intramaweb.com/.

My shared hosting server recently went down for a couple of days.

When the server came back up, data was missing and there was at least one file that didn't belong to me in my webspace.

I contacted 1&1 to alert them to this, and was told that the case had been closed and I should email my account password to them in order to raise a new ticket... What excellent practice.

I chased them and was told I'd be sent an update on the status of my ticket at the end of the day, but this did not arrive. It took several emails and over a week for all my data to be restored.

Repeated requests for information about the nature of the problem that caused the downtime and data loss were ignored. When I pressed them for an explanation, a response finally came. To say that it was rather weak would be an understatement:

"Dear Marcus,

Thank you for contacting us.

We will try to request again for the backup. As for the cause, it was a hardware failure. Our administrators already replaced the defective hardware.

Our apologies for the inconvenience it has caused.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

--
Sincerely,
Nemar Longjas
Technical Support
1&1 Internet Limited"

Unable to find any reference to the 99.99% uptime guarantee boldly advertised on their website in their terms and conditions, I contacted the sales team to ask if the guarantee was backed by any kind of SLA or whether it was simply an assertion. Here's part of the reply I received:

"Marcus,

We do not offer a physical guarantee because there is no way to be 100% certain that the servers will never go down. [...] I am sorry if this was not the answer you were looking for but I can assure you that it would take quite a bit to bring even one of our servers down for any period of time."

Hmmm. Yes, the trouble is "quite a bit" just happened to my server but 1&1 doesn't seem to prepared to tell me anything about it.

I understand that there is no such thing as a 100% secure and reliable system. I understand that mistakes happen and that unexpected problems occur. What I expect from my suppliers is that they appreciate that, as part of my relationship with them, I want to understand the challenges they face and how they go about solving them when they directly impact the services I have paid for.

After all of this, I was sent a survey asking, "Are you happy with 1&1 Internet Ltd?" I didn't have to think very hard about the answer to this question, but I made sure I gave them a full considered response.

I finally found my notebook! Now I just need to find some time to type up my notes from Slovakia, but not before I decypher the data which I transcribed in an encrypted form, the security of which rivals AES - my handwriting!

It is my hope that the long weekend will offer a suitable opportunity, but competing for my time will be my attempts to learn Polish. The results so far have been somewhat pitiful but I've only just begun.

If, with the assistance of Mr Friendly Polish Lodger, by the time I jet off to Krakow in May, I'm able to say a handful of things in badly spoken Polish to the folks I meet over there, I'll be very happy. No doubt most of the inhabitants of Poland's tourism capital will speak pretty good English... but hopefully I find one or two people who will at least humour me!

http://xkcd.com/327/ - a cautionary tale for any school with a student database application that doesn't sanitise input data.

PS I've lost my note book with my diary from Slovakia so I can't post the rest of my notes about my trip here until I find it.