Tucowed -- The Blog

different name, same old problems

2009-07-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

NetIdentity is now called Hover, but the customer-dissatisfaction beat goes on:

Hover is blacklisting the IP of a reputable email host

Three days on and not even an acknowledgment of the problem, let alone a fix.

I got no email until I went in and reentered the same email address (it claimed it was there). It was all being held in my post hover email account and tagged as spam - everything!

Due to the changeover Hover is getting thousands of tickets for help...

This new company is crap.

Some Customers are having issues logging into the hover admin.

welcome to Hover

2009-05-27T22:43:00.000-07:00

Like it or not, Domain Direct accounts have been transferred to Hover, and customer reactions have leaned heavily into the "not" direction:

was dumped over to this new Hover thing with no warning or explanation or direction. I stumbled my way through the renewal process and later found out their is no hosting at the new "Hover".

I'm transferring all my domains elsewhere because of Hover's interface.

I'm moving everything I have over to another company. And I'm recommending that all my web clients do the same. The new hover.com site really sucks. My recommendation is to stay clear of these guys.

Ross responds: "some people are going to find the transition difficult."

reactions to the response:

NO CUSTOMER SERVICE at Hover.

there are many customers that have been led astray.

the whole thing has been badly fumbled

I have transferred all my domains away from Hover several weeks ago. Today I checked my bank accounts and noticed a charge from Domain Direct. I tried calling, but was on hold for 30 minutes

Still no phone number reachable from the front page. Still sucks. Old number still in excess of 1 hour hold times.

Your customer support is the worst I have ever experienced. For my last two support tickets, the first reponse took 141 days (DAYS, not hours... DAYS) to get a response... I recently submitted a new ticket (apparently I don't learn) for the SAME ISSUE and it's been 9 days with no response.

they started withdrawing support services, wait times got longer.

I have tried in several ways to get any response from Hover -- so far with no success.

Quite simply -- the Hover.com services suck ass. I've immediately migrated the majority of my domains off of Hover...

My admin contact is gone to ground and Hover will not reply to my emails. All I want to do is give them money to renew the domain -- yet they do not seem interested. CANNOT WAIT TO GET AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY.

they can move NetIdentity to Hover and raise the price... WHAM!! You are now charging $10 per year more... and that is way more than I wanted to pay. Half the time my email has not been working properly.

you have been arranging the deck chairs on your "Titanic" for a long time and nothing has changed at Hover.

I got no notification of the switch or changes. I am unable to log into the site with my old credentials and have been waiting 4 days to have my issue acknowledged. If this is the level of customer support I should expect, I am moving my domains away ASAP... that's if they ever get back to me.

dialogue with Ross Rader at Hover

2009-02-25T21:33:00.000-08:00

Rhonda Henderson asked: "What is your strategy?"
"if Tucows is trying to get out of this business, wouldn't it be better if you just informed us?
I seem to be paying more for less services.
... if the idea is to run your business off, just tell us."

Ross replied: "we had to streamline and simplify our offerings"

Nicolette Bonner-Mielke asked: "If you guys continue to have massive outages, and now getting touch with a real person is more difficult than ever, what have you accomplished??"

John Moffat replied: "thank you for your post"

Ross claims: "I have seen some accounts with 10 domains that were paying $6.82 and some with thousands that were paying $15"

Rhonda Henderson: "I have never paid $6.82 for a domain nor $15.00 .
All the domains I handled have been charged at $34.99 or $49.99 .
I AM paying more for the same services!
Actually, I'm paying more for "less" services.
I don't see where things have improved at all."

Ross: "Any discounts that you would have had with our prior services will be honored with Hover"

James Roy replied: "This is not true at all. I had been with IYD for 7 years and had been paying $8.37 per name. Now I pay $9.00 and $15.00 per name. See ticket #3293 and 9730. This is ridiculous."

Jason Axley wrote: "worst, slowest service EVER to respond to helpdesk requests...
... you also don't have enough phone support"

-- Department of Truth and Falsehood -- Truth
Jon Clarke: I removed your posts from this topic...

Falsehood
Jon Clarke: ... and applied posts to the topics that you were asking about.

How long does it take?

"Restructuring" at Tucows

2008-11-21T15:36:00.000-08:00

Tucows has laid off 15% of its staff:

Our thoughts are with the people who have left.

Those laid off include their Email Service Director, Rohan Jayasekera, who was asked:

Tucows has decided they don't need an Email Service Director? Perhaps they intend to abandon that aspect of their operation, because (a) they are so inept at it, and (b) it provides so much less revenue than foreclosing, warehousing, and reselling domain names, yes?

Read his terse response: Don't Mess With the Rohan!
Very uninformative, as always with Tucows staff. It appears you can take the man out of Tucows, but you can't take Tucows out of the man. Rohan has stated he won't respond to criticism of Tucows now that he's not an employee any more -- but he didn't respond to them when he was an employee, either! This is another hallmark of Tucows and their employees: lack of response.

irony of the year

2008-10-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

From the TucowsInc website:

Elliot Noss, President and CEO, will present [something, who knows?] at the RBC Capital Markets Growth Conference

Maybe he'll show them how to lose 50% of a company's capital valuation in six months, the way Tucows has done.

problems, problems...

2008-10-18T03:32:00.000-07:00

Sending Problems with NetIdentity

Receiving Problems with NetIdentity

Frequently Asked Questions about NetIdentity

time for downtime... again

2008-10-10T00:33:00.000-07:00

News from Customer "Service":

Customers may experience intermittent connection timeouts when accessing email via POP/IMAP or Webmail.
Our Email Administration team is currently investigating the cause and we hope to have services fully restored as soon as possible.

Webmail/POP/IMAP access is gradually returning to normal

We apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing.

customers who were affected may still see some delivery delays

we apologize for any inconvenience that these access problems may have caused.

the fix for the previous access issue with webmail/IMAP and POP was unsuccessful

customers may still be having difficulty logging into their accounts

please accept our apologies for the inconvenience

we continue to experience problems

customers may still be having difficulty logging into their accounts

please accept our apologies for the inconvenience

we hope to have full access restored as quickly as possible

customers may experience degraded performance as in difficulty logging into their accounts

please accept our apologies for the inconvenience

access to accounts has been up and down

please accept our apologies for the inconvenience

customers will experience an hour or two without access

customers may experience slowness, difficulty logging into their accounts

please accept our apologies for the inconvenience

customers may experience minor performance difficulties and perhaps service unavailability including trouble logging into accounts

you might also find a "service unavailable" error message when trying to log into your webmail account.

please accept our apologies for the inconvenience

customers will continue to experience difficulty logging into their accounts.

they will also receive a "service unavailable" error message when trying to log into webmail. Please accept our apologies for the continued inconvenience.

we are still experiencing some connectivity issues

most customers will now notice they do not have access to their mailbox.

we continue to experience difficulty with the DomainDirect and NetIdentity email service.

many customers will notice they do not have access to their email accounts.

NetIdentity and Domain Direct email and webmail continues to be offline for the majority of our email customers. I cannot begin to apologize for the poor service that we have provided you with.
...
I am deeply sorry about the inconvenience we caused you and the poor service we've provided.

More apologies, more outages.
It's like watching a train wreck in slow-motion.

another NetIdentity e-mail outage

2008-08-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

On 13 August on his blog, Thomas Crampton wrote:

the company I pay for email service suddenly shut down without warning.
They still give no estimate of when they will restore service...
NetIdentity: Lousy, unreliable service and bad customer support. Shameful.

Comments from the discussion that followed:

Since the association with Tucows and Domaindirect, it’s been bad.

I recommend forwarding your emails to another service

I’ve had it with their lack of reliability, non-existant customer support, and horrific UI. (They recently changed their UI four times in one day!!!)

I’m dumping NetIdentity and moving to another service.

now nearly 4 days of outage and NO HOPE of it being repaired?

Tucows have been shamelessly milking NetIdentity ever since their purchase. Their customer service level is appalling, the general service is unreliable, they are refusing to improve basic products, and this latest episode is just another normal sorry example of how they are continuing to take peoples money without providing even a basic service.

-- reasons for the outage --

we’ve identified the source of the issues and implemented a fix. Mail service is being brought back online as we speak. What we don’t have an estimate for is exactly when each specific user will start receiving email again.

the issue is affecting less than half of our customers...

we charge for our services, but in exchange for this, we strive to provide the best possible service...

33% of the folks that are having problems should have full service restored sometime overnight.

each restoration will take approximately 24-36 hours (or more)

the average hold time yesterday was approximately 7 minutes

-- reactions to the excuses --

if you think good service is taking 7 minutes to answer a telephone call, I understand exactly what you think good customer service is.

Longstanding NetIdentity clients such as myself know that since Tucows turned Netidentity into a cash cow:
a) There have been no significant improvements in functionality.

b) Some functionality, such as Webmail, is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than it use to be.

c) Your response times to email queries are a joke, with an incredibly laborious process which is clearly designed to stop people raising queries in the first place.

d) When I have raised service issues, you have NEVER resolved the problem.

all I’m getting is “GATEWAY TIMEOUT” errors from Netidentity.com. Can’t even get in to see the latest “update.”

I’m going to migrate over the weekend, send out all my “change of address” notices, and then forget about NetIdentity, Tucows, the lot…

This outage was definitely the last straw for me on netidentity. On my to-do list for this weekend is to find a new provider.

The weird thing is, we have to discuss this on some guy’s blog. There is no forum on the NetIdentity website where customers can communicate with each other. Why not?

Ross, your company stinks and you are damaging your career by continuing to be associated with it.

Since Tucows took over, they have been an absolute disgrace. Any other business would have failed, but I guess the lock-in allows them to stumble on.

Anyway this latest multi-day inability to provide a basic email service is it for me. I am goneburger, despite the huge inconvenience associated.

I emailed/posted numerous messages detailing my problem with no response until finally I make contact with someone or something at “customer service”. Said entity starts offering completely hopeless and useless advice...

That’s really funny that Tucows management is answering customer complaints in this blog but not directly to customers?

Tucows took over the service in 2006 it never worked properly since.

I’m not about to rely on Tucows until they drop me in it again.

Sorry Ross, but something just doesn’t jive with the explanations given for the spam.

Nothing jives with the explanations from Tucows for their failures.

"we're working on it"

2008-07-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

On 9 July, NetIdentity General Manager Ross Rader wrote:

Domain Direct, NetIdentity, IYD -- all suffer in the usability department. Domain Direct is probably the worst of the bunch -- very confusing, unclear, and not very welcoming, but NI and IYD aren't much better.

The good news is that we're working on it.

The bad news is also that they're working on it. They've been working on it for two years, and it's still a mess.

"growing pains"??

2008-07-18T21:21:00.000-07:00

On 17 July, Chris_C at Tucows wrote:

Thanks so much for your patience as we've been working through our growing pains.

"Growing pains"?? Tucows acquired NetIdentity more than two years ago, since which time the only thing they've been "growing" is a bad reputation for crappy service and non-response. The part about "pains" is correct, but only as it applies to NetIdentity customers.

2008-07-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

NetIdentity deals with negative customer comments in its blog:

Comments

The comments to this entry are closed.

Comments were shut-off moments after the posting was listed --
no negative comments, therefore no problems!

Tucows seeks cash infusion

2008-06-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

Tucows has hired the domain-auction service Afternic to sell off the domain-name assets of NetIdentity as those domains expire. Here is the 12 June announcement on BusinessWire:

Beginning today, thousands of daily expired domains from Tucows are automatically available for auction on Afternic where the public can bid on and purchase names through a simple and easy-to-use interface. The addition of an estimated 100,000 or more premium domains each month to Afternic inventory will further enhance the selection of domain options for Afternic’s small business customer base.

Tucows penny-stock has risen a few cents on the news. This may be an opportunity for some former NetIdentity sufferers to buy their own name domains through Afternic.

Tucows upgrades HughesNet e-mail

2008-05-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

The recent "upgrade" by Tucows has incapacitated e-mail not only for NetIdentity sufferers, but also for those with HughesNet satellite service:

many customers today still lack access, which HugheNet has outsourced to TuCows since last year.

I guess that their "upgrade" from Tucows isn't going so well.

If they'd given the job to two cows it would be better than what we're getting now...

The apparent lack of planning that went into this Email upgrade has resulted in an Email service degrade. This clearly was an operation that was not thoroughly planned, tested (an under statement), and implemented.

Always good to have somebody messing around with software when part of your livelihood counts on reliable email.
There is no excuse for what is happening with this update.
There are a lot more subscribers than just me who rely on this email service for some aspect of their daily lives. What a huge inconvenience this is.
Very poorly planned, tested, and implemented.
Unacceptable.

STILL no explanation of why their email service has sh*t the bed.
How incompetent is this?

they have 'canned' answers that are clicked as response, and try to call customer service, choose option 1 for e-mail and you get a weak recording then immediate disconnect.
Lousy customer service!

Customer service told me they did the upgrade because the old client didn't work anymore and they had to make the change.
It took these morons four days to recognize they had a problem that should have been apparent after 4 hours of having their call center flooded, not to mention that even a little testing would have proved their pointy-headed decision was wrong, wrong, wrong.
On the downside, e-mail is still not working on my mail client and the old Web client is throwing server errors.

Looks like another triumph of Tucows non-planning.

Email Non-Access Issues

2008-04-22T23:07:00.000-07:00

E-mail has been around for a long time -- it's just not "rocket science" any more to provide reliable e-mail service to people -- except for Tucows:

Customers cannot access their email via Webmail or Email Software.

Terrible customer service...

I had a great experience with Domain Direct until a couple of years ago, when suddenly the level of service became drastically bad.

your utterly untrainable spam filter before the POP/IMAP boxes has been an unmitigated disaster.
Your inability to fix POP3 access from mobile devices after the migration increased my dissatisfaction.
This outage and lack of responsiveness is the last straw.

I am paying more and receiving seriously degraded service.

As in all the prior efforts it seems the cows STILL do not NOT have a rollback plan when they make changes to the system.

GREAT JOB TUCOWS!!!! and as usual no one answers support email

The past weekend has been a prime example that everything is still the same old, ineffective, mismanaged, ... bunch of whatever over at DD.

-- reasons for the outage --
Tucows Wholesale Email team scheduled maintenance for Friday night. They made a mistake during this maintenance which caused third party DNS providers to cache an incorrect DNS record.
We did not receive proper communication from them that there was an issue until Monday morning.
Domain Direct and NetIdentity does not run a full support team on the weekends.
When one of our upstream providers has problems, we receive thousands of phone calls.

-- reactions to the excuses --
Scheduling dangerous maintenance for Friday night and then not fixing problems afterwards -- what kind of project management is that?
I started to move all important emails away from NetIdentity. I should have done that as soon as Tucows took over. It's been a nightmare ever since.

The mistake was sophomoric. This is a premium pay service that many of us depend on for personal, business, and organizational services.
your customers don't care about the inner workings of your company and its divisions. They care about service and quality. Blame it elsewhere if you wish, but the fact that there is internal strife only dimishes whatever hope that the client-provider relationship will be successful.

I have to agree with a lot of the other posters. Isn't it time we dump this Tucows disaster?

NetIdentity has been absolute crap just before and since the switch.

I still get reports of email (to me) being rejected by your service, and yet there appears to be *nothing* I can do about it since all you do is ignore my reports.

No response... what a surprise!
This is a complete farce.

Today is the day my email expires and I am going to let it expire.

Same old issues, different day.

"New Email Features"

2008-03-13T01:44:00.000-07:00

Customer comments about the "new features":

The session timing-out automatically drives me crazier than anything else at the moment. I have seen other users ask about this before but they never got responses.

a good 5% of the messages in the spam folder were false positives. I was pretty shocked - especially because I can see no way of turning the spam filter OFF. ARRGH!!
I have no idea whether the webmail spam filter 'learns' when I click 'not spam'. Apparently it doesn't because it's still catching a lot of false positives from addresses I have had to 'rescue' from its clutches. ABSOLUTELY INFURIATING.
So now I have to check my mail client AND the webmail to be sure that I get all my mail. PLEASE FIX THIS.

Last night, I lost a message with a "Sorry we are unable to send this message at the moment" error.
Critical bugs like this should be the priority over "clickable links." How many months/years do we need to wait for a fix?

How many years does it take to get things right?
We pay a premium for these accounts. And we get this crap. I used to be an affiliate and sell these accounts -- now I no longer get commissions because they canned the program. And I now have to hear crap from my clients that I sold the accounts to for the crappy email service.
As my client accounts have been coming up for renewal I am pulling them because the quality of service has gone down and there are no benefits to stay.

I did not receive any reply concerning my complaint from February and my webmail account is not accessable anymore -- I assume they finally made up their mind realising that they are unable to handle a business like that and retire?
You offer a very expensive service and I really can't see any value for my money.

There are more and more people complaining but nothing is being done about it.

Please -- I just want it to *WORK*.

day 5 of timeouts, repeated password requests, web mail not available, no server at "mail.domainname" -- of course system status is "everything's wonderful"

Ever since NetIdentity switched over to their "new and improved" interface your webmail service has totally sucked. No one has ever responded to my support issues since you've upgraded your system - with the exception of receiving a canned response on one occasion that was no help at all.
99% of the time that I've attempted to log into my "new and improved" NetIdentity webmail account to check my inbox I get an error message.

I first noticed it was out on Thursday the 20th. Try to log in, get:
"Service is unavailable, try again later"
I'm hoping someone checks the service tickets on Saturday and notices that a lot of people cannot log in. I'm guessing that the service team at NetIdentity uses some other mail service, so none of them noticed that their system is out.
Great stuff, I wonder how much they would have to charge to have a mail system that works as good as, say, any of the free services?

I try to download my mail and just nothing happens.
...
You suck, guys, sorry.

I echo Jen's statement. You guys suck.

I agree with all the responses above - the service has seriously deteriorated...

I am paying money for this email. I am not a beta tester, and the reliability of this email system is horrible.

I will no longer, at least at this point, recommend this service to anyone.
...
Hopefully some day Tucows will either bring dependability to this service, or sell this to someone who has the ability to make this service dependable.

My account have been locked for two days even though I paid. And no one answers anything. I probably wrote 15 tickets to every department in the last month, and still nothing.
I think it is time to move on...

Your service is totally unacceptable. I wish for the days when the MailBank owned NetIdentity -- I hate Tucows! -- They don't care.

I have an "open" ticket that I submitted back in December, so I wouldn't count on ever receiving support. I can't imagine a worse customer service system.

I opened ticket GXL-125929 on December 22 about this issue and have never received a single response. (I've changed the ticket to "escalated" status twice in the past month.)
I've had two web/mail accounts with NetIdentity since 1999. The old webmail worked just fine. I don't know why I am paying more money since TuCows took over for lower quality service and product that does not function properly.
I received a renewal notification a few days ago. It had a line that if I had any questions regarding my account, to write to "renewals@netidentity.com". Since I clearly wasn't getting any answers on the three-month-old help ticket, I gave that a shot and asked why I should renew if I am not receiving support. I wasn't shocked to discover that was an invalid e-mail address. Yes, they are sending out renewal requests with bad e-mail addresses.

They can't even get their own email to work so it bounces.

It's a complete disaster.

Upon calling, I get the greeting that the support line is experiencing higher than normal call volume. I suspect that is a permanent greeting. The estimated hold time was 20 minutes. So, while I ate my lunch, I stayed in the queue. After 48 minutes of listening to "relaxing music" and recorded reassurances, the line was disconnected.

I called support over 40 days ago regarding my hosed-up email account and was told by the rep that it would be fixed shortly. Nothing has happened. I've posted 3 different tickets in the "support" system with no response too.

I FINALLY got a reply back for a ticket about Webmail being down that I submitted on 12/23/07. And guess what? It was an obnoxious auto-reply that asked ME to respond to the ticket. WOW, that is SO USEFUL!

Forget workarounds. Forget support tickets. FORGET YOU, DOMAIN DIRECT.

webmail is DOWN. Yay DD! You're the best! I love being cut off from friends and family before a holiday travel weekend.

My WebMail and POP servers have been down for since 8PM yesterday.

My email has been offline for over 24 hours now with nothing from Netidentiy even acknowleding the outage... this is ridiculous. I also have tickets over 2 months old that no one has responded to... do they even realize they're offline??

I also have had 2 days of no pop or webmail access. Its actually worse than not being able to get to it; I went to the web sites of two of the mailing lists I am on, to change the lists to another email address, and the mailing list web sites informed me that emails to my address have been bouncing!
I filed a ticket, but also no response.

this is another example of very poor planning & communication from DomainDirect

I don't care about a resolution and am only paying attention for the same reason that people enjoy watching a train wreck.

they were down for 3 days and not 3 hours as the site claims

Nice new "features", NetIdentity. Too bad "usability" is not one of them.

"Customer Service Improvements"

2008-02-01T22:14:00.000-08:00

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.

and the beat goes on...

2008-01-23T00:38:00.000-08:00

Customer comments on the NetIdentity/Domain Direct blog:

It it very frustrating to be pushed into getting rid of the account due to the poor quality of service since the purchase by Tucows.

... there have been so many problems I simply can't continue to rely on Tucows to provide e-mail. So now, after using this e-mail address for over 7 years I must abandon it.

... the new ticketing sytem isn't working effectively

Apparently sending has also been disabled for email.
I don't have the time or energy to deal with customer service or tech support...

... this outbound spam filter needs to go.
If users are abusing the system, cut off their service.
Don't make the rest of us suffer with the inability to send legitimate mail.

Some recipients are not receiving their mail. What is more, neither they nor I get any message regarding the non-delivery. I am therefore sending mails into a black hole.

... as of last night I have moved all of my mail and settings to Google's MX servers. Now I just wish I could get my money back for the 2 years I won't be using DD's "services." That's what I get for buying 5 years straight up.

When I try to log in via the main page at Netidentity, I get the error: "Webmail errored saying: Webmail login service is currently unavailable. Please try our alternative login page here".
Come on. At least fix the webmail target on your own website!
Secondly, the SPAM button in webmail has no function. I have yet to see it work. Now I get more spam than ever. This account is all but finished... and I will exit this chaos.

How reassuring to see NetIdentity is still on top of the issues!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

2007-12-26T21:39:00.000-08:00

A very special NetIdentity holiday for everybody:

"Service is unavailable". Happy Christmas.

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage.

"Your email message was unable to be sent because your mail server rejected the message".

The spam filter is obliterating messages after I hit the send button.

"Service Unavailable" (23 December 2007 @ 21:50 GMT).
The service from Tucows is a joke and the company is a joke too.

Service unavailable, please try again.
Merry Xmas indeed.
Thanks for nothing, DomainDirect.

"Service Unavailable" (26 December 2007 @ 20:23 GMT).
It is beyond me why NetIdentity is so messed up.

"Service is unavailable, try again later."27.12.07 @08.10 GMT
This is the worst service i'm paying real money for!

Here we go again. *We were unable to perform your request, please try again* 11:26 GMT 27-Dec-07

I keep getting 'Service is unavailable, try again later.'

Your stupid "cannot send message since it is considered spam" error. All because there's a lot of replies back and forth attached to the e-mail? I was only writing to one friend. ONE PERSON. I spent so long writing 5 huge paragraphs and when I pressed send, it gave me that "spam" message and decided to wipe out my entire letter. I LOST the 5 paragraphs.

I have just become aware that several emails have never reached me because of what I now find on this blog is a spam issue. Now my issue is compounded by the "We were unable to perform your request, please try again" so I have no way of checking to see if I'm now missing more e-mail. (I have received the "unable to perform" message for the last four days).

Also got another service interruption this AM. And the new "customer service center" is a PITA to use and a joke. If the system worked you wouldn't need all of the window-dressing RE a "formal customer support interface"

no comments from Tucows since Dec 18th, guess the egg nog was too good

9 days and no response at all to any question is insane.

The spam filter is crap, it's junk, its useless. Its not even smart enough to allow an email reply to go through.
Oh and happy holidays, no one is around to answer any questions.
... no reply in about 10 days, to not a single person making any sort of post on here to quell the riot...

This "new and improved" customer service center is worthless, as I emailed a question over a week ago and have yet to hear back.

ok, two weeks no response. Happy holidays everyone.

And a very happy New Year!

"NetIdentity Email Upgrade Is Completed" -- and it sucks

2007-12-18T00:08:00.000-08:00

Customer reactions to the NetIdentity e-mail "upgrade":

I have heard from 2 colleagues that their emails are being rejected or they are not receiving my messages.

... the new interface really, truly, does suck.

help@domaindirect is NOT getting any response. Ever. Period.

I'm very frustrated with this "upgrade".
I found the simple solution to the attachment problem... appears you should just use a different webmail provider that actually works.

Once Again DomainDirect email is D E A D - dead! The status page reads 'Active" and all issues are "Resolved" however the reality is no access via any route.

Once again, I am unable to access email by Webmail or by send or receive via local Outlook. Please FIX YOUR EMAIL SYSTEM.

This is a joke. It MUST be a joke.
I try to send mail, find ot that the RBL has struck. Again. Four times now. I then send a message to support (none of which have EVER been answered) to find it working again some hours later, if I am lucky.

I cannot believe that you are unable to change the fonts, the platform seems to change different lines of my emails to different fonts - its ridiculous and very unprofessional.

system down or what is wrong now?
can you get that thing working for once?

"Service Unavailable" - when will this stop? Why do I even try!?

I understand phone support is now open 7/12. I am currently on hold -- have been waiting for 25 minutes. This is outrageous.
I have never received a reply to the email I originally sent requesting support for the blocked/missing emails.

"We were unable to perform your request, please try again."
Oh, goodie, a new out-of-order phrase.
PLEASE FIX YOUR EMAIL/WEBMAIL SYSTEM.

Still no webmail service with the same error messages!

This is unworkable.
Should I be ordering pigeons or snails?

Now the spam filter is so good it is stopping me from sending my e-mails.

The more things change at NetIdentity, the more they stay the same.

"this upgrade seems to work flawlessly"

2007-12-09T17:17:00.000-08:00

Customer comments from the Domain_Direct/NetIdentity blog:

It's a pity that also the new webmailer has no option to mark email as spam without opening it.

As soon as I tried "add to group" the system came up with "Your session has expired". Is this a new special feature?

When I try to login I am getting "Service is unavailable, try again later."

I only ever receive automated responses with no follow up. I'm still waiting for a response from last week. It's a waste of time.

Secondly, I sincerely hope that our suffering will come to an end with this upgrade. At the moment, I am bitterly regretting renewing my account six months ago.

I have become weary after so many hollow self-congatulatory statements from Netidentity/Tucows, over the past year, and yet the problems still occur.

The final straw is the fact that it seems impossible to receive any satisfactory customer support, apart from auto-reply messages that rarely get followed up, via the online form.

Now all that's needed is an "upgrade" of Customer Non-Support.

"our email service sucks"

2007-11-29T22:10:00.000-08:00

On 22 November, NetIdentity General Manager Ross Rader wrote:

... our email service sucks. We recognize this from top to bottom, there's not a person in the building that isn't aware of this.

It's a shame there's not a person in the building who can do anything about it.

Tucows reports financial results for 3Q 2007, stock nosedives

2007-11-16T19:40:00.001-08:00

Tucows reported its financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2007 on 6 November, and its stock plunged 27% over the following six days of trading, from 95 cents per share to 69 cents per share.

read more | digg story

offline -- problems -- maintenance -- disruption

2007-11-15T23:57:00.000-08:00

The four most recent posts (as of 15 November) to the NetIdentity/Domain_Direct blog:

Webmail Access Temporarily Offline

Net Identity Email Sending/Recieving problems

E-Mail System Maintenance Notice

Domain Direct Email Service Disruption

Could even Stephen King create a rival for the horror story of this service?

Netidentity Hosted Email Service Degradation

2007-11-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

NetIdentity customer comments on the degraded "upgrade":

After living through "migration 06" I have really hoped to see a major upgrade to the system.

Tucows doesn't have a clue -- it is effectively changing its story every time just so the customer has something to go off.

I had really hoped to see Tucows produce a quality product long before my account expired. I remain amazed and perplexed they have taken so long to fix the problems.

You're right. We were told the upgrade should be completed by the end of October.

And why is there a backlog of tickets anyway? Didn't this only affect 1% of netidentity customers?

We never got an answer from Tucows about the backup and recovery system, or process they have in place, to explain why it took 37+ hours to retrieve the data.

I've been "extended" through November 17th. I too would like to see what my new service is going to look like before I renew. (I am certainly NOT renewing as long as I have this CRAP they call e-mail service.)

It just never stops going from bad to worse.

one more time

2007-10-31T00:08:00.000-07:00

On 23 October, NetIdentity General Manager Ross Rader wrote:

I posted a top-level update earlier this afternoon, but for some reason when I checked the comments related to this post, nothing new was showing up. I am not sure if Typepad was having problems or if my browser cache was stuck somehow.

At the risk of repeating myself, what was Tucows thinking to put this dimwit in charge of the e-mail migration?!

yet another NetIdentity meltdown

2007-10-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

NetIdentity e-mail "service" fails to deliver once again:

PLEASE fix the e-mail problems some of us are having...

I called support yesterday and gave up after 30 minutes on hold.

It's pathetic when you have problems with accessing your email, email that we pay MONEY for and we cant get it, not only can we not get it, but there is NO CARE about keeping us updated.

Ok, its been almost 8 hours since any sort of update, Still no email.

THIRTY SIX HOURS wihtout email is UNNACCEPTABLE.

This weekend I'm becoming convinced that I will have to spend a lot of time and money divorcing myself from this service.
...
While the service has never been what I would consider to be "stellar" under any ownership, I was never worried about it totally failing me until Tucows took it over.

Tucows botched something up in the middle of trying to perform some sort of upgrade that was beyond its staff's technical capabilities.

The fact that this company is supposedly having to restore all of its accounts leads me to believe that it has failed to implement even the most basic system redundancies.

... we've heard plenty of promises about how great the next system is going to be... meanwhile we wait.

I would love to believe the system will be restored soon, but yesterday afternoon your support site said it would take up to another 48 hours to sort out; this afternoon, 24 hours later, it says it will still take up to 37 hours.

400gb of data is going to take 37 hours to recover? 400gb and over 37 hours? Please tell us what type of backup you have , that the transfer rate will take 37+ hours. With todays technology, I just find that extremely disheartening. Do you all have a diapup connection?

I've seen guys with mail servers in their garages who do a better job of restoring accounts after a failure.

... more accounts are affected than we previously understood... The situation has been ongoing since October 19th at around 8pm EDT.

How hard can it possbily be to run an e-mail server?

It's obvious, painfully so, that this NetIdebtity mail system is the biggest piece of shit that has ever been created.

It's going to take 30 hours to restore, yet you say we may be without email for ANOTHER 48 hours. This is on top of the 48+ hours we have ALREADY been without email. If it's going to take a total of 30 hours to restore, when is this restore going to take place?

I also would like to rid myself of NetIdentity , but I am stuck renting a crappy service.

... creating an account to reply on your blog where I want to complain about your inability to restore my email... that has to be verified by email... that is just comedy.

We experienced a complete and total failure of this node and its nearline backup. From what I understand, all mail data and most account data was lost -- there was no way for us to simply bring your mail data back from the backups...

I would NEVER trust Tucows to store my personal mail folders, and now I am locked out of access to POP/SMTP and Mail Forwarding while I wait for you to restore a relatively tiny amount of data...

Regarding why it should take 4 days to restore 400gb of data, I don't actually have a good answer to that question.

... there are currently no mailboxes to deliver the mail to.

This failure simply gives us some insight to the infrastructure at Tucows/Netidentity.

You are quickly becoming the posterchild for bad and incompetent service. Then, later, you can explain who/why a mission-critical (at least to those of use who rely on email) service could hard fail with no backup or recovery plan.

NetIdentity webmail service could not load your mailbox.

Everything was working fine from 8 AM until a few moments ago (3:30PM). And now we're dead in the water again.

Broken.... Again....

The system is indeed down again -- for my email, anyway. The tech support folks at netidentity could not log in to my account either.

Some customers may be seeing the error "The NetIdentity webmail service could not load your mailbox. This is a temporary condition, please login again. If you see this error again, please check the network status page, or contact support@netidentity.com

We are currently investigating this issue and will update with further information as soon as possible." Don't know whether to laugh or cry... "Temporary situation", I should "try to login again". Well guys, I've tried a dozen times. It's dead as a doornail... again.

It's this level of service that gives me no confidence that I can rely on Tucows to host my email.

Our e-mail service is down again.

Tucows has yet to prove they can provide a quality e-mail product.

Oh for God's sake ... you can't even keep the auto-reply feature working?

I would like to add that forwarding didn't work while the service was up.

Auto-reply seems to work occasionally but forwarding is a complete disaster.

This goes beyond disaster, into the realm of horror.

Upgraded Customer Service

2007-10-16T23:24:00.000-07:00

Customer comments on the NetIdentity blog:

About a week ago my NetIdentity account went silent.

It's now been four days and I've heard nothing from the customer service. There was a promise made earlier (June) by Ross that all mail enquiries would be replied within 24 hours (and phone calls answered in less than 2 minutes). Meanwhile my mailbox is miraculously disabled.

Upgrade?? Customer service?? These words must be an oxymoron to Domain Direct. I have had no email account for 5 days straight now...

I have 3 unique netidentity hosted accounts. One of them goes silent for a day or so at a time; this problem has been persisting for 2-3 weeks. The account will simply not show any incoming emails for 12-15 hours at a time -- zero incoming emails sent to me during a period I should expect approximately 75+ based on normal daily traffic...

I cannot access my email for 12 hour stretches at a time. For the last week.

Listen "Ross": I've had it. I'm out, if this isn't fixed by Friday. Eight years I've given my business to this company, and this is how I'm repaid.

There. You asked for feedback on the upgrade, and you got it.

Listed below is the response I got today from your Tech Services Department. Does this response indicate that you simply cannot provide reliable service to anyone with an account at optonline.com (a Cablevision company with 4.5 million email customers and 600,000 corporate email customers)?

I've had it with domain direct. Why?
i've had no access to my mail for 3 days now. I get the stupid message: your account has been moved to a remote location
there is no answer from costumer service (reply within 24 hours???)
there is no hint to what to do to find and login to tht remote location

these problems are unexcusable.

It appears that the right hand still does not know what the left hand is doing at NetIdentity.

now Tucows is killing Blogware

2007-09-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

Comments by customers who are leaving Blogware:

Tucows seemed to have abandoned Blogware: no new features, and even bug fixes became rather sporadic. We were struggling with a rather manual spam-filtering process, and system availability has become worse and worse.

Blogware has been experiencing several bugs making it impossible to continue with that service.

When your resellers are leaving your platform that should be your first clue that you aren’t getting it right. Over the years I’ve dealt with all kinds of silliness from Blogware.

... it is very apparent that in Blogware’s case they don’t seem to value these customers in the first place.

Blogware has done nothing in many cases to resolve issues that have been known for years. Some very basic things need fixed yet they have been broke for ages.

The control panel basically has worked on-and-off when it feels like it for months now. This issue has been repeatedly reported yet never fully fixed.

... many times the service times-out on me when trying to post an article. This is an issue that has been reported for years by many Blogware customers. I’ll bet you guessed that it hasn’t been fixed.

Blogware service could become a major player with some effort. To me it seems as if no one at the company wants to make that effort. I can say this after almost four years of using the product. It’s been made very clear that no one is wiling to steer the product development in the direction it needs to go. I’m surprised that Tucows hasn’t pulled the plug yet. The company doesn’t seem to want to support the product. So why not just give up and call it a failure?

TrackBack management was laughable to begin with in BlogWare, and that problem only got worse with the onslaught of nefarious digital data warlords. That’s ultimately what drove me away from BlogWare, truly. It’s an increasingly-antiquated platform when compared to WordPress -- for novices and experts alike. Sorry, TuCows.

Blogware is part of a package offered by Tucows to its ISP customers -- which, in turn, offer the web-based blog platform program to their own customers. In other words, the customer of Blogware is really the ISP, not the blogger. This is key. When the end-user of your program is not your primary customer, trouble is sure to follow.

I sent [a complaint] to Blogware on June 27. I got a response on October 27, four months later. Not good for any company, but especially bad for a company that sells a platform for "immediate communication."

Blogware just isn't paying attention to end-users. As of this writing, the most recent blog entry on Blogware's own blog is three months old.

Blogware is too isolated from its real customers. Blogware sells to ISPs. ISPs are not really set up to support applications; the more they have to support them, the less money they make.

The marketing lessons are clear: you can't treat your real customers like second-class citizens.

Goodbye Blogware! Over the next few days (maybe even a week, depending on how hard this is) I am going to be moving the Web Hosting Show from Blogware over to another server that has WordPress on it. I am just so tired of Blogware giving me the run around when it comes to posting, trackback spam and so much more.

For the past month, the 'dashboard' on Blogware has worked intermittently for me at best. It's been down for 12-hour stretches, and for days at a time.

There are all types of other technical problems making my blog an absolute pain to use.

Talking to others and the reseller, it's not just me.

Blogware or Tucows haven't posted one word of explanation about this totally unacceptable situation.

It looks like another web service is being killed by Tucows indifference.

DomainDirect/NetIdentity Customer Comments

2007-08-26T23:09:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from customer comments on the Domain_Direct/NetIdentity blog:

All email services are down. I cannot access webmail or pop.
The Network Status page does not indicate that a problem exists.
The tech support phone number says, "Sorry, we're closed".

I moved 20 domains off the DomainDirect servers after the February/March meltdown. It was the smartest thing I ever did. I am sad at what DD turned into...

I have been sending support request emails for the last couple of weeks. No response yet.

I am simply fed-up with the services, response from the company as well as all of the upgrade attempts that have been made since the purchase. Many of my e-mails continue to be bounced back, errors continue to appear when trying to reply, forward and delte e-mails. All of the e-mails and errors have been sent to customer service including a direct e-mail to a rep that provided me with her personal e-mail address. To this day, the problems continue and I have not received a single response. ALL OF THIS AFTER BEING ON HOLD 3 times for OVER 20 minutes waiting for someone to answer. I am not sure what kind of business you are pretending to run here.

Tucows makes a promise, misses the date and does not keep customers updated. We still have a poor e-mail system. Customer service continues to struggle.

... transfers take two weeks (instead of like 24/48 hrs)

Eleven months have passed since the September Disaster and NetIdentity e-mail is still b0rken.

"off hours"??

2007-08-08T21:03:00.000-07:00

On 8 August, NetIdentity General Manager Ross Rader wrote:

All upgrades will occur in off hours.
. . .
The upgrade will occur between 6am and 8am EST

Somebody please write to Ross (he doesn't accept my e-mail any more) and explain to him what "off hours" means.

NetIdentity gets some attention...

2007-07-22T00:55:00.000-07:00

... unfortunately, it's from the "Bad User Interface Gallery".

Friday the Thirteenth

2007-07-18T00:10:00.000-07:00

On Friday the Thirteenth of July, NetIdentity General Manager Ross Rader wrote:

Tucows has finally launched its next generation outsourced email service today

Excellent timing on the part of Tucows, if for no other reason than the ill portent of the day. Ross goes on to state:

We are well aware of the risks associated with this type of activity...

If the past year of Netidentity history has shown nothing else, it has shown that Tucows personnel are "well aware" of next-to-nothing about "this type of activity".

another mail service killed by Tucows

2007-07-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

Posted on 1 July by the King of Email:

The original TheMail.com was a pioneer in fully featured, customizable free email, but at the end under the stewardship of Tu Cows and their corporate partners, it left this world as an ad and spam ridden nightmare with only basic bare-bones features, substantially reduced storage, skeletal frames, and very few options.

It's a shame the once-useful TheMail.com has been reduced by Tucows to a gambling, dating, porn, and spam portal that is for sale.

another dissatisfied customer

2007-06-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

Posted on her blog Wednesday, June 27:

I've had a vanity email address for many years through NetIdentity, but their recent merger with Tucows has certainly not brought any added benefits, and in fact basic services like adequate spam filtering, and being able to access the server at, for example 10:30 this morning, have decreased.
...
This last week I had a long-time client get a bit tiffy because he couldn't get in touch with me. Turns out I never got some of his recent emails. Not OK.

NetIdentity improvements still aren't working as well as what customers are being told by Tucows.

shiny happy news from NetIdentity

2007-06-27T22:07:00.000-07:00

First, the good news: new customer service tools, new customer service staff, new FAQs, new and improved web hosting services, and a whole new system for NetIdentity/Domain Direct customers. Unfortunately, the bad news is that it's all a year too late.

Customer Non-Service, Part Trois

2007-06-12T23:52:00.000-07:00

DomainDirect continues to ignore NetIdentity customer complaints about their lack of response:

I emailed support the evening of 6/1 (Fri). I received an autogenerated response, but no one has gotten back to me

I e-mailed support about 10 weeks ago. I have not received a reply

email became completely unreliable and customer service became apathetic, unresponsive, and beyond horrible. I've had dozens of support requests ignored for months and months. I've emailed people up the corporate ladder without response. And don't even try to call their support; being on hold for hours shows a complete disregard for their customers; especially when you know that leaving a message will get you nowhere.

No amount of mealy-mouthed doubletalk can explain away NetIdentity's customer non-service problem, now after an entire year of Tucows buggery.

Tucows outsources its servers

2007-05-17T20:28:00.000-07:00

In recognition of its inability to manage its own infrastructure, Tucows has outsourced its servers to Q9 Networks, whose CEO stated:

"For many, managing data centres and high-availability Internet networks is not a core competency."

Any task involving "competency" continues to stymie Tucows.

Tucows system-wide pratfall

2007-05-09T00:58:00.000-07:00

Tucows VP of Marketing Ken Schafer wrote:

On behalf of everyone at Tucows I would like to once again apologize for the frustration our Email Defense service has caused...

... the roll-out of what was supposed to be an enhanced version of Email Defense on March 1 has been anything but a success.

I can't tell you when this will be [fixed] but we're talking months not weeks.

... since a poorly executed upgrade to the Email Defense service at the beginning of March, access and reliability of the quarantine has been spotty at best. Our provider has been unhappy with this but has been unable to determine a way to fix the underlying problems...

Effective some time on May 4th you will no longer be able to access the web portal and you will no longer receive emailed reports about your quarantine.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you...

Another go-round in the ongoing cycle of incompetence, failure, apologies, excuses, and more apologies.

Another Effort, Another Failure

2007-05-05T10:51:00.000-07:00

On Friday 4 May, Tony Tucows announced:

Effective Friday May 4th, the spam quarantine feature in your Domain Direct email accounts will no longer be accessible.
...
You have until May 14th to clear out your existing quarantine. After May 14th, all spam and false positive email in your quarantine folder will no longer be accessible and will be unrecoverable.

... we are disappointed that our most recent efforts were not perfectly successful

The first customer comment says it all: "Another effort, another failure."

another migration

2007-04-27T21:16:00.000-07:00

On Saturday 28 April, the Domain Direct (NetIdentity) e-mail servers will migrate again to yet another location. This should be just fascinating -- unless you're still a NetIdentity subscriber.

a taste of his own medicine

2007-04-22T20:02:00.000-07:00

Ross Rader, notorious for shutting-off comments at the Domain Direct blog, wrote:

I tried to leave a comment on this article on PCWorld.com, but while I was going through their ridiculously arduous registration process, they turned off comments on the article. Gah.

Divine justice is a bitch, Ross.

More apologies...

2007-04-19T02:16:00.000-07:00

... and while an apology is better than a sharp stick in the eye, it is still no substitute for competence or action:We apologize for the inconvenience...
We apologize for the inconvenience.
I apologize for the delay...
I can only offer our apologies that this has happened...
Lots of apologies, little effective action.

the RegisterFly scandal

2007-04-10T01:08:00.000-07:00

RegisterFly is a Tucows reseller of registry services, and its abuses have led to de-registration by ICANN, and a class-action lawsuit. Those abuses include misappropriation of funds, and poor service [sound familiar?]. Bob Parsons of GoDaddy has a blog article about it, and a domain-transfer offer.

Truths, Half-Truths, and Lies

2007-04-03T22:20:00.000-07:00

... from NetIdentity General Manager Ross Rader:

TRUTHS:"Providing our customers with answers isn't good enough."
"We're not doing a great job"
"... we're not taking the time to pay attention"
"It isn't working."
"... we don't have the right feedback loops in place."
"Providing great customer service isn't rocket science"
"... we haven't fully turned this corner yet."
"... the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

HALF-TRUTHS:"Customers aren't upset that our isn't working as described."
"They aren't mad that it has bugs."
"They aren't disappointed that we screwed things up."
The true halves are: "our [fill in the blank] isn't working as described" -- "it has bugs" -- "we screwed things up". The false halves are "Customers aren't upset" -- "They aren't mad" -- "They aren't disappointed".

LIES:"Speaking of customer service, I've been doing a lot of it today."
Bullshitting the customers is not "customer service".
"For a long while, we were able to provide a pretty decent level of service"
With regard to NetIdentity, Tucows has not provided anything even close to "a pretty decent level of service".

Got Issues? (Part Deux)

2007-04-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

In a word: yes.

Domain Direct - Control Panel Issues
The Domain-Wide Quarantine remains an issue.
an error message returns where the attempt to view the information for the email is not available
In the place of the Allow/Release/Deny is a button labelled "H" which is not functional.
We have escalated this bug and expect to see a resolution shortly.

Six months of issues, and counting.

Mad Tucows Disease

2007-03-28T23:47:00.000-07:00

Mad Tucows Disease [Bi-Bovine Spongebob Encephalopathy] manifests itself in many ways, chief among which is delusional psychopathology such as that exhibited in the following statement by NetIdentity General Manager Ross Rader:

"My goal is to build this business on a foundation of great customer service"

Note the delusional reference to a non-existent entity ("customer service") couched in grandiose terms ("goal", "business", "foundation", "great"). This individual is clearly suffering an advanced case of the disease.

Six Months and Counting

2007-03-26T21:36:00.000-07:00

The past half-year since the NetIdentity Migration Disaster seems more like a half-lifetime, especially while viewing the latest litany of customer complaints about their difficulties with the new, non-improved Spam Quarantine, and the same old, non-improved Customer Non-Service.

"an explanation, not an excuse"

2007-03-21T23:40:00.000-07:00

Tucows Retail Service team Customer Service Manager Geoff Assing wrote:

Our target of March 10th posted by Ross back in February was applied with the proviso "barring no major issues"

Since the Tucows takeover of NetIdentity/NamePlanet has been nothing but "major issues" from the beginning, this "proviso" is the lamest excuse yet from any of the clowns at Tucows.

beware the Ides of March, O Tucows!

2007-03-17T18:58:00.000-07:00

The tenth of March has come and gone, yet the "guarantee" of "back to normal" has not occurred. Of course, there are excuses : a denial-of-service attack, antispam upgrades, and a lame explanation (complete with moronic, useless graphics) of how NetIdentity E-mail works (hint: mostly it doesn't).

This news is mostly no news: e-mail service is still substandard, and customer service is still non-existent.

"guarantee"??

2007-02-28T23:51:00.000-08:00

As a Tucows Valentine's Day gift, perhaps, on 14 February NetIdentity General Manager Ross Rader wrote:

the team is working aggressively on the following guarantee:

Back to normal by March 10.

Normal means:

- no more than a 24 hour average response to email and web-submitted questions
- no more than an average of 10 minutes on hold for telephone inquiries
- all existing questions answered

A few observations and predictions:

This "guarantee" is apparently backed by nothing more than Ross's say-so, which history has shown to be worthless -- therefore I predict "back to normal" will *not* happen by 10 March, especially with the telephone inquiries.
E-mail "response" in the past has been canned and irrelevant -- therefore I predict it will continue in the same manner after 10 March.
In the past, "questions answered" also consisted of canned and irrelevant replies -- therefore I predict questions will be answered similarly after 10 March.

NetIdentity Blogware Support Center -- Discontinued

2007-02-17T01:37:00.000-08:00

Sorry, no support for you! It's no great loss, however -- this so-called "Support Center" hadn't been updated in more than a year.

Four Months and counting

2007-02-05T21:26:00.000-08:00

Now that four months have passed since the NetIdentity Migration Disaster one might reasonably expect that the e-mail problems would have been resolved, along with the problem of customer non-service -- not so! Customers are still experiencing difficulty sending and receiving e-mail, and even more difficulty (call it "impossibility") in getting a response from Customer Non-Service either by telephone or by e-mail.

Domain Direct blog statistics

2007-01-04T23:15:00.000-08:00

The count of daily posts over the past six months at the Domain Direct (NetIdentity) blog:

month ---- posts - average days between posts

July -------- 2 ---- 15.5
August ----- 11 ---- 2.8
September --- 8 ---- 3.75
October ---- 13 ---- 2.4
November ---- 7 ---- 4.3
December ---- 5 ---- 6.2

overall ---- 46 ---- 4.0

Multiple posts on one day are not counted, because (for example) four posts in one day followed by three days of silence are not the same as one post each day for four days, and certainly not as satisfactory. Needless to say, the average of four days between blog posts during this period is unacceptable and unconscionable.

Three Months and counting

2006-12-29T17:15:00.000-08:00

Three months have passed since the NetIdentity Migration Disaster and many of the same problems remain unresolved, not the least among which is the issue of customer non-service:

... there were some email system disruptions... during which various aspects of the email system were degraded.

The regular NetIdentity system status page has not been updated...

People have lost their jobs because of the customer service issues we're facing. Others have lost their jobs because of the performance quality of the infrastructure we're providing. Letting people go is the easy part though -- rebuilding takes more time.

Left unsaid is the fact that "rebuilding" would not be necessary if the e-mail service hadn't been destroyed in the first place. Alas, that would have required foresight and planning, two items that were left off the Tucows menu for this migration.

Customer Non-Service, Part Deux

2006-12-23T00:18:00.000-08:00

Six months ago, Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct) wrote:

The biggest, firstest step is to get our customer service team up to speed.

Six months later, customer non-service is still not "up to speed", not to mention e-mail non-service in general.

"... a good learning experience..."

2006-12-22T21:59:00.000-08:00

Over a month ago, on Friday November 10, Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct) wrote:

The migration was a good learning experience for the NetIdentity team -- unfortunately, it was a lesson that came at the expense of what had been historically a good relationship with our customers. We have learned how NOT to do a migration and can tell you that it has helped us initiate big changes in the business.

Even more unfortunately for NetIdentity subscribers, those "big changes" have yet to be implemented, as the service is still unuseable.

Got Issues?

2006-12-17T15:01:00.000-08:00

Twelve weeks after The September Disaster, customers are still experiencing major problems with the NetIdentity e-mail "service", resulting in a comment section of the company blog that is a virtual bonfire of outrage. Fanning the flames is the continued insistence by the General Manager that "this blog is not a great place to get support for your issues" while failing to acknowledge that there is no effective support for any issues -- then he pours gasoline onto the blaze with this one: "no one is working on problems submitted via this blog". Nice work.

All-out User Revolt?

2006-12-14T22:30:00.000-08:00

Another article on Digg was posted Tuesday by SundanceKid503 about an all-out user revolt on the NetIdentity blog. Sundance may be overstating the case, but there is certainly enough outrage and frustration to impress most people -- Tucows management excepted, of course.

Another Corporate Blog Gone Wrong

2006-12-08T23:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, fellow NetIdentity sufferer Kurt Gooden posted an article on Digg about the failure of the Domain Direct News blog to live up to its claim that "subscribers can rely on this blog to stay on top of important announcements about these services."

There is no doubt among subscribers (past or present) that the blog has failed to "stay on top" of anything.

Two Months and counting

2006-11-27T14:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the two-month anniversary of the NetIdentity Migration Disaster and by the look of the comments posted by their remaining customers, it's easy to see most of the problems still remain, and the customers are still getting the same run-around in response to their complaints.

a terminally-clueless General Manager

2006-11-23T20:43:00.000-08:00

Looking over old posts in the Domain Direct blog, I was shocked, *shocked* to see this entry from Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct):

My problem is that I couldnt' [sic] tell a crap UI from a winner if either or both of them bit me. Boy was it a mistake that I didn't realize this until we'd already stepped off the ledge with this migration.

What was Tucows thinking to put this dimwit in charge of the e-mail migration?!

Cancellation and Refund

2006-11-16T23:46:00.000-08:00

I finally obtained the cancellation and refund I've been requesting from NetIdentity for over six weeks. The only person there who seems to be able to help is Jonathan Clarke so if you're a NetIdentity/NamePlanet subscriber who wants off this buggy ride, write him a nice, polite note to request yours -- but don't expect quick action. It appears that he's handling hundreds of similar requests with no other help from the Company. Also, if you're a subscriber, please cast your vote for/against NetIdentity in the online Poll below.

Customer Non-Service

2006-11-15T03:02:00.000-08:00

In response to a flood of complaints about customer non-service over the past two months, Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct) wrote:

... we haven't been doing a great job answering your questions. For some of you, we haven't been doing any job at all...

... we're aggressively recruiting for new help to replace some of the temporary customer service reps we brought in for October... (most of the folks in customer service are new to the company this year)...

When I first started my NetIdentity account, what seems like a lifetime ago, the company had a very small staff of maybe a couple dozen people, who still managed to run things fairly well most of the time. Their customer service was not responsive either, but they had relatively few problems to deal with. That all changed with the Tucows migration of service in September, and Tucows is dealing with it by hiring "temps" to copy-and-paste some canned replies to customer inquiries.

the Better Business Bureau responds

2006-11-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

In a reply to my complaint of six weeks ago:

Complaint ID#: 1152081
Business Name: NetIdentity

The Better Business Bureau has made several attempts to contact the business regarding the above referenced complaint. We regret to inform you that we have not received a response from the company.

The Better Business Bureau develops and maintains Reliability Reports on companies in our service area. This information is available to the public and is frequently used by potential customers. In the case of your complaint, the company's failure to promptly give attention to the matter will be reflected in the report we give to consumers about them.

If the company has contacted you in the interim, please notify the BBB immediately.

Sincerely,
(Complaint Administrator)
BBB Complaint Department

The online BBB Reliability Report states in part:

Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau due to unanswered complaints.

Why am I not surprised?

... everywhere a patch, patch...

2006-11-04T02:13:00.000-08:00

On 3 November, Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct) wrote:

our mail software provider... identified a very serious memory leak in one of the underlying applications that enables the mail infrastructure. Our software provider has created a patch for this issue...
our operations team... are closely monitoring this server over the weekend to better understand the performance characteristics of the patched application...
the operations team believes that [by Monday 6 November] they will have gathered sufficient information about the patch to finalizing [sic] planning for the next stage of deployment that would see the patch implemented on all servers in the mail infrastructure...
The patch is quite significant because it should deal with many of the performance issues that you have been experiencing...

My guess is that their software provider is Primate Programming Inc.

Customer Care Center is dead & gone

2006-10-25T16:51:00.000-07:00

Part of a canned response I received from postmaster@netidentity.com was the following:

To go to the customer care center, please point your browser to:
http://support.nameplanet.com/bin/customer.exe

This link is dead, and nameplanet.com URL requests get redirected to the NetIdentity login page -- so it appears that NamePlanet is dead, and the Customer Care Center is gone.

After I informed the support team at contactus@netidentity.com about this situation, I received a followup message (again from postmaster@netidentity.com) asking, "How is the link dead? Can you not log in? Do you receive an error message?" -- so evidently the new Tucows support crew at NetIdentity are using the obsolete old help-desk scripts from the pre-Tucows days. It appears that the blind are leading the blind there at NetIdentity Central.

Here a patch, there a patch, ...

2006-10-18T01:18:00.000-07:00

Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct) wrote:

... we've applied a patch to www.netidentity.com that fixes the primary login bug that has been plaguing the system for the past three weeks. This was a huge problem for us to fix resulting from the way that the old mail system handled cookies vs. the new one. If you were having problems logging into your webmail from www.netidentity.com or you had not received any email since September 23, this fix should correct the problems you were experiencing.
[note: this was written on October 13]

Yes, it "should" correct the problem, after only three weeks of failure -- but sometimes it doesn't.

"Here I come to save the day..."

2006-10-18T01:02:00.000-07:00

Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct) wrote:

A lot of our subscribers have asked how they can change their default mailbox name and sending address to something more meaningful than "DefaultMailAccount" and "mailbox@somename.tld". If you have these same questions, the following video and instructions should be helpful.
... it is accompanied by explicit instructions that you should follow to make the changes described.
I'll look into ways to increase the quality of the video, unless your [sic] telling me that this level of assistance is undesirable.

It's not that "this level of assistance is undesirable" -- it's that this level of "assistance" is moronic and ineffective. The poor-quality silent Macromedia Flash videos that Ross produced and uploaded to YouTube are here and here. Enjoy.

The Post-Mortem

2006-10-17T21:43:00.000-07:00

In October, Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct) wrote:

The NetIdentity Control Panel fixes will address, amongst other things, one of the more vexing issues that you've been experiencing. If you've been getting a webmail login error, or haven't received new webmail since around September 21, you are affected by this problem.
[note: this was written October 3]

We are planning a reimport of all contact data over the next few days. This is taking longer than expected because we have had to request a new export of your contact data from the old mail provider. We received this data this morning and are now normalizing it for import into our system. The impact of this activity will mean that you will lose all updates you have made to your contact data since you started using the new webmail system.

One fix that we won't be able to deal with effectively over the short term is the screwed up login screen for Opera users.

Lots of problems, lots of talk, lots of service *not* delivered.

Damage Control

2006-10-12T00:56:00.000-07:00

Following the September Disaster, Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct) wrote:

I wish we had assessed this differently.
[yes, we all wish you had assessed this differently]

We don't normally staff the office on the weekend...

My credibility is definitely shot - I realize that.

... we don't have a long term commitment to this iteration of the webmail UI. The original plan was to turf it by the end of the year in favor of a more modern implementation.

... we have a pretty solid plan to improve the interface over the coming months, and a very substantial upgrade to the UI coming towards the end of the year.
[in the meanwhile, the interface is a train wreck]

My planning process was rushed, which lead to corner cutting, which lead to mistakes and problems and a decreased focus on getting the quality equation just right.
[the "quality equation": NetIdentity + Tucows = train wreck]
...
The good news is that the fixes are well underway and ahead of schedule.
[another lie: the fixes are still not fixed as of this writing]

The September Disaster

2006-10-09T01:14:00.000-07:00

During the third and fourth weeks of September 2006, my NetIdentity webmail service became spotty, and I began to get the following error message instead of my e-mail:

Error while establishing a imap connection as myaccount@mydomain.com on n103.sc1.cp.net:143. : * BYE disconnecting; nested exception is: com.sun.mail.iap.ConnectionException: * BYE disconnecting

Then on the 26th, somebody at Tucows hit the "Enter" key for the new system, resulting in a 10,000-car pileup on the Information Superhighway. All I could see on my webmail for the next six days was the now-infamous "5 minute message":

Please accept our apologies for this delay. You've caught us in the process of automatically migrating your existing email from our old email service to our new one. Under most circumstances, this process may take up to 5 minutes. If you have a large amount of email stored on the mail system, this migration may take considerably longer (up to one hour per 300MB of mail stored). The migration of your data will only happen once during this upgrade. We appreciate your patience.

Details of this disaster have been chronicled on Wikipedia.

Storm Warnings

2006-10-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

In August, Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct) wrote:

We will be conducting a major upgrade to the email service during the middle of September.
...
It took us over three months of planning and implementation to deploy this new infrastructure from a hardware and network perspective, and almost two months of application development work to fully integrate it into the services provided by Domain Direct.
...
Your email, web hosting, domain forwarding and parking, and other services will *not* be offline or negatively affected by this upgrade.

One month later, NetIdentity e-mail was rendered useless.

Round Two -- more lies

2006-10-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct) wrote:

Tucows is planning to run NetIdentity *as is* for the near future. We will continue to evolve the service and ensure that it gets the care and feeding our subscribers deserve. NetIdentity will become part of Tucows retail webhosting services group along with Domain Direct, Blogrolling.com, and other services we offer directly to the general public.
Our first priority is to take care of a few small housekeeping items and then work on ways to help make NetIdentity easier and more enjoyable for you to use.
...
Tucows has no plans to substantially change the services offered by NetIdentity and NamePlanet. Everything will be run "as is" for the forseeable future. That's not to say that there won't be any changes, we do want to evolve and improve things, but we're not shutting anything down either.

This was written even as plans were being laid to reverse the 2004 transition of e-mail provider from Critical_Path in San Francisco to Outblaze in Hong_Kong. While the 2004 transition went smoothly, the 2006 reversal would prove to be a disaster.

Tucows reputation

2006-10-05T00:36:00.000-07:00

When the takeover was announced, some NetIdentity users who had been unhappy with poor customer service began to think optimistically that things would improve with Tucows running their mail server -- others were not pleased with the idea, pointing out the following:

Tucows is Number Five on the URI Blacklist

Spammers Protected by Tucows Whois_Privacy_Service

Tucows is Helping Spammers

Round One -- of lies...

2006-10-02T23:58:00.000-07:00

On 21 June, Ross Rader (General Manager, Domain Direct) wrote:

When I said that we are going to continue running NetIdentity and NamePlanet "as is", I said it to mean that we would not be shutting down the service, getting rid of features, arbitrarily increasing our rates, and so on."

That's three-for-three: the service was shut down for six days (for me, more for others), many features were eradicated, and rates were "arbitrarily" increased. Those empty promises turned out to be lies, all lies.

Prelude to a Train Wreck

2006-10-01T22:25:00.000-07:00

15 June 2006, a press release announced Tucows would purchase MailBank/Netidentity for $18 million cash plus 3 million shares of stock, explaining that "Tucows expects this acquisition to add between US$3 and $4 million in cash flow in 2007." Someone at Tucows was either dreaming, or else sold a bill of goods.