Total incompetence

One of my email doesn't work already 2 days - "login incorrect" all the time. And this "support" can not do nothing with this simple problem. This is the first time I see such a complete incompetence from hosting. They can not even answer my support ticket!

Do you mean that support has not responded to your ticket, or that support has not been able to resolve your problem?

Two days is a long time to wait for a support response. They are usually much quicker than that (I think my longest wait for them had been just over 30 hours, and that was whenh they were in the midst of a series of hardware issues and the support queue was abnormally high).

--rlparker

First the responded but didn't resolve the problem, now they just keep silence and the problem rest. I assume that they just can not solve it

This is a troubleshooting forum where users try to help each other. What's not working for you?

-Scott

I'm not meaning to suggest that any of us are smarter than the Dreamhost support folks, but often more minds applied to a problem can help. If you describe more fully what kind of problems(s) you are having, we might can help.

For instance:

1) Is this a new email address?
2) Can you reach it via webmail?
3) Has it ever worked correctly?
4) Have you tried logging in with the "m1234567" user name?

The more completely you describe your problem, the more likely one of us will be able to help you.

One last thought, and please don't be angry at me for suggesting this (you would not believe how often I have found this to be a problem with my users!), you *did* double check to make sure you are using the correct case when logging in, right? "User" and "user", and "Password" and "password" are different. An accidental "caps lock" on when typing a password is really hard to catch, because you can't see what is being entered. I'm sure you have double checked this, but it had to be mentioned. wink

--rlparker

Edited by rlparker on 08/22/06 07:45 AM (server time).

I have 10 emails and 9 of them is working without any problem. I know very well the difference between User and user. This email adress is not new and I can not reach it via webmail. Yes it worked correctly and right now I can make it work but with one condition - when I use the ftp-login instead of "m1234567". Yes exactly - ftp-login! I changed the password then deleted email address completely and created it again hoping get rid of the bug. And right now I see "change pending" for this new (or old) adress already 2 days! This is obvious bug of the system and "support" just can not cope with this I assume. What a nonsense!

Thanks for sending along the additional information. The situation you are describing is very strange, especially the ability to log in using the "ftp" credentials, but not the "m1234567" users.

If it were webmail we were talking about, I could understand it, as several of my email accounts have the email address@domain.com set up where "address" is the ftp user, and the passwords are the same, but I've never encountered being able to login via POP3/IMAP client with that user name.

I can also identify with the "stuck" "change pending status; that has happened to me before and it is very frustrating. I have no idea why certain DH mail related changes take so long sometimes, and are almost instantaneous other times.

Unfortunately, I have no reasonable explanation as to why the account acts in the way you describe, so at this point I can only sympathize with you (though I'd far rather be able to provide an answer).

In spite of your understandable frustration, I suggest you don't just "give up" on the support requests - If (and when) the "change pending" status goes away, if the problem persists I think you should send yet another support request. The next support tech may do a better job of getting to the bottom of it.

--rlparker

Well, thanks for your sympathy :) The situation is solved at last! The "change pending" status is gone along with impossibility to use the email. But two my support tickets remained unaswered, so I think that the problem was solved after I removed completely email adress and created it again. But I waited for 2 days without any help from support. My conclusion - total incompetence. I will try to find another hosting

I'm glad that the problem is now resolved, though I hate to think that the only way to get it fixed was to "kill" the account and regenerate it (especially given how long that can sometimes take).

Two days without any help form support is no good, I agree. Good luck!

--rlparker

In reply to:
Two days is a long time to wait for a support response.

If you think that's a long time... I currently have one question regarding email issues and it's over 28 days old. That's right, it's been more than four weeks and it's still sitting in the support queue.

GiraffeDesign.com

Whoa! I'm thinking you may have a record there! Seriously, I'd re-submit that puppy, as I suspect it got "gobbled" by "gremlins" or was inadvertantly banished into the ether by a "mistyped keystroke" by a "noob" tech in the support center.

Seriously, I'd follow up on that one; please *don't* think I believe a 28 day old support request is "funny" in spite of my opening paragraph here wink .

--rlparker

Speaking of total incompetance...I'm getting a

"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

On my site. Yes, that's right....once again, my clients are seeing *nothing* instead of the website.

This is the worst host I have ever used.
Does anyone know what's going on?

Seriously, I'd re-submit that puppy, as I suspect it got "gobbled" by "gremlins" or was inadvertantly banished into the ether by a "mistyped keystroke" by a "noob" tech in the support center.

I've thought about it, but judging by the results of some of their other actions, I really don't think they care to help the situation they created. At this point I figure I'll just let it sit and see how long it actually takes.

They blew off a callback for the third time in a row. And it's not like the one time they did call back I wasn't polite. Sometimes I do ask tough questions like "Since you claim to offer 24hr support, when the panel is down, status.dreamhost.com doesn't list any issues, and supprt@ emails bounce back, how am I supposed to contact you to let you know all my sites are down?"

GiraffeDesign.com

In reply to:
They blew off a callback for the third time in a row.

I've had a similar experience. I've hosted here since 1998 and have requested a callback only twice, and never got a callback (though the problems were utlimately resolved in short order).

In reply to:
"Since you claim to offer 24hr support, when the panel is down, status.dreamhost.com doesn't list any issues, and supprt@ emails bounce back, how am I supposed to contact you to let you know all my sites are down?"

That *IS* the hard question, and it has been asked before. There is a thread on this forum where I discussed this, and Dallas responded with an explanation and then posted that he believed it needed to be addressed, but I have yet to see any change to this "catch-22"

--rlparker

Thanks for those links! It's good to know they're at least aware of the situation.

My suggestion would be:
- When an email is sent to support@, have it check the from address and see if it's in the DH db. If it is, submit the question.
- If it's not, send an auto-reply which states the user could not be identified. Ask the user to reply to that email and then (lots of ways to do this, here's one) request the user reply with only their username in the subject.

Basically, get the system to verify the user. If it can't, create a second step to help verify. If that doesn't work, have them go through the panel.

This way users who do provide enough information for support to do their job aren't penalized by DH.

GiraffeDesign.com

In reply to:
My suggestion would be:
- When an email is sent to support@, have it check the from address and see if it's in the DH db. If it is, submit the question.
- If it's not, send an auto-reply which states the user could not be identified. Ask the user to reply to that email and then (lots of ways to do this, here's one) request the user reply with only their username in the subject.

I think that is an excellent, efficient, even elegant way to initially address the problem.

The only remaining issue I see is the situation Dallas discussed (see previous post in this thread for links) where he reminds us that "support@dreamhost.com email is dependent on our back-end database and so it sometimes is also not fully functioning when our web control panel is down".

I still like your idea about how to handle it, as in the majority cases we would hope the back-end database would still be accessible when the panel is down.

That said, a system really *does* need to be set up to allow a user to "report" that stuff is broken - *especially when it is broken!* Duh!

--rlparker