Geodog

My special hosting plan with webhostplus (formerly netbunch)

My server at webhostplus went down tonight, as has become a weekly occurrence, so I decided to try the chat tech support.

The folllowing is a verbatim transcript:

"echo5 down?"
geodog : my site, twjb.com on echo5 seems to be down
geodog : both email and http
geodog : hello?
** You are now speaking with Darryl, NetBunch. **
Darryl : Thank you for contacting Technical Support. My name is Darryl. How may I help you?
geodog : my site, twjb.com
geodog : on echo5 seems to be down
geodog : both email and http
Darryl : Looking
geodog : thanks
Darryl : Yes, it does not appear to be responding; one moment
Darryl : okay I have just been given the following information:
Darryl : Sites on Echo5 are only up 18 hours a day
Darryl : 1.00 a month, special hosting plan
geodog : what the h?
geodog : I've been on echo5 for 3 years
geodog : first time I have every heard anything like that
geodog : and i pay a lot more than 45 a month
geodog : than 1 a month
Darryl : sorry
Darryl : the guy I was talking to was joking with me
Darryl : I'm new here
Darryl : looking into the issue...
geodog : well, that is what the service has felt like since netbunch
geodog : was aquired by webhostplus

I couldn't make stuff like this up if I tried.

Needless to say, an hour later my site was still down. If you want to read more stuff like this, check out the customer forums. My favorite quote from there is

Given they have had more than 20,000 trouble tickets (at least that is the difference in ticket numbers between then and now) in the past 1.5 months, they should be a little backed up.

I don't understand how people like this stay in business. I have gotten all my mail off their servers, but am still looking for a good host (and time) to move all my little friends and family sites off.

Update: For all you visitors flooding in from Techdirt, here is the background to this story: If your web hosting company is acquired by Web Host Plus, run for the hills. And the site did come back up (more than an hour later) last night, but downtime has become a weekly occurrence since webhostingplus bought netbunch.

P.S. Thanks for all the suggestions for good web hosts, keep them coming.