We will be short on a podcast this week due to the 4th of July weekend madness that has passed us by, but between your cleanup of fireworks and dumping out the barbequed leftovers please take a minute to take this short 6 question survey about the Web Hosting Show.
Any and all feedback is appreciated and you know I am all about making you all happy so if there is something you like, hate or would love to hear about let me know.
If you have ever wanted to share your opinion to me about what I do this would be the time to do it. Also happy post 4th of July to all of you and thanks in advance!
Back a few weeks I decided I’d upgrade to DirecTV’s HD lineup. This of course meant I would have to get two new boxes for my house (one regular DirecTV DVR and one HD DVR) and a new dish. Ever since then I have almost been kicking myself because DirecTV’s customer service has… well, totally sucked.
Back on June 4th I setup the order and they said they would be here to set it up on the 13th. Oh goodie I said, can’t wait to get it up and running. Well, about 9:00 AM on the 13th they said they wouldn’t be here cause they didn’t have enough techs working. Fair enough, it was Friday the 13th afterall.
Next they were suppose to show up Monday, the 16th. I got excited again because I thought I’d get to watch WWE RAW on my new TV in high definition. Oh goodie I thought again. Well, Monday about 1:00pm (an hour after their deadline for being here) I contact DirecTV to see where they were at. The first person I talk to doesn’t have a clue but she gives me a local number. Call the local number and I’m told they still don’t have enough techs to work in the area, and they move my install date again… to today.
So here we are. Will they show up? Will I have to call them to see why they haven’t shown up? Should know sometime this afternoon. Overall though, I have to say I am pretty disapointed with DirecTV’s customer service in a whole. What if I was a new customer? Heck - Dish Network is looking kind of nice by now. Wonder how good their tech support is?
Update: Still nobody, and they got 20 minutes left to get here to meet their “promise” of behing here from 8AM - Noon. Posted about it on their user forums too.
Looks like DirecTV deleted my thread without reason? Wasn’t anything bad there - just going over what had happened thus far. Once again, DirecTV ends up with two thumbs down as far as customer service goes.
Since production of the podcast has been delayed again this week due to my recent PC problems I have decided to turn a negative into a positive (but I need your thoughts). Go check out the technical difficulties post over at WebHostingShow.com.
I need all of you to let me know what you love, what you hate, what you want more of and what you could do without this week. Give me your feedback so I can produce a better podcast just for you.
Well not much as changed, with my melted PC - so thought instead I’d make a few observations thus far:
HP has yet to update the “status” page where I can check into the progress of all of this. With the FedEx tracking number though I do know my box should be here sometime before 4pm on Wednesday.
I was impressed with HP’s online support. I explained my issue, showed them the pictures and they told me they’d setup a pickup for it, fix it or replace it and then send it back. They have also promised it would all take 7 to 9 days too.
I am pretty sure I grabbed all my important documents. I copied them over to an external hard drive and then copied from there to my laptop - so all my bases should be covered there. Will probably try to do the reformat and re-install of Windows Vista tonight so it will be ready to box up and go.
Should be getting Wii Fit tomorrow too, so it should be fun to see if the UPS guy has a run in with the FedEx guy. As long as they keep their brawl out in the street, I don’t mind.
While cleaning behind my PC yesterday, I noticed something a little funny in the upper air vent that caught my eye. It looks like around my power supply, some parts on the top have melted down on top of the three copper colored coils inside. Yes, my beautiful $2,000 baby is hurting - so I had to backup and shut her down.
I contacted HP support, and they will be sending me a box to ship her back in - so I can get it fixed or replaced, and sent back here. I figured, if this disaster gives me anything it has given me something to write about so expect me to chronicle the entire experience with working with HP’s support team right here over the upcoming days.
I’ve got a lot of positive and negative feedback on this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show podcast. The most interesting of the bunch is the debate over how usual “green” hosting really is. I know some hosts out there really want to do better by the environment, and feel like this is helping. After reviewing all the facts though I still feel like it is a three card monte-like scam. Here is a view from the other side of the fence from Jen L, one of the debaters…
We do it, and if it’s a scam, then so is my electric company regulated and overseen by the government.
At my home, I have the option to pay a premium for renewable energy, and I have lots of official stuff on my bill showing the higher price I pay with the guarantees that money got fed into the grid. My electric company releases the energy I pay for into the grid - they have to, or its illegal. Are the zaps coming into my house guaranteed to be clean?
No. Energy delivery is communal - but the higher premium I pay puts more clean energy into the grid that would not otherwise get there. If enough people chose to pay for the higher premium, a higher percentage of energy in the grid would be renewable. Does it come with the same ego boost as solar panels on the top of my house? No. Does it ensure that less pollution comes from me because I pay more than everyone else? Yes. It makes a difference.
It’s the same concept. Green Tags enable people that want to buy renewable energy but who don’t have it directly available to them to do so. If *everyone* did it no matter where they were, we could all be green in a short amount of time.
If you wonder if its a scam, ask to see the certificates that were issued (as we all get certificates saying precisely what we bought), and the report as to how they arrived at how much to offset. If they can’t give it to you, then yes, possibly, it’s a scam.
If they *can*, the place you are hosting is paying for their energy *twice*, once to keep the power on, and again in the same amount to feed that energy they used back into the grid as green energy so someone else doesn’t have to use dirty energy.
How someone voluntarily choosing to pay for their electricity twice can be considered “a scam” is beyond me.
Check out podcast 151 for yourself and join the debate. Is green hosting good or just another sales gimmick to get you in the door?
Back a few weeks I decided I’d upgrade to DirecTV’s HD lineup. This of course meant I would have to get two new boxes for my house (one regular DirecTV DVR and one HD DVR) and a new dish. Ever since then I have almost been kicking myself because DirecTV’s customer service has… well, totally sucked.
I’ve got a lot of positive and negative feedback on 