2009 March | The Gremlins Umbrella Authority

Just Sport and Leisure Review: Scammers !

March 23, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: Scammers | Comments (1)

In preparation for my travels around the world, I embarked on the difficult task of purchasing any kit which could be of use.

I bought (amongst other things): a backpack, a mosquito net, a travel towel, a portable safe (don’t ask), and a wallet.

I bought from a variety of well known companies, and a few smaller companies with a good reputation on ebay. The wallet I wanted was unfortunately only available from one UK store: ‘Just Sport and Leisure‘ (www.justsportandleisure.com). I thus purchased the item, and paid with my debit card on 12th March 2009. This was actually the first thing I ordered.

For the rest of the week, I continued researching products, and bought some. They all promptly arrived: 2,3 days maximum. Some companies surprised me, and delivered my orders within 12 hours !

As I had so many orders with so many companies I to some extent lost track. On Saturday 21st March, I confirmed that i had received everything EXCEPT the wallet from ‘Just Sport and Leisure’. I promptly phoned them, the lines were closed. I thus sent an email, I did not receive a reply. What I did however receive was a rude, and abrupt phone call this morning.

From what I managed to decipher, the gentlemen on the phone essentially said that they had not started processing my order. They said that they had started it today, and payment had not gone through. I pointed out in a stern manner I had been waiting 2 weeks ! and that it was too late now. He replied in a snarly manner it has ONLY been 11 days ! The cheek !

I thus pointed out I no longer had any use for the product. He confirmed that I wanted to cancel the order, and hung up ! I was shocked.

The lowdown of the situation is that if you buy from ‘Just Sport and Leisure’ (www.justsportandleisure.com), you can expect to wait in excess of 2 weeks before they actually start processing your order ! They will of course charge a ridiculous fee for package, and postage, yet they don’t seem to actually have any intention of packing and sending your products.
Their staff are rude, and snide. There is a feeling that you are literally dealing with 3, 40 or so men, in a basement, who honestly could not give a crap.

Avoid ‘Just Sport and Leisure’ at all costs !

Rocco Mancini: None paying bidder.

March 21, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: Scammers | Comments (0)

This is the first post in the new ‘Scammers’ category.

There are too many unprofessional people in the business. We need to increase awareness, and get rid of these people.
Any, and all people who don’t act professionally will have their information documented in this category.

Google likes my blog, and ranks well. Thus these posts should easily make the top page of google for the respective name.
We can stop these people hurting the industry further.

Please forward any information regarding ‘Scammers’ via our contact page.

Rocco Mancini purchased two domain names from me via ebay. He then proceeded not to pay for them, after stating that he would.
After 10 days of none payment I politely requested payment, and explained the repercussions associated with non-payment. So far I have waited 15 days without reply.

Rocco Mancini
110 Rockland Ave.
Waterbury, CT 06708
United States
rocco.mancini@snet.net
+1 2037537222

Avoid at all costs !

Hostgator: My new host !

March 19, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

I have now been a customer of Hostgator for a week !

As you are most probably aware, Lunarpages Sucks !
I was previously hosted by Lunarpages, and after they let me down time and time again I decided to take some responsibility and move elsewhere.

I am a very particular person. When it comes to money I will research for hours and hours prior to spending a penny. There was no difference this time around.

No web host is perfect, especially one as large as Hostgator. There are always good stories, and horror stories. That comes with the territory as a webhost. The trick is looking through the cracks, and making an overall decision.

I took the plunge, and went with Hostgator. The things that attracted me were: the positive reviews; the live chat feature; the fact they run a full, and current version of cpanel; and the fact that other domainers I know use them !

It took me quite a lot of effort to move my websites over to Hostgator. This however is the same for any web host.
Depending on the nature of your website, Hostgator offer a transfer service where they will move your websites, and databases absolutely free. +1

Once set up I had a few problems with dns propogation, but these were simply teething problems which were easily sorted with the help of live chat support.

Having worked on and off all day I left it for the night, and went to bed. In the morning I checked a website of mine to find I was being offered the option to download my own PHP source code ! DISASTER ! My hours and hours of coding was being offered completely free to absolutely any and all visitors ! I was distraught ! -10 !

I logged onto the live chat feature and explained my problem. My agent was ‘Richard Ha’. He put forward a variety of lack luster suggestions in a rude manner. None worked. He stated he would escalate the request, such that ‘at some point’ it would be fixed. I explained in no uncertain terms that it could NOT wait. He did not care. Eventually he had a Eureka moment, and suggested a fix that worked. Had he not had this I would have been completely *insert-rude-word-here*. Unsurprisingly, I was disgusted. I had spent ages setting myself up with Hostgator and they were looking to melike a bunch of rude amateurs !

Richard Ha then directed me to leave feedback on his support services ! I laughed, and obliged. Perhaps his surname is ‘Ha’ because his support services are a joke. He also directed me as to where to complain.. He told me how to complain about HIM ! Again I obliged.

At this point you are probably thinking that Hostgator definitely should not get your money. WAIT! Read on….

ONE HOUR, yes a measly 1 hour after this occurred I received a personal email from ‘Patrick Pelanne’, ‘Deputy Chief Technical Officer’ at Hostgator. He apologized profusely, resolved the problem properly (the technicians fix was a band-aid fix), explained what had happened, and gave me a free months hosting ! Now that is customer service !
This was independent of the email I had sent to ‘feedback@hostgator.com’, and I received a useful response from them too.

Kudos to Patrick, and his team. There was a problem, they noted it, and they fixed it in a matter of hours. The free months hosting was a bonus.
Admittedly there should not have been problems in the first place, BUT realizing your mistakes, and NOT simply blaming the customer is something that is very rare nowadays.

I have an account at Hostgator for 3 years, and I am looking forward to it. Hostgator are awesome ! If you are looking for a cheap, quality host then Hostgator is the way to go ! Best of Luck

Speak YOUR mind !

March 17, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (2)

I follow a few blogs. I do this because blogs are great resources. The content varies depending on the subject matter. You could be reading ‘How Tos’ on a cooking blog, or news stories on a blog covering news for a specific niche.
Blogs are great, and the reason for this is because you can always find a blog written by a good writer regarding the subject matter on which you are interested. Furthermore blogs CAN be biased, whereas news agencies such as Reuters cannot. This allows for reading of something which YOU agree with as opposed to a middle man stance.

I have previously ranted about bloggers, and their practices. This is a continuation.
I regularly check Domain Investment Updates such that I can keep up to date with my domain news. DIU collects together all the best domain news sources, and displays their posts on one page. Previously there were loads of blogs connected to the site, now however there are only the best. Why you might ask? Simple !

Previously when you visited DIU.net you would see a page full of blog posts from different authors with similar titles: clearly all on the same topic. What seems to be happening in this niche, and I assume others is a flood of bloggers.
Reputable bloggers are researching news stories, and then writing them up. It would then seem that a flurry of ’small-time’ bloggers (who are just trying to cash in) go ahead and essentially copy the content of the post onto their own blogs.

Now I am all in favour of stories being posted on multiple blogs, and multiple opinions being portrayed. What I do not agree with however is flooding our screens with other peoples opinions/findings. IF someone reads your blog, they want to read what YOU have to say, not what Steve from otherblog.com has to say.

The worst of the bunch are those whose post is essentially:
“Steve at thisotherblog.com says this…..
I agree……”

Fair enough if you reference the original author, and actually write something substantial in continuation, however too often I am seeing people who literally copy and paste someone elses content to their blog, and expect to make money.

It is a joke ! You know who you are ! Speak your own mind.

Can I spam you?

March 10, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Developments | Comments (0)

Before you have a coronary thinking that I was asking permission to spam, I was not. I was merely enticing you into reading this post.

On many an occasion I have emailed people about buying their domains. I have had replies ranging from the simple ‘No Thanks’, and ‘Flame, flame flame’ to ‘Why do you people keep emailing me?’
It seems that some people are totally oblivious to the fact that their domains are valuable, and the reasoning behind people wanting to buy them.

It has gotten to the point where most domain owners are now appreciative of the value of their asset(s). If a domain investor has emailed an owner and they have politely explained that the domain is not for sale, then I can see why receiving a further 300 emails trying to buy it would be annoying.
I had an idea: an expansion of the GUA Domain Tools.

What if there was a system: a universal system which documented each and every domain name which was for sale. The premise behind the idea would be that an email would be sent to a domain name owner the body of which would say something along the lines of: ‘Is this domain currently for sale, and if not will it ever be for sale in the future’. A link would then be provided through which the owner could update their domains status.

Along comes Mr A wanting to buy this domain. Before he emails the owner he checks our database and sees that the domain is not, and will not be for sale. He wastes no further time, nor does he waste the owners time.

Surely such a system would save a vast amount of time for many many people?

There is however a problem. If I email an owner asking if their domain is for sale, I am spamming (technically): the email is unsolicited. This leads to a small predicament. No one likes spam, but if someone spams you with a $10,000 USD offer for your $500 domain you will likely accept the offer independent of its spam nature. I.E If it is something you like, then you will not care.

It is ironic… a paradox maybe… you need to spam to stop spam per se.
If you received such an email, would you care? Would you consider it spam, and complain?

It is a good idea in principle, but would it work in practice?
Let me know your views, and perhaps I will get on with developing it !

You dont speak English? NO DEAL !

March 9, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

I am not a racist, I merely dislike foreigners!

Another rash statement contained within a blog post. A statement completely unnecessary to prove my point, BUT none the less, a statement which has made you read this far..

I am in the process of wrapping up various eBay transactions: domain names which I sold at a ridiculous loss. As of yet, every transaction has gone through fine, but my gosh did some of the buyers make it hard.

I dealt with an Italian: ‘GAMEMAN’ who had little grasp of the English language, such that I gave up trying to enforce the terms of my auction simply to get him out of my life.

I dealt with a chinaman who again had little grasp of English such that I thought the transaction would never go through. It did.

The problem with this was that the amount of extra back and forth made me at many times want to end it all. A simple 30 minute transaction took multiple days because of language barriers.

If I were to impose nationality restrictions in my domain sales I would be considered a racist. That is ridiculous because there is reasoning behind it: it is a lot harder to deal with a foreigner than an English speaking national.
An extra fee for international buyers again would not go down too well, but I feel it due.
I for one will be implementing an extra condition in all my sales: ‘Fluent English (at my discretion), and email response within 24 hours required. By bidding you agree that failure to comply with this term will void the transaction.’ Heck it may disgruntle people, but it will save me a lot of time, effort, and money. To be honest I am a businessman, that is all I care about!

Lunarpages Sucks !

March 5, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (4)

My websites are hosted with Lunarpages.com. I bought their smallest hosting package because it is ample for what I need, and extremely cheap.

I have had many a hosting account in my time, all have been distinctly average. Independent of my past hosting I still make the same mistake: money.

My websites are not massive money makers, nor do they get masses of traffic. Thus I do not want to buy a vps, or dedicated server which costs the world, and is significantly more than what I need.

The advertised lunarpages package was exactly what I needed at a great price. Thus I bought it for two years. Big mistake.

A few months in and the problems have started. On a fine Saturday morning I opened my email inbox to find an email from Lunarpages support. My hosting account had been moved to the ‘cloud’ server because it was using too many resources. They refused to document what was causing this server usage, and were insistent on advertising their awful dedicated server packages.

Eventually I got it out of them that one of my websites: Anfield.com was using too many resources. They thus took that website down without reason or permission. It took them 3 days after I demanded they put it back up to comply.

I was then told I had 14 days to find, and fix the problem before my hosting was closed. That in principle is fair. I thus asked them to send me usage logs daily to help me find the problem. They agreed, and then did not. Furthermore they would not explain to me as to why one wordpress blog of many many near identical installs was using so many resources.
Essentially they knew the problem, but refused to tell me what it was.
I have thus (as far as I know) been unable to fix it.

Since then (around 1 week), I have emailed lunarages support numerous times. I have received NO response to any email. I am trying to work with them, yet they do not help !

The ‘cloud’ server is a joke. Nearly 10% of the time my network of websites are down ! 10 % DOWNTIME ! With so many websites in development this is a real problem. I do not want to release a site, advertise it etc, and then lose traffic because lunarpages are awful hosts !

I am reluctant to move hosts as prior to this they were great: helpful, responsive, and good uptime. In the hosting game consistency is crucial however. The service they have provided a of recently is awful, the support is non existent, and the downtime significant.

I dont want to have to look for another host… I have paid for for 2 years, and on paper it is exactly what I need !

If you are looking for hosting DO NOT pick lunarpages, they Suck !
Do not be tempted by their cheap prices, and manipulative sales pitches. After all, you DO get what you pay for !

Cheers

Comic Disbelief?!

March 2, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

Call me a doubter, and/or a pessimist but Comic Relief 2009 has the potential to reduce the UK to farce for a complete day.
We were recently hit by some extremely bad weather. It snowed for days on end leading to people getting stuck at home, and to our main roads becoming temporary death traps laden with ice.
Apparently this weather cost the economy many millions of pounds. It received a large amount of news coverage, and the situation escalated to such a state whereby there was not enough salt to grit the roads!

Comic Relief is a great cause: raising money for people all across the world that really need it. Their slogan this year is ‘Be funny for money’. This is a very creative slogan in keeping with the tone of the event. It is however open to abuse.

When I first heard this slogan I thought that I would go around ‘Happy Slapping’. That IS pretty funny in my honest opinion. I’m kidding!
In all seriousness though, given the current state of social affairs in Britain, I would not be surprised to hear stories on the news of sick stunts being pulled such as the above.
It is a real shame that Britain is full of lowlifes, but at the same time perhaps it would be a little too idealistic to envisage a crime free country.

I may be wrong, but I never hear of many social misdemeanours in the US, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. Perhaps someone could enlighten me?

Independent of the above Comic Relief is on Friday the 13th March. In my view this is a ridiculous day on which to hold such an event. Not only is it a ‘Friday the 13th’ which in itself is unlucky, but also it is the end of the busy working week.
If we complain about losing money due to the weather, it seems a bit rich to then go and organize what is essentially a ‘do no work’ day on a Friday. Why not instead run the event on a Saturday and donate the money from the Friday work day to comic relief..?

As far as I am concerned this years comic relief has the potential to cost Britain socially, and economically whilst at the same time not having the charitable affect which it could have.
A lot of organization goes into such an event.. How could they get the date wrong?!