Another learning experience
I used to see people posting about their terrible experiences switching ISPs, and I’d scoff. “If only they had a plan,” I’d say, “there wouldn’t have been a problem.”
Well, live and learn. Moving Longacre-inc.com from one ISP to another took the site offline for about a week. And that was *with* a plan. Who’s scoffing now?
I know that ISPs are the most automated IT shops in existence. I admire them for being able to support hundreds of thousands of different sites for about the price of a McDonald’s Happy Meal. I understand that if administrator time is budgeted at $70/hr, a $6.99/month website entitles each customer to 6 minutes of administrator time every month–72 whole minutes a year.
Most of that time, of course, gets burned up by new customers with little or no net experience calling tech support.
Happily, I was not required to talk to tech support at all on the new ISP. I chose [[WireNine][www.wirenine.com]] based on some write-ups I saw in a few places, including [[SitePoint][www.sitepoint.com]], a good forum for web developers. Their system is so automated that I still don’t think I’ve communicated with a human being. Even the phone call confirming my credit card order was performed by a machine. How cool is that?
Anyway, the point is that while the “collect customers” part of the process is mechanized and automated and thoroughly tested, the “say goodbye to customers” part doesn’t seem to get so much attention. (Surprise!) So when I informed my previous ISP that I was terminating service, and redelegating the domain, etc., it was instant limbo!
I can complain, of course–that’ what I’m doing now. But I understand: how much money does anyone make from an ex-customer?
I will say that when I finally contacted a human being on the phone, her name was Monica from Houston, TX, and she was friendly, polite, helpful, understanding, and generally a great all around gal. When Longacre is so large that I need technical folks to hand-hold our clients through whatever they’re doing, I want Monica to work for me.
Long story short, we’re back up, the DNS logjam appears to have cleared up, email is flowing, the birds are chirping and the sun is shining. (At least here in New Jersey.)