Welcome to Dreamhost... Your e-mail is farked

Signed up for service on Friday night.

Transferred all my domains and files Saturday.

Monday everything is working and DNS is propagated.

Tuesday night at 7pm my e-mail goes down (ERROR : Connection dropped by imap-server.). I hope it's just a DNS issue.

Wednesday morning I report the problem to the server form. They reply " An unforseen consequence of something made to make our mail servers more stable is backfiring. I am working to undo it now. Stay tuned!" followed by "Outage resolved: We believe the issue to be resolved."

Problem is not resolved. I repopen the issue. I get "Outage resolved: No server-wide problem was found."

I open a NEW ticket, this time with support, providing all the details a third time (you'd think one group could talk to the other...). That was 90 minutes ago with no response. My customers would be walking out the door with this response level.

Is this what I am to expect for the next 2 years?!

-Stephen

yup, pretty much

Up to three hours now and not a word of response.

At least a "we're looking at it" would suffice.

Well, out of utter frustration I submitted another request to the server form, asking them to go nudge someone in support because they aren't responding.

Now I've got a reply of "Outage verified: We are actively looking into resolving it."

I'm praying hard that someone can really fix it this time.

PLEEEEEASE let Digitus the Patron Saint of 1's and 0's hear my pleas....

-Stephen

(*&^%(*^(*@@!!!!

Outage resolved: The outage has been resolved.
(2006-01-11 10:49:05 PDT, 0 secs ago)
Outage verified: We are actively looking into resolving it.
(2006-01-11 10:41:10 PDT, 7 mins 55 secs ago) Outage first reported.
(2006-01-11 10:27:07 PDT, 21 mins 58 secs ago)

If by "resolved" they mean "Yup, there's a problem and we're resolved to ignore it" then, yeah, this message is correct.

*sigh* So much for 97 day guarantee.... they're not even gonna make it 7.

-Stephen

i am having this exact issue as well, but there's been no response to the support ticket yet..

however, this may help you. i've found that all my mail accounts are STILL accessible via pine if you ssh into your administrator account. just enter pine, then when pine opens, enter the username & pass of the account you want to check (note: enter the 'm99999' username, not the 'whatever'@domain.com username).

but i still cannot access them via client software or webmail.

I guess I'm more stunned than anything else. I can understand an outage. But to just ignore the support requests?! Without even an acknowledgement?!

After all I read on hear and hear from my fellow DH user... utterly disappoint.

-Stephen

P.S. Thanks for the workaround muniak.

FYI DH states that they try to respond in 24 hours so your hope above of them responding in 3 is utterly in vain. Sometimes they get back instantly, sometime 24 or better.

for what it's worth, probably a reality you should know about.

To be fair tho outtages to web or mail normally get priority and response sooner

jason

Thanks jason. I guess I'm upset because I left my last host because of similar support issues. And everything WAS working great, and the package offered here is WAY better.

I just think I'm doomed when it comes to support. FWIW I'm always the one in the resturant whose meal is messed up, too.

-Stephen

from my experience. every emails i sent to to their support side, i'll get a reply after 2 days. and when that problems somehow sorted out without anything done, they didn't explain why is it like that in the first place.

update: problem fixed!

"I apologize - we had an error with our data clustering which was supposed
to be fixed but it looks like your users needed a bit of one-on-one
attention. I updated them and confirmed that I could log in and they are
working but if you need any more assistance please contact me directly
and I'll help you right away:"

Yup, got a message as well:

"I apologize for the delay - there was an issue with a system change to improve stability which unfortunatly was run at the same time as a filer update. We are working on a fix for everyone but in the meantime I am fixing your specific users."

Verified problem resolved. I'm hoping to move on from this and everything will be hunky-dory... (insert weak smile)

-Stephen

I'm curious, for the "Please select the severity of this request" part, what did you guys select?

For anyone noticing -- I am indeed sweeping through today's forum threads.

I couldn't help but laugh at this thread title. Sums up my experience nicely... For months now, DH email service has been less than reliable. Need I really say that this is obviously my own experience to those of you that routinely sweep the board with your, "hey sorry, but it's all good here" posts?

Anyways, a word to those wise enough to listen... get a backup plan for email if you're sticking with DH. A poor man's backup of forwarding all accounts to Yahoo/Gmail archives has saved me from complete ruin. The forwards seem to be fairly reliable even when DH mailstores are on the fritz.

Of course, as the resident IT guy that gave my users DH -- I still look bad. But I have re-learned the old valuable lesson about "...eggs in one basket." and will have it fresh in mind for decades to come.

Thanks DH -- and thank you OP for the laugh. I do feel better.

> For months now, DH email service has been less than reliable. Need I really say that this is obviously my own experience to those of you that routinely sweep the board with your, "hey sorry, but it's all good here" posts?

At least one or two are reasonably objective and critical of email services (at least Imap), as this customer's list also shows (give page a few moments to load).

Hey, sorry, it's all good, :-)

BobS

"I looked again at the list today and, in a remarkable turnabout, DreamHost is now the only provider on the list to get a thumbs down, meaning "a provider that I recommend that you avoid."
that made my day.

In reply to:

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"I looked again at the list today and, in a remarkable turnabout, DreamHost is now the only provider on the list to get a thumbs down, meaning "a provider that I recommend that you avoid."
that made my day.

---

Glad to make your day, but for the record, that post (quoted) was from April 2004, almost 2 years ago. That list is now more neutral with neither thumbs up nor thumbs down, nor M nor W, and includes positive and negative comments and warnings (some also old). Perhaps the bottom line is Nancy (ii.com) is apparently still a DH email customer (and participant in the referral program).

Cheers,

BobS

In reply to:

---

Perhaps the bottom line is Nancy (ii.com) is apparently still a DH email customer (and participant in the referral program).

---

I still use DreamHost for my Deflexion.com blog & for random Debian Linux shell things, and I would recommend DreamHost for:

* a non-business, non-database blog or web site
* a shell account for using lynx, procmail, pine (to access non-DH IMAP servers), etc.

But, I do not recommend DreamHost for mail hosting and I have posted repeatedly about this in these forums. I am still a participant in the DH referral program, but I try to make it clear on my IMAP Service Providers page that there are problems with the DH email system and that I do not use DH for my email (I mainly use Tuffmail.com and FastMail.FM for my email).

I'm in this for the long haul, as you can tell if you look at my 11+ years of participation on the Net (e.g., Usenet), and I would not jeapordize the most important thing -- my reputation -- by recommending a provider because of a referral fee.

BTW, DreamHost has built up a lot of good karma because of their charity programs and I will probably always have a soft spot for them because of that -- even if I decide that I need to give them a thumb down.

Nancy

Infinite Ink ~ http://www.ii.com
Deflexion & Reflexion ~ http://deflexion.com

> I'm hoping to move on from this and everything will be hunky-dory...

I suggest you save your hope for something more likely, such as pigs flying.

For the last year and a half DH email service has been astonishingly poor. In addition to the continuous stream of so-called "one-off" outages I've experienced mail features that just don't work, complete loss of incoming mail and security issues that would made your hair stand on end. Support's responses give me no hope that DH are taking the situation seriously.

<Joke>

>Support's responses give me no hope that DH are taking the situation seriously.

Yet you're still here.

</joke>

-Matttail

I thought to rate as a joke something had to be amusing ... ;)

In reply to:

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[...]
Hey, sorry, it's all good, :-)

BobS

---

(Chuckling) -- I've gone on to read the other responses in the thread but since you took the time to send this... Thanks! I think it was properly exposed as comedy. I'll be sure to properly frame your future posts...

Uh lemme try this too..

<joke>
Oh! They're giving refunds back to people past 90 days now?! Great, who do I talk to??
</joke>

Heh...

>>> reasonably objective and critical
>> Perhaps the bottom line is Nancy (ii.com) is apparently still a DH email customer (and participant in the referral program).

In reply to:

---

I would not jeapordize the most important thing -- my reputation -- by recommending a provider because of a referral fee.

BTW, DreamHost has built up a lot of good karma because of their charity programs and I will probably always have a soft spot for them because of that -- even if I decide that I need to give them a thumb down.

---

I was only trying to concisely illustrate you seemed middle-of-the-road on DH, and "reasonably objective and critical;" not imply anything negative regarding referrals. I agree on charity programs; would like it if they posted some evidence of payment similar to Distrowatch, though.

Cheers,

BobS

Hey look. My e-mail is down again. Same problem as before.

An hour later, they fixed pop, but webmail is still farked.

*sigh* So much for being just a one-time bad week.

Pop was fixed. Then Webmail was fixed. Webmail down again.