Dear TypePad What Did I Do To Deserve This

UPDATED PART 2: My faith in TypePad and Six Apart has been restored including a nice email from CEO Chris Alden. I try not to blog angry but for better and worse my blog is the center of what I do whether I am blogging day to day or not. They did a good job helping me out and I appreciate what they do.

UPDATED: 24 hours and 53 minutes later my first inquiry from tech support. I wonder what I would be like if this blog was still down a day later and only just getting a response? Then again, you would not be reading this would you?

 

Let me start by saying I am a big fan of TypePad. I have a couple of other blogs using the platform. I know of at least eight other blogs that were started on TypePad because of my recommendation.

In almost three years I have had three very minor support issues, created by me, that were answered promptly and effectively the last well more than a year ago.

But yesterday TypePad was literally not there for me.

This blog went down around 10:15 am, “404 Not Found”, and I started wondering what did I do? After thinking what I had done in the last day, nothing, I decided I could not be the culprit.

I created an “Open Ticket” on TypePad support. While doing so I learned that of all the possible options one can say for why the ticket is created not one of them is, “my site is down.”

Really, how can that be? Even if it is rare I would think this deserves a category.

So I created the ticket and moved on. I called VISI as they have the mnheadhunter.com domain name. I am on hold for about 55 seconds listening to soothing Jazz music and a friendly guy answers. (I love their customer service) I explain the issue and he says, “Well let me try (I did not understand what he said but knew what he meant) and he says nope, not us. Your site is down.”

I had not thought about it until I hung up but I tried mn_headhunter.typepad.com and it too was “404 Not Found.”

I go to the registrar to make sure I had not made fatal mistake and lost the domain name. Nope, still had it and even if I had the mn_headhunter.typepad.com would still work if it was working.

All this time I am checking my “Open Ticket” status and see “Awaiting Staff Response."   

Around 5 pm last night I created a new ticket in another category to see if that would help. You guessed it, “Awaiting Staff Response.”

So I put to use my cyber sleuthing techniques to find someone at TypePad, yeah not so much so I shifted to Six Apart and then gave up trying to find the right person and sent an email to their CEO, Chris Alden, around 7:30 pm.

Surely sending an email to the CEO of the company is shooting much too high but when you are desperate for a human response you do what you have to do.

Went to sleep around 1:15 am with no status change.

I woke this morning around 7 am, checked my email, and my monitoring service sent me an email around 2 am Minneapolis time that the blog was up and running.

Surely this has to be a miracle of epic proportion because I further check my email and nothing from TypePad. I then check the “Open Ticket” and the status remains “Awaiting Staff Response.”

Rather than be one of those customers who rants without giving any suggestions let me give two:

• Create an option for “My Site Is Down”
• Let users rank their “Open Ticket” by importance

My guess is my “Open Ticket” is stuck behind user issues over the weekend and with no way of knowing the site was down stuck in line with users with less significant issues like I had the other three times.

I have to assume what happened to me is a fluke because in my sleuthing I did not find anyone else having had the same issue as me.

I guess I am that lucky. Great, now if it would work the same for me on the next lottery drawing...

This incident was not enough for me to look else where for a provider but as my new saying goes, “My blog goes down without reason once shame on you, if it goes down twice shame on me.”

Technorati Tags: TypePad, Six Apart, 404 Not Found

Comments

[Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com]

Thank goodness that you're back up after "only" a day. Not sure if I could have made it through two days without being able to read my burrito buddy's blog. It has been so great to have you writing regularly again.

[Jim Durbin]

so jealous of the burritos. I want more, more, more Chipotle! But not in St Louis. Chipotle is too bland here, and i eat at qdoba.

glad the typepad issue is fixed.

Any clue as to what happened?

[MN Headhunter/Paul DeBettignies]

Steven, nice to know my buddies are looking out for me and that I can be missed.

Jim, they are looking into it. We are keeping the ticket open just in case there is another hiccup. Thanks for the twitter information and I will make that fix on the "www". Been thinking about you and the wife and soon to be baby. The floods near you?