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Daily.co.uk ---- if you host with them read this!
If you were thinking of getting daily as a hosting service don't bother. They've over-subscribed, service is now rubbish and they need to upgrade so they've decided to switch off all their customers to do it .... but they ain't going to give you any of your cash back. read below my recent conversation with their customer services. They seem to think that we are all going to be tucked up in bed by 9pm of a bank holiday sunday!
Ticket ID: 93987
Subject: Downtime
From: r.smith@*****************.f2s.com
Interested to read of your planned upgrade on 3rd May - you say its the time likely to cause the least disruption .... to you maybe, but has it occurred to you that a bank holiday weekend (at the start of the month when everybody has been paid) is some peoples busiest time? Your shutdown looks set to cost my business dearly so thank you very much! After suffering repeated periods of loss of our website over recent months I'm not impressed and I'm beginning to think that I've signed up with a host that is a downright liability. I'd suggest that if you want to find out when you are likely to cause the least disruption to your customers you might like to ask your customers as on this occasion you made a common mistake .... less traffic does not mean less business to an online retailer!!!! I'm very unimpressed with you!!!!
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Update from Support Team
Date: 2009-04-24 12:21:12
Hi,
We have chosen the time for this move as this is the quietest period in terms of web traffic (overnight on a Sunday the day before a bank holiday). These times were also chosen as most online stores that are based in the UK would not experience their maximum sales volume overnight.
Also the 9 hour window is from when the start of the moves until the finish. Many services will be back up and running in less time that this.
Whilst we understand that a move like this will undoubtedly inconvenience customers, ultimately we would not be able to continue providing a service at our current Data Centre which is why we have opted to address this now.
Regards,
Alexie
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Update from customer via Control Panel
Date: 2009-04-24 13:03:16
[TICKET REOPENED]
So you asked all your customers to see which night was their quietest? if not how do you know?
Incidentially my shop has gone down and is unavailable (again!) as we speak - can't access it via frontend or backend or ftp - what the hell is going on here?
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Update from Support Team
Date: 2009-04-24 16:42:41
Hi,
We know this is the quietest time simply because the majority of the UK will be asleep overnight, as opposed to during working hours. Evenso, our server traffic logs show the quietest time we ever experience throughout the year is the sunday night before a bank holiday.
As for your eShop, we are accessing this currently. We have not had any issues with the platform today. Are you still experiencing this problem now? If you are able to run a trace route or path ping if so (or if it happens again) then this will give us an indication of where this could be failing.
Regards,
Ray Supple
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Update from customer via Control Panel
Date: 2009-04-24 17:29:57
[TICKET REOPENED]
Fishing tackle retailers must be in the minority then as the 3 or 4 others that I've spoken to today have the same to report as me - one of busiest nights at this time of the year and if the weather is crap over the weekend we will lose out big time! I make the majority of my sales late evening ... and while the uk is asleep my international customers aren't - or had you forgotten about the rest of the world!
Pardon me if I seem blunt ... but I have now complained about these outages 3 times - I have done a traceroute (3 times!) with the same culprit, something down your end. The last occasion i took the additional step of getting four friends (in 3 different countries) to attempt to access the site .... all had the same problem. Incidentially the site was again unavailable at about 15:30 hours today for approx 5 - 10 minutes. I always get the same answer ... "we can't see any problem" but you never can as your not looking when the site is down and its only ever down for short intermittent periods. They may be short but they are common enough to start me thinking of an alternative host to be honest.
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Update from Support Team
Date: 2009-04-25 13:11:53
Hi,
Its not a decision we have taken lightly as it involves quite a lot of time and expense to move the entire server structure to the new data centre. The current one we use, simply can't provide us with any more server space or power. The data centre we are moving too, is not only newer ,but has a larger capacity for us to add extra servers and services in the future.
We did consider using both data centres, however, the costs involved having two sets of server administrators prohibited that option.
Our servers run on a clustered environment, so if one server for whatever reason fails (Which all servers do, no server runs 100% when you have a shared environment) the load balancer will shift incoming traffic to another server. this will keep the website live for new visitors, however, if your connected to the server via ftp or are viewing the website when it goes offline, you will get a page not found error for around 10 minutes, until the load balancer has directed you to one of the other servers.
There's nothing we can do to stop this as the Ip addresses you connect from are cached by the balancer. It will clear after around 10 minutes and then the connection will work fine.
If the data centre itself has an issue, no amount of backup systems will help as the site will be offline. In the two years we have used this data centre, only once has the entire system failed due to a faulty switch.
The only way to guarantee your site remains active, is to host it on a dedicated server rather than a shared environment. Obviously if the data centre has issues even a dedicated server will fail.
Regards,
Alan.
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Update from customer via Control Panel
Date: 2009-04-25 15:56:13
[TICKET REOPENED]
I'm aware that the decision re your move was taken way above your head .... but I wonder if running 2 centres side-by-side would suddenly become economic if a large proportion of your customers announced that they would sack you for the downtime - I wonder, as well, how many of your customers (like me) are now looking to find an alternative host - it might be economic for daily but it won't be for me! Incidentially I don't want new services, i just want the one I've paid for to work properly.
I passed on your comments about the downtime to a relative (works in the business for Bt) - his comment was "full to the brim". Fundamentally thats why your moving I take it? No redundancy left so when something goes down it takes a while to sort itself out - unfortunately in 10 minutes I will have lost a customer - I'm a realist so I understand that nothing works 100% of the time but this is way too regular to be acceptable and has been increasing over the last couple of months.
So is your move to the new centre going to fix this problem and if so how long will it take before I see the level of service that i got when I first signed up?
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Update from Support Team
Date: 2009-04-27 17:42:22
Dear Russell,
Thank you for your correspondence regarding our Data Centre move. I fully understand the concerns you have, however, as a business we had to make a decision as to when would be the best time for the majority of our customers. We knew that any move would be a cause for concern for a few but had hoped that despite the inconvenience, the move would be seen as a positive action for the future of Daily and it's customers.
In coming to the decision to make the move on Sunday 3rd May we studied web traffic logs for Sunday nights and generally these showed that this would be the quietest time. In fact your own website logs show that your average page views between 9pm and 3am on a Sunday night are between 15 - 40 per hour. Your average page views during the day in mid week are between 25 and 300 per hour.
As mentioned in Alexie's email to you the downtime window is for the return of all our services. Each of our services will be brought back on line individually so downtime lengths will vary. At this stage I cannot tell you exactly when our customer webservers will be brought back on line, but obviously these will be our number one priority.
As a gesture of goodwill I would like to offer you a 20% reduction in your account renewal which is due soon. I am hoping that despite the downtime you will continue to host your website with us. If you are planning to renew with us at any time between now and 10th July, simply enter the promo code ********* with your order and we will give you a 20% discount on that order.
We will be updating our status page constantly during the move which should give you some indication as to when you will be able to expect your website to be online again.
I hope you will bear with us, and thank you for your continued custom. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Yours sincerely,
Alison Curry-Taylor
Operations Director
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Update from customer via Control Panel
Date: 2009-04-27 20:12:01
[TICKET REOPENED]
Thank you for your reply but I have to say that quite frankly I'm stunned! Firstly your offer of 20% discount - had you had looked at my subscription properly you would have noticed that i am paid up for two years ... till 2010 .... so you have in fact offered me NOTHING! Some gesture of goodwill.
I'm afraid you also seem to have a complete lack of understanding re ecommerce - pageviews are fairly irrellivant. One hundred pageviews does not one hundred orders make - I could have a hundred visitors one day and no orders but on another day (and a sunday at the start of the month when people have money to spend is one of those days) have only 10 hits but get 10 orders - its quality of visits not quantity. This pageview stuff is hogwash and a poor substitute to actually asking your customers when the best time would be - I would lay money that to a man they would say "not at the start of the month".
Ther is no "Force Majeur" involved in this situation, just bad business practice on the part of your company - you've over-subscribed and now need to increase your capacity to cope, but instead of including the full cost of continuing to maintain your contractual obligations whilst doing so in your overheads you have decided that all your customers will have to accept a loss of service for one night - I have no doubt that I'm not alone at being disgusted with this and I cannot imagine that it will take long before it hits the forums and message boards of the net ... that i'm afraid will cost you dearly, I certainly wouldn't recommend daily to anybody after this.
It doesn't take a professor of mathmatics to work out how much money you are saving yourself. Its a simple matter to calculate what the cost of this loss of service is to each and every customer, and quite frankly you should be compensating each and every one for their loss of service at the very least. As a contracts professional of some 20 years experience I am lucky enough to be fully aware of how I stand in law and what options for recovery of losses are open to me .... I'd suggest that if a large number of your customers have the same understanding or bother to take advice then this upgrade might turn out to be a lot more expensive than daily first thought!
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Originally Posted by PeteK
