that I might have to change my DNS
pointers (I didn't have to). I think that earlier in the process
they weren't doing that, and sites were for all practical purposes
just disappearing without warning or explanation, so it looks like
that is at least getting better. On the down side, I hear they're
not responding to trouble tickets. I've been considering leaving
PZ, myself, as a result of this weeks-long mess.

BUT, as to the credit card expiration, here's my experience: Mine
expired and was replaced in March and the next time I had a Page-
Zone charge on it, I got an email from them saying that they weren't
able to bill that card and asking me to call them with information
on where they should bill me. I called them with the information on
the new card, and nothing bad happened. My site wasn't affected. No
access was cut off.

--
Blinky
Killfiling all posts from Google Groups
Details: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

Steve Greenaway

2007-01-10, 7:38 pm

Kermit the Frog stuck a mic in plato's face, who said:
>If you're thinking of using page-zone as a web host....save yourself the
>heartache.... been with them for over 5 years....but they have gone to the
>pack....prices are good BUT service is crap, knowlwdge of operators is
>really bad and you will spend more time with problems than free of
>them...OHHH I should mention the positive...they are more than happy to
>ensure your monthly subscription is received and will respond by cutting
>your access off instantly once it doesn't arrive.....within the day... so be
>aware if you credit card expiry day nears the end come a
>subscription.......LOOK ELSEWHERE

I had used Page-Zone in the past, and started using them again within the
past month. Previously, if there was a problem with my credit card, an
email communication was all it took to sort out payment, without any
interruption to service.

I signed up 3 weeks ago based on past experience. After I signed up I
noticed the talk about the troubles they've been having. The only problem
I had was FTP connectivity from home, and they helped me confirm that it
was indeed my ISP and not Page-Zone causing the problem. Both tickets that
I had in were anwered fairly quickly.

I really can't complain about them at all.

Now if I could just figure out what's wrong with my rookie PHP scripts...

--
- Steve
The bagpipes: the missing link between noise and sound.

William Tasso

2007-01-10, 7:38 pm

Fleeing from the madness of the Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada jungle
Steve Greenaway <macfisto@engsoc.org> stumbled into news:alt.www.webmaster
and said:
> ...
> The only problem
> I had was FTP connectivity from home, and they helped me confirm that it
> was indeed my ISP and not Page-Zone causing the problem...

Please do share ... what did the ISP do to hinder FTP?

--
William Tasso

http://williamtasso.com/words/what-is-usenet.asp

Steve Greenaway

2007-01-10, 7:38 pm

Kermit the Frog stuck a mic in William's face, who said:
>Fleeing from the madness of the Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada jungle
>Steve Greenaway <macfisto@engsoc.org> stumbled into news:alt.www.webmaster
>and said:
[color=darkred]
>Please do share ... what did the ISP do to hinder FTP?

I never gathered all the details, but basicly it all got blamed on a proxy
server somewhere. In the end, the ISP changed some setting somewhere, it
works now, I haven't thought about it since. :)

--
- Steve
The bagpipes: the missing link between noise and sound.

no.spam@oceanfree.net

2007-01-27, 11:09 pm

On Thu, 7 Dec 2006 21:40:38 +1100, "plato"
<platoTAKETHISOUT@telpacific.com.au> wrote:

>If you're thinking of using page-zone as a web host....save yourself the
>heartache.... been with them for over 5 years....but they have gone to the
>pack....prices are good BUT service is crap, knowlwdge of operators is
>really bad and you will spend more time with problems than free of
>them...OHHH I should mention the positive...they are more than happy to
>ensure your monthly subscription is received and will respond by cutting
>your access off instantly once it doesn't arrive.....within the day... so be
>aware if you credit card expiry day nears the end come a
>subscription.......LOOK ELSEWHERE
>

I have also been with Page-Zone for about five years. Yes, it can be
frustrating - VERY frustrating - at times! But I'm still with them
because they are just SO cheap and I'm SO patient!! I guess the
lesson is you get what you pay for.

I'm a reseller in the GMT time zone, with Page-Zone's servers in
Denver, Colorado (since the recent migration), 7 hours - or nearly a
full business day - behind my clients. Most problems tend to be
during the local (US) business day. So when services have gone down
it's generally been after my clients have gone home for the day and
they're back up by start of business the following day (GMT). So I
get away with a lot! In five years I think I've only ever been
contacted by a client once because their website was down. I'm sure
Jim wouldn't thank me for that endorsement but that has been my
experience - take it or leave it.

Page-Zone has had problems getting and holding on to good technical
support staff. At the moment they've got good staff but how long that
lasts is anyone's guess. After 5 years with PZ, I've come to the
conclusion that they don't pay well so they rely on students or anyone
who will work for peanuts - or the love of IT - to clock up experience
before they move on. There's THAT lesson again!!

In the past 5 years with Page-Zone I have had credit cards expire
suddenly but it has never been a problem. A simple e-mail explaining
it was an oversight on my part always guaranteed continuity of service
until I got things sorted out at my end. Full marks to PZ on that
score!

Bottom line: from my experience Page-Zone is great for someone like me
- a small web designer who prefers to have some control over site
hosting, generate some modest, annually recurring, revenue and doesn't
have very demanding clients.

I first heard about Page-Zone in this forum 5 years ago (thanks
Heidi!), checked it out and signed up. Yes - there have been problems
from time to time. But they have all been sorted out, without too
much pain to me.

The bottom line, as far as I'm concerned, is that, despite the
occasional problem, I've had a broadly a positive experience with
Page-Zone over five years. I'd certainly recommend them to anyone
looking to hosting sites that are not absolutely, 100
% mission critical.

Blinky the Shark

2007-01-27, 11:09 pm

no.spam@oceanfree.net wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Dec 2006 21:40:38 +1100, "plato"
><platoTAKETHISOUT@telpacific.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> I have also been with Page-Zone for about five years. Yes, it can be
> frustrating - VERY frustrating - at times! But I'm still with them
> because they are just SO cheap and I'm SO patient!! I guess the
> lesson is you get what you pay for.
>
> I'm a reseller in the GMT time zone, with Page-Zone's servers in
> Denver, Colorado (since the recent migration), 7 hours - or nearly a
> full business day - behind my clients. Most problems tend to be
> during the local (US) business day. So when services have gone down
> it's generally been after my clients have gone home for the day and
> they're back up by start of business the following day (GMT). So I
> get away with a lot! In five years I think I've only ever been
> contacted by a client once because their website was down. I'm sure
> Jim wouldn't thank me for that endorsement but that has been my
> experience - take it or leave it.
>
> Page-Zone has had problems getting and holding on to good technical
> support staff. At the moment they've got good staff but how long that
> lasts is anyone's guess. After 5 years with PZ, I've come to the
> conclusion that they don't pay well so they rely on students or anyone
> who will work for peanuts - or the love of IT - to clock up experience
> before they move on. There's THAT lesson again!!
>
> In the past 5 years with Page-Zone I have had credit cards expire
> suddenly but it has never been a problem. A simple e-mail explaining
> it was an oversight on my part always guaranteed continuity of service
> until I got things sorted out at my end. Full marks to PZ on that
> score!

That was my own experience with my own credit credit card expiration --
I got an email saying there was a problem; I responded with new
information; no problem at all. I reported that here, in a reply the
same post you just replied to, a month and a half ago.

> Bottom line: from my experience Page-Zone is great for someone like me
> - a small web designer who prefers to have some control over site
> hosting, generate some modest, annually recurring, revenue and doesn't
> have very demanding clients.

On the other hand, I wasn't pleased, recently, when as part of the
server moves, they renamed my root directory without notifying me.

--
Blinky RLU 297263
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

mail@page-zone.com

2007-01-27, 11:09 pm

no.spam@oceanfree.net wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Dec 2006 21:40:38 +1100, "plato"
> <platoTAKETHISOUT@telpacific.com.au> wrote:

> Page-Zone has had problems getting and holding on to good technical
> support staff. At the moment they've got good staff but how long that
> lasts is anyone's guess. After 5 years with PZ, I've come to the
> conclusion that they don't pay well so they rely on students or anyone
> who will work for peanuts - or the love of IT - to clock up experience
> before they move on. There's THAT lesson again!!

Our starting pay is in the lower to mid $400/wk. Depending on where you
are from I don't know if thats good or bad. Around here it's on par
with a decent job someone might get at more than 50% of the local
businesses. But with us, the office is not manned 24/7 and techs work
remotely about 80% of the time. We haven't had very good luck hiring
remote techs, and it isn't easy getting local people in this small
town. One person quit in 6 years. The rest that aren't working here any
longer were let go for various reasons, mainly my fault for not hiring
the right people in the first place, and lack of ability to demand more
of them. I more or less watch their performance slide until I decide to
let them go. The few that work here are pretty good though and it's
pretty tough work being on the front lines of tech support, as it also
sucks to need tech support due to a problem.

mail@page-zone.com

2007-01-27, 11:09 pm

plato wrote:
> If you're thinking of using page-zone as a web host....save yourself the
> heartache.... been with them for over 5 years....but they have gone to the
> pack....prices are good BUT service is crap, knowlwdge of operators is
> really bad and you will spend more time with problems than free of
> them...OHHH I should mention the positive...they are more than happy to
> ensure your monthly subscription is received and will respond by cutting
> your access off instantly once it doesn't arrive.....within the day... so be
> aware if you credit card expiry day nears the end come a
> subscription.......LOOK ELSEWHERE

I'm pretty sure we haven't shut someones account off within the day
when payment failed. The usual routine is, we email you, then waita
week, email you again, wait another week, file it in the "suspend
account" pile, and when that gets to a certain amount we do them all
and closely watch for incoming tickets that have to do with suspended
accounts. That's the way our billing person does it. Back when I did it
myself - it was last priority, and most of the time the hosting would
just become free from then on. Which is why we had to hire someone to
just handle billing.

saz

2007-01-27, 11:09 pm

In article <1169528061.547973.238260@v45g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
mail@page-zone.com says...
>
> no.spam@oceanfree.net wrote:
>
>
> Our starting pay is in the lower to mid $400/wk. Depending on where you
> are from I don't know if thats good or bad. Around here it's on par
> with a decent job someone might get at more than 50% of the local
> businesses. But with us, the office is not manned 24/7 and techs work
> remotely about 80% of the time. We haven't had very good luck hiring
> remote techs, and it isn't easy getting local people in this small
> town. One person quit in 6 years. The rest that aren't working here any
> longer were let go for various reasons, mainly my fault for not hiring
> the right people in the first place, and lack of ability to demand more
> of them. I more or less watch their performance slide until I decide to
> let them go. The few that work here are pretty good though and it's
> pretty tough work being on the front lines of tech support, as it also
> sucks to need tech support due to a problem.
>
>
I'm not telling you how to run your business, but no matter where you
live, 450/week is terrible for a tech position. Decent help requires
decent pay, and at $450/week, you will never find decent help.

You really need to consider doubling that figure in order to find the
caliber of help you need, or in the long run you may continue to lose
customers.

FYI - I'm a former customer that tried to stick with you during your
problem months of October and November before getting fed up in December
and leaving. I can honestly say that you were great for my first three
years, but you really went downhill fast. The lack of support, and the
failure to answer my critical help desk tickets in less than a week (NO
EXAGGERATION) drove me away. Decent help at a decent pay (along with a
ticket response in a timely fashion) would probably have kept me as a
customer.

As I've said here before, when you truly want to keep a customer,
communication is paramount. Bad news is better than no news.

Karl Groves

2007-01-27, 11:09 pm

saz <saz1958@nospammersexcite.com> wrote in
news:MPG.201fd40ff850d1939898c7@newsgroups.comcast.net:

> In article <1169528061.547973.238260@v45g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
> mail@page-zone.com says...
that[color=darkred]
anyone[color=darkred]
experience[color=darkred]
you[color=darkred]
any[color=darkred]
more[color=darkred]
to[color=darkred]
> I'm not telling you how to run your business, but no matter where you
> live, 450/week is terrible for a tech position. Decent help requires
> decent pay, and at $450/week, you will never find decent help.
>
> You really need to consider doubling that figure in order to find the
> caliber of help you need, or in the long run you may continue to lose
> customers.
>

It constantly amazes me the crappy pay companies provide and then act
surprised when their employees are imbeciles. $450 a week? That's $11.25
an hour. That's what a highschool kid gets paid in the Sears Tool
Department, not what qualified tech support gets paid.

--
Karl Groves
http://karlcore.com
http://chevelle.karlcore.com

Gwin

2007-01-27, 11:09 pm

Karl Groves wrote:
> saz <saz1958@nospammersexcite.com> wrote in
> news:MPG.201fd40ff850d1939898c7@newsgroups.comcast.net:
>
> that
> anyone
> experience
> you
> any
> more
> to
>
> It constantly amazes me the crappy pay companies provide and then act
> surprised when their employees are imbeciles. $450 a week? That's $11.25
> an hour. That's what a highschool kid gets paid in the Sears Tool
> Department, not what qualified tech support gets paid.

unfortunately, it is.
low pay and long hours is sop in the hosting industry.
when companies sell hosting at 10gig/100gig packs for 5 bucks, there's
not much room for payroll.
the only smart option is to outsource, but like web hosting buyers
looking for the cheap deal, the company often outsources the same way.

mail@page-zone.com

2007-01-30, 9:59 am

On Jan 23, 9:13 am, saz <saz1...@nospammersexcite.com> wrote:
> In article <1169528061.547973.238...@v45g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
> m...@page-zone.com says...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> live, 450/week is terrible for a tech position. Decent help requires
> decent pay, and at $450/week, you will never find decent help.
>
> You really need to consider doubling that figure in order to find the
> caliber of help you need, or in the long run you may continue to lose
> customers.
>
> FYI - I'm a former customer that tried to stick with you during your
> problem months of October and November before getting fed up in December
> and leaving. I can honestly say that you were great for my first three
> years, but you really went downhill fast. The lack of support, and the
> failure to answer my critical help desk tickets in less than a week (NO
> EXAGGERATION) drove me away. Decent help at a decent pay (along with a
> ticket response in a timely fashion) would probably have kept me as a
> customer.
>
> As I've said here before, when you truly want to keep a customer,
> communication is paramount. Bad news is better than no news.- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -

Occupation: Customer Service Representatives (SOC code 434051)
Period: May 2005 Area name Hourly median wage
Ohio $13.33 /hr

Thats the statewide average for that job, but the same source of data
say's the median wage for the jobs that account for 80% of the
employment around here (metal and plastic workers) says that their
median wage is over $18, and I know many people in those jobs who
start out at about $11.00

Occupation: Metal Workers and Plastic Workers, All Other (SOC code
514199)
Period: May 2005 Area name Hourly mean wage
Ohio $18.44

With tech support - especially starting out, we need to train almost
every aspect of the job, then after that you can pretty much work
from your house, which is a pretty good deal compared to the overhead
people have in travel costs, day care costs and whatever else it costs
to work in locations other than right where they live.

And you are correct, we have a fairly good history of "communication"
complaints. Moving 13,000 websites individually to another data
center, including renumbering of about 250 IP's wasn't an easy feat.
But it's done. We no longer are constrained by leased servers, and
should have done it that way from the start. The overhead is about 1/2
of what it was, and the reliability is 100 times greater. Where we
were rebooting a server due to high load unresponsiveness, or
replacing a hard drive every 12 weeks, we now have no high loads, and
still replace a drive every twelve weeks but it is un-noticeable to
our customer due to the fact that the drives are in a redundant
mirrored array.

We are back in the black after a 3 month stint of losing customers,
and still working to improve. But the changes we made last fall were
to save the company, which surely wouldn't have lasted another year on
that equipment. The plan was originally a slow transfer, and
immediately after those plans were drawn up, servers started having
catastrophic failures almost weekly, the data center we were in was
doing moving of their own and simple things like reboots were taking 4
hours to even be looked at.

I am fully aware that the past 6 months we have had a ton of extremely
pissed off customers and former customers, and I hate that fact. And I
appologize.

mail@page-zone.com

2007-01-30, 9:59 am

On Jan 25, 3:18 pm, "Red E. Kilowatt" <kilowattREM...@aww-faq.org>
wrote:

"If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys"

I've never seen a solid connect between rate of pay and competence.
And venture to guess life is a lot more like this:

"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of
incompetence"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_J._Peter

Red E. Kilowatt

2007-01-30, 9:59 am

mail@page-zone.com <mail@page-zone.com> wrote in message:
1170084580.910954.239500@m58g2000cwm.googlegroups.com,

> On Jan 25, 3:18 pm, "Red E. Kilowatt" <kilowattREM...@aww-faq.org>
> wrote:
>
> "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys"
>
> I've never seen a solid connect between rate of pay and competence.

That's because there many other variables that the screening process
must take into account, but the fact remains that higher pay will
attract and help to retain higher-quality employees.

--
Red