Every so often, I’m prompted to write a diatribe about some experience I’ve had. In this post, I thought I’d relate some bad customer service experiences I’ve recently had.
I’m an older dude who still plays video games.
I was there when Pong, the original tennis game made an appearance. And I’m still playing games several decades later. I’m in my 50s, btw, not some geriatric button masher. Not yet, anyway.
Video games aren’t just the preserve of the … 
A couple of weeks ago I used up all the checks in my checkbook, so I put in an online request with my bank for a replacement book to be sent out to me. Yesterday, I had to pay my credit card bill. I normally pay this monthly bill by check but, by yesterday, the latest day I could pay in the bank branch, my replacement checkbook still hadn’t arrived.
My current account and credit card are with two different …
I was finally ready to populate the Baileys Tackle blog with content only to find that the TubePress plugin no longer works (it did a few days ago). Maybe there’s a conflict between it and some other newly added plugins. This is a blog that just doesn’t want to get built!
Further investigation suggests that it’s the W3 Total Cache plugin that’s at fault. Pages display ok when the plugin is deactivated. When it’s activated, pages sometimes display correctly, sometimes …
Due to Bravenet’s stance, I had to delete the WP-DBManager plugin on the Night Sky Observer site and reactivate the GD Press Tools plugin. The reason I wanted to use WP-DBManager is that it automates the optimization and backup of a WordPress database. It also uses less resources than GD Press Tools resulting in faster page load times. Pity I can’t use it. …
I heard back from Bravenet with regard to WP-DBManager on the Night Sky Observer site. They won’t provide the paths to MYSQL or MYSQLDUMP as they say doing so would pose a server security risk.
I did manage to get the time to update the SiteSell Guide site to show SiteSell’s new Buy-One-Get-One-Free offer.…
On my Night Sky Observer website, I’ve found that the WP-DBManager plugin doesn’t autodetect paths to mysqldump or mysql. Had to submit a support ticket to Bravenet to get this info. More time spent waiting…
Several hours later…Bravenet got back to me and told me they won’t provide that info. I’ve appealed to their better judgement but am not hopeful of a positive response. It’s beginning to look like I’m going to have to move the site (all 5+Gb of …
I use a specific domain for building test blogs. I decided to move my Telescope Guide auction site from a Bravenet shared hosting account (which doesn’t support cron jobs) to a VPS webhost. I discovered that the BackupBuddy plugin doesn’t run on Bravenet either (probably takes too many resources) so I had to download all the WordPress files and folders to my PC (Bravenet doesn’t even provide a File Manager so I couldn’t zip up the files). I then uploaded …
Bailey’s Tackle is an older domain I had that I wanted to rebuild using WordPress. I put up an initial blog with just 3 posts. The next stage was to populate it with PLR articles using the Easy Empire Builder (EZ EB) plugin.
However, EZ EB’s automated licence issuer isn’t working so I can’t get an unlock code for this domain. Scrub building a site here for today.…
I find WordPress incredibly frustrating to work with. Plugin conflicts, plugins that only work on some webhosts, WordPress upgrades breaking plugins, bugs in plugins, the list goes on.
So as much for my own edification as anyone who visits here, I’m going to start documenting when things go wrong, and what things go wrong. Most of it will be WordPress related but there will be other stuff too, stuff to do with running an online business, like my broadband connection …
