Tag: blacknight

blacknight, cix, hosting January 21, 2007

Just to clarify

I have heard it back that the reason for my recent posts about Blacknight is nothing to do with my poor customer service experience but rather because I am trying to bully Blacknight into becoming a customer of CIX!!!

In case anyone else has heard this ridiculous rumour and has put any stock in it let me address it quickly.

First off, anyone who knows Michele (MD of Blacknight), knows that any attempt to bully him into doing anything is definitely not going to work!

Secondly, how does this work anyway? Bully someone into buying something? Surely if I was chasing Michele as a customer for CIX, I would have been singing Blacknight and Michele’s praises on the blog. Not picking up on the failings of Blacknight’s customer service.

Finally, as far as I recall, I only spoke to Michele once about hosting in CIX. This was when I called him to inform him of our intention to build an N+1 data centre in Cork way back in July or August of last year. At the time Michele didn’t express much interest and said he wouldn’t commit to anything but that he may take a rack in the data centre when it had been in operation a year or so and had proven itself. I asked him to forward on any requirements he’d have from a data centre. He never did.

Not exactly a hot prospect so I didn’t think about him much more in relation to CIX as we had far larger prospects to chase.

blacknight, hosting January 18, 2007

Blacknight Solutions don't tolerate criticism

Blacknight Solutions contacted me this afternoon and asked me to move all my sites off their servers. They no longer want my business. Why? Because I criticised their customer service after they lost all my podcasts, didn’t tell me about it until I discovered it a couple of weeks later, and when I did report it to them, they blamed me for asking for a temporary home for my podcasts (untrue).

In the comments of that post, Blacknight MD Michele Neylon admitted:

our handling of the â€œpodcast situationâ€? could have been better

I decided to do a quick search through all my posts relating to Blacknight on this blog. I found fifteen posts referencing Blacknight. Of those fifteen posts (below) ten were positive or at worst neutral about Blacknight (mentioning them as my hoster in passing). In many cases I linked to them using the word “host” or “hoster” which can only have been good for their SEO.

Recently I have noted a decline in the standards of their customer service and my most recent five posts were negative about them.

I will always highlight good service when I receive it and poor service too.

It appears that Blacknight are incapable of taking criticism. If you criticise them, they ask you to take your business elsewhere.

Way to build a customer base guys.

For anyone thinking of hosting with Blacknight, beware what you say about them or you may find yourself out on your ear too.

Here are all the posts I found on this blog referencing Blacknight:

Email, Technology November 27, 2006

Email sending problems

Anyone else having problems sending emails via Blacknight Solutions today?

I had a desperate time trying to send mails this morning and I have three emails trying to get out now which can’t seem to send.

Normally they are reliable – ironically their support is via email so finding out what is causing this could be a problem!

Technology September 24, 2006

Blacknight suspends site against explicit instructions

I’m furious. A client’s domain was suspended by Blacknight despite my explicit instructions to the contrary on Friday.

I received a call from Blacknight on Friday saying the site was due to be suspended. I told the Blacknight representative that the domain had been transferred out of my control in July and that I needed to contact the site owner to clarify the situation. I then specifically instructed her not to suspend the site until I could clarify the situation.

On Saturday afternoon the site’s owner contacts me to say the site is offline. AAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What’s worse is because the site was suspended on a Friday, it can’t now be re-instated until Monday afaik.

Blogging, Business blogging, Technology July 11, 2006

How not to complain

Michele Neylon put up a post last night, ostensibly about how not to do PR, but really it was about how some of his competitors are getting legalistic with clients. I think.

The post was one of the more cryptic posts I have read in a long time. Seemingly someone somewhere, who may be a competitor of Michele’s, sent a legal letter to someone for something. You with me so far?

It goes on. Somebody else, who is also a competitor (may or may not be the same competitor) engages in sharp business practices and may have also sent out a legal letter (this is not clear).

Jeez Michele. If you have got something to say, just say it. Don’t hide behind “somebody somewhere did something to somebody”.

Either that or say nothing.

Blogging, Technology May 8, 2006

Site offline temporarily – apologies

Anyone trying to access this site or my PodLeaders site today between around 12:54 GMT and 13:14 GMT would have seen a screen somewhat like the one below.

My hoster told me when I rang them that they were ‘working on it’ but didn’t tell me what ‘it’ was!

This is the second time in just over a week that this has happened – not very confidence inspiring!

UPDATE:
My hoster has been back on to me to tell me that the problem is that my site is hosing the server! We’re tying to work out why now.

Further update:
The site has been up and down (mostly down) for most of the afternoon. Hopefully my hosters will get this sorted asap.

Technology March 31, 2006

PodLeaders in syndication deal

I’m delighted to announce that PodLeaders has successfully concluded a deal with ElectricNews and Blacknight Solutions whereby ENN has added PodLeaders as a channel (on the left hand navigation of ENN) and will re-publish all future PodLeaders podcasts on the ENN site (and in its email alerts). Blacknight Solutions is sponsoring this deal and consequently gets to brand the PodLeaders page on the ENN site.

This is a great deal for PodLeaders as it increases the traffic, adds a source of revenue for PodLeaders and as it is not an exclusive deal, it means that PodLeaders can look for more revenue (I may be able to have bread now with my water!!!).

Sincere thanks to Michele of Blacknight and Ralph of ENN for concluding this deal with PodLeaders.

Tom Raftery's – Things to Come