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web hosting nightmare

X

xjohn

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oh boy. I just got the following email from my web hosting provider:

Hello John,

Thank you for your recent e-mail.

Our server, NS39, was compromised . We regret to inform you that a customer data was lost and the operating system damaged. At this time we
have no way of recovering any data. We will be re-creating all of thesites from this server on a new much more secure server. Once the site has been re-created on the new server you willneed to re-upload your site, if your domain name was registered with us we will re-point the DNS, however if you registered your own domain name you will need to re-point the DNS yourself. All customers will be receiving a 3 month credit to their account that will apply to the next three months, however if you have an outstanding bill you will have to pay the balance before your site will be setup on the new server. We regret that this has happened and assure you that we are working toprevent this from ever happening again. The new server has better hardware, increased security, and will be heavily monitored. Thank you for your understanding and patience in this situation.

The support page on our website is working fine at the following URL:
http://dot5hosting.com/support.php

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any further questions you may have regarding this matter. You can reopen this ticket or open a new ticket for the same.

Regards,

Monica,
"We look after our customers, or someone else will"
support@dot5hosting.com
Click to expand...

Argh. I can't believe this. The site wasn't much, just a weblog, but it represented hundreds of hours of my time over the past year. I live in Beijing, far away from my family and most of my friends, and the weblog was a way for me to keep in touch. It also served as a record of my thoughts and life over the past year.

Ugh. I certainly don't have a backup. I don't think I even know how I could have made a backup, though I'm sure there's a way. I guess I thought the provider was keeping a backup.

Yuk. 🙁

Any advice?
 
Ouch.

I've been trying to get a refund from dot5 for a while now after they continually messed up my domain renewal. I've switched to a different company and am happy so far.

Check out this thread for my and other people's experiences with them.

Good luck getting some sort of restitution from them. I've been trying to get ahold of someone on the phone and so far I've struck out.
 
Thanks, Rower. Good luck in getting your refund, too.

What sort of restitution can I ask for? They're offering three months of free service, but I can't think of why I'd want to stay with them. It seems to me that I should get back everything I ever paid them and more...

Should I have expected them to have a backup? For some reason, I assumed that it was common practice for hosting providers to have automatic backups.

(I'm still trying to reconcile myself to all the stuff I've lost. I also had two friends' weblogs up on my site. They were keeping a record of their time in the Peace Corps. I'm trying to figure out how to tell them that their journals are lost...)
 
Re: web hosting nightmare

Originally posted by xjohn
Ugh. I certainly don't have a backup. I don't think I even know how I could have made a backup, though I'm sure there's a way.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear about your data loss, xjohn. 🙁

But if it's important, you should keep a regular backup.

Do you use a weblog system? It might include a backup feature which will export the data to your computer.

Or you could FTP to your site and download important files every so often.
 
Thanks, redcore.

You're right, I should have used the export function to keep a backup of the weblog data. I'm kicking myself right now.

Here's the latest reply from Dot5:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your recent e-mail.

We regret to infrom you that due to an error on the part of our service provider, all of your data has been lost. We wil re-create your site on a server in a datacenter that we control. Our current service provider has at this time lost our business and will never touch your server again.There is no data that we are able to recover

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any further questions you may have regarding this matter. You can reopen this ticket or open a new ticket for the same.

Regards,

Monica,
"We look after our customers, or someone else will"
support@dot5hosting.com
Click to expand...

Not looking good. 🙂
 
Originally posted by redkore
I also suggest you take Monica's advice and let someone else look after your hosting. 😉
Click to expand...

I totally agree. Go with another host. But make sure you backup yourself in future.
 
I also suggest you take Monica's advice and let someone else look after your hosting. 😉
Click to expand...

Agreed. The sick humor of their slogan has definitely been laughing at me all day. 😉

I do have one idea, though. I'm wondering if I can perhaps salvage some of my data through Google's cache. I've been able to find some of my pages in google, but haven't been able to get the cache links to work yet.

We'll see...
 
Originally posted by xjohn
Thanks, Rower. Good luck in getting your refund, too.

What sort of restitution can I ask for? They're offering three months of free service, but I can't think of why I'd want to stay with them. It seems to me that I should get back everything I ever paid them and more...

...
Click to expand...

I'd pursue a refund. Get on the phone and be courteous but firm.

Hopefully that works for me, too (haven't been able to get them on the phone yet 😛).

And yes, the slogan at the bottom of their tech support emails is a sick joke.
 
Did that just happen? I got the exact same message from them a couple months ago when they lost my website. Just substitute NS 45 and it's the same letter. Of course I had to write to them first and say "where's my website?" and that's the reply I got. So it happens a lot apparently. I thought it was terrible that it happened once. Dot5 sucks. At least they finally stopped billing me.
 
Horrortaxi,

Yes, just happened. Same thing here: I had to write them to ask, "Uh, where is everything?"

Were you able to recover any data?
 
Originally posted by xjohn
Were you able to recover any data?
Click to expand...
I keep a mirror of my sites on my hard drive, which I back up often. I didn't lose anything but that's just due to my own diligence. They lost everything...including my business. 10 minutes after I recieved their "sorry, we lost everything" email I was up and running at readysetconnect.com.
 
Thanks, adamberti. I checked out archive.org, and a combination of it and the google cache will allow me to recover some of my older data, which is great. I'm not holding out hope for the rest of it.
 
This isn't the first time they've had an issue with a server. About a month before I cut ties with Dot5, my service was down for 2 days due to a "hardware failure." It was a pain, but it got resolved.

My advice to u, be firm & consistent with your complaints. Their customer service is TERRIBLE, and it took me 7 phonecalls, as well as many emails, before getting a full credit. Whatever they say, keep hitting 'em back.

This company has gone down the tubes since I first had service with them over 2 years ago. I've since gone to www.neureal.com, and have had nothing be excellent service. 😀
 
Web Hosting

Hey guys,

I have just set up my own hosting company, the servers are coming online over the next few days, ill keep you posted.

Ensign
 
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