On February 24, 2010, EMC Web Hosting/Myriad Networks/EMC Telecom’s web servers went down. The outage lasted approximately 27.5 hrs. No email, no websites humming, zero telephone support. EMC clients, such as myself, searched for a telephone number to contact EMC Telecom. Everything we found, including the 888 number on my billing statement produced the robo voice “We’re sorry, this telephone number is no longer in service”. Rumors swelled as we all turned to commiserate in the forum “Webhostingtalk”.
About 10 hrs after the outage began, FINALLY Michael Tyler, Director of Datacenter Operations at EMC Telecom/Myriadnetworks made a post in the webhostingtalk.com forum. It offered us little solace and even admonished us all for calling the cell phone number of a tech support rep! “… he is not taking any more calls by that method.” Not taking any more calls? EMC/Myriadnetworks never took ANY calls in the first place.
Many of us in the forum grew angry. We felt ignored, lied to and treated poorly with being given such little information regarding the severity of the outage. Resellers such as myself had zero information to pass along to their clients. It made us look really bad.
On Friday, February 26th, I received an email from the EMC helpdesk. The email stated “We have credited your account $153.70 to pay your monthly renewal through March. Your next payment will be due for April as regularly scheduled.”
Ah… my heart soared. How nice, I thought. Then it occurred to me. Wait! EMC “strangely” ran my credit card early for March hosting. My credit card was run a mere 30 minutes prior to the outage on February 24th. I say STRANGELY because EMC Telecom typically bills me on the last day of the month. Why did they STRANGELY run my card on February 24th?
One of these is NOT like the others
So I began to laugh at the email from the EMC Helpdesk. Ah yes, you charge me – just to offer me a credit? I really do hope that this was an oversight. If not, EMC Telecom and Bernie Madoff were probably business partners.
I’ve responded to EMC support stating that I was already charged for March so the credit is bogus. I’m waiting on a response. More to come from this aggravated reseller.
UPDATE: It has been over 18 hours since I put two support tickets into EMC Telecom/EMC Hosting/Myriadnetworks and NO ONE has responded. Clearly there is no longer any technical support at EMC during the weekend. Buyer beware!
UPDATE 2: 19 hours and finally a response. What if my sites where down again? You decide.
