When the economy collapsed and the economic growth came to a stand still, the governments would not be making the money that they expected and as such, they could not pay the dept on the money that they had borrowed.

This has had a huge impact on the population and what really pisses me off is that the US and EU governments are now spending money creating websites to show people how they can save money and not live beyond their means. But it is the government who has been living well beyond their means for a long time that generated the economic crisis.

Isn’t this insane? The government borrows way more than it ever should have done based on their economic growth. The economic growth comes to a stand still and the government then spend more money telling the population to do what the governments should have done in the first place. Don’t spend money you don’t have fool!

Like this idiotic website feedthepig.org. As if I am going to take advice from a god damned farm yard animal with a hole in his head!

God damn, I am pleased that I am away from the UK where I lived, or you may find me on the streets, Molotov cocktail in one hand and a wild turkey in the other.

The Background on My Relationship With Lunarpages

For those of you who do not already know, I had an issue with lunarpages (the webhost) which started as a simple complaint about their support. At the time I was contacting them a lot as the server I rent from them kept going down. They gave me one excuse after another and none of the excuses seemed to be right. I pushed for an answer and ended up demanding that they investigate the issue to the fullest extent possible. They reluctantly investigated and found that all the downtime and server crashes were due to the hard drive within the server which was so heavily corrupted, it had just days left to live.

Lunarpages then moved me to a brand new server, however the staff completing the move failed to follow my instructions or the instructions of their manager which resulted in the server crashing and refusing to come back online. Even more time was wasted as lunarpages did not have direct access to the server and needed a special cage team to go and see why it was not coming back online.

The whole thing was a mess to say the very least and I was treated horrifically. Even Lunarpages staff commented that my issue should have been addressed a lot quicker than it was. All the signs the server was giving out pointed towards a serious issue, but lunarpages ignored all the signs. Had I not forced them to investigate, they would not have found the issue before the hard drive died and I lost everything.

The Lunarpages Review / Report

I wanted to write about the issues I had experienced and I even talked about this with AJ, a lunarpages manager. I decided that the best way to approach it was to simply publish all the e-mails that had gone back and forth between myself and lunarpages. That way I would not be giving my version of the story, I would simply be providing all the evidence so that readers could come to their own conclusions by reading the published e-mails.

I published the e-mails along with some explanations and background info (you can read the full article here). Immediately I received comments and e-mails from people who were shocked at what had happened. Not once did I receive any communications disputing what had happened or even questioning the story in any way.

The Comments on the Lunarpages Review

Recently I received a series of nasty comments from someone calling themselves “La Vita” who seemed to simply be trying to discredit my character by making me look as if I was in the wrong and I should know more than the commenter thought I knew.

Meh, whatever, it’s a free country and visitors can say anything they like. I didn’t pay much attention to it, but it bugged me. Not what was said, but the way it was said, attempting to discredit me.

I checked the stats  for “La Vita” and saw that they were geographically very close to the Lunarpages offices. I didn’t think any more of it, but I could not fight the gut feeling that they were employed by Lunarpages or their parent company Add2Net. Some of their comments seemed angry that I had included the names of the staff involved when publishing the e-mails. I did not add any names, the names of the staff were at the bottom of each e-mail that I received.

The commenter “La Vita” had claimed to be the owner of a truly huge website. They had entered their domain name into the comment, but I removed it as I did not want a link to his website from my website. When I checked the details of the website, it stated that the owner was in the USA, or at least that was the registered address. Yet “La Vita” claimed to be in Italy. Searching for his e-mail address via google, I found that he was not indeed the expert he claimed to be and I managed to locate a couple of websites where he was asking basic questions on the very topic he claimed to be making thousands of dollars a day via his website selling professional website/cms themes.

Putting that to one side, I then received another comment simply saying “Dude, you suck, get over it…”. Again, who cares what an idiot says? If you want to argue with me, make it intelligent, put your point across and try to sway my point of view and perspective on the matter at hand.

Again, I was going to let this comment pass, but the first set of digits in the commenter’s IP address (64.73.252.26) rang a bell and I had no idea why. To satisfy my curiosity, I traced the IP address and found that it belonged to Add2Net, the company who owns Lunarpages. I was shocked. I checked and double checked the details to be sure it was indeed Add2Net who had left this comment. I used multiple systems to check the IP so that I could be completely sure before contacting Add2Net / Lunarpages about this issue. You can view the trace for yourself by clicking here (opens in new window) and as you will see, it clearly says “Add2Net” next to the “organization”. I realised that I had recognised the 64 at the beginning of the IP address as my old shared hosting account with lunarpages had an IP that began with 64.

I then checked my stats to search for this IP address and see how and when they entered my website. It turns out that this IP has came to my website twice searching for names of staff within Add2Net / Lunarpages. The search terms used were “Er. Sarwan Singh Jassi” and “lunarpages bad reviews ation gilliam”.

I simply could not believe that Add2Net / Lunarpages staff were leaving abusive comments on a customers website. It was simply outrageous!

In all, there were two IP addresses from Add2Net / Lunarpages. When I checked the locale of the IP’s they were both at 33 latitude and -117 longitude, the exact same latitude and longitude as the IP address used by “La Vita”. A coincidence? I think not.

The Lunarpages Complaint

As far as I was concerned, this was a serious breach of security, not to mention a breach of trust and a highly unethical practice. I decided that the best thing to do was to immediately inform lunarpages of the issue so that they could ensure I was not at risk. If a member of staff is willing to risk his career to leave an abusive comment on a customers website from their work computer, they may well be more than willing to access my server, account or anything else that is private or personal and stored at Lunarpages. How did I know that they had not already tampered with some of my websites? I didn’t and I was worried that I may be at risk.

I contacted lunarpages and informed them of the situation with the evidence that I had at the time. One and a half days passed while I manually went through all of my stats and other information I had access to, compiling a full list of evidence for lunarpages. However, lunarpages had not replied to my ticket in over a day and a half! I opened a new ticket containing all the information that they needed for this complaint and phoned them to inform them and ask why the initial ticket had received to reply at all.

I was told that the ticket had been queued and would be passed to a senior technician who would reply. When I provided the new ticket number, the member of staff I was talking to said that their staff would not leave a comment like this on a customers website. I pointed to the evidence that I had provided and I was put on hold for a few minutes while he quickly reviewed it. When he came back, he simply explained that he could not deal with this ticket any further and would need to forward it to the Add2Net / Lunarpages Legal team who would reply within 1-2 days. The legal team never replied to my ticket, it went into a black hole and they refused to discuss the issue.

In Depth Research

I checked everything that the Add2Net IP addresses had done while on my site and I was shocked to see that they had visited a number of other pages including a post I made about Christmas which contained photos of myself and my children. According to my stats, the Add2Net / Lunarpages employee had downloaded two photos to their computer at Add2Net / Lunarpages, one which was a photo of my daughter and another which was a photo of myself with my children. Why would they download these two pictures to their work computer? We will never know.

To protect myself, I banned the IP addresses that had been involved so that they could not connect to my website any more, but should I have needed to ban IP addresses of my webhost? I am a customer of theirs, the last thing I should ever need to do is add protection to protect myself from the actions of my webhost’s employees.

Lunarpages Response

After 2 days I became sick of waiting, I had no idea what was going on or if Add2Net / Lunarpages were actually addressing the issue so I called their Dedicated Support team who seemed to be completely clueless as to what was going on. I asked to speak to a manager who told me that Add2Net / Lunarpages do not monitor or manage what their staff do online. If one of their staff wants to comment on a public blog and leave abusive comments, they can. I was stunned at their attitude of this most serious of breaches. I was informed that Add2Net / Lunarpages were conducting an internal investigation of the highest seriousness, but Add2Net / Lunarpages would not inform me of the outcome or findings of the investigation.

I do not find this acceptable as it means that if they find that the member of staff has accessed my account or my server without authorization, I will not be informed. It seemed like an attempt to cover-up a huge issue that would be damning to Add2Net / Lunarpages if it was ever revealed what actually happened. Immediately I knew that I would need to put on my chainmail and be the knight of truth, informing people of what actually happened and showing you the same evidence that I provided to Add2Net / Lunarpages so that you can make up your own mind on this particular incident. As corny as it sounds, I just felt that prospective Add2Net / Lunarpages customers should be well aware of what happened to me at the hands of Add2Net / Lunarpages.

Lunarpages Staff Return

Closely monitoring my stats I noticed that after I had blocked the Add2Net IP addresses, they had tried to visit my site again, but the server refused them access as I had told it to do so when faced with these IP addresses. They were again coming from a Google search that they must have bookmarked as it was the same search query.

Minutes later, I received a connection from a proxy in Romania via google and I could see that they had searched for “‘reasons why you shouldnt use lunarpages com”. It is very strange that an IP address is searching for my post about Lunarpages using the exact name of the article. All checks of this IP address show it to be a proxy server. Later in the day, another Romanian IP address that also seemed to be a proxy came into the site searching for me using my full name (first and last) followed by “lunarpages”. The only company who has my full name is Lunarpages. My full name is not mentioned on any websites that I own or run. The reason that lunarpages have my full legal name is because they needed the name that was on my card when I made my initial payment. On my card it says “David”, but I always go by “Dave”. Every other company that I deal with and everywhere my name is mentioned, it says “Dave” and not “David”. Why would anyone be searching for my first and last name followed by “lunarpages”? No one who would be searching for lunarpages would even know my first and last name, all my friends know my blog and would not need to make a search like this. Even if they did, they would search for “Dave” and not “David”. The only people in the whole world who knew knew my full legal name and also knew that I was with lunarpages were Add2Net / Lunarpages. As such, it is my opinion that these visitors were no other than lunarpages.

Lunarpages Investigation and Final Response

Lunarpages contacted me to inform me that they have completed their investigation into the matter. What follows is the full reply that they sent to me.

Hello, This has led to an internal investigation and actions on our end are immediately being taken to deal with those involved.
We appreciate your bringing these details to our attention. No further communication on the matter is required on your part.

Best Regards,
Shawn Williams
Customer Care Manager
support@lunarpages.com

Notice that there is no apology, no sympathy, no empathy, no emotion at all, just a flat, plain reply that is completely meaningless. The reply does not even come from the legal team who I was told would be dealing with the issue, it comes from the manager who I spoke with on the phone earlier.

I am left completely in the dark with no information at all as to whether my details have been shared and no information on whether my personal security and server security has been breached, which according to my stats, it would seem that it has.

Naturally, I replied immediately with the following:

Hello, I do think that further communication on my part is indeed required. What your staff did was highly unethical and my team of staff are still investigating everything that has happened.
Are you seriously saying that this is all that you will be willing to do?
No apology at all for what happened?
No answers to any of the questions I asked in my previous tickets? The main and most important question was “How can I know that your staff are not doing more with my info, publishing it online or even altering my server files etc?”. Are you refusing to answer the question?
I was told yesterday that this ticket would be passed to your Legal Department who would provide a full reply within 1-2 days. Why did this not happen? Was it ever passed to the Legal team? If not, why was I told that it would be passed to the legal team?

Shawn Willams replied with the following (bold added by me to highlight the main pointers of their reply in my opinion):

Hello, We have very strict privacy policies in place that address these concerns. Those policies, if breached would result in termination. Our policies and procedures have been reviewed and confirmed via audit by 3rd party firms in order to obtain our SAS70 type II certification.

Hopefully that will satisfy your concerns as for your data privacy.

Our operations manager reviews all legal claims and interfaces with our legal council. He has reviewed this matter and is the one who has initiated the internal investigation.

While traveling to a public website that allows public postings would not be a violation of ours or anyone’s privacy policy, its still possible that staff could be reprimanded for using company computers for personal activity.

Best Regards,
Shawn Williams
Customer Care Manager
support@lunarpages.com

Do you see an apology? There are a whole bunch of things I can accuse Add2Net and Lunarpages of, but only one that I can prove and that is the only thing I am asking an apology for. However, Shawn Williams seems to think that the biggest issue here was staff “using company computers for personal activity”, not the fact that said staff said “you suck” to a customer.

Also, notice how Shawn Williams (the customer services manager) is replying to this most serious complaint. Take the following statement for example: “While traveling to a public website that allows public postings would not be a violation of ours or anyone’s privacy policy”. Anyone’s privacy policy? How can he say that when there is no way he has read everyone’s privacy policy. As you can see, this is not an acceptable business attitude to adopt when replying to a complaint of such a serious nature. He is basically trying to make me look stupid and discredit me or bully me into not replying. If you look at Shawn Williams first reply, you will see that although he failed to answer any questions or address any of the issues that I had detailed at great length in my complaint, he says “No further communication on the matter is required on your part.”. That is a very blunt statement basically telling me not to reply as Add2Net / Lunarpages consider the matter closed.

I fired off the following reply:

Thank you for explaining why you had replied and not the legal team. That would have been handy earlier on. See, I was told that “the legal team will reply to your ticket” so I was kinda expecting the err legal team to reply to my ticket if you get my drift. However, knowing that they passed the information to you is fine, you may have wanted to initially include that piece of useful information so that I was aware as to what had happened and would not have needed to ask why it seemed the department who I was told would directly reply to my ticket had not.

I understand as you state “While traveling to a public website that allows public postings would not be a violation of ours or anyone’s privacy policy, its still possible that staff could be reprimanded for using company computers for personal activity.”, but that is not the case. If that were what happened, no problem, I do not mind at all. But the fact of the matter is this:
1) Add2Net Staff (at least one) while using Add2Net internet connection visited my personal blog. (no problem so far) and then proceeded to leave an abusive comment (there’s the problem). Let me get this straight. In this case, given all the evidence, you would think that “using company computers for personal activity” was the most serious offence? Not the fact that they left abusive comments?
2) Since this happened, someone has been searching google for “David *surname removed* lunarpages”. Only you and my bank know me as “David”, the rest of the world knows me as “Dave”. The only people who know that I am hosted with lunarpages and also know my full name are lunarpages and my girlfriend. It was not my girlfriend. Naturally I can not directly prove that it was you, but by the process of elimination, it was no one else.

You said “While traveling to a public website that allows public postings would not be a violation of ours or anyone’s privacy policy”. Are you saying that Add2Net and Lunarpages have no policies against or issues with staff telling existing lunarpages customers “you suck”?

Still no apology?
I am not happy with this as a resolution. I think that at the very least I deserve an apology for your staff (while at work and using an internet connection that you are legally responsible for) telling me “you suck”. This is now the third time I have asked for an apology and each time you have completely ignored it.

I believe I deserve an apology for the way your staff acted (fully detailed in initial complaint). If you do not plan to provide an apology, please say so so that I do not waste any more of your or my time chasing you for an apology. I am assuming thus far that an apology has simply been overlooked by accident.

I have worked as a manager of a superstore where I was responsible for $4 million per year. Every single cent of it was my responsibility as my primary role was the cash office manager. When other managers were not in (early in the day and late in the evening), I was in charge and had to deal with any and all customer complaints, issues or general bitching. I trained all my staff that while we could never admit anything was our fault, we could and always should apologise. This makes the customer feel as if you understand their concerns. Even something as simple as “I am terrible sorry that you have felt the need to issue a complaint about a member of our staff”. There is no admission of guilt or any acceptance of liability. It is a generic apology. Now why the hell has no one said sorry to me yet? After all, I am paying lunarpages $150 per month and when a member of their staff uses their internet connection to tell their customer (me) that they suck, I would expect an apology at the very least.

Refusal to provide any apology

I had had enough and I called Lunarpages to demand an apology. I was eventually put through to the Operations Manager who was in charge of the call centre and after pushing and pushing and pushing, he gave an apology. However. I had to tell him what to say and explain why they should apologise. He explained that the reason they had not apologised for any of this was because it would make them liable. He also said that their other concern was that I would make a huge post detailing this horrific issue. Sadly, that was the only thing they have ever said that was right.

To make matters worse, I have recordings of almost all of the calls including:

• Support staff telling me that their manager refuses to address issues they send to him
• Lunarpages staff telling me that their staff would never leave such a comment on my site. Followed by the same staff telling me they would investigate it.
• Lunarpages Operations Manager telling me why they would not and have not offered any apology for what happened.

I will post these online as soon as I can.

The domain was sold and I went to use the SSL on a new domain, but the SSL was gone. I called GoDaddy and after investigating, they told me that the SSL had been cancelled as the new owner for the domain had bought an SSL to use on the domain and no domain can have more than one SSL.

OK, so I asked how I can change an SSL so that it can be used on a new domain. “You can’t” they replied, explaining that it was a “company policy”.

When I had bought the SSL I had read everything carefully so that I knew what I was getting and what I could do with it. I asked the GoDaddy agent where it says that it can not be used on a new domain. The agent e-mailed me something from their support section that explains that it can not be used on a new domain. I asked where on their site it says that it can not be used on a new domain. “on our support section” was his reply.

So lets get this straight.

1) It is GoDaddys policy to not allow SSL certificates to be used on a new domain after 30 days of the order
2) GoDaddy only state this “policy” in the support section of their website. They do not state this within their terms, product description, order process or checkout process.

So, I paid $49.99 for my SSL which was used for 3 months before I sold the domain. The new owner of the domain bought an SSL for the domain from GoDaddy. This means that there are 9 months left on my SSL which I have entirely lost and meanwhile, GoDaddy have charged the new owner for the new SSL. GoDaddy have doubled their money for the SSL on this domain for 9 months effectively.

I refused to take their answer as they can not claim it to be “policy” when it is not detailed within their policy, nor is it detailed within their terms, the product description or anywhere else except their support section. The agent understood and agreed. He went away and when he came back he said that all he could offer would be a new SSL for $12.99. I took the SSL as it is usually priced at $69.99!

I have to say, I thought this was going to be another company that pissed me off and made me go to their competitor, but they addressed, understood and resolved the issue that I had even though it was against their “policy”. Granted, this should have never been an issue, but they have managed to keep me sweet and thus, keep my business.

Also, I knew that if they upgraded the local exchange, there would be no way to exclude my internet connection from that upgrade.

A few weeks after the call and I notice that my internet connection is working at 5.3mb. However, this does not mean that they have not illegally upgraded me without my authorization to a new 12 month contract.

I think that it is very underhand to offer a free upgrade providing the customer signs a new 12 month contract when the upgrade will be applied even if a new 12 month contract is not signed.

I have been running this since 2008 when it was nothing more than an idea. Today it is a rock solid business with over 20 websites/domains, pulling in thousands of dollars every month.

My baby

It has been my baby, I brought it into the world, watched it grow up with the right guidance and input.

Starting life on a Hostgator server – what a god awful bunch of idiots these people are
Moving onto a LunarPages server – which proved much worse and resulted in 3 server failures (and I mean total failures). Their support team totally fucked up a number of times and almost lost my entire system as the hard drive failed. Then, when I reported their failures on this website, they decided to leave negative comments on my blog thinking they were anonymous, but actually they left a clear trail allowing me to prove that it was done from their office internet connection. Soon after, the server was hacked, although not hacked in a traditional sense, the attacker simply walked straight into the server having used the correct password first time. They accessed two accounts on the server and I found it very interesting that one of the accounts was very old and I had not used it in over a year as I did not have the password for it and did not need it. The only people in the whole world with the password for the account was Lunarpages! Once in, they added trojan downloaders, but by this point I had already moved all my business websites to another host.
The most recent server that my sites were moved to was Rackspace who are extremely expensive, but one of, if not, the best host in the world. So far, I have been very happy with Rackspace.

Be your own boss – a recurring nightmare!

Running a business and being your own boss may seem ideal, but it is far from it. I have worked every single day since it was created back in 2008. There has not been a single day that I have had off and I am on call 24 hours per day. If the issue at hand takes 40 hours to resolve, it takes 40 hours and I must do the hours. How I miss the days where I could work 9-5, doing overtime when issues needed more time. After work, I left it all behind me, went home, went to the bar, had a drink and relaxed. Since 2008, that has not been possible as I was working from home. Sure, I went out now and then, but I was always on call should anything happen that required my swift attention.

In the beginning I really enjoyed the work, but recently, I have became a wreck due to the sadomasochistic way that my business has controlled me. At times I don’t know if I am Stressed Eric or Fry from Futurama!

I do not intend to turn my back on work, just the work that I have been doing. I crave for something new, something fresh and more challenging. My intention is therefore to sell my existing business, spend time away from work and then come back to create new products, businesses and websites.

The business should be listed within a few weeks and will last 1-3 months depending on the bids I receive. I expect the sale to be completed within 2-4 months of the listing being made. The expected value ranges depending on the metrics you use, so I am not holding my breath, but I do have some figures in mind that I expect to see before I would happily allow the sale to be final.

What will I spend the money on? If I get enough, apart from setting up a new business, I would like to purchase a house, a few guns (I’ve always wanted a Russian made AK-47), a car and my pilots license. I have already been to a training centre to inquire about the costs involved in training for a commercial pilots license.

Who knows what the future will bring. But for now, I will close this post and get back to work…

Unusually, we had also been getting phone calls all this evening from one person who was trying to call someone else. We told them time and time again that they had called the wrong number, but in they kept calling. After 15 phone calls, we called PLDT to report the issue to them. They read back our phone number from their system, but it was the wrong number.

We found out that we now have a different number. It would seem that PLDT have transferred another account to my house. This means that we now have a different phone number and internet plan, one that is not ours.

After all the mistakes that PLDT have made, I can not believe that they have now moved another account to our address. God only knows if we will get billed for the calls that are made from our number while it is assigned to someone else.

PLDT said that they would go through the notes and contact us tonight. However, having worked for telecommunications companies, I know that an account transfer can take 5 to 14 days to be fully processed. This means that it could take up to 14 days to get our old phone number and internet package back.

I am so annoyed right now…

Cebu Pacific are cheap, but they do what they can to ensure your journey is enjoyable and as comfortable as possible. While some of their prices are not the cheapest, they do offer more quality than some.

Philippines Airline are probably one of the best in my opinion. Their customer service is second to none, they do all they can to look after their customers and even bend rules when reserving tickets so that we can get the tickets we want with short notice and without having to turn up too early at the airport. They have their own airport in Manila that exclusively deals with Philippine Airline flights. The airport is clean, well looked after and comfortable.

AirPhil Express are fuckers and that is being overly nice about them. Their customer service is complete shit and their agents will avoid direct questions, refuse to provide information and even talk over you. Their website is broken and shows fatal errors. Their aeroplanes are poorly cleaned between short flights and when I was on the plane I found a half eaten meal in the seat pocket in front of me, the floor is filthy and some of the plane fixtures are broken.

We recently flew from Manila to Iloilo, both the outbound and return flights were early flights, taking off within a few hours of the sun rising. The outbound flight was nice. I had asked for the seat next to the main emergency exit. I do this on every flight for two reasons. Firstly and most importantly, I want to be next to the exit so that if the plane needs to crash, I can rip the exit open and get everyone out. Sitting in this seat requires you to agree that you will be responsible for the safety of the other passengers by being the person who opens the emergency exit and deploying the slide. I happily agree to do this so that I know that the passengers will be safe should the plane crash land. The second reason for wanting these seats is the leg room.

On our return flight, we again requested these seats, but they told us that the flight was fully booked, so if I wanted these seats I would need to pay 200 pesos per person. While that is not a lot of money, it angered me that they wanted me to pay so that I could be the nominated person who would be responsible for the passengers safety should the plane crash land. “So if the plane crashes, will I get my 200 pesos back” I asked. “no” was their reply. “Why do I have to pay you to sit in this seat when I have already paid for a seat and I am willing to take on extra responsibility in ensuring the passengers safety” I asked. The agent simply shrugged his shoulders.

I think it is perfectly reasonable for me to get the benefit of extra leg room in exchange for agreeing to man the exit should the plane crash, but out of principle, I will point blank refuse to pay for these seats.

It goes to show that AirPhil Express are so focused on money that they do not care for the safety of their passengers. I will never fly with them again and would not be surprised in the slightest if I saw one of their planes crash on the news due to poor maintenance.

My suggestion: book with Philippine Airlines, you will not regret it.

As such, this push for a more environmently friendly biofuel has pushed 44 MILLION people into a state of poverty.

Well done you uneducated righteous motherfuckers. Why don’t you educate yourself on the subjects you bleat about all fucking day long about? By trying to do good, you have doomed 44 Million people to a lifestyle of poverty, many of whom will die from lack of food, a basic requirement of human life. All because you want a cleaner fuel for your 4 wheel drive off-roader. What the fuck are you doing driving a vehicle with bull bars in the city? You really deserve to be dragged into the streets and shot in a public execution.

Going green is nothing more than a two pronged attack. Firstly, it is a tax scam. What else would you call a 5p tax on plastic bags in the UK when NONE of that tax is spent on cleaning up the existing non biodegradable plastic bags or even cleaning up the streets or countryside? Secondly, the push for biofuels has created a massive food crisis, dooming many poor families in 3rd world countries to death. This is nothing more than a cleverly orchestrated genocide and anyone stupid enough to believe that “going green” is the answer deserves to die in the most horrible way possible. Before putting your name next to something, learn what it means and the consequences that people around the globe will face.

I know that you all meant well, but you fucked the world. Deal with it!

The main one that has concerned me as an adult is Aspertaime which is a sugar substitute that you can find in almost every “sugar free” product. As far as I am concerned, you may as well buy the sugar based product as Aspertaime will increase your appetite as well as a high probability of killing you.

Why do we need to look for totally unnatural chemicals instead of natural ingredients that are found growing on the earth?

Today, I simply wanted to get some crisps (chips) and so we went to the local mini mart and bought some Cheezy Corn Crunch and some Baconette Strips. Later I also picked up some Bread Pan.

When I checked the ingredients it contained a usual range of colourings, flavours etc, but there were a few colourings that I wanted to check. When I did, I was shocked.

Cheezy Corn Crunch – Yellow 5
Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 are made from coal oil. Fucking coal oil, a god damned fuel!

Baconette Strips and Bread Pan – Red 40
Red 40 is also made from coal tar!

God damnit, these items are used for fuel and these chemicals should never be used for food products. Are we purposely trying to kill ourselves?

From now on I am eating healthy with salad (that goes off in 3 days), vegetables (that go off in 7 days) and cheese that is naturally made. Damnit just look at the ingredients that are in the food you eat. Put simply, if you do don’t know what the ingredient means in the food you have in your hand, put it back and buy something else.

Recently, I started a PCI Compliance team. In short, PCI Compliance is a certificate that confirms that your website complies to all requirements of any company who handles money. Granted, it’s a bit more technical than that, but that is the main beef of it.

McAfee advertised PCI Compliance on a website I was visiting, so I clicked on the advert so I could see what they offered, what the prices were etc. I clicked on the Buy Now link, assuming they would display their prices there, but I could not see them anywhere.

I noticed that they had a chat system that would let you get an answer from an agent, so I clicked on the chat tab where it said the following:

Have a question? Interested in one of our offerings? Want to Chat with a Sales Person? We can help. Representatives are here to assist you in deciding what product works best for your needs and your business.
Click here to Chat online with a McAfee Representative now.

So I clicked on the link so I could “Chat online with a McAfee Representative now”.

A new LivePerson window opened and I was asked for my name, email address and question. I completed the form and clicked on send. “Thank you, you will be contacted shortly” the page said. But this was supposed to be online chat, yet no one was there. I later found that despite their wording, they do not offer live chat around the clock, only within specific hours that they do not specify or otherwise mention anywhere.

What follows are the e-mails from McAfee. Please remember that I initially asked a question when I completed the form.

McAfee 1st Response

I’m following up with you regarding McAfee SECURE. I can answer any questions you may have. What is a good contact for you and the best time to give you a call so we can go through this?

Best Regards,
Ashley
Ashley Sirmans
Web Security Group
5000 Headquarters Drive I Plano, TX 75024
972.987.2448 I Direct
Ashley_Sirmans@McAfee.com
www.mcafeesecure.com

My 1st Response

Hello, I dont really like the fact that “live support” was not actually live support, but was an e-mail form. It doesn’t give me much confidence in your support. There wasn’t even any explanation as to why I had to fill in the form. I clicked for live support and it immediately asked me to fill in the form. When I did, it said I would be contacted.
I do not want to be phoned as I would prefer a paper record of our communications.

Many thanks
Dave

McAfee 2nd Response

I apologize that no one could assist you at that time; you contacted our chat line after hours here. The short form you filled out was so we could contact you and answer your questions. We can communicate via email if you like. How can I help you?

Best Regards,
Ashley
Ashley Sirmans
Web Security Group
5000 Headquarters Drive I Plano, TX 75024
972.987.2448 I Direct
Ashley_Sirmans@McAfee.com
www.mcafeesecure.com

My 2nd Response

Hello, on the “chat” tab, it only contains the following information. “Have a question? Interested in one of our offerings? Want to Chat with a Sales Person? We can help. Representatives are here to assist you in deciding what product works best for your needs and your business.
Click here to Chat online with a McAfee Representative now.”

No where does it mention any times that chat is available or not available. Thus, I was left in the dark and naturally did not know why I was told that I would be contacted when I completed the chat form. I fully expected to get transferred to an agent as you failed to state anywhere that chat was unavailable. Instead, I had to guess this based on the sole fact that I was told I would be contacted.

I don’t mean to pick fault, but you have said “The short form you filled out was so we could contact you and answer your questions.”, yet two sentences later you ask “How can I help you?”. I guess the first way that you could help is to answer the questions that I asked within the form that you mentioned which I completed when I contacted you, hence the replies that you are making. Since contacting you, you have e-mailed me twice and I have replied twice, yet not a single question that I asked in the form I filled in has been addressed thus far.

This kind of pre sales service does not fill me with confidence in how you will treat me once you have my money and I have any issues to contact you. It would seem that you are unable to do something as simple as correctly word your website, yet you expect me to trust you for providing online security for my websites and customers. I have asked a question and in two replies you have failed to address a single question. If this were a major technical issue causing problems with my website, I would be completely screwed and very angry.

I think I will choose another provider as there are many that can provide the level of service I would expect from a company of such a size.

Many thanks
Dave