Ipowerweb Sucks

Sunday May 27, 2007, 7:41 PM

2007-05-27T21:25:00.000-07:00

From billing@ipowerweb.com

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Sunday May 27, 2007, 7:39 PM

2007-05-27T21:23:00.000-07:00

To: billing@ipowerweb.com
Subject: Possible Fraud

Recently in a support ticket for poshlust.com an operator listed me as the owner of pencilboxshop.com. When I informed them it was a case of fraud, they referred me to you.

Am I listed as having purchased pencilboxshop.com or not? If so, I have never heard of this domain until now and it is a case of fraud.
If someone is using my identity to get themselves credit cards to buy websites I need to know so I can call the police and put a lock on my credit REGARDLESS of whether billing has been suspended. I need to know if my name is associated with that account or if "Niles S." accidentally cut and pasted another person's account info in my support ticket.

Is it a typo or fraud?

I also need to know if my name is currently associated with any other accounts.

Thank you in advance. The entire exchange is listed below.

Sunday May 27, 2007, 8:14 AM

2007-05-27T21:16:00.000-07:00

(BTW, does this sound outsourced, or what?)

Discussion Thread
---------------------------------------------------------------
Response (Rocca T.) - 05/27/2007 08:14 AM
Dear Client,

Thank you for contacting IPOWER Technical Support.

We have gone through issue and checked that "pencilboxshop.com " is with us in "Suspended billing" status .Regarding this domain you will have to contact our billing department they will assist you for further.
Their email address is as below:
billing@ipower.com
As well as when we check another domain which is with us poshlust.com you will have to change name servers for this domain to ipower as per provided to you .As soon as you change the name server to ipower you will be able to access your site .Now you can access this site using the below temp URL:
http://host380.ipowerweb.com/~poshlust
Please check it and feel free to get back us if you have any query we will be happy to assist you for further.

Please feel free to visit our knowledge database at: http://helpcenter.ipowerweb.com for step by step instructions on working with your iPowerweb hosting account. Should you require additional assistance please do not hesitate to contact us at support@ipowerweb.com

"Now you can access this site using below temp URL"?

I checked. The site still works there. It's now 11:20 PM an Sunday but I got this at 4:06 PM Friday:

Response (Jennifer N.) - 05/25/2007 04:06 PM
Dear Customer,
Your account has been cancelled.
Should you have any other questions, please feel free to call our billing center.
1-888-511-4678 option 4
Thank You.

If my account has been cancelled, why is it still there?

Sunday, May 27, 6:23 AM

2007-05-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

I decide to keep it simple and ignore anything related to poshlust.com.

FRAUD ALERT:

If you are referring to pencilboxshop.com as listed in the first reply from you, I do not own that domain and demand an investigation if your records say I do because it is a case of FRAUD. Do your records show me as having purchased a hosting package for pencilboxshop.com or not?

In the meantime I have looked for records of pencilboxshop.com and can't find anything that says it ever existed. But if someone is out there using my identity to get credit cards to buy domains I need to know, don't I?

Saturday May 26, 2007, 4:18PM

2007-05-27T21:10:00.000-07:00

In response to my demand about pencilboxshop.com and my statement that I was canceling poshlust.com:

Subject
---------------------------------------------------------------
Unable to receive email

Discussion Thread
---------------------------------------------------------------
Response (Rocca T.) - 05/26/2007 02:18 PM
Dear [name],

Thank you for contacting IPOWER Technical Support.

We have checked your issue. Your domain name servers are not pointing to our Name Servers, So please point your name server to our Name Servers, which are listed below.

Primary: NS1.IPOWERWEB.NET 64.70.61.130
Secondary: NS1.IPOWERDNS.COM 12.129.206.202
Tertiary: NS2.IPOWERWEB.NET 12.129.206.200
Quaternary: NS2.IPOWERDNS.COM 12.129.206.203
To make your domain to point to our Name Servers, please contact your registrar, i.e. TUCOWS INC.

Till the domain is pointing to our Name Servers, we cannot assist you further.

Please feel free to visit our knowledge database at: http://helpcenter.ipowerweb.com and http://support.ipower.com for step by step instructions on working with your ipowerweb hosting account. Should you require additional assistance please do not hesitate to contact us at support@ipowerweb.com.

Friday May 25, 2007, 7:59 PM

2007-05-27T21:07:00.000-07:00

Re: Error Processing Email

Reference Number: 070525-000166

Hello:

Thank you for contacting iPowerWeb. It appears that you recently had an interaction with one our representatives. We strive for 100% customer satisfaction 100% of the time and take all steps to ensure that we meet our goal.

When it is convenient for you, would you please take a moment and answer a brief survey? Your valuable feedback will be used to ensure that iPowerWeb maintains its high quality standards.

[Links]

--------------------
Thank you for taking the time to complete our survey. We appreciate your time and feedback.

Click on the following link to be removed from our survey recipient list.:

http://ipowerweb-metrics.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ipowerweb_metrics.cfg/websurveys/optout?_147=thisaccounthasnoinbox@poshlust.com&_143=2330695

You have got to be kidding me. I decide not to fill this out until I find out what the deal is with pencilboxshop.com.

Friday, May 25, 2007 1:09 AM

2007-05-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

I send a request to Ipower to cancel my poshlust.com account because everything is transferred now. I won't include those emails here because they include personal information. I gave them the wrong credit card number for verification and they requested a new one, then when I sent the right one there was an "Email Error" at their end. It took 4 emails and all day to cancel the account.

Thursday, May 24, 2007 6:53 AM

2007-05-27T20:59:00.000-07:00

I sent this reply:

I don't own and never have owned pencilboxshop.com. If you have me listed as the owner of pencilboxshop.com then it is a case of fraud and I demand to have the account cancelled and an investigation completed.

As for poshlust.com, when I received no response to my first or second inquiries and still could not receive email 5 days later I switched poshlust.com to a different host. That's why 8 days after my initial inquiry and 10 days after I stopped receiving email with no explanation and no indication that the problem was being worked on-- in spite of providing an alternate email address to which I successfully received an automatic reply, mind you-- my nameservers are pointing elsewhere. How long was I expected to wait?

You've made it perfectly clear ipower doesn't want my business so I am in the process of canceling my account. I don't expect to ever get an explanation as to why my email was down and why it took 8 days to receive my first reply.

Thursday May 24, 2007

2007-05-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

Eight days after my initial support ticket:

Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support
center. Below is a summary of your request and our response.

We will assume your issue has been resolved if we do not hear from you
within 72 hours.

Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.

You may update this question by replying to this message. Because your
reply will be automatically processed, you MUST enter your reply in
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Subject
---------------------------------------------------------------
Unable to receive email

Discussion Thread
---------------------------------------------------------------
Response (Niles S.) - 05/24/2007 02:19 AM
Dear ,

Thank you for contacting IPOWER Technical Support.

We apologize for the inconvenience you are facing. We have checked that your Name servers are not pointing to us. So please do contact to your concern registrar in order to point your domain to our name servers.
Here is whois record of your domain.

Domain Name: PENCILBOXSHOP.COM
Domain Name: POSHLUST.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net
Name Server: NS1.LUNARSERVERS.COM
Name Server: NS2.LUNARSERVERS.COM
Status: ok
Updated Date: 19-may-2007
Creation Date: 19-sep-2005
Expiration Date: 19-sep-2007

To change your name servers to iPower's, you must log into your current domain registrar's control panel and make the switch. Our nameservers are:

Primary NS1.IPOWERWEB.NET 64.70.61.130
Secondary NS1.IPOWERDNS.COM 66.235.217.202
Tertiary NS2.IPOWERWEB.NET 66.235.217.200
Quaternary NS2.IPOWERDNS.COM 64.70.61.131

Please feel free to visit our knowledge database at: http://helpcenter.ipowerweb.com and http://support.ipower.com/ for step by step instructions on working with your iPowerweb hosting account.

Customer - 05/18/2007 03:56 PM
Hello, has there been any progress on this?

Customer - 05/16/2007 05:04 AM
Hi, none of my people have been able to receive email at our ipower hosted accounts since late Monday night at poshlust.com or earthwingskateboards.com either through webmail or smtp. As far as I can tell it started shortly after we got error messages while trying to log in to vdeck. Is there an ongoing issue?

I seem to be able to send to non ipower accounts through my ISPs smtp server if that helps any.

Keep in mind this means I won't receive any email until the issue is fixed so I won't be able to reply to an automatic reply. Hopefully an actual human is reading this?

Auto-Response - 05/16/2007 05:04 AM
Title: Troubleshooting - 553: Sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts
Link: http://helpcenter.ipower.com/cgi-bin/ipower.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=1220&p_created=1086149087

Title: Troubleshooting - NJABL: error while sending
Link: http://helpcenter.ipower.com/cgi-bin/ipower.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=1932&p_created=1161370437

Title: Troubleshooting - 550: Relaying Not Allowed (port 25)
Link: http://helpcenter.ipower.com/cgi-bin/ipower.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=1437&p_created=1088470394

Title: Troubleshooting: -ERR unable to scan /Maildir
Link: http://helpcenter.ipower.com/cgi-bin/ipower.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=1810&p_created=1100656732

Title: Presales - Do your servers support different e-mail clients?
Link: http://helpcenter.ipower.com/cgi-bin/ipower.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=1060&p_created=1085607186

[---001:003232:46271---]

Regards,

Niles S.
Technical Support Team
IPOWER, Inc.

IPOWER Support Center
http://support.ipower.com

IPOWER Help Center
http://helpcenter.ipower.com

Who the hell is pencilboxshop.com?

Sunday May 20 to Wednesday May 23, 2007

2007-05-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

No issues. Still no response from Ipower, though I don't expect one. But....

Friday night and Saturday morning, May 18, 2007

2007-05-27T20:37:00.000-07:00

Still no reply beyond my first one from Ipower. Even though I know deep down the operator will just paste something from the Knowledge Base in their reply, I wait an hour in Live Chat. While there I continue to look for hosts.

This is my 6th day without email.

I decide on Lunarpages. They have a good deal going and in spite of some accusations of locking threads in the forum they actually have a forum AND post announcements and updates when there's a problem, and because of my experience with Ipower, that's all I want. I outsource all my videos so I don't even look at bandwidth and space. I simply don't care. I just want someone to tell me why my site is down when it happens.

So I download my entire website by FTP while I take a nap(I sleep days) and when I get up I go to Ipower's Knowledge Base so I can change my nameservers (this is how the internet directs traffic), and in that article I find this:

Keep in mind that you will not be able to make changes unless you contact our transfer department and have them unlock the control panel.

I decide to ignore that and check it out for myself, and it turns out this is a lie. You just log in and click "Domain Locking". I transfer my domain to Lunarpages by changing the nameservers and within an hour I can receive email again. I write to Lunarpages and ask them to be my domain registar as well.

This should be the end of it, right?

Wrong.

Friday, May 19th, 2007

2007-05-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

I send the following message in a reply between the lines as instructed:

05/18/2007 03:56 PM
Hello, has there been any progress on this?

Then just in case, I start researching hosts with customer forums and a history of posting messages when they are going to do something that messes with your site.

I received no reply to this, not even an automatic one. Also it appears Ipower's phone support is down due to higher than normal volume.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

2007-05-27T20:26:00.000-07:00

Still no email at poshlust.com, although Earthwing started getting theirs.

No response from Ipower.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 7:04:33 AM

2007-05-27T20:24:00.000-07:00

I successfully received their bot reply at my Yahoo address Wednesday, May 16, 2007 7:04:33 AM

Your question has been received. For an optimal support experience, please visit www.contactipower.com in the future to submit a question. You should expect a response from us within 24 hours.

You may update this question by replying to this message. Because your reply will be automatically processed, you MUST enter your reply in the space below. Text entered into any other part of this message will be discarded. In order to be able to update the question, be sure to click Reply in your email client first.

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May 15, 2007

2007-05-27T19:32:00.000-07:00

Late in the night, Brian was still unable to receive email. We tried sending a few things to each other while talking on the phone. We could send it fine, but not receive it to Ipower email addresses.

I googled "iPower email down" to see if there were any other people on newsgroups or blogs with this problem because Ipower doesn't have a user forum and Although some people have in the past seen temporary announcements on their support page admitting their support is swamped, I've personally never seen one.

After wading through other blog posts about ipower in which people seemed to be getting conflicting information, I decided that yes, this was an ipower-caused problem, probably from migrating servers but not migrating email with it.

Having had experience with Livechat before and knowing they would be no help because their information is limited to what they can find in the knowledge base, readily available to customers who know how to read, early Wednesday morning I submitted the following support ticket:

05/16/2007 05:04 AM
Hi, none of my people have been able to receive email at our ipower hosted accounts since late Monday night at poshlust.com or earthwingskateboards.com either through webmail or smtp. As far as I can tell it started shortly after we got error messages while trying to log in to vdeck. Is there an ongoing issue?

I seem to be able to send to non ipower accounts through my ISPs smtp server if that helps any.

Keep in mind this means I won't receive any email until the issue is fixed so I won't be able to reply to an automatic reply. Hopefully an actual human is reading this?

After submitting this, the next page had a place to put an alternate email address, so I used a Yahoo address.

May 14, 2007

2007-05-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

I was unable to receive email at poshlust.com. My brother, who was expecting a large order for skateboard decks, was also unable to receive email at earthwingskateboards.com. Our sites were running but we had no access to the vdeck (control panel) on either site.

We decided to wait until morning to see if it was another unannounced change because trying to get an answer from Ipower is a pain and we had gotten used to the site being down for two days or so in the past. In the meantime, when Earthwing's vdeck became accessible again, I logged in to have all of his email forwarded to his gmail account since we had no way of knowing if it was a problem with where the mail was routed or with accessing the place where it is stored.

My experience with ipower

2007-05-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

I bought a few websites through them several years ago, when they were good. Sometime in the last 2 years they crashed.

I used to run a few phpnuke websites. About 2 years ago they started going down for no reason. It turns out while ipower offers high bandwidth and a large amount of storage very cheaply, they limit the amount of "queries".

In layman's terms, when a web page loads the code sends queries so that it can pick up files it needs to display on the page. On a plain html page this usually means image files. On pages that run on databases, like phpnuke, postnuke, forums, chatrooms and stores, this means everything on the page.

So you are allowed to store as much information you want on the space you rent from ipower, but you are not allowed to display them on a page as much as you want, even if you are well below your bandwidth limit.

This limit on queries is not listed in the advertising they use to reel you in. You will just find your site down from time to time depending on how many visitors you get. More popular = more visitors = more queries = more downtime.

You are also limited to 1 cron job. A cron job is something you want to schedule to happen on a regular basis. You would be wise to use this to do site backups.

I got fed up and stopped using databases altogether, thinking that would solve the problem. It didn't. Things got worse in the fall of last year. Since about September my site has been shut down for things ranging from migrating servers, deciding to shut down FTP access for blogs, and accidentally unplugging a server.

This doesn't include the times my site or email were down or inaccessible for reasons never explained.

Main reasons not to use ipower:

1. They will never tell you ahead of time when they are going to do an upgrade or move something. They never have. EVER.

2. There is no way for customers to contact each other.

3. If they finally admit to a problem, the developers are working on it and they expect it to be solved within 24 hours. They will tell you this for several days in a row if you can manage to get a response.

I'm normally a very even-tempered person, but my experience in the last few weeks was the last straw for me. I'm putting it here in the hope that no one else will have to go through this. I only wish I had saved the other emails I have exchanged in the last year with Ipower so you could see the scope of the problem. Instead I have linked to the User reviews at Cnet So you can see for yourself.