What a week, or if you're using Emax hosting - DUMP THEM NOW!!

Ok, I was planning on posting my February revenue when I was done with dinner on Thursday night. No sooner did I pick up a huge knife and make the first cut into some veggies for salad, my phone rings. It's Emax. Telling me they've cancelled my account. Not to mention taken control of the 2 domains I registered for them. (Side note - I read recently on someone's blog (I can't remember whose, sorry!) to never have both domains and hosting with the same company. Believe me now when I say this is true!!) The reason? A charge back on our credit card. A little back story - about mid February, Eric said to me that there was a double charge on his credit card from Emax. So while I was looking into it, he called his credit card company and asked (ASKED!) what to do if we can't work it out. They said they'd send us some paperwork to file a charge back. (Meanwhile on March 5th we STILL don't have this paperwork.) Apparently they went and filed this charge back.

Now, it was legitimate, Emax charged me for registering a domain that was never transferred to them (we tried twice) and with the hours I work it's virtually impossible to reach them. Having had issues before and knowing their ticket system is just for technical issues I wanted to CALL them. I should mention this charge was applied in January and yes, they did credit me back, miraculously (they pointed out the date while on the phone) MARCH 2ND - THURSDAY - the email was received but not read since, HEY, I have a job to go to, I deal with email at night after work. Either way, it was too late since the chargeback had already been filed unbeknownst to us.

So after him repeating to me several times the consequences of a chargeback ($35 fee plus higher merchant fees for life) and me repeating I was unaware it had gone through and that since he had already cancelled my account I certainly wasn't going to pay the $35 (he said that I didn't have to!) our conversation degenerated into a screaming match since he would listen to me. He just kept repeating the fees without proposing any kind of solution (I honestly don't understand the point of the repeating, it was really weird) I finally got sick of trying to talk over him and told him finally to fuck off and hung up. (I was shaking at this point and we were going nowhere. The account was cancelled and he wasn't going to reactivate it.) He THEN called right back and told me his lawyer would contact me for the $35 and hung up on me.

So I rushed around like mad trying to find a new host. This time, I didn't care if I was paying more for it but I was getting 24/7 VOICE (phone) support included. When I have a problem, especially with technical stuff I don't fully understand I want to TALK to someone about it. Is that too much to ask? (It is with Emax - now even if you call their tech support they have a message that says fill out a ticket first... argh) So I finally decided on Host Gator.

So far I'm very happy with them. They have CPanel (which was another requirement since I'm used it now), shopping cart stuff (not well versed but I will be!), Fantastico (I wanted for a few apps), .htaccess access (finally starting to learn how to use it and I could never get it to work on Emax since they messed with my stuff so often), unlimited domains (you'd think I'd learn, but I like to manage everything, or almost everything in one place) , autoresponders and tons more. I probably could have gotten away with the "Baby" package, but since I plan on growing my next site to be huge and possibly have a shopping cart and database on it, I wanted ALL features available, so I went with the "Swamp" package at $14.95/month. I think I'd rather pay more for great service, and I've read good things about them from other people.

So all that said, learn your lesson from me. Dump Emax NOW. I sugarcoated a lot of the bullshit I went through with them (problems EVERY SINGLE TIME I added a new domain, to which their automatic response was "it's a FrontPage issue" unless I bugged them to actually LOOK. FYI - it was not ONCE a Front Page issue!) for the sake of playing nice. I refuse to play nice anymore. And I almost hope their lawyer contacts me... a) because what a WASTE of money, for $35! and b) my uncle is a lawyer.. I'll get free advice and perhaps file a counter claim for lost income. Since they've now stolen 2 domains I'm daily losing money on one of them. They can keep the dog domain though, I have barely paid for hosting, let alone the domain, that was a dud site from the get go.. lol (Not to mention I'm in Canada and they are in the U.S.) And btw - even if they did credit the domain registration charge, I'm still out for a month's hosting that they DID charge and I'm not getting.

And to be very honest, yes I'm PISSED about the whole thing, but if I'm philosophical about it, I have just been waiting to be out of a job to switch hosting companies anyway, since it wasn't something I really wanted to do after work, know what I mean? So anyway, if you sent an email between Thursday afternoon and Saturday afternoon to support AT a1-travel-accessories DOT com, please resend it because I didn't get it.

Ok, on to income.. well, it was a crappy month. I made a little more than last month I think, but that was from promoting 1 specific product which netted me over $120 in comissions. If it hadn't been for that I would have been very poor indeed. So here's the total: $380 (approx, as usual), which also includes doing some VA (virtual assistant) work for someone. Better than I had hoped for at the beginning of the month when I saw the awful totals, but obviously less than I would've liked. I'll just have to get working on the new site. Though to be quite honest, I've come to the conclusion if I get work done during the week, awesome, but if not I'm done with feeling guilty about it. My job is very draining due to the repetitiveness of it and the stress with dealing with a bunch of incompetent morons in management. In case this never occured to anyone else, NEVER take a job where your department has been in existence 3 years. Or maybe it's only at my company... but wow, they can't make a decision that sticks longer than a month to save their freaking lives! Frustrating to say the least!!

And at this point, I've no doubt bored you to death, so I will stop, wish everyone a GREAT week (can't be as bad as mine has been! lol) and may March be the new month to beat!!

Tara :)