Mail and Email Scams

I reported on one mail scam earlier on and have received another. But, I'm not going to turn this blog into a scam reporting service. All I will say is that if you receive an "Awards Certificate" from an organization you didn't solicit, or if the deal appears to be too good to be true...it is and just shred it.

If you still have questions, get on the web and enter in some prominent keywords, for example, the name of the "contest" and the name of the company sponsoring the contest, sweepstakes, or giveaway. There will likely be a few websites providing enough information for you to make a relatively informed decision. If you're still unsure, call the Better Business Bureau in your area. I would say that 99.99% of the "You've Won....!!!!" letters you get in the mail are promotional gimmicks that will net you nothing, a bushel of additiional junk mail , or worse, the loss of hard earned cash when you are pressured into buying some overpriced product you don't need and will never use. No, I take that back, it's 100% of the "Congratulations!" letters you get in the mail.

I don't seem to get as many of these in the mail as I used to, but it still irritates me. If enough people quit falling for these schemes perhaps they will go away. Who wants to buy any products from a company that employs these tactics in the first place? The same as if I'm going to go ahead and visit a website or purchase a product after being tricked by a false email subject line. Like the best way to get me to buy something I don't need is to make me think any correspondence is from someone I know, then blast me with a litany of garbage offers and incentives, fake testimonials and blown out of proportion promises.

The thought of getting something for nothing, a free car, cash, airline tickets (which usually require you book at accommodations at the resort of the prize-giver's choice and for a minimum number of nights), big screen TV, etc. is compelling. Resist the urge. Put down the phone. Take a breath. It's not real. It's only a dream.

Avoid hosting with 1planhost.com

I've now had it. Sorry about the delay in posting, i've been busy with, you know, business matters. But, this last event has finally taken the cake. I received an email today from 1planhost support, where I host my website and 3 other clients that I still web design for. It stated that there was going to be

"conducting network upgrades over the weekend of August 18th, 2006. The upgrades will take place on the 19th between 10pm - 12am. There should be no more than 60-90 minutes of downtime so please bare with us during this time period. After our network upgrade you will experience a noticeable difference in connectivity speeds and reliability in the future."

Little do they know that today is AUGUST 20. And at 6:30pm soon after I received the email I checked. And, not too surprising, all my sites are down. That includes my domain email which is processed through their mail servers.

1planhost was bought a few months ago by some company that prefers to remain unknown, which should have been the forst indication things weren't going to go well. During the transition, pretty much all the hosted websites went down for at least 5 days, some for much longer. Disguised as a "server upgrade" which was supposed to greatly improve performance (I haven't noticed any improvement) it was wool over the eyes of subscribers. I let it go, thinking that the original 1planhost owners, who were great about keeping the system running, responding very quickly to issues, and the CEO replied directly on occasion. I don't think I've had a personal response to a support ticket yet under the new regime.

So, this finally breaks my back. As if I don't have other things better to do than babysit a webhost. Over the next week I'll be moving all my sites over to a new host that's been recommended and seems reliable after some email communications. Honestly, I don't know if this will be any better, but I can't be having this crap go on any longer. Also, since the transfer, my domain email has obviously been blacklisted as spam coming from the new host, so I will need to also fix that.

So, my recommendation for any of you thinking about hosting with 1planhost.com.

DON'T

They were good once, but all those people are long gone. It's worthless now. Run away.

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