Yeah, so I'm leaving Namecheap in February…

So, I left GoDaddy over SOPA, and I went to Namecheap because they were having a special for transfers coming from GoDaddy for a one day sale. Well the hosting side of things worked for my blog, but getting my email set up has been a nightmare, and every visit with tech chat revealed that I wasn't dealing with techs, but with secretaries reading from a script book. Even after I'd done what they asked and shown that my problem was something else, they never deviated from their script. I would have gotten more talking to a bot. I asked to speak to a tech, and the first thing the tech did was start at the top of the script again. There was ZERO communication between the secretary and tech.

I need to point out that I used to work as a PC tech, and as a help desk technician. In most every place that I worked, I entered notes on my assignments so that if the customer called back, the next tech could read my note and see what had already been tried. This is a great cheap system that wastes no paper, because the notes are attached to the customer's files on the server. The customer doesn't have to get upset by repeating the same steps over and over, and the techs deal with a lot less irate callbacks. It's win-win-win for everyone. But instead of doing this, Namecheap creates a tech script and uses untrained labor to handle a tech's job. It's because Namecheap is too cheap to pay real techs to be on standby.

Irate doesn't even begin to cover it. I've spent three days cleaning house in an effort to settle my ass down, and I'm still pissed off at Namecheap for their lousy tech support. The house looks great, but I'm sore and fatigued, and I still can't check my fucking email in Thunderbird.

I can't move hosts this month, as my money is already gone for this month. But in February, I'm changing hosts again, one which has assured me that their email server will work with Thunderbird without the headaches I'm having with Namecheap.

So, long story short, there may be another momentary outage, but I don't think the address will get screwed up. Also, I shouldn't lose your comments…in theory. If I do, know that I'm really sorry for screwing stuff up again. I really hate moving, whether in the digital or physical world, and I honestly hope this next move will find me in a good home that I feel okay with sticking around a few years. I had three with GoDaddy, and up until recently, I never had a problem with them. I didn't want to have to move, damn it, and the first place I moved to now feels like a bad neighborhood for the shitty management. But hopefully, the next stop will be the "Goldilocks host" that's just right for me.

But if I haven't made clear yet, no, I do not recommend Namecheap as an alternative to GoDaddy. Setting aside their SOPA support, GoDaddy was a great host with good customer support when I needed help. I guess Namecheap thinks they can get away with shit service, and I'm sure they won't miss me and my one little blog. But from now on when people ask me about web hosts, you can be sure who I'll tell folks to avoid first before I start listing hosts worth looking into.