Tucowed -- The Blog

Tucowed -- The Blog

A history of the crisis brought about by , from the viewpoint of one beleaguered user. The same incompetent bungling and failed leadership that led to the crisis continues with and .

Friday, February 01, 2008

"Customer Service Improvements"

It appears the outsourced Customer Non-Service copy-and-pasters and their infamous canned-message e-mail "support tickets" have been eliminated from NetIdentity — as a useless waste of resources, perhaps. Meanwhile, problems continue unabated among "ticket"-holding customers:
There is NO RESPONSE to any of my customer service tickets.
THE PROBLEM KEEPS HAPPENING.
PLEASE FIX YOUR EMAIL SYSTEM.


Since Jan, 26th I have three open tickets. I didn't get even an answer that someone has seen them at all.

So my email provider's customer service cannot be reached via email anymore?! Hmm, I think that's strange...
With all due respect, but I think putting your effort in creating this customer service center is a sign of setting wrong priorities. This is a serious problem you have had for over 1.5 years now, ever since the first "upgrade": You wouldn't need to worry about customer service — you wouldn't even need a "customer service" department/center — if you just provided us with an email service that works.
... it's great to see that my tickets from early December are still in there — "open".


What a joke. I have an outstanding ticket dating back to 28th December 2007, BHH-246051 if anyone's interested... All I want is an email account that works .. no fancy stuff, just a reliable POP3 email account. If you can't manage even something that simple, maybe it's about time to jump ship.

I have had two tickets open for over almost 2 weeks now, each with no response...

I cannot register to receive emails from my bank because the emails are not going through, not to spam, not to my inbox, no where. What the hell is going on? Why the hell is no one answering us on this. I have posted before I was having this problem as well. But aparently, as usual, no one gives a damn. Open a ticket, wait 6 months, don't get a response. Post your problem on here, don't get a response.
This is beyond pathetic.


Today, Feb 1 '08, I find that ANOTHER BANK has sent email to me that was returned to them as undeliverable.
This malfunction on the part of Domain Direct had to have happened within the last 48 hours.
THIS IS THE FIFTH TIME THAT I KNOW OF.


I'm getting "server not found" for mail.mydomain.com ... AGAIN. Like everyone else, I NEVER got a response to ANY of my tickets. Ever.

Like many others on this list, I am NEITHER receiving emails from reputable people/organisations that had no trouble sending to me before the last upgrade NOR am I getting any meaningful response from the trouble-ticket system.
. . .
I logged the problem on 8 December 2007. I got a reply from the trouble ticket process on 10 January (5 weeks later) - which was a diatribe of PoP /settings that was not relevant to the problem (the mail was being rejected due to host lookup failure!!!
Netidentity then closed the ticket!!!! without the problem being resolved.
I responded via the trouble ticket system on 14 Jan that the problem still existed and provided further details - NO RESPONSE
and again on 28 Jan - NO RESPONSE
The problem remains open with no meaningful attempt to resolve after almost 2 months!!!!! and no responses to information provided
PLEASE FIX THIS CRITICAL ISSUE


No comment, no acknowledgment, no, oh we know what the problem is, no the problem has to be on the bank system side, no we dont care what you have to say, no nothing. Just an ignorance of the issue we brought up.

No email in my inbox. No email in my spam. Made a payment to my credit card. Was told I would get a confirmation email. No confirmation email in my inbox. No confirmation email in my spam folder.
This IS A PROBLEM. I am doing things with my FINANCES and for some reason my bank emails are not getting through. But Tucows DOES NOT CARE, that is OBVIOUS. Why else would these problems be ignored?


I'm real tired of DD making problems for me.
I'm done with DD.
Good luck to all, including you folks at DD.
Hope you get your problems worked out.


I opened 8 tickets in the cust. serv. center on Jan 31st. They were there, listed as open, I got the automatic confirmation by email. I checked the cust. serv. center again on Feb 4th: The 8 tickets had disappeared, they are just not listed any more. Gone, without any info to me.
Indeed, that's efficient cust. service: Receive a customer's phone call, pick up the phone and hang up again right away: Great response rate, great rate of calls answered/agent, great reports, management is very happy. But not really helpful for your clients.
Should I open a new ticket for that?! I guess I don’t need to bother.
Since you praised your customer service center at least one day after my tickets disappeared, I suppose you weren't aware of the problems. Why does that not surprise me? So we now helping you to improve the email service we pay for plus your customer service tools?!?! We are great customers, or really, really dumb.
Btw. my two old tickets from Dec 6 are still there, now listed as "closed". Also very efficient: No feedback to me whatsoever, no comment online, and of course the problems described have not been solved.


What is the point of creating this customer service site if we will not have our tickets answered? What was the logic behind this? Did anyone put much thought into it or was it another hair-brained idea? As for calling into your call center, what good is calling if I'm on hold for 45 minutes? Obviously your customer service department does not have enough man-power to answer both phone calls or tickets through the support center. Choose your poison. Why not pick one type of support and scrap the other form, if that is the only way we can expect an expedient answer from you? You shouldn't introduce something new until your house is in order. Get the basics right first. Didn't they teach you that in school?

Is this another failed implementation by Domain Direct?

I have re-posted to trouble ticket FVU-607964 a recent hostname lookup error, return path, email systems and servers used, etc, etc. This is the same detailed information that I posted on the ticket on 10th January and which remains unanswered.

I had my first account with NetIdentity/Nameplanet sometime in 1997/8 and never really had any issue, since it has been taken over it's been nothing but horror and tears.
You came all in like a bull in a china shop (no pun intended) and started changing, modifying, removing a service we signed up for, don't you think it would have been nice to ask us first if we wanted this?
- functions removed and not replaced (where is my bad word filter)
- serious spam increase since you took over (not only somehow someone always seems to have a rough idea of who you email and about what and tailor their spam to it, and no its not a bug/virus/troyan on my laptop as my laptop is highly protected against any of this because of the nature of my work)
- emails triple/quadruple download to outlook (only from your service, my downloaded yahoos load just fine (1 only))
- emails that do not arrive in my inbox from "safe senders" who get a blocked message
- support tickets that are not answered!!!!!
2 MONTHS ++++ and still no reply to my support tickets, I am disgusted, is this the standard of the "new and inmproved" customer service?


What's going on here? I get a message saying my perfectly up-to-date account is about to expire and I'm in some kind of NetIdentity/Domain Direct deathlock with your ticketing system.

5PM on the 15th and again no feedback.

Support has been useless.
Customer Service Improvements indeed ...


First I don't get emails from a bank. Now I am not getting emails from my airline.
...
This is totally insane. I think my account is up for renewal next month. I think I am going to log into all my bank accounts and all the systems that I have registered this email address to and change it to one of my other email addresses and not renew my account. Why should I when this system STILL cannot be trusted!


I have been unable to receive email in any of my three accounts since 2/12 (apparently it is being returned to senders), and have had a ticket, GDI-169825, untouched since 2/15. Are you people still in business?
I get a notice that my account has recently expired, which, as I mentioned on the unopened ticket, is listed as active until 2009

There are other providers out there providing way better service and options for much less. In many things in life you get what you pay for. I am not so sure in DD's case.
This morning, a client of mine sent me 3 emails. One bounced back saying I had an illegal host/domain name. What is up with that?


What was 'supposed' to be the turn-around on tickets entered into the new system?
CKV-404216 on Feb. 1st regarding a email problem (no response)
LPA-837354 on Feb. 19, with regard to a question on Upgrading (no response)


Domain Direct introduces a new customer support site which is suppose to provide better service but it does not. They obviously do not have the man-power to handle all these problems. If you rely on Domain Direct for your business, you are better off transferring someplace else unlesss you can go months without an essential service. Have you also noticed that the this blog is hosted by Typepad? Why would Domain Direct not use Blogware? Do they not have confidence in the product that they offer? If they won't use their own services, why should we?

I decided to upgrade, by moving the domain to another host.
...
The so called customer service site is nothing but a black hole that never seems to draw any attention.


WHAT customer service improvements? I have entered two email tickets BOTH of which have gone completely unanswered -- in your new, improved, shiny, BS system.

Whoever stays with this company must have money to burn. Start transferring EVERYTHING away. For more than a year we've been promised a new and improved email service. And they give us this? Spam filtering sucks. Whitelisting doesn't work. Email that is inaccessible constantly. Forwarding that doesn't forward. And at a premium compared to other companies.

I just moved to hostpapa, what an amazing difference. As my other domains are up for renewal, I will also move them off. It would look like they are trying to fold up this company by killing it off one customer at a time.

I have two tickets, LOV-910956 and PHB-103872 that have had no response since Feb 5th.

I have submitted many tickets on how functionality has been reduced with their 'upgrade'.
Email editing is almost impossible with the tools available.
The timeout expires before a reasonable email can be created.
Keyboard entries can't be made such as delete or home or end.
Spam runs rampant -- personal filters don't work.


I have had zero responses and no resolution to my problem. I have not been able to recieve my email in 11 days. When I log in to webmail I have no inbox (I pray my email has not been lost, I use this account for business). Now it rejects my login all together. I have tried pulling it into Outlook but my login is rejected there also. And for the record, since the system "upgrade" my webmail has been so slow it's painful. (When it was working)

Evidently the new crew at NetIdentity Customer Non-Service is enjoying an extended holiday.

click here for a current Tucows stock chart,
 or just scroll down to the bottom of this page.

click here for a current Tucows stock "Price Performance" table.

Tucows corporate web-page.

NetIdentity is now Hover, so of course there are Hover system issues
 "We are again seeing issues with the main Hover system."

add me to the list of the unimpressed
 "no contact info on their home page, no help menu"

trying to get some support for the past 2 weeks and have had no reply
 "have been having trouble since trying to renew our domain"

Us Versus Tucows
 "a blog for those fed up with Tucows (NetIdentity, Domain Direct, etc.) and who are ready to do something about it"

from Cluster A to Cluster F**k
 "with this notoriously bad-luck strewn product"

You call this service?
 "This is the most disappointing service I have used in a long time... I have yet to see anything work right"

support may be in need of some quality control
 "waiting 5 days for a reply"

new "Processing Fee" at OpenSoReS from Tucows
 "Everyone here is tired of being nickle-and-dimed"

Tucows Incompetence
 "the ridiculous webmail interface that looks like a high school project.
You have shown your incompetence in the past.
This e-mail service is much too complicated for you.
Tucows = Incompetence with a capital 'I'
I opened a ticket a long time ago. Of course they did nothing.
SHAME ON YOU TUCOWS. SHAME ON YOU."


Downsizing at Tucows
 "laying off approximately 15% of its staff"

Tucows stripped of its Registrar Seal of Approval
 "the World Association of Domain Name Developers has voted to revoke the Registrar Seal of Approval awarded to Tucows"

NetIdentity Complaints - Bad service
 "has been down multiple days 3 times YTD"

I hate Tucows and NetIdentity right now
 "I am sick to death of the broken email, broken delivery, broken blog software, clunky interfaces, and general lack of investment in this service"

NetIdentity failure powered by Tucows
 "I will not renew my account expiring in 2009"

Tucows launches the brilliant, sophisticated YummyNames
 "Why settle for a lousy domain name? (like we did)"

Tucows… Come On!
 "Tucows just keeps the domain"

Tucows Now Selling The Expired Domains They Kept From Their Customers
 "it has started Yummydomains.com to sell tens of thousands of those domains"

Site contents deleted - use at your own risk
 "all the files of my original site were gone"

Domain Renewal - now taken by Tucows
 "They took it AFTER the domain was already renewed"

Tucows/Netidentity sold my domain name
 "their declining stock price is forcing them to make some quick cash"

Is it worth this frustration?
 "I will cancel this service as soon as the subscription finishes"

Giving up on NetIdentity
 "my site and all its content vanished"

Netidentity email failure/outage lasting for 4 Days
 "should be interesting to those considering using their service"

service has been down for almost a day and has been intermittent for 3 days

Virgin.net Knocked Offline by Tucows
 "a series of unanticipated hardware failures"

how exasperating these people are to deal with
 "It never works."

hanging out in the NetIdentity Office
 "I am a very unhappy NetIdentity customer."

after Tucows purchased Netidentity the service and customer service both simply fell apart.

the NetIdentity service has hit rock bottom since being taken over by Tucows

no reply to my service requests
 "service is one of those unheard-of words"

not able to access my paid-for email/web service
 "they need to get out of this business"

Tucows has a deferred problem
 "Tucows has lost 50% of its market value since July 2007"

net loss for the first quarter of 2008 was $1.1 million
 -- how a company loses money providing e-mail and domain names --

the cow is half empty
 "their market share has been dropping"

Tucows Revenue Falls Short, Stock Tumbles
 "disappointing Google ad revenues"

Tucows forever
 "how a woman feels when her drunk ex-boyfriend calls at 3AM saying he misses her..."

Nitido WebMail at DomainDirect Sucks
 "why do people have to break things that aren't broken?"

the future of Tucows Developer Blog
 -- in a word, "bleak" --

Why I’ll Never Do Business With Tucows Again
 "managed by incompetent, uncaring, and completely clueless people"

Re-imagining Our Email Defense Service
 -- just imagine it actually working! --

"it really sums up a lot of my approach to business"
 -- a nice, warm pile of irony --

Companies Must Understand There Is Nowhere To Hide
 -- even better irony from a Tucows VP --

Corporate Blogging Best Practices — by Ross Rader (!)
 -- a case study in irony --

Terror Goes Digital With Canadian Help
 "the website for al-Qaeda was registered to Contactprivacy, the anonymous-registration arm of Tucows"

Tucows Facilitating Hamas Propaganda
 "Canadian firms selling service to Hamas include Tucows"

the incompetence of Tucows
 "Tucows passing the buck"

NetIdentity business ways
 "is this the way to run a good business?"

Mismanagement, Bad Customer Service, and a Revelation
 "how not to succeed in growing your business"

NetIdentity Aren't Smart
 "really lousy webhosting"

This Isn't Customer Service
 "why do I have to fix this company's problem?"
This isn't customer service, Finale
 "The solution is simple. Find another company. Take your business elsewhere."

What's happening at NetIdentity?
 "having lots of problems"

So what's happening with NetIdentity?
 "My email has been down pretty much ALL WEEK"

Recent Blogrolling Downtime
 "We still have an issue"

Blogrolling no more?
 "odd that they would buy this service and then basically abandon it"

Blogrolling Update
Blogrolling Update 1

Netidentity Email Migration Nightmare
Netidentity Email Migration Nightmare: Update

NetIdentity's "Reliability Report" from the Better Business Bureau
 "BBB Rating: Unsatisfactory"
 -- note the
"Additional DBA Names" section, listing "Glazen Online Services", run by notorious spammer David Glazen; and "Loanclub.biz", a fraudulent online lender --

Spamfree, virusfree NewNetMail: Jaap Verduijn's answer to the /

using Gmail to read other accounts
 "Gmail instead of the crappy webmail interface that NetIdentity provides"

NetIdentity Transition Survivors Group (NTSG) — Google
 "to discuss the recent transition disaster"

NetIdentity & Tucows "migration" fails miserably
 "by far the worst example of customer service"

Tucows screws up NetIdentity and NamePlanet migration
 "a new, horribly-designed e-mail system"

Netidentity E-mail Fails
 "a service provider has stopped providing service"
Netidentity E-mail Crisis Ends for PR Consultant
 "Netidentity, owned by Tucows, went from bad to worse"

Mailbank.com (NetIdentity/NamePlanet) Email Migration — WikiPedia
Tucows Talk on WikiPedia

System migration may be the most dangerous thing Tucows could ever do
 "our technical team is working on fixing this issue"

there have been too many issues with your Tucows migration

When Business Processes Fail
 "this problem is endemic"

The end of explorers@whyte.com
 "even worse since they were bought by Tucows"

Netidentity/Tucows email Price Increase
 "they are a novice in the email space and completely messed this one up"

NetIdentity extended downtime
 "this one has gone on for months and is beyond real"

No More BS Ross — FIX IT!
 -- The Unintentional Comedy --

Bandwagon Missed
 "Tucows bought NetIdentity and has since screwed up the whole system"

Why Have I Moved My Website?
 "Netidentity email service is virtually unusable"

a foolish spam policy
 "not very good for email"

NamePlanet — the worst customer support
 "We've had a few problems"

NetIdentity, please stop
 "I don't want it any more"

Ok, so I got a blog
 they screwed up the transition and made my whole site go "under construction"

Tucows resurfaces!
 "I pretty much gave up and forgot about Tucows"

Receiving Problems With Your NetIdentity Account
 "There are a number of reasons"
Sending Problems With Your Email Account
 "the problems are common"

Do yourself a favour and avoid NetIdentity and any service provided by Tucows
 "I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO RECEIVE MY INCOMING E-MAIL MESSAGES"

Dude, where's my website??
 "Whoops!!!"


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