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More on scam of A1AccessDirectory.com and A1 Access Directory

2010-05-04T16:03:00.003-05:00

Here's a followup on a previous post about the business directory scam of A1AccessDirectory.com aka A1 Access Directory.

In early April, a lawyer representing us sent the company a Demand Letter via certified mail that contained these closing paragraphs:

Moreover, under the provisions of state and federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and related consumer statutes, we are hereby instructing you that you are to cease communicating with via mail and through telephone. Any further communication with my clients means my law office will seek legal remedies against A1 Access Directory. Further, I demand that you immediately discontinue collecting on the erroneous debt and that any reporting of such debt to a credit reporting agency be immediately withdrawn.

Lastly, if I do not receive a reprieve from A1 Access Directory within 15 days of the date of this letter, I will consider this matter fully resolved and close the case.

We also heard from the BBB of Upstate New York that "We regret to inform you that the company has not responded to your complaint." and they have closed the case. The non-response will be recorded on their BBB Review which as of this writing has a F rating and 22 documented complaints.

Then out of the blue, we received an email from the company:

Date: Tue, 04 May 2010 14:20:55 -0500
From: cs@a1accessdirectory.com
To: ******************
Subject: BBB Complaint ID: *********

Attention ***********,

A few weeks ago, we received your complaint that you filed against our company with the Better Business Bureau, Inc, on 4/1/2010.

After reviewing your complaint, it is clear that you misunderstood the whole situation as ******** did authorize the two-year online advertisement for ************* on 1/27/2010. The verbal authorization was already provided to you on 4/1/2010. Should you wish to hear it again, it will be made available to you upon request.

We would like to resolve this matter with you as soon as possible in order to close our books. A payment arrangement or a settlement offer can be reached with our customer service department or with our accounts receivable department.
You can reach us between 9:00 am EST - 6:00 pm EST, Monday to Friday.

We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Respectfully,

Nicole Sanders
Customer Service Manager
A1 Access Directory, Inc.
(866) 678-5522 ext. 24

The email has already been forwarded to said lawyer. The scam never ends!

Anti-virus programs put to the test... and the winner is...

2010-04-13T12:32:00.002-05:00

One of my computers would not load properly after a friend used it for a few days. Turns out "explorer" was not loading upon system startup.

I ran Hitman Pro 3.5.4 and it found a Trojan -- lgou.rlo in c:\windows\system32. My trial had expired, so I couldn't clean it with Hitman Pro, so I used this situation to test other anti-virus software.

I Googled that file, came up with this page from SuperAntiSpyware.com that says it can remove it. I installed SuperAntiSpyware and scanned my system. It found nothing. I uninstalled it and rebooted, and the problem was still there.

I installed AVG free anti-virus and ran a full scan of my system. It found nothing. I uninstalled it and rebooted, and the problem was still there.

I installed Spybot Search & Destroy 1.6.2 and ran a full scan. It found nothing. I uninstalled it and rebooted, and the problem was still there.

I then reran Hitman Pro 3.5.4 just for kicks. Yep, the trojan was still there.

I installed and ran ComboFix. It found nothing. I uninstalled it and rebooted, and the problem was still there.

So I had a choice -- pay for Hitman Pro to clean it, or rebuild the system. Since we purposely had the system pretty bare bones anyway, I decided to wipe the system and rebuild it as I worked on other things. 10 points for Hitman Pro.

Scam alert: A1AccessDirectory.com and A1 Access Directory

2010-04-01T13:22:00.014-05:00

For each of the past two days, my business has receieved a call from someone at "A1 Access Directory" who says we are past due on online advertising. We, of course, never authorized nor requested this service.

This scam is detailed here: http://www.spamlaws.com/yellow-pages-scam.html

And here on the FTC's site: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/alerts/alt024.shtm

Funny thing is they called up and asked for the owner of the business by my wife's given name, a name she NEVER uses in day to day business. So this information must have come from standard public records, or county DBA records, or something other than us.

Today they sent us an email, full of spelling mistakes, threatening to ruin our "good credit rating" if we don't pay.

Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:59:29 -0500
From: cs@a1accessdirectory.com
To: *******
Subject: Past Due Invoice - A1-****

Good afternoon ********* (given name here),

Attached herewith is a copy of the past due invoice that is 62 days overdue for your company's online advertising on: www.a1accessdirectory, placed on January 27, 2010. To avoid ruining your good credit rating and further accrual of lates fees, pleae remit your payment as soon as possible.

To pay online, please log onto: www.a1accessdirectory.com Otherwise, your cheque must be mailed to A1 Access Directory, Inc. to the following address: 907 Hanshaw Road, Suite 194, Ithaca, NY, 14850.

Respectfully,

Megan Beresford
Accounts Receivable Manager
A1 Access Directory, Inc.
1-866-678-5522 Ext. 23
cs@a1accessdirectory.com

The attached invoice is very official looking.

So I called their number and spoke with someone named Lori. I gave the invoice number. She put me on hold. She said they have a recording of the order being "approved". They played it for me. My wife was heard just answering yes and verifying information. She had no idea it was placing a $250 order.

When Lori came back on, I asked to cancel the service immediately as this was not authorized. She spoke over me, ignored me, and said to get an attorney and have them contact A1 and then hung up on me.

I emailed them back, saying:

This service was never authorized, requested, nor approved. Remove us from your records IMMEDIATELY and confirm that this service has been cancelled and no further charges will be made.

They responded with:

Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:18:56 -0500
From: cs@a1accessdirectory.com
To: *********
Subject: Re: Past Due Invoice - A1-*****

In response to your email, this service will not be cancelled as it was authorized and the proof of authorization has already been provided to you, therefore, it is in your best interest to resolve this matter as swiftly as possible to avoid further ramifications.

Threatening our company will not get the invoice cancelled, as we will provide the parties concerned with the proof of authorization for the service provided. So, we suggest you get legal representation on this matter.

Found their BBB rating (a D!!!): http://www.bbb.org/upstate-new-york/business-reviews/mailing-lists/a1-access-directory-inc-in-ithaca-ny-183808444/ .

I posted a complaint with the BBB of Upstate New York. I also called the FTC and talked with an awesome lady named Maria who took my complaint there and also directed me to the Attorney General's office in New York, where I just faxed in another complaint.

And I did contact a lawyer, one of our customers, who sent a Demand Letter to the company this week to stop this nonsense.

GoDaddy's ColdFusion hosting doesn't allow CFDUMP any more?

2009-11-30T23:04:00.005-06:00

I use GoDaddy for hosting of one of my websites. Windows, Shared Hosting, with ColdFusion.

I "upgraded" from IIS 6 to IIS 7, which apparently meant my site had to move servers. Fine, all the documentation says it should be a seamless transition. Apparently, despite all the listed "settings" information shown for my account, I was ALSO switched from a ColdFusion 7 box to a ColdFusion 8 box as well without my consent.

Then I discovered that the CFDUMP tag in my code no longer worked. I use this in several administrative emails and debugging reports. It told me "Security: The requested template has been denied access to createobject. coldfusion.runtime.FunctionPermission createobject".

I sent a support ticket to GoDaddy, which should be a joy to receive a response from, so we shall see. Obviously permissions need to be adjusted somewhere, but I dont have a good feeling about a positive outcome for me. May have to do some quick recoding...

Update 12/1/09: The response from GoDaddy was a typical canned response. Brendan H wrote: "We disable the CFObject tag according to Macromedia's guidance on how to securely configure a ColdFusion shared hosting environment. Please see Macromedia's Security Bulletin for more information. If your code is currently using CFObject or the CreateObject function, you might consider changing your code to use the CFInvoke tag instead."

So the core issue, kiddos, is that apparently ColdFusion 8 rewrote how the CFDUMP tag works, and it now requires createObject permissions, which GoDaddy won't turn on. So I wrote an alternate version of the tag and use that in my applications instead.

Fraud using deaf relay system strikes again

2009-11-22T16:32:00.003-06:00

You may be suprised how often, as owners of a small business, we run into people who want to steal our money or products. Nigerian e-mail scams come and go and seem to target Joe Public. But we have had two recent scam attempts target our business, this time using Deaf Relay systems.

For those that don't know, this is a mainly anonymous, free service that allows hearing impared to communicate with any US phone number using a relay client. Well, scammers also use this service, hiding them from having to speak a word to the targeted business.

Today (November 22 2009), we get a call to our business using this relay service from someone who wanted to order 32 8 inch cakes "for a wedding". He wanted us to take some money as a tip and charge everything to a card. He gave his email address as "peterlawal@yahoo.com" (Google it and you should find this informative post. Ann, already aware of the previous time this happened, challenged him to e-mail us a copy of the front and back of the card as well as ID (to which we never heard from him again).

The link above explains how the scam works. They make a good point -- we are reluctant to accept any calls that use this service. This is not discrimination -- this is business. So if you are one of our deaf customers, please come in to place your order.

Incidentally, the previous time this happened (July 15 2009), it was from Jessica at jessica2710@yahoo.com who wanted us to send 100 chicken gyros and 100 diet cokes via carrier to New York (and "keep $500 for ourselves"). Um.... sure.

More proof that the world is going crazy.

Watch your ATT bills - found fraud charge by BIZZLINKS.COM

2009-11-10T22:26:00.004-06:00

So tonight I looked at my latest AT&T bill. It was higher than normal. I found this nice little doozy:


Billed on Behalf of BIZZLINKS.COM, LLC 
 
   Questions?    Call: 1 800 433-4518 
   Itemized Charges and Credits 
   Item 
   No.  Date  Description 
   Charges for xxx xxx xxxx
   3-01 10-06 BIZZLINKS.COM,LLC-WEBHOSTING MTH FEE                          39.95 
                  Provider not affiliated with AT&T 
                  For questions call 1-800-433-4518 
                   or visit www.ildteleservices.com

So I call, and their offices are closed. ATT Billing? Closed. Tomorrow I will try both again.

I never signed up for this service, never heard of them, and don't want them. A quick search on Google shows this company isn't new to the fraud game. This is not right.

Update 11/11/09: I called "ILD Teleservices" (who also use 1-800-637-4009) and was told it will take up to 2 billing cycles for the refund. I received a "confirmation number" for the refund. I then called ATT, who told me they (unlike all other carriers) don't have the option to block 3rd party billing on my phone because "they are a utility company regulated by the FCC". So google these guys and see all the other complaints about them. Watch out.

Coldfusion 7 CFHTMLHEAD Bug

2009-09-14T13:41:00.002-05:00

The following code renders differently in CF 7 vs CF 8. I know everyone is talking about ColdFusion 9 now, but we just ran into this issue on a CF 7.0.2 instance.

It appears that adding the "profile" attribute to the HEAD tag is causing anything added by the CFHTMLHEAD tag to be placed at the very top of the page output, not in the HEAD section of the page.

The code:

<html>
<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<title>Testing CFHTMLHEAD</title>
</head>
<body></body>
</html>
<cfhtmlhead text="<script>runme() { }</script>">

The result in CF 7:

<script>runme() { }</script><html>
<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<title>Testing CFHTMLHEAD</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

The result in CF 8:

<html>
<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<title>Testing CFHTMLHEAD</title>
<script>runme() { }</script></head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

Using XML to parse strings in SQL

2009-06-25T11:32:00.003-05:00

I like finding clever ways to solve problems -- like in a previous post talking about how to parse filenames with T-SQL.

I read an article today by Divya Agrawal that used XML to parse strings in SQL and wanted to try it out in some code we use quite frequently: given a string (a list of values) and a delimiter, return the values in a table.

We have used custom functions like this for some time. Because there is no concept of a "list" in TSQL, we took a string and essentially parsed it to split the values into something we could work with. So the query:

select * from dbo.fn_varCharListToTable('my,name,is,bill',',')

would return


autoid listitem
1 my
2 name
3 is
4 bill

and you could then join that function's result however you needed.

The custom function you need to do this is very small when you use XML to parse the string:


ALTER Function [dbo].[fn_varCharListToTable] (@varcharlist varchar(max), @delimiter varchar(1)) 
returns @myTable table (autoid int IDENTITY (1,1), listitem varchar(max))
AS
begin

 declare @strAsXML as xml
 set @strAsXML = cast(('<x>'+replace(@varcharlist,@delimiter,'</x><x>')+'</x>') as xml)
 
 insert into @myTable(listitem)
 select N.value('.','varchar(max)') as value
 from @strAsXML.nodes('x') as T(N)

 return
end

Parsing filenames with only T-SQL

2009-06-02T12:07:00.002-05:00

So from time to time, I get to use SQL functions in a perhaps non-conventional way. Here is one that I love: PARSENAME().

Say I have a column that contains a full path to a file on the filesystem:

ID FilePath
1 MyPath\MyFile.doc
2 MyPath\MyOtherFile.pdf
3 MyPath\MyThirdFile.xls

Let's say I need to know the file extension for those files. Using PARSENAME() will give them to me!

SELECT ID, PARSENAME(filePath,1) as fileExt
FROM myFiles

PARSENAME() will only work on strings with no more than 5 parts -- each part is a substring delimited by a period. The index (1 in the above query) takes the 1st substring starting from the right. You can use PARSENAME() to parse all sorts of things:

File Extensions: PARSENAME('myFile.doc',1) = doc
File Names: PARSENAME('myFile.doc',2) = myFile
Volume Numbers: PARSENAME('7.1.34',3) = 7
Database Objects: PARSENAME('myDb.dbo.myTable.myColumn',2) = myTable

May come in handy for you at some point.

My Starting Place

2009-05-15T23:23:00.005-05:00

I know a lot of people in my generation that moved around a lot while growing up. There were a rare few that, especially as time went by, still lived in the same house they grew up in, in the same town, surrounded by the same people. I was one of those people.

I lived in the same house from day 1 until I graduated from college at 21. My parents were never apart. I went to three schools in pre-college days: Ottawa Hills Elementary from K-5th, Blandford Nature Center in 6th, and City High/Middle from 7-12th. Suffice to say, change came more from within than it did in my day to day routine. It was a good life, a stable life, built on good foundation. But those three schools no longer exist.

With the demolition of my elementary school this week, I have realized that the final real, ~~concrete~~ brick connection I had to my hometown was now a pile of rubble.

My elementary school, where my brother attended 5 years before me, is no more. My special 6th grade environmental program at Blandford Nature Center, where my brother attended 5 years before me, packed up many years after I left and relocated. My middle/high school, where my brother attended 5 years before me, was demolished the summer after I graduated to make room for parking and classrooms for the local community college. Our beloved house on the hill in the Ottawa Hills neighborhood of Grand Rapids was sold in 2002 after 30 years in our family when my parents moved to southern California. It is as though my formative years, the good years, lost all connections to home before I was really ready to see them go.

I was a latchkey kid. I walked to elementary school every day with my neighbor, Kevin Vance, as my parents left for work at their schools across town. Kevin and I played together after school at the house, on the school's playgrounds and fields, and on the streets and sidewalks in between. I remember being a good student with Mr Griffin in Kindergarten, Ms Freeman in 1st, Mrs Meyers in 2nd, Mrs Bookman in 3rd, Mrs Wilcox in 4th and 5th... all at the school that took me in as a scrawny 5 year old and opened its doors to let out a budding 5th grader.

Ottawa Elementary was a school with a strong, brick exterior that made me feel safe, even on the big kid's playground, even in the harshest of Michigan winters. It was a school that allowed me the pleasure and awe of being in 5th grade, walking down to the 1st floor, kneeling, and watching the incoming kiddos stretching to the same height I now was. It was where I learned tornado drills and cursive. It was where I touched a computer for the first time. It was where I learned about crayons and erasers, the pleasure of peanut butter sandwiches and fruit roll ups, about dodge ball and frisbee. It was about friendship that through many twists of fate and inventions of technology, still exist at some level some 30 years later.

I had come to terms with my middle/high school being demolished many years ago. Those years, as I sit today, were more painful than they should have been. They were hard years. I dont feel the same about them as my prior schooling years, though the few friendships I had were close and extremely important at the time, as they are now. But high school is more about the preparation of moving on to college, life on your own. It didn't conjure up the same nostalgia as watching my elementary school take its final bow.

I always wondered what it would be like to go back to the old neighborhood. To show my wife where I lived, where I walked to school, where I played baseball every day, every summer, until the sweat stained my baseball cap that unique shade of dirt that kids love. To make that walk from the house to school one more time, maybe with kids of our own. But I hesitate. The house isn't mine anymore. The school doesnt exist anymore. I am a stranger to my hometown now. Something soon will be built in its place. I pause to take a breath, realizing the newborn kids in the neighborhood will have their own starting place soon.

How to alphabetize xml elements using XSLT

2009-05-08T10:34:00.003-05:00

I dont blog about my day job much, but I had a problem to solve and wanted to post the solution I came up with to possibly help someone else looking to do the same thing.

Problem: I have a pretty flat XML block that I need to store in a table with an xml datatype column. That xml column has a schema that requires my root elements to be in a specific order (alphabetized). The structure of the XML blocks are variable -- some fields are present in some blocks, other fields are present in other blocks. So how do I alphabetize my xml elements when I don't know exactly what the elements are?

Solution: I came up with an XSLT transformation to do the job.

Original XML: <doc> <c mycattr="c attrib">c text</c> <e> <g>my g text</g> <a expanded="a expanded">a text</a> <b id="b id"><d>inner d</d></b> </doc> XSL to transform the XML: <xsl:stylesheet version='1.0' xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform' xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"> <xsl:template match="*"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:copy-of select="@*|text()"/> <xsl:apply-templates select="*"> <xsl:sort select="name()"/> </xsl:apply-templates> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> Resulting XML: <doc> <a expanded="a expanded">a text</a> <b id="b id"><d>inner d</d></b> <c mycattr="c attrib">c text</c> <e> <g>my g text</g> </doc>

I knew I needed to use xsl:sort and knew I needed to reference the name() of the element, but couldn't pull it together until I looked into xsl:copy and xsl:copy-of. I needed to include the "|text()" in my copy-of or else the text of the nodes would not be copied, just the attributes.

This may not be a perfect solution for your needs, but for mine it solves the problem. I plan to call this inside SQL using a c# UDF to update several hundred thousand records for a new schema applied to the column.

Overdue update on Marc Labate / Allied Construction

2009-05-07T22:30:00.002-05:00

This update is long overdue.

The path to justice is well underway. You may know that the contractor we hired to remodel our bakery left us in the cold a while back, something he has done to dozens of other victims in Austin. He has been sued (and lost) in court cases and now, arrested and charged with fraud and theft!

Austin's FOX affiliate ran a story on Marc Labate's scamming ways which you can find on YouTube or on MyFOXAustin.com.

Marc Labate is scheduled in court for his first appearance on June 3, 2009. Will let you know what happens.

And yes, I know about the false reports Marc had been making about me and my bakery on a certain complaint website that shows up in your Google searches. As of now, the site refuses to take down the reports.

Landlord tells us we cannot go on vacation. News at 11.

2009-03-07T13:24:00.005-06:00

I know, I know. Tim must be blowing things out of proportion again.

Our little bakery is family owned and family run. And my family is small. It's just Ann and I. The "and I" is even a bit of a stretch since, like many small businesses today, someone in the family needs to maintain a full-time job elsewhere that provides the money, insurance, and stability needed to offset the craziness that is running your own business these days. Ann works from 10am-8pm every day, and the bakery is not doing well financially. You can imagine the stresses coming at us from all directions.

We closed the business on Tuesday with plans to reopen on Sunday. These five days we would be closed would be an opportunity for us to get away and focus on things that have been hard to focus on in quite a long time. We needed a break. We dont have a staff, so we decided to close the bakery for a few days so we could work through things, relax a bit, and not think about the bakery for the first time since 2007.

The fatal mistake I made was checking e-mail while we waited for our return transportation to the airport. It could have been worse--I could have checked *during* our time off. But I checked. I received an e-mail from the property manager of the strip mall where our bakery lives.

Dean writes:

I noticed you were closed today with a sign stating you were on vacation. Per the lease, you are required to maintain the business open year round, with the exception of certain holidays throughout the year. If an emergency arises, management would need to approve the shutting of your doors.

In addition, the landlord restricts this type of sign.."closed due to a vacation" displayed in the window. It is not the message we want to send to other tenants or patrons to the center and obviously effects your sales figures. I hope you understand. Let me know if you have any questions.

In this economy, in these times, in this complex with spaces still empty for almost a year now... it would seem that the landlord would do whatever it takes to keep the tenants they have. Part of that includes, perhaps, a slighty relaxed enforcement of the 48 page terms and conditions of a lease. Customers have been asking why we dont have signs by the street pointing to the bakery. We tell them the truth -- the landlord won't allow it. And now this gem of an e-mail will appear in the bakery, so we can show to our loyal customers why, after a much needed break to focus on some specific things, we still can't catch a break.

News at 11. You can't close unless the landlord gives you permission. Even when you can't afford to hire a staff to stay open. Thanks.

Will Sprint honor their online promotional code discount?

2009-01-02T19:10:00.005-06:00

When my T-mobile contract finally ended in December, I took the opportunity to switch networks. I found a decent deal on Sprint along with a great promotional code that gave me an invoice credit of $50 per line (over 2 months). I received my first bill this week, and the discount wasnt there.

I called Sprint customer service (*2), and after 4 times being disconnected while I waited on hold, I talked to Mark, who "escalated" the issue and told me while they ~~won't~~ cant add the credit to my already posted bill, they will apply the credit to my next two bills. I guess I have to trust him. Will followup next month if it somehow gets forgotten.

Update: 1/27/09. My 2nd statement should have been posted by now, so the 3 CSRs I called today have told me. Buy yet it hasn't. I finally was transferred to Barbara in Sprint Customer Finance who again told me it should have been posted, and they wont be able to see if the credit was applied until it is posted (seriously?). She did drop the casual "It doesn't look like it has been applied" line, which of course did not settle well with me. I verified this whole promo discount was in my customer notes, which it was. So now I just have to wait and see. Not a great customer experience so far.

Update: 1/28/09. My bill has yet to be posted even though the cycle ended 5 days ago, but my new balance has been posted, and surprise, it does not reflect the promo code discount promised. I called Sprint Customer Finance back and this time talked to Tammy, explained the whole darn thing over again, and she spent several good minutes in silence reading the notes on my account. After reading it all, she asked to put me on hold. This is where it took an unexpected turn... after a few more minutes later of awkward silence on hold, Tammy came back, apologized for the delay, said the credits probably weren't posted because they would be more than the bill total (huh? So how would I ever get them?), but that they will combine 2 month's of credits onto my account immediately -- so instead of a $100+ bill this month, I don't owe anything and have a credit left over already applied to next month's bill. *THAT* was great customer service, Sprint!

A plea for a rent reduction

2008-12-16T22:44:00.006-06:00

After speaking to several business owners and "experts" (aka consultants), last week I approached our landlord and asked for a temporary rent reduction. In my request, I spilled my guts on how the business was doing (we report sales numbers to them anyway), how rent is now the biggest expense, and how I think a temporary rent reduction could help us through this tough spot.

I haven't received a meaningful response. I did, however, receive a letter from the management company saying that the CAM charges have been adjusted for 2009 and our rent has increased $100 per month. So thats pretty much another day of business in a month that has no room for any extra days.

Update 1/9/09: It has been a month since my request, and no answer from the landlord.

Update 1/27/09. The landlord has agreed to a temporary, very short term rent reduction. Every little bit helps. We are now making plans for an exit sometime this spring.

Broken Record: GoDaddy cant keep my website online

2008-12-16T22:38:00.005-06:00

I spent 32 minutes on the phone with GoDaddy today, at the end of which the man said they need to "escalate" the issue so my website can once again come back online. I was then told this escalation could take up to 72 hours. It has been down since 10pm. I now have my website monitoring alerts email GoDaddy support directly. They run every 2 minutes.

This is what Ive been staring at:

GoDaddy web hosting down again

2008-12-02T23:15:00.005-06:00

Not that you can see this post now, but were my website up...

Got an alert that my website was down at 10:42pm. I immediately called GoDaddy, got a clueless support rep who hmmmed and hawed for a few minutes before putting me on hold to some crappy 1920s jazz music (the same freaking song every time) and which point he finally came back and said he needed to escalate it.

So it is 12:10am and Im going to bed. Sites are still not back online.

Update: It came back online at 3:40am. Total downtime: 5 hours.

UPDATE: It is 11:30AM, 8 hours after the server became responsive. I JUST got this email from GoDaddy:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for contacting Hosting Support.

We have been unable to recreate the issue described in this escalation. Your site is being served without issue at this time. If you are continuing to experience issues with your site, please reply to the message with the specific URL(s) where we can reproduce the issue.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Thank you,
Moe F.
Hosting Support

I give up on you people.

Holiday season?

2008-11-30T22:39:00.003-06:00

As far as food sales go, November 2008 was the lowest month we've ever had, down 28% from last November. Realistically, I think a formal closing date will be set soon.

Why are we doing so poorly when we hear great things about our product? Let's explore.

Argument: We only hear the good things. The people that don't like it don't come back.
This is true, of course, of any business. The people who don't come back do so for many reasons. I think the regulars are loyal and appreciated -- there will always be people looking for Starbucks, or HEB pricing on cookies, or Just Arent That Into You. So for the 16 Yelpers who gave us great reviews, and the Chronicle, and Gazette, and CitySearch, and ... thank you, but apparently the vocal minority only goes so far.

Argument: Our COGS must really be high.
Our Cost Of Goods Sold has remained pretty steady from month to month. We only buy what we need. We rarely waste any food products, though bakery products have more waste which we donate to our neighboring Pizza place when we can no longer sell them (any cookie that doesnt sell after 2 days... one day on the shelf, one day bagged as "day old cookies"). Last month I bought out 3 Randall's bags of flour since I could buy them at 1/3 the cost we normally do. So we are the proud owners of 240 pounds of flour. Even with that, our COGS we lower in November than in recent months. We dont have a lot of customers, so we dont buy a lot of things that will go to waste.

Argument: We must have cut our advertising.
We advertise weekly in the Austin Chronicle, and several opportunities with AIBA. The last few weeks saw 0 coupon redemptions. We reach out to our customers with a customer newsletter, including a coupon in each issue. 0 redemptions in two weeks. We have kept the same exposure as previous months, with dwindling results.

Argument: It's the economy.
Is it? It's not. As long as you are talked about, you will survive. Take Sugar Mamas. Now personally, I dont like their cupcakes -- the frosting is a bit too oily for my tastes and I dont like cornbread-textured cakes. But a lot of people like them. And they have a press-friendly name. Think cupcakes, think need-to-do-a-live-shot-for-the-10pm-news. Stand in front of some place named Lux Bakery and Cafe? Or a place called Sugar Mamas? Or Hey Cupcake? Not to hard to figure out. There is money to spend, and my feeling now is that when times are tough, it really shows who is meant to stick around.

Argument: The business musy not be run well.
This is a scapegoat argument that is easy to make when you can't think of anything else to say, and more likely than not, as true as anything else.

Argument: It must be the product.
I don't think the problem is the product. We use quality ingredients. Ann puts a personal touch on everything and refuses to sell the "bad" stuff -- malformed gingerbread men come to mind. She frequently adds new, additional things to menu.

So why was November our worst sales month ever? I remember back to October 2007 when we were force to close for a week. Our neighbors, the Pho noodle place, told us to sell right then. She said our place had bad luck even before we came in.

Question of the Day

2008-11-22T21:39:00.002-06:00

Today was Austin Unchained -- an initiative by the Austin Independent Business Alliance (AIBA) to get the word out about the financial benefits of shopping at local, independent businesses over chain superstores. We elected to participate, which meant being included in some (minimal) advertising. We offered up some specials including donation of a portion of sales to a local charity.

We might as well have stayed closed. As far as return on advertising investment? Zilch. Maybe other stores did better. I saw a lot of traffic near Walmart and the mall today.

So I pose this question. What would you do? Would you:

a) close the bakery, continue to pay the landlord $2500 a month in rent, try to sell the equipment for garage sale prices, and pray that we find someone to sublease the space;
b) stay open, continue to lose $1500 a month, and "ride it out" for the next 3 1/2 years of our lease?

We can't just walk away since we are personally on the hook for the lease (there isnt a landlord in the city (everything is managed by the same damn companies anyway) that will let us sign a lease without a personal guarantee). So hiding behind bankrupting the company won't work.

If we close, we would be like another space in our complex -- sitting there empty, hoping someone will sublease. If we stay, we may not lose as much (knock on wood) but there is that all too great "hidden cost" of staying open. It has taken its toll. Many times over. On Ann, on me, on her dad.

As a side note, how fucked up is owning a home in Austin... this year I have to take out a loan on our home's equity just to pay the property taxes. I have two months to secure $6,000 in property tax. Ug. But I digress.

It is wrong for us to think it will turn around on its own. I don't now, and will never, believe that. We don't have the luck, relationships, or faith to bank on that. Ive resigned myself to the fact that we wont get our investment back -- and that's ok. My gut tells me that if there was an opportunity to not have the bakery ties, we could try to rebuild our lives where deep down we know we'd rather be.

I have refused money offered by my mom. I have refused to take business loans. The only debt the business has is to our personal accounts. And those with successful businesses will laugh and say that is part of the reason for our ~~failure~~ lack of success. And that's ok -- they have worked hard to get where they are. But honestly, something doesnt feel ... fair... about this whole thing. Maybe Im seeing things too closely. It is another unfortunate series of events -- from the contractor who screwed us and stole our (and others') money to the bad economy -- to add to my life's list.

What would you do?

Hey GoDaddy - my website is down again! Why don't you already know this, being a hosting provider and all?

2008-11-05T12:58:00.005-06:00

At 12:29pm today, an alert tells me that my business website LuxBakeryAndCafe.com is down again. Coldfusion needs to be restarted. They clearly dont know about it.

I called at 12:45pm. The rep asked me how I know the server needs to be restarted. I told him the "Server Error. JRun closed connection." was a clue.

1:07pm -- the server was restarted... a downtime of 38 minutes *if* the alert was generated when it actually went down.

1:12pm -- The rep hasnt returned from putting me on hold yet. Im sure I will need to tell him that things are good now.

1:18pm -- The rep returns form putting me on hold. I tell him I paid in advance for one year's hosting back in June. I asked the rep what is the process of cancelling my hosting and getting the remainder refunded as this continued downtime was not acceptable. He told me if I cancel my hosting I could ask for a refund of the remaining unused portion. Best news Ive heard all day.

2008-10-28T18:23:00.000-05:00

Today our microwave died.

Are you there God? Its me, Tim.

2008-10-23T21:51:00.005-05:00

See if you can see anything in this quick graph I put together other than a constellation of a crappy economy.

Ann works really hard at keeping up. She comes home between 7pm and 8pm, eats, and crashes. I get home around the same time from my work, and spend the next hour or so entering in the daily numbers, making sure bills are paid, and sifting through a laundry list of paperwork that gathers on my office desk. The daily sales this week have sucked. They have been horrible. For no conceivable reason. So I put together this graph (purposely ambigious for web exposure) reaffirming to me that there is no pattern to our business. You *might* argue, as we have, that the only pattern that seems to emerge is that we are currently at a low point. Bad weather? Customer fickleness and apathy? Bad luck? Some lesson God is trying to teach us? Any and all of the above.

The review in Austin Chronicle near the start of September saved us. After running the September totals, I audited myself and reran them. While it was the best month we have ever had, we were 100 dollars shy of breaking even. Not bad. Breaking even is fine with me -- a great start to things picking up, my conscience sayeth. The beginning of October showed promise of repeating the near-break even milestone. And then BOOM. Gas gets cheap, stocks tumble, landlord refuses to put us on the new complex monument sign, customers trickle in slowly, slowly, slower... slower... Welcome to October. May your losses continue to grow, sayeth the chain eateries.

Shopping tip: want to save by buying at Sams Club? Shop around. We regularly visit 2 local Sam's Club stores. The closest store to us is generally cheaper (bet you didnt think that different Sams Clubs in the same city sell the SAME ITEMS for different prices, did you?) but doesnt carry several items we need -- so we go to a different Sams a little father away to get the remaining and cheaper items. But Sams (unlike WalMart) makes it easy -- their website lists current prices for each of their stores. So a quick programming job later, I get a list of everything we buy at Sams and which store has it cheaper. Milk is now 2.72 a gallon at our local club.

So in conclusion, my patience is wearing thin. Im beginning to realize that Austinite's support of the independent eateries isnt what it "used to be". Austinites, now like every other city, flock to the chains even when they dont consider them chains. "We're going to Thundercloud because so and so didnt want to go to a chain restaurant while they were in Austin," someone once told me. I laughed, knowing full well that as as a coworker often says, "it'd be funny if it were on TV."

Can you see this? GoDaddy must have finally restarted my server

2008-10-16T15:11:00.003-05:00

2:28 pm 10/16/08. I receive notification from Observu that my ColdFusion server is not responding. Needs to be restarted.

I immediately call GoDaddy. The man on the phone "sent a request to restart it" and that it "will be restarted within the hour".

Update: 3:15pm, still down.

Update: 3:18pm, it has been restarted. Total down time: 50 minutes (at least).

Followup on crappy GoDaddy hosting

2008-10-07T08:51:00.002-05:00

Jacob at GoDaddy, "Hosting Support Lead", responded to my complaint.

"We apologize for any misunderstanding or miscommunication you may have encountered at any point during your contact with us. Although we obviously can not provide specifics, please rest assured that we maintain regular monitoring of all of our servers, the services they run and the networks they rely on. As can be expected with any complex system, problems do arise from time to time and you can be sure that we do our best to address such problems as quickly and efficiently as possible. If at any time you feel that your website is unavailable due to such a problem, please don't hesitate to send us an email, submit a trouble ticket or give us a phone call. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter and if there is anything else you may have questions about, please let us know."

My followup:

In response to "please rest assured that we maintain regular monitoring of all of our servers, the services they run and the networks they rely on", Id like to inform you that at 7:20 this morning I started to receive alerts that ColdFusion was not running properly on my server AGAIN. I called GoDaddy support at 8:45am as it was still not restarted. I was told it "automatically restarts itself". Clearly not. I was then told they were doing "regular maintenance" and she could not give me an ETA. She was not happy to talk to me -- didnt even offer a survey at the end of the call. Her silence was clearly an indication the call was over. She never said thanks for calling, just cold silence. So that tells me GoDaddy views me as clearly a "problem customer" and I will be switching off your service soon.

**update: My CF hosting was reported down at 7:20AM and it came back up at 9:35AM. Over 2 hours.**

GoDaddy Web Hosting is becoming a joke

2008-10-06T13:44:00.003-05:00

An open letter to GoDaddy Support...

This is a followup email to my support phone call placed at 12:30pm central time today, Oct 6. I called because my business website, hosted by GoDaddy on a shared ColdFusion server, was down. Specifically, the ColdFusion service was unresponsive and needed to be restarted. The "JRun Closed Connection" 500 error was the key. Im a ColdFusion Developer -- I know what it looks like when the service needs to be restarted.

So I call in because it was clear no one on GoDaddy's side was monitoring this server. The man on the phone took my call and asked me to give him 4-5 minutes to investigate. About 2 minutes after being placed back on hold, I refreshed my browser and saw that the ColdFusion service was indeed restarted and it was in the process of coming back up. Eventually, the website came back up and we were good to go. I waited for the rep to come back.

This guy comes back on the phone a few minutes later and tells me -- matter of factly -- that he couldnt find anything wrong with the server. I told me I know because you guys just restarted CF. He was insistent on telling me -- multiple times -- that no one "over here" had restarted it. OK. It must have been my shear will power wishing it would restart on its own that did it. I told him that I was a CF Developer and that I know what it looks like when someone restarts the service. He again said no one had restarted it.

So again, I told him that this is the second time in the past 4 weeks that Ive had to call GoDaddy to tell THEM that my ColdFusion server needed to be rebooted. I said #1 is that someone needs to be monitoring the server. He said -- and I was speechless -- I cant do anything about that. REALLY? You cant write a damn note in the system, submit an email, submit a ticket, anything? He suggested I submit a suggestion at godaddy.com. Oh.. and can I send you a survey about this call?

Here's a suggestion, Go Daddy. Apparently I get what I pay for with you guys. Do you damn job and offer better hosting for your clients. If you have any left. And dont respond to this feedback with the same old bullshit "we appreciate your feedback" crap. Respond with ACTION ITEMS as to how you will correct this problem and when. It really isnt all that hard.