MWeb drives one towards insanity

[MactheKnife]

Dealing with MWeb is impossible. One gets shunted from pillar to post and multiple calls later still can't get a simple process initiated.
\
<Start of rant>

MWeb as my company's ISP provide our ADSL, mailboxes and hosting.

Our website is an ancient Frontpage creation, so we have moved across to a Joomla based CMS. Our initial basis shell is ready and working on a local host and we are now ready to put online and start developing it further (the sooner we get rid of the old pages the better!).

So today I call MWeb 3 times. The first time is a quick chat with the tech support guys just to understand from them how they will approach the porting, timeframes etc. All well and good and the guy tells me he will get an account exec to call me to arrange.

So nothing happens. So call back this afternoon. Get a sales person who doesn't have a clue what I am talking about. She puts me back to tech support who obviously tell me they can't help and transfer me to customer services. After hanging on for a while, the call cuts off!

So call again this afternoon. get another sales guy who doesn't really know what I am wanting, but suggests sending an email that he can then pass on, but can't put me through to anyone who actually deals with this because they don't deal directly with customers. At that point I give up in frustration as if one can't find someone to sort this out with first hand, dealing with or through an intermediary is just asking for problems.

FFS -- how do you run a business like this?

<end of rant>

 

[GTAMCN]

..how do you run a business like this?...

well don't even bother to email it takes them at least a week or two to respond .

 

[Synaesthesia]

How irritating. Sorry if this is ignorant but why don't you just host with someone else, and manage it yourself? International hosting is also much cheaper.

 

[Saajid]

I think MWEB might be right on this one. I don't actually understand what you want from them. The way I understand (as you've explained) is that you have a hosting account with MWEB, with an existing, but very ancient website. You developed a new website, and now you need to replace the old one with the new one.

Why do you need MWEB to get involved? Just upload the files to your hosting account, and set everything up through the hosting control panel. You should have a username and password to log into your hosting account control panel, where you can manage everything related to your hosting account on your own.

Why on earth would you need an "account exec" to get involved? Besides, if the website is based on Joomla CMS, then it should be REALLY simple. Who developed the website for you? Why are they not making it live for as well?? Do they even know what they are doing??

Still.. you have a point.. MWEB are pretty bad at customer support, especially since starting the big uncapped hoo-haa.

 

[joeymojo]

go with another hosting company. dealing with mweb with regards to hosting is a nightmare. I normally advise my clients to stay away from them.

 

[MactheKnife]

Morning ToxicWazte

Thanks for your interest.

The existing website is hosted on their MS platform with Frontpage extensions - very old, very basic, very K@K.

We did the new website ourselves in Joomla. Have it running on one of our computers on a localhost using XAMPP. Not too bad a learning curve but still having fun.!

By my understanding, the way the hosting is presently configured there is no database capability and MWeb must first facilitate the installation of MySQL, php etc, to create the platform for us to FTP our Joomla content up.
Or am I missing the plot here??

I think MWEB might be right on this one. I don't actually understand what you want from them. The way I understand (as you've explained) is that you have a hosting account with MWEB, with an existing, but very ancient website. You developed a new website, and now you need to replace the old one with the new one.

Why do you need MWEB to get involved? Just upload the files to your hosting account, and set everything up through the hosting control panel. You should have a username and password to log into your hosting account control panel, where you can manage everything related to your hosting account on your own.

Why on earth would you need an "account exec" to get involved? Besides, if the website is based on Joomla CMS, then it should be REALLY simple. Who developed the website for you? Why are they not making it live for as well?? Do they even know what they are doing??

Still.. you have a point.. MWEB are pretty bad at customer support, especially since starting the big uncapped hoo-haa.

 

[Saajid]

Morning ToxicWazte

Thanks for your interest.

The existing website is hosted on their MS platform with Frontpage extensions - very old, very basic, very K@K.

We did the new website ourselves in Joomla. Have it running on one of our computers on a localhost using XAMPP. Not too bad a learning curve but still having fun.!

By my understanding, the way the hosting is presently configured there is no database capability and MWeb must first facilitate the installation of MySQL, php etc, to create the platform for us to FTP our Joomla content up.
Or am I missing the plot here??

Which hosting package are you on? Do you know? I'm pretty sure it will at least support PHP and MySql out of the box. If not, then it is a big fail on MWEB's part.
If you know which hosting package you are on, you can visit the main MWEB website, and check what features your hosting package supports.

In any case, if possible, I would recommend you switch to a new hosting provider. WebAfrica are pretty good, with the best hosting prices around.

You shouldn't ever have to phone MWEB to manage your website, unless you are doing really advanced or complicated stuff, like writing your own extensions or having custom DLLs that need to be loaded. With WebAfrica, I manage everything on my own - except of course for domain transfers and domain regsitrations.

 

[MactheKnife]

Thanks for that feedback.
Unfortunately the MWeb website is a bit sparse with detailed information on capabilities etc - just very bland overview stuff.
They also seem to want to charge the basic hosting fee plus then also a database fee for the CMS hosting (the latter to provide the MySQL)
Also seem to need to transfer to a Unix/Linux hosting platform - don't know why because I can run MySQL happily on my XP environment.

Would have been nice to keep everything under one account, and keep the hosting and email domains at one place together with access (ADSL).

Which hosting package are you on? Do you know? I'm pretty sure it will at least support PHP and MySql out of the box. If not, then it is a big fail on MWEB's part.
If you know which hosting package you are on, you can visit the main MWEB website, and check what features your hosting package supports.

In any case, if possible, I would recommend you switch to a new hosting provider. WebAfrica are pretty good, with the best hosting prices around.

You shouldn't ever have to phone MWEB to manage your website, unless you are doing really advanced or complicated stuff, like writing your own extensions or having custom DLLs that need to be loaded. With WebAfrica, I manage everything on my own - except of course for domain transfers and domain regsitrations.

 

[MactheKnife]

Thanks for that feedback.
Unfortunately the MWeb website is a bit sparse with detailed information on capabilities etc - just very bland overview stuff.
They also seem to want to charge the basic hosting fee plus then also a database fee for the CMS hosting (the latter to provide the MySQL)
Also seem to need to transfer to a Unix/Linux hosting platform - don't know why because I can run MySQL happily on my XP environment.

Which hosting package are you on? Do you know? I'm pretty sure it will at least support PHP and MySql out of the box. If not, then it is a big fail on MWEB's part.
If you know which hosting package you are on, you can visit the main MWEB website, and check what features your hosting package supports.

In any case, if possible, I would recommend you switch to a new hosting provider. WebAfrica are pretty good, with the best hosting prices around.

You shouldn't ever have to phone MWEB to manage your website, unless you are doing really advanced or complicated stuff, like writing your own extensions or having custom DLLs that need to be loaded. With WebAfrica, I manage everything on my own - except of course for domain transfers and domain regsitrations.

 

[Saajid]

Would have been nice to keep everything under one account, and keep the hosting and email domains at one place together with access (ADSL).

I recommend you move to WebAfrica, or another hosting provider. MWEB are not serious about hosting. You can still keep your ADSL access with them, if you really want to. Only their uncapped packages are competitive and reliable. Their capped packages are pretty darn expensive - if you have a capped package you should consider chaning ADSL providers as well, or switching to MWEB uncapped.

 

[ToxicBunny]

I agree with ToxicWazte on this...

Mweb are not serious about that sector of hosting... If you're doing dedicated servers and such then they're easier to deal with... but a hosting package where you don't have control of the box yourself? much easier to go with someone like WebAfrica or Texo...