Mami Rant: Fat Cow, Fat Fail!

I have been communicating with my web host since yesterday.  First ticket opened was to request either a backup of my site or instructions on how to do it.  I receive back information on my ftp site (but not really b/c they included someone else's ftp address).  The next few tickets had to do with clarification on that. Now, I can access my ftp site but that didn't answer my original question so, here I go replying to the ticket again. I'm not too concerned because I was busy most of the day anyway and figured I'd handle it when I finally sat down in the evening (provided I didn't fall asleep yet again! This co-sleeping thing is killing my productivity!).

Long story short, I finally ask for about the third time to either get a backup or have them backup for me.  I get the instructions, go to the page and it throws an error asking me to contact support.  I suddenly felt like I was playing the helpdesk version of who's on first.  Wouldn't you know it, I respond with the error in the ticket and get the following response from these masters of customer service (aka asshats):

Hello, 

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. Currently there is no backup available for your account. Hence you are experiencing the issue. There is known issue with some of the storage backups. So the 'Site Backups and Restore' tool is not listing any backup files. Hence the backup is not available for few weeks. Within few weeks you should be able to view the backup. 

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to reply through Support Console. We are available 24x7. 

Sincerely, 

Dumbass McGee (<---not real name) Technical Specialist

So, let me get this straight: you jerk me around most of the day not giving me the information I need, you send me to the backup and restore page that you KNOW has issues and you NEVER WARN ME THAT THIS FUNCTIONALITY THAT I PAY FOR IS NOT AVAILABLE?! Is that about right?  Um, that's not acceptable.  I am shocked that they've known this issue and have not bothered to notify their customers!  Here's my response:

That is NOT an acceptable response. I pay for backup services and backup services need to be available to me when I need them not when you fix whatever bug you have not bothered to fix earlier. 

If it is a "known" problem, why was a global not issued in order to advise your customers. I CANNOT wait a "few" weeks. Please let me know what steps are being taken to remedy this situation immediately.

I haven't heard back from them yet (I sent this out @ 7:57 a.m.).  What kind of shop are they running over there? I just don't understand. It is not that difficult to offer good customer service.  Just fucking pay attention and notify your customers of basic information they might be interested in: LIKE THE FACT THAT THERE IS NO BACKUP FOR THEIR SITE EVEN THOUGH THEY PAY FOR IT.  And let me mention that over the last few weeks my site has actually been completely down (the first happened on the day where I had a guest post on Keeping Up With The Joneses, mind you!).  Their own site was down during that outage and it wasn't until they came back up and I contacted THEM that they mentioned they were having issues.

I'm done with them.  I want them to give me my backup and then I will take my business elsewhere!  Have you heard of Host Chicken? That's where I'm going!  Want to know why? Because they have cluckin' reliability and that, my friends is what I need!

Image used with permission from Hosted Chicken

Update: I received this after publishing the blog:

Hello,

Thank you for getting back to us.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. I have noticed that we have already filed a bug report to the Engineering team for the problem you reported. As a result, no further contact will be made through this ticket but your issue will be resolved at the earliest time possible. 

If you have any further questions, please update the Support Console. 

Sincerely, 

Asshat Johnson (<---not real name) Technical Specialist

Basically, this should read: we don't give a damn about you and will be closing this ticket because it's of no consequence to us.  We don't want your business and have no time to address your issue any further.  Thanks.

After the posting of this blog, I received the following email about 3 hours after:

Hello, 

I wanted to follow up with you on this issue and let you know that a backup of your site has been placed into your Home directory in a file called backup.tar. I do apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have created for you. Please let us know if you need any further assistance regarding this matter. 

Sincerely,  The Clean Up Guy that read your blog (<---not real name) Support 

Read: Stop blogging about us! Here's your damn backup and shut up! Please.