Short story long, my access to this hosting service, which I will keep unnamed for now, has been restored. I was able to access WordPress sites, like this one, but that is about all. My email accounts were also still working, but I was unable to add/remove or change any of them.

This all started last fall when I requested that an organization that I had been running a web site for over many years, take over the management of the site themselves. We had all agreed that this would be a good thing to provide for the long term operation of the site in case I was no longer able to do so.

Of course, that meant something would happen so that I was unable to do so…

In December, I had back surgery and ended up in physical rehab for over a month afterwards. When I finally returned home, I was not in any mood to work on it. Sitting in front of a computer for more than a few minutes was difficult.

We had begun the steps to move the website to a new host account and I had assumed that the hosting company would assist in the migration. But because I couldn’t check on it very well, the job got totally botched up, they ended up giving ownership of my account with several domains and at least six sites, to the new account and I was locked out of it all.

Worst of all, I couldn’t seem to get anyone to understand what was wrong and what had happened instead of the simple task we requested. I’m sure the time that elapsed before I could dig into it didn’t help.

I must have called 25 times only to explain to a customer representative from scratch what I wanted, only to be told that they could not give me ownership of my own account back, even though it was their screw up that took it away.

I was at the point where if I didn’t have so much family history established in this site and some others that I did not want to loose and which would be very difficult to replace, I would have given up and closed the account. I was debating if it was worth spending the money to hire a lawyer, or contact my attorney-general’s office, or what else I could do to get through their bureaucracy.

Both I and the two fellows with the organization we wanted to move the site for, were trying to get through to them. Finally, it became necessary to treat it as if they were transferring my account back to me. Forms with identification and verified e-signatures were required and took time to accomplish, even though that apparently wasn’t necessary to take it from me.

But it eventually got done after more than six months.

What broke the log jam? I started searching for complaints online about the hosting company. I found plenty, Facebook, Reddit, etc. I finally stumbled upon TrustPilot and noticed they had responded there. I wrote up an account of my troubles and withing 24 hours had an email from the hosting company.

Apparently, you need to hit them where it hurts, their reputation.