Is This What Adam Sandler Felt Like In "Anger Management"?

I am livid.

LIV-ID.

Okay, so here's the deal. Long time readers will know that I started out on Blogger, transferred to Wordpress after the first year, then recently made the switch back to Blogger for sheer simplicity of blog management. I'm now about to enter into the third year of Lizzie's Home.

When I was shopping around for a webhost for my dot com last year, I didn't have a lot of money to spend. In fact, it was an uphill battle getting Talented Hubby to allow me to spend any money on something that I had been doing quite well for free on Blogger. I eventually convinced him about the merits of the change to Wordpress and he then relented. Or I wore him down with my whining. Either way!

I chose a company I heard mentioned on a (then) big name blogger's website. As in, "go here, I personally recommend these companies." I was debating mentioning the name of this organization but after a day to stew about the situation I have come to the point where I honestly don't care anymore - the company is Very Commerce. Don't bother searching for a website. You'll understand why in a minute.

The plan was only $4 US per month prepaid (at $48) for a year. Thinking this was quite reasonable, I paid and had no problems at all for the entire year. In fact, I did not need to contact the company again after those initial couple of weeks of set-up, me being the green newbie and all.

In December, I was contacted by both Very Commerce and GoDaddy about the upcoming hosting and domain name expirations. I was also sent repeat reminder emails for the next two months, more so from GoDaddy for the domain registration but there were two or three from Very Comerce regarding the hosting as well. I knew I had until the end of February to make a final decision so I flagged these emails and pretty much ignored them while I considered my options.

Obviously I decided to switch back to Blogger and have been slowly manually uploading my posts back here for the last couple of months. I knew I was getting close to the wire with several months' worth still left to bring over so I logged on to lizzieshome.com yesterday, or tried to, to do a bit of a catch up session.

Hmmm, that's strange, I thought. Why can't I log into the dot com? Why am I being redirected to a Google results page for "lizzies home" instead? Must be my computer - it has been a bit temperamental of late. I'll check back later.

Later...

Still not working? Well this is odd. I wonder if Sarah is online?

I then log on to Messenger to find that yes, Sarah is online and willing to try to log on to lizzieshome.com from her end. She can't get in either.

Oh dear. I wonder if they've cut my hosting plan off two days early? Or maybe I got my dates wrong and everything expires on the twenty-sixth, not the twenty-eighth? Checking my email history I find that no, neither expires until the 28th so I should be good to go.

I am, by this stage, starting to hyperventilate.

I quickly typed up an email to Very Commerce querying the situation. I mean, if they're having major technical issues then that's at least something I can't control so I can relax a little while they fix it. To check that I had their current email address, I tried logging on to verycommerce.com, their main site. Nothing. No, not nothing. I was getting the same Google results page as when I tried logging in to my own site, except this time, obviously, the listed results were for "very commerce" instead.

Then I notice the first entry in the list of results Google threw up. It's for Very Commerce. Their main site. The same one I just typed into the address bar. The very same one that redirected me to the results page instead:

Attention: January 21, 2009. Very Commerce is going out of business. ... If you have questions regarding this matter send them to verycommerce@...

Ruh-row.

Nooooooo. NO NO NO NO NO!

I am not concerned with money, because I haven't lost any. I paid upfront last March for a year's worth of blog hosting on their economy plan, and I got that. Losing money is not the issue here.

What I'm extremely upset about is the fact that I (and I imagine, all their other customers) were given NO warning of the impending business closure. No grace period. Nothing. If I'd known Very Commerce was going belly-up I would have gone crackerjack on moving those old blog posts over. Did whatever I could so I didn't lose any content.

I did receive an email in January asking if I was intending to renew for 2009. It was a stock-standard mass mailout and it mentioned NOTHING about an imminent closure. I am checking the dates for that email (I can't access it right now with my computer issues, but soon) but there might be a chance it was sent AFTER the date mentioned above, January 21. If that is the case, then they were still soliciting business while going under. Not cool.

What happened to the customers who, unlike me, did pre-pay for another year recently before finding out Very Commerce was no longer operational? Do they get their money back?

I sent my email to Very Commerce yesterday, right before midday. I asked for a swift response because irrespective of the current hoopla I do still get (rightly) cut off from my blog on the 28th. At 8:57am precisely, according to Very Commerce. I'm thinking with the time difference between the US and here I might have until late evening on (my) 28th. To be safe, I'm giving myself until just lunchtime.

Or, in other words, approximately TWENTY-FOUR to THIRTY-SIX HOURS to rectify the problem.

As it stands now, lizzieshome.com is off the radar - prematurely and forcibly, I should point out. The hosting company going out of business meant (I guess) the servers running the show aren't supporting the site. I suspect they were hosting their OWN site on their own servers so the fact I can't get into their site either is a bit of a red flag. I cannot access any of my old content. Nearly 100 posts have gone KAPOOF! There were still SEVEN full months of posts to transfer - and as I said before, had I known the disaster that was about to occur, there's no way I would have been resting on my laurels with the transferring.

This is Not. My. Fault.

As far as Very Commerce is concerned, I could have changed my mind about re-hosting in 2009 at the 11th hour. If my measly $48 per year (which, by the way, was more like $60 AUD at the time) was considered chicken feed and therefore I was a disposable customer, then they need to consider that for all they knew, I was about to pay for their most premium hosting package. I might have been about to pay them a boatload of money. They didn't know! Haven't they ever seen Pretty Woman (and specifically this part)? And yes, I just referenced an 18 year old movie. Roll with it!

Contractually, they still owe me two days of blog hosting and clearly, I'm FIRED UP.

Why is there not protection in place for customers in situations like this? Why wasn't a warning email sent out? Gosh, even 24 hours notice would have been better than nothing. Why, if they knew on January 21 that they were going out of business, was I not immediately contacted, along with all their other customers, warning us that we needed to move our content ASAP? I haven't checked lizzieshome.com daily for a while but I sure as heck have been there within the last two weeks and I had no problem getting in until yesterday.

What if my old site was a BUSINESS? What if my source of income had suddenly been removed with no warning or chance to switch webhosts, or to let my customers know before it impacted on my business? What kind of money might I have lost had I been relying on Very Commerce then?

What might have happened had I been waiting until the very last moment to switch back to Blogger and hadn't even informed my readers I was moving yet? They'd be cut off and my blog would have disappeared entirely! Bloggers don't recover from that! As it is, my move back to Blogger has seriously impacted my subscriber numbers and page hits.

At this stage, I've had no contact with Very Commerce - and yes, I do EXPECT an email within 24 hours given the serious time implications of this. 24 hours is just about up now. As of this moment, I am still a paying customer.

The whole situation is completely, utterly ludicrous and I just want to scream. Like, really, REALLY loudly. I can't understand how I can go from absolutely no complaints about their service (I never even had a downtime all year long) to wanting to bang my head against a wall until my ears bleed, I just can't.

If this serves as ANY warning at all to you, please let it be that you never, ever go with a smaller webhost. Stick with the hosting packages offered with GoDaddy or other seriously-large companies - ones that are less likely to go out of business. I was too eager to save a few bucks (there's not really that much difference between GoDaddy and Very Commerce) and though I have not had cause to complain about their service until now, at the very last moment, the dog's breakfast they've made out of things now all but negates that entire year of calm.

It also makes me wonder what their response time would be had I been a Moosh In Indy, Scribbit or Pensieve. I've never wanted to be a big name blogger and kick some hosting butt more than I do right now!

I need chocolate.

WHERE'S THE DARN CHOCOLATE!!!