Busy day. Ken needs an illustration of the Bantu system of reincarnation, so I've been drawing the seven small illos for that. In between proof-reading the Ghosts manuscript - and I have to say it's bloody good! Long term readers probably know I have a very sceptical view of the whole subject, but the book is absolutely fascinating (which made it difficult to proof-read as I kept being distracted by the content!) Great stuff.
The client site situation is not so good. A few months ago Supanames became incorporated with 123-reg.co.uk. The transfer seemed to go nice and smoothly, although I have to confess I do not like the new control panel. But then I had an email asking me to set up the payment registration for all the sites they host. That's not a problem per se, it's the same procedure as Supanames used - but when I tried the system refused my business card. And Ken's business card. And my personal card...
123-reg have a support page not too dissimilar to Supanames, so I reported the problem, and some hours later got an email asking me to login to check the response on my support page. (humph. Supanames were faster and replied in the email.) They thought it might be a problem with my bank. So - given that when Lovefilm sent me their (rather nice!) usual Yuletide £10 gift voucher for being a loyal customer and I tried to pay the excess on the two films I ordered from them, that failed as well - I rang the Co-op.
Who had a nice message on the phone saying that due to the weather they had less staff than usual (they guarantee a UK call centre, bless 'em) but please to wait and the call would be answered asap. Which it was, in less than a minute. The extremely pleasant young guy I spoke to assured me there was no problem the bank's end, and to maybe try paying Lovefilm again as it may be a glitch (but he'd add a note to my account anyway to say I'd been in touch and in case there were any repercussions). He then transferred me to their business section, where the equally friendly and efficient young man also assured me there was no problem with that account either. Which is pretty much what I'd expected.
So I went back to 123-reg - and logged in using effing IE...
Oh surprise surprise, the registration went through just fine. [spitspit]
However, I did notice that the two-yearly hosting sub for one of the sites was showing as £74 instead of the £50.50 it was last time, so I queried it, wondering if they were charging for the domain name (which is held elsewhere) as well as the site hosting.
So they've come back, saying - if I've understood the not-terribly-well-worded message correctly, and I will confess that I'm not at all sure that I have - that they don't host sites for which they don't hold the domain name. Which accounts for seven of the client sites I manage.
I've asked for clarification, as that really doesn't sound right to me. I sincerely hope I have misunderstood, because I really don't want to have to try to transfer half my clients to another new host...
I managed to get Lovefilm mostly sorted out too, I think - although it seems they somehow refunded the excess on the order when my payment never actually managed to get through to them, so I need to pay them twice £1.86 to set things straight. Somehow.
[sigh] Nothing's ever easy 'round here...
Labels: books, client sites, nothing's ever easy 'round here...
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 11:48 pm
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