Don't You Hate It When Tech Support Lies?

I do a lot of Web work for non-profit organizations. I believe in giving back to society, not just sending a check (which sometimes would be a lot less aggravation).

Anyway, I re-did a site for an ancillary non-profit which works with the association I'm affiliated with. I hated their site. It was amateurish and poorly designed. It didn't convey what that organization did; in other words, it failed to meet expectations of what a Web site should be.

OK, I was also bored!

Anyway, I re-design, get the leadership of the organization involved, and they love it.

They say, "Go live!"I say, "I'm ready!"

They say, "Here's the username and password."

I say, "Great, it will be up by tonight."

Good thing they went out of town. I didn't get the new Web site up. I ftp'd to the server, and found the root directory associated with the logon blank. Weird, the Web site they had (the present, vs. the future site I had, which I wanted to make the present site, so the present site could be called the old site " you following this???) was still working.

I change ftp programs, from the built-in ftp program of Dreamweaver to my trusty WS_FTP32 shareware program. Well, I can say that the Dreamweaver program was working, but the server wasn't.So I called technical support. I get a guy on the phone whose having trouble following my problem. He puts in a trouble ticket and says he's bumping it up to the system administrators. I say, "Hey, let me speak with them." You can guess the answer "No."

Eighteen hours later I call back. I'm told the server is in maintenance, and it won't be ready for another day. How many days does it take a server to have maintenance performed?

The server crashed! It's not hard to figure out, but they lied to a customer (or a customer's representative). They didn't have the courtesy to contact their affected customers and tell them the truth.

Poor show, Interland!