I had to vent it out. My story deserves to be heard. So I thought I’d post a separate DreamHost support review. I did review their WordPress Hosting earlier. So here is the episode 2: my experience that forms the basis of my DreamPress 2 review:

DreamHost Support Review #TrueStory

One of my websites, hosted at DreamPress started experiencing downtime in October 2016. Jetpack for WordPress would notify me every 5 minutes that my website was down – then it will notify again after few minutes that the site was up again. I didn’t know what was going on but was confident that the issue will get sorted out soon.

So I contacted support and started waiting for response, notified them that my site was down, and went to sleep.

Eight hours later, my site was still down – and there was no response from DreamHost Support.

12 hours later – a superhero from DreamHost support finally got back to me. Here’s what he wrote

Hello Rashid,

Thank you for contacting DreamHost Technical Support.

Upon investigating your account, it appears you have your name servers
pointed over at Cloudflare and noticed that your MySQL hostname is not
pointing at the proper A records.

Currently, your MySQL A records is pointing here : [IP Address] https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/mysql.Rashid-is-a-fool.com

It should be updated to : mysql  A       [IP Address]

Once you’ve updated the records over at cloudflare, please test out your
site again in a few hours.

Also, do you also have  a premium cloudflare account? For SSL to work
properly, please be sure that you’re using

If you have any other questions or concerns, please contact technical
support.

Sincerely,
Superman

That’s awesome, no? This provides a perfect solution. So here’s what I wrote:

Hi Superman,
First, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to respond. Your 24×7 support is truly awesome! As a loyal customer, I couldn’t be more thankful seeing your response just 12 hours after contacting you. Super quick!

I understand the mistake I made, pointing my MySQL servers to [IP Address]. My bad. Mistakes happen. I apologize for that. I do realize that, despite this ridiculous mistake on my part, my website has been working fine for about 15 months. That’s pure genius, for which I am thankful to you guys – that despite the A record for MySQL being incorrect, you have been able to make my website load perfectly for so long. Magical! Couldn’t be more thankful.

I have now corrected my mistake and changed the MySQL IP to [IP Address]. Please accept my apologies. I am sure this will correct the FTP outages too, magically – correct? After all MySQL and FTP are so closely related.

And no, I do not have a CloudFlare pro account – don’t think I need one either. Oh wait, maybe now I need to signup for CloudFlare Pro account? 11 months AFTER my website has been running magically on SSL without CloudFlare Pro?

I’m sorry for being a novice web developer. Can you please educate me on this:

Why the MySQL IP address, that has been working for more than a year, had to be changed overnight?

I haven’t even signed in to CloudFlare for months – meaning, nothing in DNS has been changed lately – then why is it that my website is mis-configured all of a sudden?

Oh and I understand that you guys at DreamHost support are super busy, but appreciate if you can meet your benchmark of responding after 12 hours.

Thanks,
Rashid

I accepted my mistake, and corrected it too. But who would tell that to my website that was still down? I was expecting a better response from DreamHost support now – and that’s exactly what I got – a better response.

Sadly, this time, DreamPress Support team could not break their own record of responding to customers after 12 hours. I had had enough. So I purchased the MediaTemple WordPress hosting. Kneejerk reaction?

DreamHost team did get back to me. There was no solution though – just the finger-pointing, time-buying shit. See for yourself:

Hello Rashid,
First and foremost, my apologies for the issues you’ve been experiencing
with rashid-is-a-fool.com

Looking over the history and site on the DreamPress, I do not believe
your issue is the mysql hostname. The dreampress server can resolve the
mysql hostname internally through a preset /etc/hosts file, which looks
to be up to date. A mysql hostname pointing incorrectly would only affect
any resolutions set to use external DNS, such as phpMyAdmin.

While http://rashid-is-a-fool.com is loading up, albeit with a few errors,
https://rashid-is-a-fool.com is giving me the following error:
rashid-is-a-fool.com uses an unsupported protocol.

ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH

I would contact CloudFlare and have them double check the SSL settings
their service is currently using to resolve the Comodo Certificate
inplace on the DreamPress.

Thanks!
Spiderman

Now that’s some serious spider shit. The HTTPS version literally “gave” him the error. Like really, handed it over to him – face-to-face. Who would not express gratitude for such awesome support? I did:

Hi Spiderman,
Thanks, and please also convey my gratitude to Superman – the support rep who discovered this great MySQL solution. Don’t know where I’d be without his advice. And please don’t tell him that the solution that he had proposed was so lame that a novice like me could see that. He won’t like that.

You are absolutely right. The website is now working fine on http but https seems to be not working. Must be something with the Cloudflare. The DNS configuration on CloudFlare auto-updated itself and suddenly it’s mis-configured. 36 hours since my site is down and here we are.

Well, actually, I am in process of moving my website over to MediaTemple. That’s why the http version is working and https is not. For now. I have been working with them for last 12 hours and I can see the MediaTemple support team is a bunch of losers. I mean, seriously? They have nothing better to do than responding to customers’ queries. Even the $20-a-month customers like me who do not deserve that kind of support – ‘cuz they’re paying so less, right?

Anyways, their loss.

Back to the awesome DreamHost support. Just so you know, I temporarily pointed my IP to DreamPress to see if it was any better now. No luck! The issue has still not been identified, investigated, and corrected. All we are doing is pointing fingers at CloudFlare configuration.

Please do not waste my time unless you have a solution. An actual solution. Not that I am expecting a response before 18 hours, but still.

PS: How I wish I had something better to say, that would warm your hearts, and soothe your souls.

Thanks,
Rashid

I didn’t mean to be harsh. But guess what, it did not matter – because the DreamPress Support team do not read customer emails. I repeat, they do not read what you write. Let me say that again:

DreamHost Support Team DO NOT READ customers’ emails.

Here is the proof:

Hi Rashid!
Thanks for contacting DreamHost support. I am happy to assist you today.

Sorry to hear your site is not loading using https. While I don’t see an
issue with the SSL Certificate issued here, it does look like the domain
is not pointing to the correct IP since you are not using DreamHost’s
nameservers. To connect the site to the domain without changing the
nameservers to DreamHost, contact CloudFlare and have them update the A
records for www.lets-fool-rashid.com to point to [DreamHost IP Address].  It is
currently pointing to [MediaTemple IP Address].

I hope this information was helpful. If you need further assistance or
have any other concerns, please let us know.

This support rep did not have a name. Can I call him the Batman/Batgirl? ‘cuz that’s some real bat shit there. But it sounds cute – no? And this information was super helpful for me, just as he/she/it hoped.

It helped me make my decision to move away from DreamHost.

And you know the irony of it all? A day after this interaction with their support team, I received an email from DreamHost Marketing team. Guess what was the punch line:

Hello, Rashid!

You spoke, we listened!

[insert some super cool marketing offers]

Yes, morons. I fuckin spoke, and you sure as hell listened carefully.