Current Technical Issues Update
April 20th, 2009 by AnnaUPDATE:
3.0 and 4.0 sites and Virtual Offices are up. There are feature-specific items we are investigating (ListNOW thumbnails, listings loading, etc).
Testing shows that these sites and Virtual Offices are running at normal or better-than-normal speeds.
Webmail.advancedaccess.com is still timing out and we are working on it.
Sending and receiving from outlook has been fixed for all accounts. This may take some minutes to propogate.
If you have concerns related to these issues, please be aware that call volume and email volume is extremely high at this time.
Here is a recap of the reason for these issues (this email was sent to all clients this morning):
At the end of last week, Advanced Access made a significant upgrade to our systems. These upgrades include the relocation of our data center to a new multi-million dollar facility to increase speed, reliability, and space. The move is completed, however, it is resulting in some issues that have carried over from the process. We are working diligently to have everything fixed as soon as possible. Once these issues are resolved, this move will increase the overall performance of your website and other services provided by Advanced Access.
We understand that access to your Advanced Access products and services is important, and we want to assure you that your satisfaction is our number one priority. We will be sending a detailed email once we are positive we have resolved these issues to answer any questions related to this move. We are currently experiencing a high call and email volume and are working hard to keep you updated as you contact us.
Thank you for your patience as we continually strive to improve our service to you.
My E-mail at barbara@barbarakondrath.com is NOT WORKING YET at 2:19p.m. EST! I can’t get into my E-mail with my website password yet. I have NONE of my back E-mail and there is NO SIGN that I have received ANY E-mail from Advanced Access. My business is ruined - I have foreclosure papers lost in Friday E-mail. All means of communication go through my E-mail domain name owned and operated by you. Please give us specific time frames and updates - not generalized as none of those things are functioning for me except my website access which means nothing because my E-mail is destroyed.
Barbara Kondrath
April 20th, 2009
By the way - you have mentioned that “sending” and “receiving” from Outlook is up and running - no way. I have Outlook 2003 and only 3 E-mails have sneaked through. Two late Friday afternoon and one about 11:30 a.m. today, Monday. Nothing in between or since. My E-mail is forwarded from all sources through your site as you own my domain name.
Barbara Kondrath
April 20th, 2009
it is 4/20/09 @ 3:00pm (eastern) and I can not get into my virtual office and have not gotten any emails since Thursday 4/16/09.
melinda leonard
April 20th, 2009
I still cannot access my site and I have no photos on Featured Homes. (2:30PST)
Marlow Harris
April 20th, 2009
Webmail unavailable, and not comfortable making any changes to it (such as forwarding to another address) given the current AA problems. Cannot change web site template, so it is currently outdated. No photo functions in Virtual Office, including lack of primary listing photos. And all this happens when the market begins to perk a bit. And AA clients were not sufficiently forewarned as to what to expect. We were told by AA rep that all would be back up and running last Friday night….
Doug Parker
April 21st, 2009
My mail does not download on Outlook. I cannot access it through the web. I had to open a gmail account to get it to download. Having e-mail not working for most of 5 days is unthinkable & unacceptable in this day. Real estate business is run through e-mail. Do not even think about contacting me with new services. I am going to be looking elsewhere for reliable service.
Pam Paulsen
April 21st, 2009
None of my listings are showing up, no photos etc. Virtual Office is inaccessible.
David Dean
April 21st, 2009
I’m astonished that a major project such as this doesn’t have a “bullet proof” plan before starting. This project is now in its 5th-day with no resolution certainty. People usually get fired over something like this. The first priority should be to get the web sites up. Second is to get email working. Third is to get Virtual Office working. Only the first priority seems to have been accomplished in 5-days. The email system and VO remain broken. It is incredibly irresponsible to “cowboy” this conversion with 25,000-plus web sites and people’s livelihood in the balance. The customer service representatives get the brunt of this. The IT department is who should be receiving the complaints since they caused this. I’d like someone from Advanced Access to answer one simple question — “How did this happen?”. If Advanced Access is unable to handle a project like this, they should hire outside consultants to navigate this. Where is Dominion Enterprises in all of this? Shouldn’t they have the resources and a swat-team that they can send in and bring this to a swift resolution?
Rex Manz
April 21st, 2009
Advanced Access is the most incompetent and unresponsive company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. Have you no sense of urgency? I want to know who is being fired for the thousands of dollars (present and future)I have lost to your poor performance.
Jeff Kramer
April 21st, 2009
I am utterly amazed Advanced Access let this happen in a day and age when it could have been foreseen and prevented. I have no idea how many thousands of dollars you cost me in a time that has been already tough! What were you thinking?? And where in the world is your apology and attempt to make it right? Instead of an apology I received a call today from someone wishing to “review” my website (ie sell me something extra). Pretty insensitive and silly day to call. It only irritated me further. I am looking for a new host with a better attitude.
Nancy Walker
April 21st, 2009
When our website finally get back up, we can use http://www.httrack.com/ to copy our content and move our sites to a new website provider or even a Word Press static blog. I can’t afford to stay with a company who has so little regard for my business.
Marlow Harris
April 22nd, 2009
Hello to everyone… we continue to apologize for all the inconvenience that this is causing.
Our departments are still working as scheduled as we work to restore everything.
Nancy, you can definitely decline a website review. We have changed that process and the review is a great way to go over some key concepts for your website. I apologize if it was not the right timing.
Rex, we are working with Dominion Enterprises on this, as the issues are resulting from a massive relocation to their data center at corporate headquarters. We have upgraded to a new multi-million dollar data center. How did this happen? The data was running for months at the new center with no issues; we did the official switchover which means we phyiscally shipped our servers to the east coast and there have been some major routing issues with the physical change. We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible.
Thank you. We will keep updating the blog as we have new info. I just posted more information a few moments ago.
Marlow, the image issues are resolved. If you see any red x’s, regenerate your template, and you will have corrected images.
Anna
April 22nd, 2009
Anna I think in all sincerity you would do yourselves a big favor if you had your reviewers making apology calls instead of “reviews” for the next couple of weeks. I could barely speak I was so amazed. I appreciate your responsivenes, but AA needs to step up and communicate giant apologies one doesn’t have to search for on your website. I understand they were not prepared for the problem, but it is not too late to do repair with individual apologies. I am still stunned and horrified at the real dollars I lost this week. If I had caused such problems, even unintentionally, for any of my customers or clients I would be falling all over myself trying to make it right with them.
Nancy Walker
April 22nd, 2009
I called in last week when one of my listing clients let me know my site was down. I called AA, was assured that my payments were current, and that my site would be back up soon. Today, another client called to see if I was still in the business, as he had someone to refer to me. To echo the other agents—this is a travesty! I can’t log in to my site, and neither can anyone else…on and off for a week!!!! And when I tried to call in today, there were 20 calls ahead of me!! I will be looking for another solution as soon as I can…100 bucks a month for this???
Susan McKya
April 29th, 2009
Hello Susan;
It looks like you may have been on the “special server” that was created for Yahoo when we were working on that situation. You and one or two other clients need your sites moved from that server to a new one. I have David Preston (a customer support manager) working on it now with IT.
Anna
April 30th, 2009