I originally reported a propagation problem itself yesterday in a different thread. But there have been some significant developments mostly pertaining to poor customer service since then, I felt that this warranted its own thread.

The following is a timeline of events that have occurred in attempting to update contact info and DNS information for the domains http://www.hibiscusflorals.com and http://www.hibiscusflorals.ca . The domains listed are registered through a Tucows reseller called Blue Genesis, who also was (and at this time still is) hosting these domains.

Wednesday, June 15, 2:00 AM: For the domains listed above, I changed the DNS servers to point to the nameservers for my servers. All the other stuff was done (add the domain to DNS servers, etc.)

Wednesday, June 15, 11:00 AM: I saw that hibiscusflorals.ca had correctly propagated, whereas hibiscusflorals.com had not.

Wednesday, June 15, 1:00 PM: I received a strange call from my client indicating that the old site was showing up on their machine for hibiscusflorals.com, which in itself was not strange. What was strange is that an hour before, the new site had under the same domain name.

Wednesday, June 15, 2:00 PM: After having experienced the "forward and back" propagation myself, I spoke to a support rep at Blue Genesis by the name of Serge, who refused to initially acknowledge the problem. In his defense, it is rather unusual to say the least as I'd never heard of it before in 6 years of doing design.

After 10 minutes, he pointed me to a website called xwhois.com to look up the domain record and see that it was pointing to the original Blue Genesis nameservers. But, Serge neglected to read further down the page and see that the new nameservers (ns10.servdns.com and ns11.servdns.com) were a part of the same record.

brian.mark, the only person who's injected any sense into the proceedings whatsoever, informed me in the original thread that this was likely due to cached information (the old name servers) vs. live information (the new ones), which I can accept as an explanation for what I saw. Thanks for that, brian.mark .

But this information was still showing for the hibiscusflorals.com domain on xwhois.com until about 11:00 PM Wednesday night. But more on that later.

Wednesday, June 15, 5:00 PM: My client received an email from his former webmaster, Warren Weir of Liquidmedia. Weir was contacted by CIRA (the Canadian equivalent to ICANN, for those who may not be aware) asking him to log into his CIRA account and indicate that the admin email account for hibiscusflorals.ca needed to be changed. Weir proceeded to tell my client that my client would have this information themselves (which they would not since the admin contact for hibiscusflorals.ca is listed as Weir himself with Weir's address.)

This information becomes significant later on in Blue Genesis dealings, so hold it in the back of your head.

Wednesday, June 15, 8:00 PM: I called Blue Genesis back for a status update on the issue and was told by a rep (who never provided his name, even when I asked) that, because it was a domain issue, I needed "to call back during the hours of the day." When I pointed out to him that he didn't specify which hours to call back during, he proceeded to get all huffy and tell me "BETWEEN 8 AND 6, OKAY?", as if somehow I had done something wrong. And when I wanted to verify that it was Eastern Standard Time, I got a very terse "YES" back.

Wednesday, June 15, 11:00 PM: I informed my client that the xwhois.com had updated with new information and that it appeared that the propagation issue was solved or well on its way to being solved. They checked the site, and the first time it loaded with the new site. The second time, it loaded with the old site. But at this point, I quite incorrectly made the assumption that if xwhois.com had the correct information, somehow everything was going to be okay, since new information seemed to be propagating.

Thursday, June 16, 12:00 AM: As per the instructions of Blue Genesis, my client faxed a change of admin contact email form to Tucows directly indicating that the admin contact email for hibiscusflorals.ca was to be changed to a hibiscusflorals.com email address, since Warren Weir wasn't going to cooperate.

Thursday, June 16, 10:00 AM: My client received an email back from OpenSRS indicating that the email address had been changed for hibiscusflorals.com , as per the fax. They conveniently ignored the .ca request. At this time, the domain was STILL bouncing back and forth between two nameservers.

Thursday, June 16, 12:00 PM: My client and I conference-called Blue Genesis and spoke with a "Ricardo". In Ricardo's defense, he seemed a lot more in tune with what was going on than the other people and gave me a possible cause of the problem. He proceeded to tell me that the A record of the new nameserver might be the problem. And he had apparently had no documentation of any of the previous information, because I had to explain the problem to him fully three times.

The problem is that if the A record on the new nameservers was incorrect, then the domain would not actually register anything when the new nameservers were being accessed (i.e. the new site would not show up, which it was.) When I pointed this out, he realized that this was something much deeper and at least had the presence of mind to transfer us to the Blue Genesis DNS department.

We also spoke to him about the .ca issue and explained it to him, and he proceeded to tell us that we needed to talk to customer service about that. The email address not being our primary concern, we asked Ricardo to transfer us to DNS first and then we'd get DNS to transfer us to customer service immediately after.

So he puts us through to an "Andreas" or "Andrea" (I couldn't tell which, although it was a woman) in DNS. She realized that the problem was something deeper and ultimately, as I suspected from the beginning, a Tucows issue. So she proceeded to take down my phone number and promised to call me back.

And then we asked to speak to customer service about our other issue, so she put us on hold to transfer us.

Or so we thought. After waiting for over five minutes of dead air and being unsure if we were disconnected, Andreas picked up the phone again.

"I'm sorry, we couldn't put you through to our customer service department because we don't have one right now." Not "no one is available", but "we don't have one". So she asked us what our issue was. We explained what was going on with the .ca and she said "Oh, that's my department, just refax the information in and indicate that it's the .ca you want changed, not the .com, and we'll take care of it."

So my client proceeded to do this. But wait, kids, the story's not over yet.

Thursday, June 16, 1:30 PM: My client received an email from OpenSRS acknowledging the refaxed request, but did not change the domain name as the request "didn't come from the owner of the domain, Warren Weir O/A Hibiscus Florals." So I called Blue Genesis back yet again and got through to a "Nicole". I explained the situation and Nicole told me that a letter would be faxed on company letterhead to Tucows indicating the switch. She also asked me rhetorically why I wasn't dealing with Warren directly, since "he's very honest and easy to deal with." (Yes, and that's why there's a domain name that doesn't legally belong to him registered in his name.)

I was too tired of fighting at this point to ask why we weren't asked to do this the first time, and I don't think it would have done a lot of good anyway. Why? See below.

I thought since I had the correct department on the phone, I'd ask her if there was any kind of update or information regarding the issue. She replied, "yes, Andreas left the information with me and then went home for the day."

So I said, "okay, and what did you find out?"

"Nothing."

"What do you mean, nothing?"

"That's the nature of propagation, sir. It doesn't show the new site on all computers at the same time."

"For the fiftieth time, I get that. The problem isn't that it's not showing the new site on all computers at the same time. It's that it's showing the new site, then the old one, then the new one, then back to the old one, and so on and so on for the exact same machine on the exact same IP address. Propagation doesn't work like that. It's a one-way process."

"Well I can't look into this for you, sir. Propagation can take up to 48 hours."

"So you're just going to make me sit and wait even though we're at the 36-hour mark, which is reasonably close enough to ascertain that there may be a deeper issue and that it's something that's been acknowledged by the person who just handed the job down to you."

"Yes, sir, thank you. Is that your only issue?"

At this point, I realized that no amount of fighting would solve this issue with this woman, so I simply hung up the phone.

Thursday, June 16, 2:00 PM: In a last-ditch attempt to solve the issue, I called Tucows directly. I know you're not supposed to do that but I was running out of options and ideas, so I went ahead and did it anyway.

After 20 minutes of screwing with their menu, I got a customer service rep or someone. I didn't get his name, though.

"Hi, I'd like to report a DNS propagation issue. I tried going through the reseller but they're not cooperating so I tried this route."
"It's not a Tucows issue, sir. You need to go through your reseller."
"I can't do that. They're not cooperating."
"Well we can't help you."
"Well it's your problem."
(very reluctantly) "Okay, let's hear it."

So I proceeded to explain the problem to the Tucows person. He said "it's not ours." So I asked him, "well then, where is the problem?"

"It's on the new nameservers, usually."
"I checked there, and when the doamin accesses the new name servers, the new domain comes up as expected. So I know it's not the A record."
"Well it's not us. So you're going to have to deal with your reseller."
"So what if the reseller won't deal with me, and what if it is ultimately your issue?"
"You can choose from one of our other resellers. If they report the same issue to us, then we'll know it's our problem. Thank you."

So, in order for them to possibly acknowledge a problem, my client would have to transfer their domain to another Tucows registrar and see if the problem still exists.

I'll give them half-credit. The domain should be transferred to another registrar, and will be. But it's going to be GoDaddy (someone who will actually solve problems) and Tucows and its resellers will lose some business. I just hope others who use Tucows resellers will gain something from this and take their business elsewhere as well.

As far as Blue Genesis goes, they were telemarketing to me back in 2002 and I had my doubts about the company then. All of these issues have served to confirm said doubts and then some.

So there you have it. My trip through Hell thanks to Blue Genesis and to a lesser extent, Tucows.

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Toronto Web Design | Search Engine Friendly, Standards-Compliant Layouts | Walk on my Path (my blog)

You might also look into dotearth.com for hosting the site. They have been very good to me. Tech has taken the time to tell me what I need to know when I have had to use them.

Another place to look is quik.com hosting. They will double check stuff for you when you give them a call.

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YourWeb The Friendliest Shopping Mall On The Net |
Buying First Time | Whois Search

Sorry to hear how bad that was, Adam. It sort of seems like one of the DNS servers may have been updated and the second never was now that I re-read all the issues. I had that happen once when a sync error occurred between our DNS servers. Since we run our own, I was able to fix it a little easier than what you were able to.

Did you ever get it fixed? That seems to be the part of the story that was missing.

Brian.

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ToolBarn.com, an Internet Retailer Top 500 and Inc. 500 Company | Tool Parts | Pet Supplies

webhost1: it wasn't a hosting issue, since the new server is my own. I'm good from that point.

To update the story and to answer brian.mark's question, Tucows called my client long after the fact (i.e. after we transferred the .com to Go Daddy and solved the issue that way) to inform him that they had an issue of caching old nameserver information (something which, when brian.mark pointed it out to me, I in turn pointed out to Blue Genesis who turned around and told me I was wrong). This had nothing to do with the hosting of course...it was a registrar error through and through.

Anyway, the .com issue is now resolved and the domain is registered through Go Daddy.

The .ca is up for renewal, and this is still ongoing. The reason is because, after all the crap my client and I had been through, I felt it was only justified that we got at least a 3-year renewal (thinking it was only around $19.95 since that's what a .ca typically goes for). Well...the .ca costs $35.00 per year at Blue Genesis, so the 3-year renewal is out. However, the butt-kissing sales guy who has "a lot of stroke" was going to see what he could do about a goodwill credit. We called on Friday, June 17, at 12:00 PM and were promised a reply within 2-3 hours. We're still waiting.

So that's the story up till this point. .com resolved, .ca renewal pending.

__________________
Toronto Web Design | Search Engine Friendly, Standards-Compliant Layouts | Walk on my Path (my blog)

Adam: I too had problems with one of their resellers, a very prominent one, and simply got tired of wasting my time and losing my patience and began transferring everything over to GoDaddy. I love that they add one year onto the registration with the tranfer, a real savings when you start calculating the cost of renewals anyway ...

I don't tolerate poor customer service very well. More over, I will not tolerate companies, like the one you've described, who do not want to admit or accept fault when they screw up.

GoDaddy has bent over backwards to make me happy and I don't get nearly the unsolicited junk mail I did from my previous registrar. I get a few emails from time to time from GoDaddy, but the only postal mail I've ever gotten was a thank you with a discount on a future purchase ... that's what I call CRM!

I'm about to nix my webhosting company for the same reasons I axed web.com. Any suggestion on a good host?

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W. R. Mineo

We're hosting some stuff on hasweb.com (just the stuff with huge bandwidth usage and little else.) The rates are amazing. We paid for a year on their service, which was a lot less than a month of our hosting for toolbarn.com and we're allowed 500GB of transfer monthly. I've been pretty happy with them so far.

If you really want service, nothing beats a close by colocation or even running your own T-1, both of which I'm also doing right now. We have a differnt T-1 for XML and direct access to our colocation servers.

If you don't have the needs of our colocation service or the full T-1 hosting (that requires even more server knowledge and networking knowledge), then there are many options. If you need lots of bandwidth, hasweb seems reasonable.

Brian.

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ToolBarn.com, an Internet Retailer Top 500 and Inc. 500 Company | Tool Parts | Pet Supplies

Thanks Adam. I think I got it.

wrmineo take a look at my post and you can get I think I posted 2 or 3 hosting companies.

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YourWeb The Friendliest Shopping Mall On The Net |
Buying First Time | Whois Search

Sectorlink are the guys who host my dedicated server. I've been with them for myself and clients for over three years, and they're the only ones I'd recommend.

Anyway, a phone call will be made tomorrow morning re: the .ca domain name. I'll keep you guys posted tomorrow night.

Side Note: my girlfriend's father had a huge problem with his host and ended up transferring to web.com as a result. They were the ones who actually helped me help him get the domain from bouncing to an ipowerweb.com "account suspended" page. For a newcomer like my gf's father, they're a great company to deal with because of their editors and scripts and things of that nature (all of which I have no use for personally, but he likes 'em).

Mind you, I haven't used them for anything hardcore and have no plans to, so I can't say from any point of view other than the one customer service issue I was having that they helped me solve.

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Toronto Web Design | Search Engine Friendly, Standards-Compliant Layouts | Walk on my Path (my blog)