IP Dream Host lost my posts
Losing your data is a nightmare. It happened to me recently, with my IP provider DreamHost.
- 2026.3.01 Khatia Buniatishvili @ Tilles 2020.1.12
… more nightmare: I discovered many contents in the posts are truncated, cut off, in 2024.
How is this even possible?
I’ve been with Dream Host since 2007. I don’t have anything fancy but a few blogs for my research and hubbies.
- Journey: after 1985
- Walk: after 2022
- missing text within a post April 2024
This latest data loss marks the second time they have let me down.
The first failure occurred when their tech support team (TST, free to us) forgot to close my site after completing maintenance. The site remained open until a well-intentioned hacker contacted me with a warning. I still don’t know the extent of the damage, but it left me uneasy, as though waiting for another incident.
The second is this time, they lost 18 months of my postings (Feb 2022), done by their pro team (PT, fee-based), at a cost of $200, when they repaired one of my sites that had been hacked.
Interestingly, the TST initially recommended that I delete and reinstall WordPress to solve my problem. And assured me that it’s relatively easy.
So that was when I did a backup (just in case something goes wrong). I got two auto-generated emails with the identical error message. Not wanting to take any risk, therefore, I turned to PT to avoid any mishap.
The cost of their service is $199. But they first billed me $299. When I asked why the extra $100, they said, $199 is a 72-hour turnaround, and $299 is a 24-hour turnaround. I picked the cheaper one. The 72-hour turnaround turned into a month. On Oct 13, they sent an email saying it was fixed and asked me to check my site.
- I noticed the missing months: the Archives shown my last posting was February 2022, which meant 18 months of postings are lost.
- Secondly, the Chinese characters are messed up.
From Oct 10 to Nov 8, I’ve exchanged 75 emails with them:
- Abhay Shah
- Muhsin Muhamed
- Sakshi Pandita
- …
I couldn’t believe the amount of garbage they sent. Many emails were repeated. Their attitude is simple: deny. deny. deny, and shirk responsibility. Such as, “we don’t guarantee any data lost … we did all we could … but were unable to find any missing data…”
Padding their emails with repeats and nonsense: as if the longer the email, the more productive they are.
I didn’t want to give up the 18 months. I pushed, emailed, pleaded… And contacted TST a few times. The 75 emails do not include TST’s.
I learned and enlisted two supervisors to help. As it turned out, Dean Johnson, the manager of PT, informed me on Oct 27 that he found wpxxxdatabase_10-02-2023.sql, which contains some posts from later months. This cut my loss to May 2023, shortened to four months (May/June to Sept). I don’t know much about data and coding. But do find it odd that they have the majority of my data/posts, only missing the last 18 months. Both supervisors said they’ll expedite my case to PT.
On Chinese characters: at first, they deny deny deny, saying the fonts appeared in the same way before we started working on the report. PT said they’ll investigate as courtesy. Days passed without any news. So I contacted the TST, and they corrected it within hours. (Some like character like é as sautéed is still messy.)
Why would I even pay them?
Today, a friend wrote “什么booking.com, Agoda 的客服一帮老印,有纠纷找到PayPal, 客服又是一帮老印,你想charge back,信用卡客服又是一帮老印,我现在听印度英语也行了,我很早就被说英语的人民教育说他们没有困难听印度人说英语,因为印度人说的就是英语,言下之意,你们说的就不是英语. 我对很多高管都是印度人沒有不服气, 但是据说伦敦变成了印巴新首都却让我不那么想往了.”
