My Views | The Gremlins Umbrella Authority

Vodafone: Bad Business

December 14, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: Advice, My Views, Reviews, Scammers | Comments (0)

It has been a while since I have posted anything of merit. I will try my hardest to start producing some more informative content.

Independent of where you originate from, you will have more than likely heard of Vodafone: the mobile phone carrier originally set up within the UK in the eighties.
Over the years they have gone from strength to strength, last tax year earning a post tax profit in excess of £3 billion. Running businesses within 20 different countries, and employing 79,000 worldwide gives off a general aura of a well run business. Wrong.

Now I appreciate wholly that I am a tiny fish in the grand scheme of things, however a sample of ‘me’ suggested that 100% of Vodafone customers were extremely disappointed. Stats do not lie !

I have been a Vodafone contract customer for the past 18 months. Prior to that, I had previous contracts with them. My family all have mobile contracts, and the majority of them are with Vodafone. We give them a few thousand quid a year, so logically they would want our custom right? Nope.

Having lost my phone, I decided to get a new contract. My previous contract expired in 3 months, so compared to what it could have been, it was a minimal financial loss.
Thus, knowing I could not cancel my contract I went into Vodafone to change my contract to a lower tariff. I.E Rather than spend £35 a month on a phone I did not have, simply spend £15: a saving of £20 monthly for 3 months.
After ‘a period of time which made the effort not worth it’ the woman told me I could only reduce my contract by £5 a month. I stated that with previous contracts we had reduced the contract in one lump, but she was having none of it. Essentially Vodafone wanted to make £30 extra out of me over a 3 month period by making ‘me saving money’ excessively complicated.

What Vodafone in fact did is make me decide that I did not in fact want to take out another contract with them. On the assumption I would have taken out a £30 monthly contract for 18 months, they lost a whopping £510 for having no business sense. Further to this, I have informed all family members to stay away from Vodafone when getting a new contract. We can multiply that number by 5, and state that Vodafone will essentially lose £2,500 bi-anually (minimum), and it is all their fault.

I am ridiculously stubborn, and business acumen influenced. Vodafone have ticked every box for me as a company NEVER to deal with.

Is there a stigma associated with adult webmasters?

September 8, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (4)

As a domain name investor, I am more than happy to invest in anything I deem potentially profitable.

It just so happens that a year or two ago I was offered some adult domain names.
Basically, I had previously purchased some names from a seller. A few months after this initial purchase, I was contacted by him. His wife had found out that he owned these domains, and given him a lowdown.. sell them, or… well… who knows.

Now I dont have much interest in the adult industry, or adult domains, however these were some reasonably popular adult keywords in various cctlds. I jumped on the reasonably low prices. In hindsight I am curious as to whether his scenario was a selling ploy, none the less I felt I had gotten a good deal.

I have since attempted to sell these domains numerous times, never with any success. Eventually I gave up, and took a $200 offer I had received on ‘blowjobs.us’. To my dismay the buyer put it straight on SEDO, and fetched over a grand. This increased my motivation for selling the other domains, however even a Rick Latona auction could not get any bids on these domains.

Now I appreciate that cctlds, are less valuable than faeces nowadays: I sold 5 LLL.us I had bought for $70 each 3 years ago for $1 each on ebay recently ! However one of the names in the .com extension sold for mid $xx,xxx. You’d thus think that the .us would be worth $500? Apparently not.

So, essentially I am in a position where I own 5 or so domains I cannot sell, in a questionable niche which I have little interest in. Furthermore I have no idea as to how to develop them. What to do?

I looked into adult content on popular adult forum GFY.com. The cost of content was extortionate ! No wonder porn is such a profitable business. 10 sets of images cost more than the domains themselves cost (OK That is an exaggeration, none the less it IS expensive). The little motivation I had was diminishing.

Fortunately for me, I stumbled upon a seller who was licensing a large volume of content for a pretty cheap price. It now seemed worthwhile to spend a little cash for a potentially good return. 100GB of downloading later (YES, 100GB ! : (very high definition images) ), and I was in a position to begin development.

This whole exercise has been worthwhile in that it lead me to develop a script to automatically resize images. I managed to convert 2.15GB of images down to 85MB with this script. I could easily make my money back selling the script.
Armed with this, I decided on my development ‘plan of attack’, and have since put it into action.

FAST FORWARD

So, now my various adult websites are online. Anyone can access them, yet no-one can definitively say ‘That website is owned by ‘The Gremlins Umbrella Authority”. Why is that the case? Well simply put, as mentioned numerous times, the adult industry is questionable, and somewhat immoral from my perspective, however my websites are not illegal. On that basis, money is money, and I will gladly accept it, yet I dont really want to be actively associated with it.

If you park a domain name on an adult landing page, you would not go onto the streets and tell your mates that you were in the porn industry (or would you?). Likewise I know what I want to be known for.. a network of great, user, and family friendly websites. In simple there is a stigma associated with the adult industry, and I have no interest in associating myself with that stigma.

Would you?

The Support Game: Moniker

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

With this round of ‘The Support Game’ I felt somewhat bad. I contacted Moniker, who are by far and away the best domain registrar on the web.
My call was instantly picked up by Don Lyons, who is in fact already my account manager. I apologize for wasting your time as a fake customer, but hopefully what I have to say will get you many a customer in return.

‘Why should I use Moniker over Godaddy for example?’

Dons response involved praise for Godaddy for what they do. He stated that they are the worlds biggest registrar, and thus they must be doing something right. He pointed out that Godaddy are a webhost also whereas Moniker simply focus on domain name management. He stated that Godaddy caters to small businesses, and college students whereas moniker is a ’boutique registrar’.

Now I don’t know about you, but a company that can sell itself praising competitors must know what they are doing.

Don then went on to a 5 minute or so explanation of exactly what Moniker offered. Such was the response that after hearing it, I could not think of any hard questions to ask. I felt like saying.. Wow you are awesome, and hanging up… but.. well.. I couldn’t do that.

Paraphrased, Moniker is slightly more expensive, but has never lost a domain name. Their portfolio manager can handle upwards of 5,000 domains on a single page, and dns changes etc can be registered in bulk in a matter of seconds. Furthermore they are owned by Oversee.net, and thus support, and service is streamlined for Snapnames, Domain Sponsor, and Moniker.

I questioned Dons statement with regards to ‘never losing a domain name’, referencing this post, and was informed that Oversee resolved this by paying out of their own pocket to buy the domain back, and returned it to the owner. This has not been verified, but if so is seriously impressive.

Regarding support, I was curious as to whether Godaddys statements about support were correct. Don was completely honest stating that ‘Moniker is not a hospital’, whereas, as a host Godaddy needs 24/7 support, Moniker does not. None-the-less he stated he is almost always reachable by phone, and has a blackberry for when he is on the move. He also praised the Moniker web based support, and the staff.

My only disagreement is that the web based support is slow, and uninformative at best. Phone, and you’ll always get the answer you want.

Without even asking Don also offered me free 0% interest financing to move my domains to Moniker. I queried how they could provide this, and received ‘$150,000,000 in the bank tends to help’. One thing is for sure Moniker aint going anywhere any time soon. Fill in a simple credit finance form, and you can move all your domains such that you don’t need to prolong the process.

What I loved about Moniker was the honesty. Whereas Godaddy sounded desperate for your business, Moniker were happy to accept your business if you both suited one another. Don would not for example offer free financing if my domains were crap. Why? Because Moniker only wants good domains, such that they can look after all their names and customers, rather than be flooded with spammers and scammers.

Interesting fact of the day: Moniker has over 3,000,000 domain names under its belt, putting it up there as one of the top 10 domain name registrars.

Moniker is by far and away the BEST domain name registrar. Don’t delay, and join at Moniker.com

The Support Game: GoDaddy

August 31, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (1)

I came up with a new game to entertain myself, and help others: The Support Game.

Essentially what happens is I phone up a support service, and ask ‘unusual’ questions. How well are support staff trained, and can they deal with a difficult customer?

Today I phoned up Godaddy, and was aided by Damien. The first thing to note is that he did not tell me his name until the end of the conversation when I asked. How impersonal !

I begun by disputing their ‘All conversations will be recorded’ process, asking if there was a secure line where such was not true. I did not want my conversation, and details of my domain names to be heard by anyone except Damien. His response was ‘No’. I pushed for an explanation, and was given ‘Training, and Security’. I stated that my request was in the interest of the security of my (made up) portfolio of 30,000 domain names. Nothing.

I went on to question what kind of manager was provided for such large portfolios, and was given a vague description of the portfolio manager that everyone gets. I felt no un-exclusive.

I probed as to whether Godaddy support staff were given a line to tell potential customers, as to why they should choose Godaddy over anyone else. Godaddys’ line is “24 hour support including holidays, free hosting deals, and bulk prices”. I made the point that near all registrars have that, but apparently they do not.. not many do. Damien has spoken.

Question 4 inquired about the ridiculous ‘Administrative Fees’ Godaddy like to charge for absolutely nothing. I for one was charged $200 in 2006. 4 of my Godaddy names were listed at tdnam. I then renewed them, Godaddy didnt remove the names, they sold. I was charged $200 in fees for non-sales of domains which GODADDY listed !
Another similar case, was one whereby a user had a UDRP filed against him, and was charged $29 without his permission for the honor.

The response to this was that Godaddy do not charge administrative fees without reason, and that fees are only charged for WIPO claims after GoDaddy have done an investigation. I.E Godaddy gives themselves a right they do not have to charge you based on their opinion. That is reason enough to avoid Godaddy.

He completely avoided my question about the seclists.org fiasco.

Fortunately for me, If I were to move my 30,000 domains over, they ‘might’ be able to get me an account manager.. Oh dear oh dear.

Check out Nodaddy for more reasons to avoid Godaddy.

Only on the Internet

August 15, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

I’ve never given real thought to this phenomenon until today.

There are some things which you can only buy on the Internet. The reasons are vast, and varied but certain products in certain niches simply cannot be bought on the high street.

When I see something I want/need, I often will go out and buy it from a shop simply because although the Internet may be a little cheaper.. it also takes a little longer. The problem is, that as happened today, I ended up wasting time looking for a product which now I will order online anyway

I have thus made it my prerogative to highlight products that I believe are only available online.

N.B I am English, I live in England, and these are my findings in my local area. I am sure if you look hard enough, and in the right places these products can be found offline BUT who wants to put effort in?! Feel free to let me know of any products you believe can only be bought on the net.

Body Fat Calipers: These things basically pinch your body fat, and give you a reading in mm. This can then be used to calculate your body fat percentage. I thought you could find these in any pharmacist, or sports shop. You cant ! I asked in JJB Sports, and the guy clearly had no idea what I was on about, yet pretended he did. “Any Idea where I could get them from?”… response “Yes, from the protein store” (I think he thought it was some sort of mass gaining supplement).

The logic behind such products is obvious… they don’t sell many, so it is not profitable. Why use storage space with something you are not going to sell.
This got be thinking: What happened if you wanted these before the Internet? Mail order catalog I guess.

If you know of any items which simply cannot be bought on the high street, then let me know. I will go an have a look, and If I cant… Ill give you absolutel nothing.

Addition One 15/08/2009 19:37
Thanks to Acroplex for this.. not sure how I missed it.

Domain Names
Domain Names cannot be bought in any way, shape, or form offline. It would however be extremely cool if you could: “I’d like a 20 pack of Malboro lights, and www.shopping.com please.” Response “That will be $100,005.99″.

Cheers

Buy Domains : Spammers

August 12, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

Admittedly I am quite easily annoyed, but you have to go a level beyond to make me post about you on my blog. Therefore kudos to Buy Domains.

Back in early 2008 I sent an inquiry to Buy Domains regarding a domain name which they owned. The domain in question was tomc.com

It is not the greatest domain in the world, and in retrospect I am not even sure as to why i inquired at all. Having checked my logs, I offered $450USD for the domain, an offer which I think exceeds the value of the domain.

Sadly Buy Domains did not agree, and responded with some ridiculous offer. $6,900 if I remember correctly. I politely responded, and said ‘No Thanks’.

Since then I receive an email from Buy Domains every two months, sometimes less. The emails always go the same: We are having a special sale, tomc.com is now only $STILL-EXTORTIONATE-PRICE USD.

First time I replied stating I was not interested, and to remove me from their list. Gradually my replies started getting more and more ‘flame-filled’.
Over the past year I have received over 25 emails offering me the same awful domain which I do NOT want !

Apparently Buy Domains tactic is to change the name at the bottom of the email, then it is not spam.

I have received the exact same template message from Jim Beltz, Jason Miner, and Neil Kavanaugh.
Their emails are always signed off with ‘Head of something really complicated, and important sounding’

In reality I think that Buy Domains employees work on a commission system, and spamming gives them more opportunity to sell domains.
Sad fact, I will never buy from them ever, and I hope others follow suit knowing their unlawful practices.

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.

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

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