My ISP - A Bad Review

If anyone if trying to reach me via email this last couple days, I probably have not recieved it, and I'm not certain I will. My ISP (formerly Cyberworldhost, now owned by E-insites) is having yet again another problem with their email server (yes, singular; they're finally talking about putting in a backup SQL server, since this one has gone down so many times). So my email is not coming through, and I honestly don't know if it's stacking up somewhere or just getting lost in the ether. So if you've emailed me in the last 48 hours, and I don't respond, you may want to try again in a week or so.

E-insites has this to say on their support website, for anyone interested in the dirty details:

It seems like we are having the worse luck imaginable with email over the last two months. We have done everything any host would do under this situation. We took steps to make the email wore reliable, by spreading the load to three servers. Then we had a CPU failure on one server, and the next day the Mail SQL server had a hard drive failure. We then replaced all the hardware in that server, and put two drives in, one for the OS, and one for the SQL databases hoping that this would never happen again, and we promised our customers it would not, but unfortunately, the second drive on the Mail SQL server has failed today. This is a brand new drive that is less than 1 month old, and it has failed. We do not know or can explain why we are having such problems with this server, even though we have replaced everything in the server before. The primary drive is ok, but the drive that contains all the SQL Databases is making the dreaded clicking noise.

We are working on trying to fix this problem as we speak, and we sincerely apologize for any inconveniences caused. We know that this has become a nightmare for most people, and we know we assured everyone the problems were fixed, and they were. But, who could predict one server having Hard Drive failures on more than one occasion so closely together even though the equipment was all new equipment. We have our techs working on this problem as we speak, and hope to have the server back on shortly. We really do want to express how sorry we are that this has happened again, and we are going to take a step further in making this mail situation more reliable, by making a second Mail SQL server and load balancing the SQL server so if one were to fail again, the second server would just take the whole load.

This is about the tenth time this year my email has been down, and honestly - despite the vaguely whiney explanation they posted - I'm getting very tired of it. I pay them for a service, and they're not holding up their end of the deal. Suppose my payment was late, or partial, or I accidentally sent them Euros instead of dollars. Think they'd have any sympathy or give me a break? Yeah, right.

Suffice to say I'm about fed up with E-insites, and I officially do not recommend them to anyone as a web hosting company. Back when it was still Cyberworldhost, a locally owned and operated Spokane company, I liked them. In fact, I chose them because they were small and local to the Pacific Northwest. But honestly, ever since they were bought out by E-insites, it's been one headache after another. My current lease expires in April 2004; look for some changes then.

In the meantime, if anyone really needs to reach me, try my cell phone if you have it (Mermy, Gene, I'll call you guys back today) or just be patient and re-email me in a few days.