back to article Freeparking web hosting services go TITSUP after migration

Customers have complained at not having access to their emails and websites from domain names and web hosting company Freeparking for over a week, due to a migration issue. Customer Sean Osguthorpe said: "I have been without some of mine since the 25th May and every helpdesk request I send is ignored." The service is currently …

  1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Not surprised but there's a silver lining

    I'd had enough & left them before they announced this migration. Frankly, I'm not surprised. But at least it's stopped them spamming me about renewing a domain they no longer manage.

    One worrying aspect about their service turned up during my migration. I'd allowed as testing domain to lapse & set it up elsewhere. That was the first to be transferred to my new provider. Attempts to send email to it from the domain they still hosted were bounced by them and raising tickets had no effect. Emailing from anywhere else still worked. Clearly having once had the domain they seem disinclined to accept anybody else can host it. It seems to be of a piece with their spamming. The worrying aspect was that if this was SOP for them any current customer wouldn't be able to email any ex-customer. Possibly, just possibly, they'll have failed to migrate all this old baggage.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not surprised but there's a silver lining

      > Attempts to send email to it from the domain they still hosted were bounced by them

      If you send mail between two domains hosted on the same machine the mail transport agent is normally clever enough to know that it can just deliver the mail locally rather than going out through the internet and back again.

      However, if the supplier doesn't remove the old domain completely when you migrate it the MTA still thinks it's local and tries to drop the mail into a non-existent domain. This will cause bounces.

      It's a case of them not cleaning up after themselves properly and the issue will vanish when you migrate the second domain away.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Not surprised but there's a silver lining

        Even if the second domain migrates away the uncleared data is still there. In fact there might now be uncleared data from two domains. What happens if a user of some other domain hosted there tries to email either of these domains? Good housekeeping should have removed the data when the domain expired or was moved.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not surprised but there's a silver lining

          > Even if the second domain migrates away the uncleared data is still there.

          At that point it doesn't matter because all the DNS is pointing to the new server and the email goes there.

          It's ONLY a problem sending from a domain currently on their server to another domain that used to be on their server.

          Once you have no domains on their server you are free and clear and they can have all the old useless data they want hanging around on their server and it won't matter a damn.

          EDIT: I see what you are saying. What happens if another random domain is hosted on that server? Mail would likely bounce. but realistically the chances of that happening are actually pretty small.

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Not surprised but there's a silver lining

            "the chances of that happening are actually pretty small."

            They're probably getting smaller now!

  2. simmondp

    Three weeks without being able to send mail

    No meaningful response from support whatsoever.

    Closed ticket on not being able to send email, can only re-open by emailing from my email address #Doh! #Catch22

    If I open new ticket I go the end of a very long queue.

    Recommendations for a new domain hosting company please.

    1. Dr Who

      Re: Three weeks without being able to send mail

      Without any hesitation I can recommend CloudFloor DNS (http://www.mtgsy.net) who have provided us and our customers with a top notch, highly reliable service for many years now. They're brilliant. The shocker is, their service actually costs a few pounds a month. Unbelievable isn't it! Who'd have thought that you have to pay a reasonable fee to get a good service. Just doesn't make any sense.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Three weeks without being able to send mail

        +1 for CloudFloor for a variety of services. Have only ever had to contact them when it's been my own stupid problem, and got really helpful, pretty much instant responses from a real person

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Re: Three weeks without being able to send mail

      If you want cheap but decent, 5quidhost I've used for a site for many years. Staff very helpful, even resolving an issue at 3am on a Saturday morning. However, they only do hosting, so your name services will have to be done somewhere else..

      1. Billa Bong

        Re: Three weeks without being able to send mail

        Heartinternet gets a vote up from me. Massive range of services, sensible business structure, pricing isn't bad, support is good.

        1. Triggerfish

          Re: Three weeks without being able to send mail

          Heart impressed me when I used them, a ticket seems its dealt with by people who actually know what they are doing, they've even pointed out a potential issue.

  3. regadpellagru

    Few post-migration issues ...

    And a huge backlog tickets.

    Yeah, right ...

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > For as little as £1.50 a month you can get decent hosting from Luxminet.

      I used them for many years but they turned to utter crap when I attempted to migrate a .com domain away from them; they simply ignored all my mail.

      Luckily they are a domain reseller for someone else and I was able to cut them out of the process.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Ragarath

      And also a ...

      website from the 1990's will be yours.

      The service may be good, but that website really needs an update.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        WTF?

        Re: And also a ...

        Holy shit, have I visited the Wayback Machine by mistake?

        I would of said it was created in FrontPage 2000, but it's not even that good.

        I hear they are shorty going to improve it by moving to Geocities.

        Guess not updated for a while (footer on page)

        © 1997 - 2012, LuxmiNET, BGP Tecno Limited. All rights reserved.

  5. Little Mouse
    Facepalm

    "El Reg has contacted Freeparking for further comment"

    For a guaranteed response you should have raised a ticket.....

    1. Danny 14

      Re: "El Reg has contacted Freeparking for further comment"

      eventually

  6. Shrub

    About 5 years ago, free parking failed to renew a domain with their upstream registrar causing it to lapse. This domain was our main corporate domain hosting our client's DNS servers, taking down 100 zones for customers.

    We moved after this <_<

    1. Danny 14

      seems an odd choice of hosting for a company with 100 zones.

      1. John Geek

        cheaptitude has no bounds.

  7. Billa Bong

    Vindicated!

    Wow! It couldn't happen to a bigger bunch of cowboys. I ditched them after a terrible run of errors both technical and billing left me out of pocket (money and time), and the support channel seemed to be a single guy who couldn't find his <user input required>.

    Changed provider, haven't had *any* issues that weren't resolved in a timely manner by a support team who actually understood basic terminology. If you want to know how *not* to run a host/domain registrar, look at FP.

  8. DalSoft

    Worst customer service

    Worst customer service if I messed up everyone's dns and email forwarding I'd have my support working 24h shifts and weekends. They seem to never respond to email or any support requests. They messed up all my email forwarding and new domain registrations no response from them in 10 days. I've moved to namecheap who have 24h support. Amusingly I managed to register my new domain on namecheap while freeparking system was still crashed.

  9. JimboSmith Silver badge

    I've been with them for over thirteen years and I've not had a problem until this migration where upon my email went nuts. I couldn’t any emails on my phone (although this resolved itself) however my tablet was the major problem.  I started to get duplicate emails downloading for my entire mailbox which I could delete only for them to reappear next time I connected. For a time and I didn't want to turn on the wifi because of the knowledge that I'd just be downloading yet another set of duplicates. I eventually deleted the contents of the old mailbox and that seemed to solve the problem. Everything now works perfectly again but for about 48hrs I was wondering what I could do.

  10. DalSoft

    1997 called...

    and wanted to register a domain

  11. Alexdave

    This is what most companies do... Most of hosting companies (Godaddy, 1&1 and Exascale) have ticket system. They are accountable to you and reply within their processing times. Avoid mailing and use ticket system.

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