Attention OSSome Blog Readers: This is a rant.  This is only a rant.  In the event of a total meltdown, you would be notified by…oh, wait, I can’t really notify you in any other way because my website host company decided that five years and a boatload of money wasn’t enough to afford me  so much as a courtesy call before they shut down my business email account!!!!

Breathe, Dawn, breathe.  In…out…in…out…  Ahhhhhhhhhh, the calming effects of steaming hot coffee.  However, the coffee’s not the only thing steaming this morning.  🙂

I couldn’t log into my business email account yesterday late afternoon.  After several attempts, I phoned customer service and was connected with a lovely lady who calmly walked me through a bazillion steps to see if we could remedy the problem.  Nothing.  I asked her if the maintenance scheduled for hours later that night had been moved up.  Could that be causing the problem?  She did not know.  She left to go speak with advanced tech.  She came back to say that she didn’t think that was happening and that she and the person she spoke to were stymied.  She filled out a “help ticket” for me, and we hung up.  At that point, I figured it was some weird technical thing that would resolve itself in a few hours or, at the longest, by morning.  I was soon to discover that I was wrong.

Customer service hours end at like 6 pm Pacific time.  That puts it at 7 pm my time.  How interesting then that at approximately 7:20 pm an email pops into my personal email account from my web host informing me that my business account had been suspended due to the fact that it had been flagged for spam.  Really?  REALLY?????   The account had been shut down hours before, I had spoken to a customer service agent who knew NOTHING about it and could not fix it, and the first I hear about the issue is AFTER the customer service department is closed for the day?????   Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?

The “informative” email included a copy of the offending email.  Let’s see…it was an email I sent on September 1, 2010 from my business email account to my AOL business address.  Also included on that email were the folks who signed up for or asked to be added to my First To Know mailing list.  So, all in all, that particular email went to slightly fewer than 80 people.  The email was advertising a new repaint listed on Ebay.  Again, that email was sent on September 1st…two months ago.  But, the first I hear of any issue is when my account is suspended?  No courtesy call.  No email warning.  Nothing.  NADA.

I am writing this blog entry in an effort to cool down a bit before I phone customer service this morning.  The reps have been at their desks for about half an hour by now.  They’ve had coffee.  I wonder which lucky person will pick  up my call?