Hitting the brick wall

Since 1994 I have had a pterosaur website on-line, hosted by 1and1 Internet.  It is hosted on a Microsoft Business server in Germany.  For years I have been very satisfied with the service they have provided.  Some years ago, the local help desk was moved to India.  This was not an issue and the service was of a high standard.

The help desk has since been moved to the Philippines and the setup is now totally impractical for anything but the simplest of support issues.  Each enquiry is handled randomly by a help desk technician as if it was a new query.  If the issue you have is not included on their help schedule, they have methods of putting you off in order that you call in again to a different person.

Having has an internal server issue with their 1and1 web database setup, I have expended 26 E-mails and 3 telephone calls at a cost of over £5 to get nowhere with what should be a simple issue.  All I really need to do is communicate the issue to a server development programmer.

E-mailing the headquarters to explain that my issue was not being handled by the help desk, they sent the mail to the help desk to resolve the issue.....Arghh!!!

I have now started a discussion strand on the 1and1 facebook page. I had a sympathetic and apologetic response in half an hour - But still no resolution.

1and1 still provide a good service in most respects, but the support system has fallen down for me.  Having read recent forum posts, I am by no means alone in this matter.

My solution, since the database part of my MS business package will not function properly and I have no way of communicating directly with the server development programmers, is to lodge my data on another host site and write my own database front end.  If I had started that 2 months ago, it would have been up and running by now.

Rant over - have a cup of tea.

Footnote:
In response to the facebook entries, I have been approached by a help desk manager, and explained the issue by E-mail.  The error was replicated (3rd time they have done this) and this time the development team have been informed.  19 Feb to 20 April to do what should have been done on day 1.