CompuDrew.com

This post is born of 10+ years of frustration in dealing with the Internet Service company that once was MindSpring, but was bought buy Earthlink, aka ELNK.

Back in the 1990's I bought a domain name though them, for a pretty penny. I won't go through all my woes with them, but will point out my main frustrations.

I moved from one state to another. Per the Internet authority on domain names I was required to update my registration information. I called Earthlink to do this and could not. At this point it's been so long ago I forget their excuse. So for over 10 years that domain name had seriously stale information associated with it.

Later I wanted to move my domain name to another host. So I called Earthlink and asked them to unlock my domain name. They said the would, but they lied. It stayed locked and I could not move it.

I was so frustrated with their poor service I decided I didn't even like that domain name any more and stopped using it.

Finally it came time for me to try to totally cut them out of my life, but like a blood sucking parasite they would not let go; like a stalker they kept on following me around in the dark.

I called them 2009-08 to tell them I wanted to cancel my account with them and end my relationship with them. Done. Parted ways. No more contact. Tired of games.

They stopped sending me invoices, but it wasn't until a few months later I noticed they were still billing me through my credit card. I was furious. I called my credit card company to find out what was going on. They said they'd look into it. But the most recent statement has all EVIL ENLK charges back.

So of course I had to make another round of calls to figure out why.

Still more games from Earthlink. They claimed I only cancelled my domain name with them, but did not want to cancel my _______@Earthlink.net email address, so they kept billing me for that email address which I NEVER used. In fact, to give you a sense of how "good" they are, I did get email to that _______@Earthlink.net email address, it was spam! Obviously their systems were hacked. Why would I buy a domain name then use some @Earthlink email address?! Ha. I never did. But I did get invitations for bodily enhancements and invitations to buy drugs over the Internet.

Such frustration. MindSpring/Earthlink may have been a good company in the 1990's but they have been nothing but frustration and IGNORING my requests for over a decade now. And like a sick stalker, they are amazingly hard to get rid of by asking nicely.

Yes Earthlink, I'm talking about you. And yes, I am going to write the BBB, my state attorney's general, the state attorney's general of Georgia, and will also send copies to the FTC and FCC. Your practices have MADE ME ANGRY and GRABBED MY MONEY WHICH YOU DON'T DESERVE.

DOWN WTH EVIL GREED and money grubbing games.

CompuDrew.com is back online after a brief outage due to a number of factors beyond my control.

I moved my domain and consolidated my web sites' code, but it seems I moved it all to a hosting account with outdated support, and that lead to a series of unfortunate events.

However, i was able to get my host to wipe the slate clean, as they say, and it seems this new hosting environment is better.

To say I long for the day when I can run my own servers out of my own place, at a reasonable cost, is a gross understatement. Down with telco/cable monopolies and puny bandwidth at exorbitant costs!

It may take a while for me to get my posts back online, I'm not sure I trust my latest database dumps, so stay tuned!