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Advanced Access Outage

At this time, Advanced Access is having significant power issues at our offices and all services are currently down. 100% of our resources are dedicated to solving this problem with many various solutions being implemented at this time. There has been no data loss or corruption of your services.

We are expecting that all services will be shut off for the rest of the day. We do anticipate all services to be running tomorrow, Tuesday May 22. We sincerely apologize for the downtime and are doing our best to get you up and running as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your business and support. We will continue to post updates at our Advanced Access Blog as we receive them and are able to post them from sources outside the office.

- Kristina

Posted by Advanced Access on 05/22/2007 12:10 AM

Comments (99)

advanced access

99 Comments on Advanced Access Outage

MAY

2007

Good thing I found this blog as I just posted one as well. I hope they get this fixed, I am losing some serious lead potential today.

Thanks Kristina.

PS.. when I am finally going to be able to get to 4.0 or atleast be able to get my url looking a little nicer, ie MikeTrinch.com/NewHomes <-- I cannot do that right now as you know.. looking forward to being able to do that soon.

Thanks

Michael Trinchitella

www.MikeTrinch.com

Hi Mike,

We are working as hard as we can! Regarding 4.0, we will definitely be posting as soon as we have a definite date of conversion from 3.0.

Does this have anything to do with being Blacklisted? I had to send a letter to comcast to get them to unblock you so I could receive email of course I have no idea if this has happened yet.

Hi Dirk,

No, this is a separate issue. We also have been recieving reports regarding Comcast and hopefully will have an update on why they are having trouble with processing emails.

- Kristina

Thanks for posting this blog. We have been wondering what the problem was and even though our website is down today, feel better now that we know the issue and that you are working on it.

I'll keep checking this blog for updates.

Rob

www.weichertpremier.com

Thanks for the update - have full confidence that you are doing the best you can.

Thought I hadn't renewed my url !!

Does this have anything to do with the recent email issues? Or is that a separate issue?

Hopefully we can have it up and running by the morning, Tuesday is a huge day for Internet users! Nothing as of 9:30pm EST.

Unfortunately Monday seems to be my highest traffic day. I understand hosting having been a VP of Sales for a hosting provider. I wish you the best of luck getting everything up and running, but you need to do a serious root cause analysis. A power issue should not cause a service provider to be off line for over 6 hours, if we were down 2 minutes I had serious issues with customer relations.

Our entire Operations staff continues to work diligently on our current situation. Rest assured that at this point it is simply a matter of time and that no data (including email) was lost or adversely affected. The current estimate is that all systems will be up and running by 12:00 am PST.

At this time we are still investigating what caused our main UPS to become non-operational. Unfortunately, due to the damage to our UPS, attempting to reactivate our servers at our Anaheim location would have caused some or all of our data to be corrupted. Thankfully, over the past few months we have been assembling a second, offsite backup data center in Irvine, CA for redundancy purposes. Although we were not planning to announce or make our move to this data center for a few weeks, we were able to activate the backup location ahead of schedule in light of the power issues.

We understand that your website and related services are at the core of your business and your success is our top priority. Please accept our most sincere apologies for this inconvenience. Thank you for your continued patience and understanding.

- Kristina

Kristina,

Why on God's green Earth haven't you guys at the very least updated your phone system so we know what is going on? You have no idea what you have done to my business. 90% of my advertising/marketing is used to drive traffic to my website. luckily I stumbled accross this blog. I cannot imagine the severity in which your company will suffer from this matter. A power issue would not allow your system to be down as long as it has. I'd love to know how you guys plan on making things right with your customers.

Kristina,

WHO ARE YOU? A company of your size communicating like this? No employees to answer the phone????? I feel as though a nuclear bomb has hit and you guys are hiding to avoid the fallout. I have spoke to DOZENS of your customers by phone who are not so appalled by lack of service, but the manner in which you people so selfishly ignored all calls. I went on goddamn listing appointment today only to look like some stupid jack ass Realtor who had to make excuses for your companies dissapearing act. WELL GUESS WHAT!!! YOUR CAN COUNT ON MY BUSNIESS AND A WHOLE LOT OF OTHERS TO TO HIDE FROM YOU TOO!! I'LL BE SURE TO NOTIFY EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY INDIVIDUAL AND APPROVED SUPPLIER THAT YOUR COMPANY IS UNRELIABLE AND MOST OF ALL SHOWED IT'S COWARDLY FACE IN THE TIME OF DISTRESS!!!!! WHY HAS GOOGLE AND YAHOO ***FIRED*** YOU GUYS FROM TOP RANKINGS/???????? WHAT IS IT WITH YOU LOSERS????

Hi Greg,

Our office continues to be down as well, Internet and email. Our phones were down for a period of time until we were able to get them up and running during the day to answer calls. We are reaching out in this manner, as well as posting on our corporate blog (http://www.blAAwg.com) to keep our customer as informed as possible. As soon as our servers are up we will be emailing everyone as well.

There is nothing worse than wasting a Realtors money - nothing.

Well, it took me all day to finally find this source explaining why my site has been down all day. I 'Googled' just about every keyword I could think of before finding the link to your blog. I can't believe that you didn't have a quality backup system in place. We have power outages in Illinois quite often and all your clients should expect that a company as big as Advanced Access would have the proper backup equipment in place. I'm sure glad that my email is hosted elsewhere or that would have been down as well. I feel sorry for poor Anna when this thing is up and running again, answering all the hate mail that you well deserve. The losses in business from over 10,000 sites will be measured in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Gene, glad you found this blog? Things happen in the high tech world and the low tech world. Chill out and it will be fixed. Eric

I a glad Kristina is working on it for us. I was knocked out by Katrina for a month several years ago. it will be working when you wakeup. You have power, food and gas,lol.

I was promised that 4.0 upgrade over a year ago too.... I have to look into other companies now..

This isn't Katrina, but it sure feels like it. I am unable to respond to leads or to any email diercted to my account.

Between our assistant and our own time, an entire afternoon has been wasted trying to bring our website and email back online.

I am seeking alternatives....

Eric - Nice to talk with you on the phone tonight.

Kristina - My email is hosted through AA. I receive well over my 10MB every day. So how is that going to work? Is my email currently bouncing?

Where I live we have power outages several times per month in winter, and at least a few times every summer. My husband works in IT for the State of Alaska and they deal with power surges and outages all the time. The technology is available and it's what my husband calls insurance.

What really gripes me is that I was told you had backup servers in another location in case something like this should happen. My first site crashed for a few days during hurricane season so I know I asked that question. Tonight I was told you were working on it.

99.9% of the time I am very happy with your company. This .01% came during the busiest part of the month, and at the beginning of my busiest season. 75% of my income for the entire year will be made in the next four months so please don't make me start over this time of year. I cannot afford the time it would take.

You should be glad this is a minor blip and hopefully it will be fixed by this evening. I did not know till I got home that it was down. Its important to all of us but shouting and crying is not going to bring it back faster. You could be in Iraq where things are never what they seem. This is an extreme example, but we can still be polite.

Debbie, do you have another e-mail account. Send yourself or your husband an e-mail and see what happens.

Eric - When I'm at home all my email goes through the AA servers so I can neither send or receive at this time. That is set to change when my new laptop gets here in the next few days (sweetie got me a b-day present, but being in AK, sometimes things are delayed). I need a larger quota anyway so that's the first thing that will get changes. 10MB will hardly hold an appraisal. Thanks though! Got any good suggestions? GMail? Hopefully our next phone call will be something more fun :-)

Regarding email, your email is being held in a queue and when the servers are operational, the email will be delivered to your box. No bounced messages are being sent.

I think what you mean by us saying we have backup servers is that regular backups are made of our data and sent to an offsite location. If anything happened to the office, the data would still be there and recoverable. Now, in this case, nothing happened to our data but we are moving it and all the servers to a different location because of our power issues.

I hope that better explains things.

Anyone else find it ironic that AA may very well see their highest point blog ever with the rate at which it is getting comments?

Kristina,

You CENSORED my comment on www.blaawg.com.

You really should not have done that.

I am already an irate customer.

Imagine how angry I am going to be tomorrow!

Censorship does not work. You have made a huge error in making this decision.

Laurie Manny

Hi Laurie,

I actually haven't seen a comment from you on the blaawg. Do you know what time you made it? Akismet could have snagged it. I will definitely go look in the file right now. If you have the time, that would be great. We currently get about 700 spam posts a day.

Roberta and I left comments at about the same time, while we were on the phone talking about the unbelievably poor performance of Advanced Access. After which my phone was ringing off the hook with other premium members calling me asking if I had found a viable alternative yet to the horrific service we have all been receiving from Advanced Access. When one of us finds a way to move without being affected you will lose all of us.

Oh my - I hope this gets resolved soon. I wish AA a speedy recovery.

Any website providers out there that can GUARANTEE we will not lose our current search engine placement in a move should contact me immediately. Don't contact me if you cannot perform.

MAY

2007

Gosh, and all day I was optimistically thinking that maybe, just maybe the site was down for retooling and tomorrow we could wake up to a bright new world of 4.0...Sigh.

Kristina -

Hope you can send the email in small doses. There should be at least 2 appraisals in there.

Ouch-guess it's a good idea to have redundant systems---more than one website provider may be costly, but at least you have a better chance of having at least one pipeline up and producing.

I've been hearing about a lot of problems on AA sites lately from everyone I know who has one.. too bad as they used to be one of the best..

OK it is now 5am on the east coast and no connectivity and the blog has not been updated in what appears to be 8 hours.

AA needs to run through its contigency planning very quickly. Having no power at your site is absolutely no excuse for not handling customer concerns better. 1st a simple Toll Free Advanced Feature from AT&T could allow you to re-direct all traffic in less than 5 min to an anouncement "We appologize but due to a major technical issue our services have been temporarily interupted....please go to www........for updates and more information." Put that in your plan today, AT&T could have that operational in less than a week - not that it will help in this situation but you need to be prepared for the future. Also, the second thing you should do is get your marketing email list serve in the back up site and provide direct updates, we all get your marketing newsletters we should get an email (those who do not have their email hosted by AA). At a bear mininmum you should have the ability to redirect your customer service URL to an off site location and have updates ready.

Your response to this situation makes you appear rinky dink, and PS it also appears that you are operating under the premise of what they don't know won't hurt you ... only those who are diligent about checking their site are aware

AA: It is 5:40 a.m. PST and still no website (www.sandiegopreviews.com)--or word from you. Thank heavens for a second website I have maintained for years with Realigent, because I am checking into directing the AA domain to that one.

Please...answer your phones or at least provide hourly updates. You are crippling thousands of agents.

I considered using Advance, choose not too. This happens with every provider, mostly planned updates during off hours for equipment and software. This is catastrophic for many top producers, but it too shall pass but not without notice.

This is unacceptable at this point.

I just lost my #1 spot on google! this is absurd! I spent so much money to get there, is AA going to reimburce me a whole years work!?!?

I have received GREAT service from AA for many years. I will not be changing my website provider now or in the near future.

There are only two types of computers in the world: Computers that have crashed and computers that will crash.

I'm disappointed to realize AA does not have a better back up system, however, I'm sure that after this they will have one of the best systems available. I'm sure they will not allow this to happen again.

This was a huge mistake and I am sure that AA will do everything to make this right.

Getting irate never solved any problems.

Since this is the first time I have ever experienced this type of difficulty with AA I don't see any sense in getting my shorts in a bundle.

AA I hope you figure this problem out soon. Hang in there!

I've been walking the fence with AA with poor customer service this past year. This is not the first problem I've encountered and I think my mind has been made up to not renew. It's now 8:45am CST and still nothing.

Yeah this is not the 1st problem, trust me. This is unacceptable and I need to seek other options.

Lost my spot on MSN from Number 1 to number 4! Also all my PPC was directed to this site! More waste of money and loss of LEADS, and no access to my e-mails! Time to redirect everythng to my Point 2 Agent site!

1.0, 3.0, Forums Online

We are getting updates to everyone as quickly as possible... the above mentioned items are up and we will be getting more info out ASAP via our corporate website once that is restored to its current version.

We have our support center staffed to capacity as well to answer your calls. 1-866-518-1571.

My site is just now back on line :-)

Anna: All lines are predictably busy. Should we redirect our AA domain to another site? Critical email is not coming through. Please provide guidance.

Katrina: Mine is not. Do you have the 4.0 version?

For Anna or anyone else at AA...

8:10 AM PST - my 3.0 site is up... when should I expect my e-mail?

My sites are still down. I will check later to get an update. Katrina, glad you are back in business. Eric

Anna - site is up, sort of. Just the home page - no internal links. Are we going to have to re-build these sites? What sort of bomb went off there yesterday? And, the e-mail is still in the ether...

Anna - Girl, I feel sorry for you today. The best employee at AA and the abuse you will get. I agree with the other person that said whatever they pay you it isn't enough for being the fall guy for such a large company.

I hope after this, AA makes sure they have a true hot site, not just an off-site location for catastrophic backups. I still insist I was told this was in place when I switched to AA. Another lesson learned, VOIP phones are great when everything works but you need to splurge on true land lines for when there is a problem like this. With these in place you can expect no more than two hours down time. Or at least that's how it works for the State of Alaska, ETS Operations where my husband works.

This time of year I don't have time to rebuild everything that's on your servers, but I've also been told my email is bouncing. I need a better email solution. My IT husband is going to help me figure out what else needs to happen. I really don't want to maintain two websites, but he is thinking it might be a good idea until this washes out.

Once again, I've loved my AA site, and working with you, but these problems are past getting way out of hand and I've got to protect myself and my business. When everything works again I hope you go have a glass of wine!

Advance Access - you might want to give instructions on how your customers can receive email while you work through this issue. I posted some instructions on how to re-direct your email on my blog to help everyone out, but you are in a better position to give out more details.

By doing this it will help your customers receive email on a temporary basis.

Kim Hughes

Kim Hughes & Company

http://www.kimhughes.com/

Kim@KimHughes.com

Our site is still not up. I thought we were running 3.0

Stacy

www.weichertpremier.com

Hello all of you. I thank you for every comment. I know that frustrating isn't a descriptive enough word for this situation.

I don't have an update on email yet. Only that all space limits are removed so that everything can come through without regard to space in any way. We are working on getting everything 100% up at the new data center.

We do not yet have internal email either so if anyone has sent email to an @advancedaccess.com email address we do not yet have access but we are working on that as well.

We are working on restoring VO access. As soon as VO access is up, you can feel free to edit your site and change every occurance of an email address to an non-aa email for the time being (or call us and have us do it for you of course). The only way to make it not hit our servers is that way at this point unless your MX records are already pointed elsewhere.

You can call us and we'll help you with this as soon as access to the Virtual Offices is up. 1-866-518-1571 is straight to our support team.

I see internal links up on sites... we are getting the system stabalized so you may see some up and down issues for the time being.

I just spoke with AA Customer Support, and was told that around half of the 3.0 sites are up--but not fully functional. Others, like me are still waiting.

Agony.

up & down issues... kind of like the feelings of many AA clients right now. An hour ago, my site was up. Now down. For the past day, error messages when tapping into the e-mail server. Now, no error message, but no e-mail either. Kim Hughes posted a good idea about re-directs on our mail servers, but I fear that the time it takes for those re-directs to take hold could be another 24 hours...

How did we live before the internet & e-mail? I find myself agreeing with Ted Kaczinsky in the proper role of technology... (almost)

Anna - It was nice talking with you just now on the phone. Thanks for letting me vent! I really hope this is a learning experience for everyone. As to my comments above on VOIP phones, the state had to learn the hard way as well. Anyway, the timing sucks, but thank you for the updates.

Hi Debbie... I think you just spoke with Anna in our CS dept... she is awesome. Just making sure you know who you chatted with. :)

OH? I thought I had YOU! Oh well... maybe next time. And here I was all excited I got to talk to you...

You can of course feel free to call me too ;)

4.0 is now online.

Another saga in the experience with Advanced Access. It's been a rough 2 years.

:-( It looked good for a moment earlier this morning. My 3.0 site was up and then gone. Trying not to over stress this. I've got offers for properties I've got listed being sent to my eFax number which goes to my AA email. Disruptions happen and I have room for that to a point...just don't like it when happens during the busy season and it makes me look bad.

(Hi Eric! Glad to see you doing well too!)

Had my site (but no links or e-mail) for a bit, but now gone again. Am wondering what others are going to do "after the storm". Should we find other providers? Who? Or, should we stay with the (in all liklihood) "slimmed down" AA? I only pose the questions at this time. Might have answers later.

I seem to be getting some current emails... Any word on when you will let go of the ones in the servers?

At this time most systems are up and running. Specifically, certain websites will be running slowly throughout the rest of the day and the Classic 3.0 Virtual Office is currently inaccessible. Email is operating and will be slowly moving through the backlog of messages from the past day and a half. Our entire staff is working diligently to correct these remaining issues and we will continue to keep you updated.

On a positive note the resources available at this new location should help to prevent the very issues we experienced. The new data center is a state-of-the-art facility with multiple fiber paths for internet connectivity, redundant environmental control systems, on-staff AC and electrical technicians and on-site backup diesel generators.

Please feel free to contact our Advanced Access Customer Service Team
Support@AdvancedAccess.com
866-518-1571

Mine is back up but I found a visitor counter at the bottom that says: "You are the 4th visitor to my website". This is disturbing to me and misleading to anyone who sees it since I've had my site for a couple of years now. What next?

This is a preference that although you have off is on by default with the 3.0 platform... it is a known bug and is being worked on.

Counter is gone now :)

Mine is finally back up, but it appears some links (such as MLS search) are not working.

Ouch!

Hopefully, this will be resolved midnight (tonight!).

Hi Roberta,

IDX, IntelliCards, and the rest of our own internal systems are being worked on now.

Thanks, Anna. Your plate is overflowing!

MAY

2007

It is now 11:30pm CST and my site is down again...I can only assume that this means my email is down also. Three days with very little email and very little website advertising.....How come this is taking so long to remedy. My site was up for a while today but my idx searchs and other pages were not working.

Donna Salyer

MAY

2007

ADVANCED ACCESS SITE IS DOWN AGAIN GRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It could be worse. You could be paying for a ppc campaign that results in "page not found". oh wait -many are paying ppc since they are banned in Yahoo and were torqued in Google for the last month.

My ranking on Google is dropping :(

Anna: You and the crew have held up remarkably well--and have served us all well. We are making arrangements to move our main website with you over to an independent server. We will upload another domain with Advanced Access to test its viability.

Perhaps it will prevail.

Best wishes to us all!

Is there any other bennefit to be on an independent server. We are paying to be on a server?

You can pay to be on an independent server for like, $9.95 per month. And if it fails, move it somewhere else.

I normally update my AA site on Fridays. As of right now, the file uploading feature is not working. (At least they have a note to that effect...). I would like to voice the intemperate question of what the others are going to do? A la mode called today, and others are likely to as well. Who has the best set of web-tools for Realtors? I would prefer to stay with an established company. Ideas?

MAY

2007

Companies like AA are web 1.0.

If you stay at that level, you will get left behind as your competition moves to Web 2.0.

What is the difference? Andy told me you FA, any reason? You can pm me if you want. Seems expensive unless the do something that I do not know. Going to look into it however.

MAY

2007

Eric,

I need a decoder ring to decipher your comment.

MAY

2007

Eric, expensive is relative.

$600 a year vs 1200, but one gives you the ability to blog, where with AA you need to get your own at another 100 a year. FA gives you support from one of the best WP designers out there, plus SEO support from Andy Beal (marketingpilgrim.com), one of the best in the business, and Rackspace hosting.

So the $500 difference gets you a better platform, better advice, better email reliability, better service and less downtime.

Bob, thanks for your opinion, I will give them a call Monday or Tuesday. Actually I called Friday nite and Jim actually called me back from the caller ID. They are on Mountain Time. What will web 2.0 be different in laymans terms. Thanks Eric

Who is FA?

Famous Agents, I was writting in code. Look em up. Eric

Thanks Eric

MAR

2008

Has anyone here left AA for another website provider? My renewal is due on April 1st, and I'm currently shopping around for other providers.

Advanced Access has failed to provide any new functionaility or enhancements to my website since I became a customer in 2003. The 3.0 interface on the back end (where agents manipulate their sites) continues to look like Windows 95. No Java photo uploader, I mean come on, is this 2008 or did I miss something???

__________________________________________
Whether Buying or Selling: Get on the Fast Track to your new home!
Greenville SC Real Estate

I kept mine since its up and running. I did add a blog where I haope to make it successful. It takes time and energy as anything tends to do. Have a look at www.neworleanscondotrends.com

Cameron: I moved http://www.SanDiegoPreviews.com over to WordPress from AA and have been delighted with the results.

MAR

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APR

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Call Corey...He is great! 866-645-7702 ext 815

MAY

ADVANCED ACCESS OFFERED ME A FREE 30-DAY TRIAL in MARCH OF 2009. I cancelled within the 30-days and not only did they bill me DURING the 30-days, they have refused to issue a refund after AMPLE time to do the right thing. I do have emails to prove that I cancelled within the trial but a SUPERVISOR at AA NAMED MONA didn't seem to care about that.

I have called my credit card company to tell them to issue a chargeback. I shouldn't have had to do that and for that reason, AA sucks.

I hope RV, who works for AA, gets a job with a better company. He did a great job and was helpful--the other company just offered a better deal.

Hello Amanda,

I am sorry to hear about the frustration you have experienced in this process.

I reviewed your account and will list the basic time-line so we can work toward a resolution.

12/15/08 - You signed up for an Advanced Access website
1/12/08 - You requested to cancel and were refunded your month of hosting you had paid
3/19/09 - RV spoke with you about coming on board again, and you decided to give us another try
3/27/09 - RV helped you with some design changes for your website
Months of March and April - we sent you emails offering additional help with your website
4/20/09 - You contacted us requesting to cancel

Our system will automatically refund any cancel request within the 30 day trial period. The system will refer any cancel requests outside 30 days to a representative (Mona in this case). Since your request was received after the 30 days, Mona is unable to offer you a refund. However, I can discuss this further with a manager if you like. Remember the 30 days is actual calendar days, not a "month" (in other words not May 26th - June 26th, but a true 30 days).

Please let me know how I can help you.

Anna Bourland | Advanced Access

No Anna, that's not entirely how it went. I sent RV an email on April 6th to make notification of the cancellation. Prior to that, all communication with RV was responded to QUICKLY. Once I emailed RV on April 6th, all communication stopped. (Check the account notes and see if any emails were sent to me after 4-6, it should make sense that I must have cancelled since there are NO emails after that point.)

When I spoke to Mona on 4-20-09, she told me I was cancelled and there would be NO charges.

I was charged a week prior to that on 4-14. 4-14 was still within the 30-day FREE TRIAL no matter how you count the days and so was April 6th when I sent the email to RV BROOKS.

I gave AA ample time to issue the refund to no avail. I called my credit card company today to dispute the charge.

Hi Amanda,

Do you have a copy of that email from April 6th? If so, please forward it to abourland@advancedaccess.com.

I believe Mona let you know that she was requesting a refund from her manager for you. I see that the issue she sent to her manager is open and waiting for an approval. I think there may have been a misunderstanding regarding the process she was following on your behalf, as she did create the refund approval request issue in your account. I apologize if you felt the door was shut on your request for a refund.

As I said, I can discuss this issue in detail with the manager of our Quality Control team and reach a resolution for you.

Anna Bourland | Advanced Access

MAY

Thanks for your help, Anna. I have forwarded the email to you as requested.

It's been almost two weeks since Mona told me not to count on it and I've heard nothing back, so I could only assume my request was denied.

I got that email over to the Quality Control manager and we discussed your refund which will go through today. I apologize for the delay in response. I also apologize for the unclear follow up regarding your email from April 6th. You can contact your credit card company to stop the chargeback as we will be putting your refund through our system today; it will show on your statement when your credit card company receives it.

Please contact me if you need anything at all.

Anna Bourland | Advanced Access

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