28 September 2007

Grapevine attempts to redeem itself

| boneymaloney
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Taiyaki, you have your wish. Text of the email received by Grapevine customers today:

Dear Valued Grapevine Customer,

I would like to sincerely apologise for the inconvenience you may have been caused by the recent interruption to your email service.

Unfortunately, after a planned outage to upgrade the network during the early hours of Monday morning, Grapevine was unable to re-establish the primary mail server. We immediately started work to rectify the issue and at 11.15am on Tuesday a secondary mail server allowed users to send emails and to receive some emails. The service was fully restored on Tuesday afternoon but it took some time for the backlog of emails to clear.

I would like to take this opportunity to assure you that we are implementing measures to ensure a problem like this does not occur again.

As a measure of our sincere regret for the inconvenience caused, and for your support and patience, we would like to offer you all of the following:

a 10% discount on your plan’s monthly access fee on your next account;

no charge for data usage over a 48-hour period from 9.00am on Tuesday 9 October to 9.00am on Thursday 11 October; and

an upgrade to the next highest plan for a period of one month at no extra charge*. Please call the Grapevine Helpdesk on 13 35 00 by Thursday 4 October to upgrade. Note – you will need to contact us at the end of the free month if you wish to opt back to your original plan.

If you are a Grapevine business customer we will be in contact with you shortly with regards to the outage.

We hope the above will help mitigate any inconvenience caused and once again, we apologise for the interruption.

Yours sincerely

Ivan Slavich
General Manager Retail”

Have they redeemed themselves with this offer? On the other hand, who cares, I plan to murder those free downloads 🙂

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Google’s ‘Gmail For Your Domain’ is a hosted version of Gmail, using your domain, and backed by the staff of Google. The free version offers all that most small business users will need.

I heartily recommend.

If you are a business and actually run your business through your ISPs free e-mail service then you really need to fork up some cash for dedicated business hosting.

I learnt when I was 8 that you never ever rely on your ISPs e-mail, whoever that ISP may be. What happens when you change ISPs??

I’m happy enough with Grapevine and the service I have received, and was not hugely inconvenienced by the outage. Saying sorry would have been more than adequate in my view – not that I’m not grateful for any freebies.

As with Snahons, what worries me a bit is that this could turn into a catastrophe if people inadvertently stay on their higher value plans. I have a real resentment of businesses which deliver unrequested goods or services and then suggest that there’s some obligation to keep them. For example, if I ask the mechanic to do a grease and oil change and he charges for a full hamburger service because I did not expressly refuse it, I would probably be quite unhappy. There may be some trouble down the track.

Anyone from Grapevine like to comment?

‘Sif put up with isp-mail.

http://www.servage.net

Less than $8.50 per month gets you your OWN domain name, unlimited email addresses, unlimited forwarders, web/pop/imap access, spam filtering, mailing lists, your own outgoing smtp server, a HUUUGE 320gb online space for websites/storage/backup/whatever, and a gobload of traffic per month, plus a bazillion other things if you have the desire to learn about how websites work and what you can do with them.

Considering how their pricing structure works, and the professionalism they’ve shown this month in black-listing their own mail server, I’m surprised they have any customers to send this apologetic email to.

– Aurelius

philbert83au9:23 am 28 Sep 07

For future avoidance of such drama you could go and get a gmail address (or similar) that supports POP3 access (through Outlook) as well as excellent spam blocking and portability if ever you change ISPs. I guess you’d be submitting yourself to Google, but choose the lesser evil?

Snahons_scv6_berlina8:59 am 28 Sep 07

“–an upgrade to the next highest plan for a period of one month at no extra charge*. Please call the Grapevine Helpdesk on 13 35 00 by Thursday 4 October to upgrade. Note – you will need to contact us at the end of the free month if you wish to opt back to your original plan. “

Typical – we’re sorry so you can have this “freebie” but if YOU don’t call US after WE give YOU the freebie we’ll SLUG YOU for the higher rate !!

How about an automatic upgrade then an automatic downgrade after the the month? that would say “we’re sorry”.

I have to say I’m glad they are offering a discount, explanation and apology. At least they seem to have heard the fury of thier customers.

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt8:02 am 28 Sep 07

Have fun with the download time…I bet it runs REAL fast…

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