(Apparently not all the glitches are gone as I just had trouble re-logging into eWillys)

Some days just don’t go like I plan them. After being busy early this week with doctor appointments (for Ann), bread baking, and ewillys updating, I had set aside Friday morning to work on my next book.

But, life had other plans. First, Thursday’s night’s turkey (or maybe the glass of rum I had) upset my stomach, so I didn’t sleep well Thursday night. Then, at 9am while laying blissfully in bed with Ann, I received a call from Hobeken, New Jersey. I rarely receive calls anymore, let alone from numbers unknown. I told my wife that if there’s a message, it’s a bad sign.

There was a message. It was a bad sign.

A reader named Adam left a message informing me the site was down (and I do appreciate the message!). He noted that ewillys was defaulting to a domain renewal site. A few minutes later I got a follow up call and message from Roger in Ohio. Yep, there was definitely a problem.

After a few god-damnitts (not for the calls, but for the problem), I climbed out of bed and sat down at my computer desk. Only partly awake, I stared at the screen thinking ‘what do I do now‘? I was not quite firing on all cylinders (if any).  I pulled up eWillys. Sure enough, even in my half-awake state I could see that the wrong page appeared.

What was truly puzzling was that I HAD renewed eWillys.com eight days ago to avoid this very problem. To get to the bottom of it, I called the 1-800 number of the company (Midphase) that hosts my domain name (different than my web host). To my disbelief, I encountered three straight advertisements that required me to ‘exit’ the ads by clicking on the ‘star’ button of my phone. Worse, after the third ad I was redirected to Verizon (my phone provider). What the hell? I was really pissed.

So, I jumped back online. I entered a dizzying array of usernames and passwords before I remembered how to access my domain name management screen. I opened the billing section and saw that I had intact renewed my domain name. To get to the bottom of it, I entered an online help chat with a customer service support person who informed me I hadn’t renewed my domain name. But, yes I had, I wrote, and the evidence is on my billing statement!

The support person responded by exiting the chat and sending me to billing. Next thing I knew I was online chatting with a billing customer person. That person claimed I also hadn’t renewed my domain name. Again I wrote, But, yes I did and the evidence is on my billing statement!

She put me on hold so she could do research. A few minutes later she came back and told me that yes, I had renewed. They (who this mysterious they is remains a mystery) just hadn’t updated the domain name. She then apologized and said I’d have to wait a few hours for the domain name to propagate. I told her that wasn’t good enough. I wanted to know why it happened so that it wouldn’t happen next time. She responded that it could have happened for a variety of reasons. I asked how we keep this from happening next year. She offered to inform the admins of the problem . . . yeah, some admin at another location is going to listen to a call center person tell them they screwed up … I was not happy.

At this point I tried reaching through the screen to choke the person on the other end, but my hand bounced off my screen. To protect myself from virtually assaulting anyone, I left the chat room.

So, sorry for the drop in service Friday morning. While the domain seems to be fixed now, my faith Midphase’s domain service is most definitely broken.