Not a good first impression

I've been recommended Dreamhost by just about everyone. But my first impression hasn't been great:

First off, you should know that the contact links on your website are down.

Secondly, here's what I wanted to contact you about:

I'm trying to sign up for a new hosting plan, including registration of my free domain. The .net domain I want show as being available on all the other registrar sites I've queried it on, yet when I try to enter the address as my chosen domain, your site returns that the site is already registered.

Is this a temporary issue at your end?

and

If I elect to set up the account with a temporary dreamhosters domain, am I still entitled to my free full domain registration?

Cheers,
tamper

Hi tamper

In reply to:
First off, you should know that the contact links on your website are down.

You mean the links to http://www.dreamhost.com/contact.cgi are down? I have no problems accessing them.

In reply to:
The .net domain I want show as being available on all the other registrar sites I've queried it on, yet when I try to enter the address as my chosen domain, your site returns that the site is already registered.

You can check who has a registered the domain at http://whois.dreamhost.com/. Maybe this can tell you if the domain is really registered or if it's an error.

In reply to:
If I elect to set up the account with a temporary dreamhosters domain, am I still entitled to my free full domain registration?

Yes! I used my free domain three months after I signed up.

Hi doeleman,

Yep - I should update this. Both problems were related to issues with the Dreamhost site last night. The most frustrating thing was that with the contact form temporarily down, there was no way of getting in touch with DH except through the forum (hence my post). Especially since the support@dreamhost.com address plastered everywhere is no longer supported!

But, I'm glad to say that things did come back online and Dan from DH was very quick to respond after that.

Much is forgiven!

support@dreamhost.com is definitely supported. What makes you think it isn't?

nate.

> support@dreamhost.com is definitely supported. What makes you think
> it isn't?

Note that that address is supported, but only works if you've A) emailed us in the past, B) contacted us via the contact form or support page in the past, or C) have set the email address in question up as an 'official' contact email address via the web panel. This all applies to our sales email address, too.

If you email those addresses, you should receive instructions back letting you know pretty much what I wrote above. The first contact, generally speaking, needs to be through a form.

Basically, this is the only way we could keep spam out of our queues without the risk of deleting customer emails. It's not perfect either, unfortunately, but works.

- Jeff @ DreamHost
- DH Discussion Forum Admin

Not a good first impression