Sam Hulse { portfolio } stay hungry.stay foolish

As most people are aware by now, the new iPod Touch update announced by Apple at Macworld a few days ago is going to cost existing Touch owners £12.99 ($20 in the US though, but £12.99 is roughly $26USD, why do I have to pay an extra £3?).

Rumour has is that the 1.1.3 firmware update contains the new applications Mail, Maps, Stocks, Weather, and Notes (and the wiggle-rearrange feature), they are just locked until the update is paid for - so for now the 1.1.3 just has bug fixes in it, and no noticeable change except the iPod now has the iPhone dock. Thanks Apple, even though you’re trying to screw us over you might have actually just done us a favour - you’ve just made it a hell of a lot easier for people who don’t want to pay for the update get all the apps when the 1.1.3 jailbreak is released.

At the moment I want to focus on lighting, but I’m still taking on a couple of design jobs so if you need anything doing just let me know. I miss doing lighting and being on shows so hopefully something will come of the enquiries I’ve made these last couple of days. Unlike in many sixthform colleges, I have to do work experience - so I was thinking about either getting into a theatre or a gig venue of some kind and hopefully if I do I’ll make a good few connections.

In other news, I’m a little annoyed. With £1GBP now worth $2.03616USD, as British we’re being priced out of the market. Some of the best design comes from Britain but we’re being overlooked, simply because of price. On the plus side, though, it should be a good time to buy from the US? Well, actually no.

Say I wanted to buy Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium (which I do), in America I would be paying $1799USD which works out at around £850GBP; yet the UK price for the same software is £1655.58. In USD terms that’s $3365.62, almost double.

Adobe CS3 Design Premium contains:

• Adobe InDesign CS3,
• Photoshop CS3 Extended,
• Illustrator CS3,
• Flash CS3 Professional,
• Dreamweaver CS3,
• Acrobat 8 Professional,
• Bridge CS3,
• Version Cue CS3,
• Device Central CS3.

Recently I bought an iPod Touch straight from Apple. It cost me £269 (near enough $550), the exact same thing in America $399 (roughly £195).

I’ve had several conversations this past week with people from America and Australia who are looking for people to do work, and wanting British designers, and simply can’t afford it. Not because they’re poor, far from it, but for the fact it’s so expensive over here to pay for labour.

So at the end of the day, we’re paying pretty much double for the exact same goods and we’re getting f*** all in return.

Update: Ben Briggs sent me the following interesting article about Adobe’s pricing.

So I went to HSBC today to set up a new bank account, as the account I currently have won’t sync with Paypal so I can’t get money to and from easily. All I wanted to do was set up a new account with them, but they wouldn’t let me.

“You already have an account with Nationwide?” the woman said after asking me about my bank statement I’d taken as proof of address. So? I want 2 accounts. As far as I’m concerned it’s none of her business - and so what if I do? I’m not ready to close me other account yet. Plus it’d be easier for me to keep my Nationwide account open as my Chefs Assistant job pays into there, and so will my EMA in a couple of weeks time - it makes sense for me to leave it open while I get everything sorted out with the new HSBC account I’m after, but no.

“Sorry, that’s dual banking - you’re not allowed to do that.” she explains. “Only in exceptional circumstances do we allow dual banking.” This is all turning out to be far more hassle than it’s worth. “I can still set it up for you, but you won’t be able to use it until you show us a proof of closure letter from Nationwide to show us you have closed your account with them.” I’m surprised any bank wouldn’t bit your arm off when you’re trying to open an account with them - after all you’re going to be giving them money, frequently.

This would be like walking into Tescos and the woman at the till saying “Excuse me, do you shop at Asda?” “Yeah.” “Well, I’m sorry, you’re not allowed to buy anything from here unless you stop shopping at Asda.”

This is what happens when your host closes, and transfers all it’s accounts to AxisHost, The Worlds worst hosting company.

I had been away for the weekend with some friends, leaving my websites ticking over with my old host (ADM Hosting), or at least, so I thought. It happens that while I was away in Wales, ADM decided to close, transferring over all of it’s customers to, without a doubt, the worlds worst web hosting.

When I got back to England, I stumbled upon multiple threads in the Newgrounds forums about the closure of Newgrounds favourite web host. I checked my e-mails to see what was going on, yet nothing from any hosting companies. I checked the ADM website, only to be greeted by this message.

AxisHOST.com has purchased all ADMHosting customers. AxisHOST.com has a 10 year history of excellent customer service and rock solid server performance. If you have any questions about your hosting account or wish to order additional hosting packages or related services, please see www.AxisHOST.com.

For all ADMHosting account TECH SUPPORT or BILLING ISSUES, please see: www.ADMHosting.net/billing/

We look forward to serving you for a very long time to come. Please contact us with any questions, suggestions or concerns. Thank you!

It may seem fair enough, companies close all the time but most companies would tell you, especially if you were a paying customer. Angrily I emailed AxisHost, telling them how disappointed I was with the situation and how it had been handled, and how inappropriate it is to be left in the dark when you’re paying for a service which you reply upon for income. I said:

Due to FTP problems which were due to the switch after I returned from holiday this weekend, I have lost 2 whole days work. That’s £200 roughly ($400) worth of work…

Just out of interest, how much downtime occurred during the change? I’m also going to look into a possible breach of contract and/or law about how the situation had been handled.

In reply to this, AxisHost said they were going to ceased all communication with me over emails, despite me asking for their attorneys information so that I could try and recover some of my losses over this time. Axis refunded my hosting and gave me 3 days to find a new host.

Because this is not a game for your amusement. We’re not paying one of our
attornies to explain the law to you. You have two choices, and this WILL be
the last time I communicate directly with you:

1. Forward your attorney’s full contact information and one of our
attornies will communicate the situation to him. Then your attorney can
explain to you why you’re not going to sue us.

2. Sue us and represent yourself in litigation.

You now have less than 24 hours to move your hosting account elsewhere. I
suggest you take the time to do that immediately.

Incredible how me being out of pocket several hundred pounds worth of work means I’m going to be messing around with them. I had to email clients and tell them that their work would be delayed by 2 weeks until I returned from my second holiday.

Due to the FTP problems because of the change of host I lost several hours worth of work because I was unable to connect to FTP. I was still logging in, but to the old server (ADM were unaware that a server transfer was going to take place), meaning nothing was being updated on my websites. This loss of development time as well as well as the downtime that had occurred due to AxisHost playing around with the server I was hosted on had had a major impact on work I was able to complete, and also ad revenue from domains attatched to my account.

I browsed law websites on the internet, read up on business law from my classes, spoke to friends and posted on forums to see if I could find fault in anything that AxisHost had done. It turns out that the majority of complaint would have to be directed at ADM; they were the host who had closed and not told anyone; the host whom had breached the Sale of Goods Act by not finding a host whom supplied the same version of PHP as what we were paying for; and whom had potentially breached their own privacy policy and the Data Protection Act.

I asked Taylor if he would e-mail me the terms and conditions of ADM Hosting and also their privacy policy. AxisHost quickly stepped in on the public forums and said:

I’m going to respectfully ask that you not communicate with Sam on any issue. He’s made some outrageous and unsubstantiated claims and has threatened legal action. Our attornies are aware of the situation and Sam has been given a full refund of his $24 per year hosting account and his “walking papers”.

We don’t play around with threats of legal action. You threaten to sue us, you better have the balls and facts to back it up because we 1. Will immediately pass it on to our attornies and stop communicating with you directly. 2. Will give you 72 hours to find a new host.

Its especially interesting when someone is claiming over a week’s worth of damages when we’ve only had their account for less than 24 hours AND his only complaint is that FTP wasn’t working for him (and he couldn’t be bothered to report it to us).

PS: If an FTP hiccup lasting less than 2 hours had the potential of costing me $xxx - I certainly wouldn’t host it on a $24 per YEAR hosting account. I’d make sure I was on a dedicated server with some sort of contingency for redundancy.

I was going to keep this just between Axis, ADM and myself, but seeing as though Axis decided to post on public forums multiple times information which should have stayed private - I don’t think they’re too bothered about people finding out what they’re really like. AxisHost are still banging on about how I’m going to sue them, how much this isn’t a game and yet they won’t let me talk to their lawyers. It’s not illegal for me to do so, or even a far out, crazy idea. I especially like the cheap digs at me like “I certainly wouldn’t host it on a $24 per YEAR hosting account.” and “Its especially interesting when someone is claiming over a week’s worth of damages when we’ve only had their account for less than 24 hours“. I had never said I’d lost a weeks worth of anything, if you remember in my initial e-mail to Axis I said “I have lost 2 whole days work.” Axis had been in control of my account for around 3 days at this point.

My hosting account was also worth more than $24. At the time of buying my account should have been $35, then I had upgrades to bandwidth and storage after doing some web design. But, at the end of the day, with AxisHost virtually saying their shared hosting is incredibly unreliable, and that we should all be on dedicated hosts I’m glad I’m not with them any more.

Apparently Axis changing my FTP details and not telling me is my fault (which was no where near my only complaint).

his only complaint is that FTP wasn’t working for him (and he couldn’t be bothered to report it to us)

I haven’t taken this situation further, most of the problems are a result of ADM and there’s not a lot I can do now they are closed (and the owner was a pretty sorted guy). I bought a new hosting package with Site5 whom have been excellent so far, quickly replying to queries and their backend control panel is wonderful.

I am not the only person who has had issues due to AxisHost since ADM closed, but I’m glad my account was cancelled when it was, and that I have found a new host so that I wasn’t again in the line of one of AxisHosts screw ups. A couple of weeks after this, all of the existing account I tried of people whom stayed with Axis were directed to this page, yet another hiccup which could (and should) have been avoided by Axis.

If you like being ignored; poor service; private discussion being post on public forums; and having what you have said twisted, AxisHost might just be the host for you, otherwise, I strongly suggest, whether you’re a customer now or just thinking about it - stay clear of AxisHost, continually The Worlds worst hosting company since 1997.

If you were affected by the ADM/AxisHost switch, or have had bad experiences with them in the past, please comment and let me know.