Total Hosting Choice

The previous post may need some 'splainin' for those of you who visit this site often.  If you don't, why are you reading this? 

For several years now, Spolem.net was hosted on TotalChoiceHosting.com (TCH).  As far as web hosts go, they are pretty good.  For less than $9, I ran and built this site for about 4 years without problems with billing, excessive downtime or anything like that.  As my forays into PHP became more advanced, however, I asked the technical support to install a couple interesting modules and received a "No" response.  The reasons were that installing a module would be disruptive to others on my shared server. 

Yes, I run a website on a shared web host.  You might ask, "If you want to do fancy things, why not run your own server?" I also might ask, "Why don't you stop shopping at HyVee and revert to hunting and gathering?" I'm a UNIX/Linux system administrator for 40+ hours a week so I'm quite familiar with the needs a webserver would have.  Electricity, network, cooling, backups as well as money for hardware and the desire for 24/7 uptime are concerns I don't mind dealing with at work but when it comes to my own site right now, I'll leave that worry in someone else's hands.  Some day in the future, when I have the cash to build a decent system, I may just do that.  For now, a web host is ideal. 

I could deal with not installing custom modules, at the time.  It was about 3 years ago, however, when PHP version 5 was released and I began reading about all the cool things you can do with classes and running into neat functions that were only available in version 5 or higher.  I, along with many other customers of TCH, asked on their forums when they would be moving to PHP 5.  It's now 2007 and the answers were still, "We have no plans to move to PHP 5." Now, I'll be honest with you in that there were a few features TCH didn't have that I started to desire alongside PHP 5.  Terminal access, addon domains and some decent spam control were things that I could live without if the move to PHP 5 was coming soon.  I found the site gophp5.org, learned that PHP 6 is coming soon and then spotted a post on the TCH forums that said they may be going to PHP 5 by "the end of the year".  I decided to ask the hard question to the TCH staff (you could see this discussion here if TCH hadn't removed it from their servers):

DirkNiblick - post 9/7/2007 01:06 PM

Let me start this out by saying spolem.net has been hosted by TCH for over 4 years now. I enjoy the perks of the deluxe hosting package. For the meager $9 I shell out every month, I have been able to do almost anything I could do on a standalone server without the hassle of managing my own backups, power, cooling, etc. All this with very few service problems. 

That said, the fact that php 5 was released 3 years ago and my site is still running on php 4 has been a very large dandelion in an otherwise green lawn. We've been told for years now that "there are no plans" to move to php 5 despite the many benefits to the end user (especially the developer) of doing so. Now the direction is that "[you] hope to make the move before the end of the year" and that the decision "will be posted in the forums". 

I've had issue with the preference of contact via forums over e-mail for awhile now. I honestly have no desire to search every topic and post every day for a hint of a php migration or planned downtime. This is a sidebar. 

Regardless of the communication method, as the number of webhosts that support php 5 primarily or even along side php 4 grows, I think TCH owes it to their customers to give at least a soft date as to when to expect a migration. This would provide us with a timeline to prepare for it. The worry that you might not meet that soft date and the letdown it would provide is no different than hearing "no" for almost 5 years. 

I know that sounds like some sort of an ultimatum but it's not. There are other users and developers out there...

I watched the topic and noticed the TCH admins flocking to the page as I pretty much called them out to state their intentions in moving to PHP 5.  This response was posted 40 minutes later:

TCH-Dick - post 9/7/2007 01:47 PM

December 31, 2007

Now I spent probably half an hour crafting my initial post so it wouldn't come out like "I'm sick of this PHP 4 shit!  Upgrade now or else!!!  LOL! OMG!" I simply wanted TCH to stop ignoring their customers (there are dozens of topics on their forums about this very subject) and come clean.  I saw the above reply and realized it was a flippant attempt by an "Assistant General Manager" to imply that they had no timeframe to upgrade to PHP 5 and just wanted to shut me up.  I didn't like it:

DirkNiblick - post 9/7/2007 02:11 PM

I apologize if I'm taking your reply the wrong way, but it seems a rather curt way of answering a very honest and reasonable request from someone who's been a loyal customer of TCH since before even your own "Joined:" date. I'm sorry if it seems like I'm putting the screws to you but I think it's in everyone's best interests to not be constantly wondering if or when their website will be running on a current version of PHP. I bet you'll start seeing people breathing sighs of relief now that the mystery is gone. Thank you.

Yeah, I admit that the "Joined:" date thing was a cheap shot but I was irritated by TCH-Dick's response.  I just wanted to say I am a long time customer and I saw through his post.  His reply:

TCH-Dick - post 9/7/2007 03:22 PM

Yep, you took it the wrong way. 

To be honest its an arbitrary date, (Dec 31, 2007=end of the year) that I put in the format you requested. As for the 'mine is bigger' comment about the "Joined:" date, I am glad you found the forums long before I did, but I was customer with TotalChoice long before then. However, I really don't think anyone cares nor see how it affects this conversation. 

Anyway, I had no intention of hurting your feelings and causing a pissing match, therefore, I apologize for providing you just the date. 

Thanks for the feedback and once we are ready to upgrade we will notify you via these forums.

"Arbitrary date" would imply I was right about his intentions.  At that point someone else by the name of "Just_Rob" suggested that "If you want the support and headaches of everyone else then I suggest you go to them." The fact that someone in the management would talk to a customer like that was the straw that broke the camel's back:

DirkNiblick - post 9/7/2007 03:52 PM

Apparently I didn't take your comment wrong. I asked the same question others here have asked since PHP 5.0 was release but with perhaps a bit more teeth. You simply put a date down to brush my concerns aside as you've done with everyone else who's asked the very same question. This is exactly what I gathered. I only said the comment about the "Joined:" date to make a point that I've been a loyal customer despite having been brushed aside for almost 4 years. Apparently long term customers aren't a desired outcome of your business. If so, I would think you'd be more transparent with your longterm goals to when PHP is probably pretty important to those customers. My mistake. 

I'm a *NIX administrator for a hospital system with +8,000 employees and if I ever responded to even one of them like you did above, no matter how rude they were, I'd be fired. If TCH-Jesse had entered his comment prior to yours, I would have been satisfied until December. In fact, I've never received a cross sentence from any of the technical or customer service people the entire time I've been here. Your two comments, however, have just made the decision for me to take "Just_Rob's" advice. I know I'm only $9 a month and probably not important to your salary or TCH's bottom line but I would hope the customer service ethic would would be passed up to the management level. Again, my mistake.

I believe TCH-Dick posted something else after my last post that was more vile than the last one.  I read it briefly as by that time I had already compiled a list of the web hosts listed on gophp5.org and was rating them all by services, price, etc.  3 days later, A2 Web Hosting was rated number 1 out of my list of more than 20 webhosts and I began the process of migrating my site over.  Hopefully, by the end of the day, my TCH account will be closed and I will have moved on with my life. 

In case, you think I'm making this all up or being one sided about the conversation, I saved the topic.  Am I overreacting?  Maybe a bit but I don't think so.  In this age of Internet, paying about $430 over the course of 4 years for such a highly intangible service as web hosting, you'd think customer service would be important.  Good customer service is very rare anymore and I believe in rewarding it with loyalty and fighting for it when it's missing.  Don't get me started on how Bank of America told me they'd rather I close my credit card account than lower my interest rate 1%.  Too late.  :)