Forbidden Message a while back

Forbidden Message a while back
 Posted by Webmaster on July 22, 2003 at 19:42:44: Previous Next

All,

I just realized I never posted an explanation for why the site was down a few days ago. Here's the explanation.

My site is hosted by OLM. They require payment in order to provide service. That seems fine and reasonable. When I signed up with them years ago, I set up an ongoing account with a Mastercard.

A few months ago, the bank issuing my Mastercard made a unilateral decision to no longer carry Mastercard accounts. All Mastercard accounts were converted into Visa accounts. I never got a satisfactory explanation for this since they tended to peddle both before the switch, so I had one of each. Now, of course, I have two Visas, which seems a bit absurd.

Anyway, somehow the new credit card information didn't post to my account, so they continued to try to post to the Mastercard. Meanwhile, the Mastercard was canceled, so charges were denied.

OLM doesn't get paid when charges are denied. No payment, no service.

OLM is responsible company, though, and sends out notices when there is a problem like this. They sent out several warning messages to me, using the correct email address, warning me that I needed to bring my account up-to-date.

Unfortuntely, these days, those who actually use their email address are bombarded with spam. I've taken measures to filter as much spam as possible so that I can actually read all my emails that are not spam. In my analysis on how to do this, I discovered that there is a particular email header that comes 99% of the time only in spam emails. Not only that, this one filter catches over half of the spam.

Those of you now making a leap to a grand assumption are probably correct. Their emails to me were being caught by my spam filter. I had higher priority filters to intercept email originating from OLM, but this time a new domain name (to me) was beging used, olmstaff.net. So my OLM filter didn't recognize that the email came from OLM. Hence, I didn't see them.

After repeated warnings to me, and having not heard back, they shut down my site. This happened close to noon Central time. I know that because I had accessed my site when I was home for lunch, and then it wasn't working when I got back to work.

I called support to find out what the problem was and was told that I needed to talk to someone in billing. When I spoke to someone in billing, they explained about the cc denials. I explained about the bank and offered to give them my new cc information right then and there.

Unfortunately, they will not take CC information over the phone and don't have facilities to take it over the internet (except for signing up the first time). What they required me to do was to fill out a form with the new information and fax it in.

Problem: I have no fax machine, and I was loath to fork over who knows how much at Kinkos to fax CC information. I emailed back and forth (I was now watching for the right email address domain) on possible alternatives and settled on one. I would complete a form, print it out, sign it, scan it, and then send it by return email.

I completed this task just before their closing time and was told the account would be reactivated first thing in the morning -- which it was.

So there you have it. Was anyone's speculation right?

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