neurological dryer lint

no i'm not talkin bout the game which i'm buying thursday. too bad ill be home two days enough to play it for a bit.

anyway. no. what's unreal is frickin CIHost. remember a few weeks ago, my story about dealing with this hosting company? and then about our server getting there, not working, and shipping it back to my office, and it worked? so we sent it back to em again. i still can't pull it up after it got plugged in and turned on. i've about had it with these guys. my patience is long since gone, and i think tonight is the last straw.

so back then i called their 24x7 'reboot hotline', if your server needed to be power cycled for some reason. they couldn't do anything but power cycle (a bunch of monkeys in an office, i guess) so they referred me to their colo support line (800-538-6031). option 3 takes you to chicago support... except no, it takes you to some surly guy who doesn't work for the company.

well now i know the guy. i figured, maybe two weeks ago that event was a blip, they fixed the problem w/their phone call routing, now it's actually going to their datacenter, right? no. i got the guy again. conversation ensues:

phone system: welcome to cihost technical support. this call may be monitored for quality assurance. please select from the following options. if your server is managed in texas, please press one. if your server is managed in los angeles, please press two. if your server is managed in chicago, please press three.
me: *3*
phone system: please wait while your call is transferred...
other guy: hello?
me: uhhh.. crap, is this ci host?
other guy: you wish.
me: WAIT WAIT WAIT DUDE DON'T HANG UP!!!!!
...
..
me: you still there?
other guy: yeah.
me: dude, first off, you don't work for this company?
other guy: no way, man. you have no idea how much i hate that company.

and we get into a great conversation about how this has been going on FOREVER and this poor guy hasn't been able to get them to fix it. he's called managers and vice presidents and no one will address the issue. i felt absolutely awful. he recommended another hosting provider... it just sucks to be in his position. so i called back to the reboot line, the monkey transferred me to his manager and i explained the whole story to him. he sounded genuinely remorseful and promised to check out the phone thing, as well as get the real guy from the chicago colo facility to call me in the morning.

so... so far we have an unresponsive sales guy, a broken phone system routed to a helpless, annoyed victim, monkeys on a reboot hotline, an incompetent guy in a colo facility that can't figure out how to clear his voicemail or follow simple instructions, and evil uncaring management that doesn't care either way. i think it's about time to switch to the bell's hosting. argh. again the moral: avoid cihost, they'll give you a disease.