Not A Happy Bunny

I am a bloody unhappy bunny in fact.

I have been unable to update my web site since Thursday evening and when it is a dynamic site it is something of a serious pain in the arse.

It appears my web hosting company have had a security breach and as a result they have rescinded everyones password and are mailing out new passwords to everybody - using snail mail.

Meaning web sites cannot be upgraded until the postman delivers the letter - this in the build up to Christmas - not the brightest of moves.

Trying to contact them is a farce, no it is nigh on impossible.

To e-mail the support team you have to provide your account number and support PIN, however to get your support PIN you have to log into your control centre - which you cannot do without a password. Doh!!!

If the info is not provided the support e-mail is rejected and not read. Absolute crap customer service and you would have thought in the circumstances they would have turned off this automatic filtering to try and assist their customers.

So I tried to make contact via the sales team as that appeared to be an unfiltered e-mail address, basically they refused to help and told me to contact the support e-mail, even though I had explained in my mail why I couldn't use the e-mail support. Clearly their sales staff have a serious problem comprehending the English language and a complete lack of customer care or support.

The only other option was to phone the help desk. Well on Friday it was only possible to get an engaged tone. On Saturday you were able to join the queue. The first time I rang I was told I was number 48 in the queue, after 23 minutes I had reached the heady heights of 39 in the queue - 9 places in 23 minutes. This equates to a wait of two hours - I'm afraid I have better things to do with my life.

Just to add insult to injury they had this patronising apology message which kept playing saying how sorry they were and that they understood the inconvenience. Bollocks – if that had fully understood the impact on customers they would not have taken the action they did in the first place.

By mid-afternoon after many attempts and being fed up of joining the queue in the 40's, I actually managed to join the queue at number 38, so I decided to wait. After almost half an hour I had reached position 27, I was getting hopeful - then I was cut off!!! Are they taking the piss or what.

I have tried many more times, late night, early morning, several times today and the best I have ever achieved is joining the queue at position 39.

Clearly I am not the only person they have seriously hacked off.

This looks to me, to be not only a major cock-up but also a major failure in customer support and customer management. I'm sure I'm not the only customer who will be moving their web-site to another hosting company.

If you are thinking of setting up a website and you want to update it regularly, may I strongly recommend and suggest that you avoid Fasthosts like the plague.