Suspension for high-usage?

[zen-r]

Did they at least bother to TELL you? Nobody told me that for quite some time, my site's DNS was pointing at the WHOLE WRONG DAMN IP ADDRESS.

And, oh, yeah, I too got suspended for resource over-usage... though I have nothing but static html (well, a few bits of javascript) and a few small images. And didn't find out about it until FIVE DAYS LATER, when I went to look at something on my site.

x10 was great when I first came on board, about two years ago I think it was. I even sent in money for the double-everything, TWICE. Things have gone far downhill, very fast. Horrible reliability, taking away features (including one that resulted in all my email getting bounced), moving stuff to new IP addresses with zero notice even after the fact, and closing support tickets when the problem has not been addressed at all let alone resolved. Unless things return to some semblance of sanity soon, I'm outta here.

(Big hint to the manglement: A happy customer MAY tell a friend, but an UNhappy customer almost ALWAYS tells the WORLD! And don't think that "free" means "not a customer".....)

Big hint to YOU:

Notices were posted in the News section - plenty of them. If you can't be bothered to read them, more fool you.

But don't come whining here, with your bad attitude & your angry faces.

Personally, I'm not interested.

 

[davearonson]

failure to communicate

Big hint to YOU.

Notices were posted in the News section. If you can't be bothered to read them, more fool you.

But don't come whining here, with you're bad attitude & your angry faces.

Not interested.

Ahem. I quote also from Corey's own post on June 2, the ONLY thing I could find about Cossacks accounts moving: "Absolut, Cossacks, Lotus, and Stoli will all be moved to new servers with double the memory, more disk space, and faster processors. The new servers will take on the names of one of the current free servers, so you may end up going from Lotus to Lotus just the new server."

Okay, depending on interpretation, one COULD imply "...or you may go to another server". It's very unclear.

And it's not at all just me. ichwar, an X10 *Elder*, also had the same problem, saying: "I don't know. I was on absolut and now I'm on Lotus." in reply to gsonline who was wondering what happened to Cossacks, though he's only a sophomore. You then condescendingly pointed them to . . . exactly the ambiguous post I mention above. Other than dougs's complaint that much of his stuff had disappeared, and blue_earth's saying that Cossacs [sic] was still only 75% done, the entire rest of the thread makes NO mention of Cossacks.

Sure, some of the followup in the off-topic section makes further mention of problems on Cossacks. Sure you aren't saying that we now need to follow every post in every off-topic followup thread to the REAL "news" threads as well?

What we have here, and in fact what we HAVE had here since at least last November (when x10 took away catchalls so my email broke), is a failure to communicate. It takes more than saying RTFM like you do, someone at x10 has to WTFM in the first place... and write it clearly, and in a place where it's likely to be found, not buried in garbage.

 

[zen-r]

Things haven't been perfectly communicated by x10 here - I agree. But they have attempted to give you plenty of information in the News section

Your last post whinged about nobody contacting you to tell you what you demanded to know. The fact of the matter is that you are expected to log in & read the News to find things out. Sorry if the world doesn't revolve around you.

Re not knowing what server you were moved to: Easy - you just log in to your account ; http://www.x10hosting.com/panel.php

It shows you which server you are on, & provides you with a link to cPanel.

It's not rocket science.

Re services being withdrawn: most services haven't been withdrawn, they have just been disabled during the server upgrades & most of them are already re-enabled.


For other people just finding the end of this thread, & wondering what news threads they should have been reading to keep up to date with current issues, please see my standard footnote, below ;

Sorry to post the following here if it doesn't help you, but a lot of people haven't spotted the lastest important News posts yet ;

Link1 ; http://forums.x10hosting.com/news-announcements/98947-backup-issues.html

Link2 ; http://forums.x10hosting.com/news-announcements/98910-high-resource-usage.html

Link3 ; http://forums.x10hosting.com/news-announcements/98836-update-6-22-09-a.html

These may answer some of your questions.

Regularly check the News & Service Alerts sections for more Updates like those.

Please Note : The staff are getting flooded with Support tickets during the server upgrade work, which is being done to provide for x10's long-term future.

• Read the forum for help & avoid submitting a ticket unless you really have to.
• Please be patient & wait - they will get to you eventually. Don't "bump" your Support ticket, because that will put it to the back of the queue again.
• Corey has warned that people submitting frivolous, rude or multiple tickets may get banned from the Support system.
• Unfortunately, because of the ticket spamming, there has been need in the past to close all tickets - both the frivolous and the important ones. Therefore it is important to regularly check the status of your ticket, & if necessary re-open it if it gets closed.

Remember that this is a free service, supported by an active & unpaid community of staff & other x10 members (myself being one of them!)

 

[fguy64]

hmmm I see a lot of blame being passed on to the consumer here, regarding frivolous tickets and excess resource usage, not to mention "failure to log in daily and browse the news forum to see what kind of information has been posted about service outages. I've seen some of these announcements. "we're gonna upgrade the free servers tomorrow, 'if you have a problem you know why' " That's not what I call a good announcement.

Having worked in the field, I find myself a little curious about things like project plans, and fallback measures, and all that kind of stuff. Being a technical guru will only get you so far.

 

[zen-r]

I have been somewhat critical too, & have provided possible suggestions for improvements in various threads.

The difference between me & davearonson, though, is that I have also shown some thanks here to the unpaid staff & other members for what service they are providing, & are attempting to achieve for x10 in the future (when the upgrade is complete). I have also attempted to help & provide support to as many other members here as possible, whenever I could.

By contrast, davearonson has done very little but complain & ask demanding questions here of others, for most of this year. What has he given back to the community in return? And he has the cheek to come here now & say that this free ride he's getting still isn't enough for him?

Pah!

 

[fguy64]

zen-r, are you staff? I've noticed you seem quite involved, your efforts have not gone unnoticed. They are appreciated. But It sounds now like you are doing this out of the goodness of your heart. I must say I'm not sure who is getting paid and who isn't around here. And that doesn't make me feel any better about the reliability of the service. Maybe the free customers haven't paid x10 for the service, but they still have plenty at stake.

I know it's not an easy task. Believe me, I do know about the pressures of supporting a mission critical application in the corporate sector. So I can imagine what people here are dealing with. I know how messed things can become, I'm trying to be critical without being offensive when I say that all this smells of poor planning.

 

[zen-r]

I'm just another member here, like you, fguy64. I never have been a member of staff, & have no plans of applying to become one (though never say never, I guess!)

I've only tried to help out with support because I have had a bit of spare time lately, quite enjoy it, & could see that staff were struggling during the upgrade process. Whilst I was in no position to help out with the server upgrades, the least I could do was to try to lighten the load on them regarding Support tickets. It was also nice to help, & get more contact with other members here.

This isn't a reference to your comment, fguy64:

It is always easy to criticise others & their mistakes, & certainly I can see how things could have been handled better here in terms of forward planning etc. But we don't know what problems the x10 staff & Corey have had to deal with here, how much time they have had outside their "day jobs" to do this, & what finances they have had at their disposal. Also, I dare say that this has been a learning curve for everyone involved.

So "Yes", whilst the service hasn't gone perfectly recently, I know it was good in the past, am sure it will get back on track in the future, & know that staff have listened to members & care about getting things right.

Constructive criticism can help, especially when it comes from people willing to give a little back to the community. But regularly complaining free-loaders should just look elsewhere for their free ride, as far as I am concerned. (Note: I'm not calling davearonson one. But he is in danger of becoming one if he carries on in the way he seems to be going :happysad

 

[davearonson]

Things haven't been perfectly communicated by x10 here - I agree. But they have attempted to give you plenty of information in the News section

I log in every week (twice as often as required), and read at least the first several posts in every thread that looks the least bit relevant, including those with vague titles like "latest update", in Server Alerts and News & Announcements. If I still get taken by surprise, that doesn't speak well for x10's attempts to give us plenty of information.

In case you didn't grok, posting something important much later in the thread, is what I meant by "buried in garbage". if it's important, it deserves to be the first post in a new thread with a relevant title. That's just basic communication.

Re not knowing what server you were moved to: Easy - you just log in to your account ; http://www.x10hosting.com/panel.php

I did... once I knew my site was down, and figured out why.

Re services being withdrawn: most services haven't been withdrawn, they have just been disabled during the server upgrades & most of them are already re-enabled.

Uh, no, lots of things have been withdrawn. I don't just mean some little feature being offline for a bit. The big one being email catchalls, which I think went away last November or so. (Everything seemed to start hurtling downhill at the server move.) Maybe I missed the big announcement (maybe it was buried in garbage in some thread with an irrelevant title?), but my first clue that email catchalls had been taken away, was the realization that it had been taking a lot less time to finish my inbox lately....

 

[zen-r]

I agree that the old method of posting News into threads was a bad method, because members added their own comments, then more News got added later in the thread & it was lost amongst the other posts.

I brought this up, & a new thread was started by garrett to discuss this very problem. As a result, Corey acted on our suggestions & from then on, his News threads have been locked. This makes them easy & quick to read. Members can still post about the News, but in a separate thread.

This seems like a pretty responsive service from x10, if you ask me. It shows they do listen.

We also have another suggestion thread running here at the moment ; http://forums.x10hosting.com/off-topic/98785-suggestions-more-effective-forum.html

If you feel like you have something to contribute (nicely) then why not add your own suggestions? I'm sure it would be more productive & elicit better responses than just complaining, here.

 

[davearonson]

The difference between me & davearonson, though, is that I have also shown some thanks here to the unpaid staff & other members for what service they are providing, & are attempting to achieve for x10 in the future (when the upgrade is complete). I have also attempted to help & provide support to as many other members here as possible, whenever I could.

As have I, as you would see if you check out my past posts. Admittedly, not as voluminous as you, but pardon me for having a life! :drool:
Edit:

I agree that the old method of posting News into threads was a bad method, because members added their own comments, then more News got added later in the thread & it was lost amongst the other posts.

I brought this up, & a new thread was started by garrett to discuss this very problem.

Oh, gee, I thought maybe you meant this one from early 2008, in which I suggested that.... :dunno:

 

[zen-r]

As have I, as you would see if you check out my past posts. Admittedly, not as voluminous as you, but pardon me for having a life! :drool:.......

A disproportionate number of your posts this year have been complaints & questions - there's very little "giving back" that I can see.

Whatever "life" you have, your spending too much of it complaining here!

.....Oh, gee, I thought maybe you meant this one from early 2008, in which I suggested that.... :dunno:

Good, we're on the same wavelength in that area, then.

Perhaps it's just the way that you have gone about expressing yourself lately that is something which we may not agree upon.

Anyway, I'm going to end my part in this conversation now. Some of us have a life, you know!


Update: re your statement that the catchall mail facility had been removed at the beginning of this year, please see this new post from Corey ;

http://forums.x10hosting.com/news-announcements/99054-update-6-29-09-a.html

 

[zen-r]

Here is the latest News relating to the subject of this thread ;

http://forums.x10hosting.com/news-announcements/99095-resource-usage-monitoring.html#post554553

It has its own discussion thread, so I'd imagine that there will be no need for any more posts in this thread!

 

[kenja1]

i was also suspended for high -usage..i put in a ticket and was back up and running..i'm not sure why.but i guess i will need to clean up my files

 

[theascended]

My account is being continually suspended without me doing anything. Fortunately, the warnings haven't incremented since I've been suspended 3 times.

 

[davearonson]

catchalls

Update: re your statement that the catchall mail facility had been removed at the beginning of this year, please see this new post from Corey ;

http://forums.x10hosting.com/news-announcements/99054-update-6-29-09-a.html

Yes, I just saw that today, having returned from vacation. It seems to refer to disabling the "No local address filter". The ability to disable it, had itself been disabled, when I finally got the ASSP icon installed (it had been missing from my cpanel for a long time). There must have been some kind of policy change since 03 Apr 2009 5:33 AM, when support person Federico Lerner wrote to me, regarding a support ticket, that 'The "Catch-All" option is disabled and can't be enabled.' Obviously I missed the announcement of its return. :dunno: