Stupid Stuff on the Internet

I changed web hosts this week for the sites I host.  If you've ever done that, you may know that it's not always pain free to change hosts - there are usually lots of "gotchas" that you don't foresee.  Like stupid stuff buried in the fine print that you didn't notice before you signed up with that new web host. Or claims that they do things or have services that turn out to not be true.  I've been there, done that and got the t-shirt more than once since I've been on the Internet, so changing hosts is not only something I dread - I'm now very careful, or try to be, before I change hosts.

My old web host was imhosted.com.  I had been with them for years - after starting out with a couple of smaller hosts. They were far from perfect.  They have no telephone support available at all, and that's something that probably should have steered me somewhere else, but I thought I could deal with email only support.

But then when I did need support, I'd get email responses with sentences that didn't exactly make a whole lot of sense - it was obvious that English was not their primary language.  Email responses that would end with something like - "We have done the needful".  Nobody who speaks English talks like that.  My guess is they used some translation software to get from something that made sense in their language to something that sounded pretty stupid in English.  Just about every support email response I ever got from them ended that way - and from different support people - with names like Sam, Beth, Bob, Sue.  Come on now, when you say something like "we have done the needful" I now damn good and well  that your name is not Sam.

So when I decided to switch web hosts this time, of course I  couldn't call imhosted.  So I went to their support site, logged in, and attempted to submit a support ticket.  Only this time, after clicking on submit ticket, I was presented with this page:

Notice the last sentence there, "you can submit a ticket by selecting the appropriate department below" followed by nothing but blank space.  Yes, file this under stupid stuff on the Internet - there is no department below to select from.

And this from a company that makes money by being on the Internet.  I think that's really dumb.

And that's why I'm glad I switched web hosts this week.  Not so much because I expect my new web host to be perfect or a whole lot better than imhosted.com - but because imhosted.com has done more than their fair share of stupid stuff on the Internet with me.  It was time to move on and put a different "Kick me" sign on my back.

Who is my new web host?  I'd rather not comment here.  But I'm relatively sure they'll do their share of stupid stuff on the Internet at some point as well. So it goes.