Jan 10 2009 at 12:52pm
How not to handle technical difficulties, take 2
I meant to post this at the time but never did. Why do I never finish my drafts???
On Wednesday, October 8th our websites suddenly disappeared. Our VPS (virtual private server), hosted by VPSville, was completely unavailable. There was no explanation on their website. Our only information came from a thread at Web Hosting Talk.
The VPSville site was still live, but their forum was no longer active. Supposedly they did post something on their forums early on, but quickly took the forums completely offline. Over 24 hours passed before VPSville let their customers know what was going on.
The original announcement was vague. In light of later news that some of their servers had been hacked and all the data erased, this announcement was outright misleading. Needless to say, this was completely unacceptable. Not just that they lost the data. No, the worst part was that they didn’t tell their customers what was happening.
What do do when things go wrong (revised)
- Find out what actually happened.
- Fess up. Admit that your systems weren’t able to handle the traffic (or whatever the problem was). Do not blame the users.
- Make sure this information is published and availble to clients.
- Ensure that communication channels are open. Make every attempt to respond to customer questions.
- Do not attempt to cover up the problem.
- If you don’t know all the details, that’s okay. Tell people what you do know.
- Promise to get things working ASAP.
- Do get things working ASAP.
- Give paying customers a refund for services lost.
- In the future, make sure your servers can handle the traffic, or plan other ways to avoid the problem.
Chuck Monroe January 12th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Everything you just said is common sense
The fact that it warranted a post shows well how sadly many service provider don’t get customer service.
I am sure I am not the only one who is willing to forgo some quality in the service to get top notch customer service / tech support.
Good post!
Matt January 19th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
The last time my datacenter had a major outage (exactly 185 days ago) I called them up within minutes of the downtime. They told me there was a major power spike which shutdown every server in the datacenter. I asked them to send me more details when they had time, and a few hours later (after all the servers had been turned back on), they sent a mass email to all their customers. I was down for a total of 2 hours.
I asked to be compensated for the downtime, but they completely ignored me. I guess you can’t have everything
rtt June 25th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
What happened at VPSVille is unfortunate, I’m not a customer but I do work for an ISP.
Although I don’t think the customer should be blamed, it is important to note that this could have happened at any provider.
The best way to avoid these situations is to make sure you take regular off-site backups (it’s best not to rely on your provider for this).
Further, it’s in almost any TOS that the provider is not responsible for dataloss, especially if the customer did not pay for databackup.
Actually, many providers do not take regular backups, due to the sheer cost of it, so they either leave it as an extra option for the customer to purchase.
I know little about VPSVille but I did hear on WHT that they offered 1 month free to all customers.
I guess I’m biased because I’m Canadian and prefer Canadian providers, and I’ve observed far worse service and response from US based companies.
Megan June 25th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Hi rtt,
We prefer Canadian companies too! Unfortunately we haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement for VPSville in Canada and are now hosting in the UK.
What we were most bothered about with the VPSville situation wasn’t the loss of data (our fault for not having good backups), but the lack of communication about the situation. They actually took their support forums down – that’s pretty appalling. One month free as compensation wasn’t enough to keep us there.
Megan