Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: July 20, 2003 (Previously Published)
Section: Viewpoints

The continuing saga of Cyberwings hosting took a very curious turn this week. As we discussed in the previous piece on Cyberwings hosting, you'll know that the company's main collection of servers were down. This was due to an issue with their service provider Lightship. No one knows why Lightship discontinued service to Cyberwings, but it is known that the Cyberwings customers who have data there won't be able to get their data unless Cyberwings works out the issues with Lightship.

During the week many promises were made by Shawn White of Cyberwings. As you may recall, Shawn White is the CEO of Cyberwings and has made a name for himself in the hosting community by offering extremely low cost deals on lifetime, reseller and regular hosting accounts. Unfortunately for the customers, none of these promises came to fruition.

As the week progressed the tense feeling among Cyberwings customers came to a head when Shawn White visited the only official support channel left for the customers, the chat room. With an anticipation that one feels when the President addresses the nation, many customers were hoping for news of new servers that were on-line or a resolution with Lightship that would allow data retrieval. Their dedication to waiting until early into the morning on July 17th was quickly dashed like a kid realizing that there just is no Santa Clause.

To many customer's dismay Shawn launched a very confusing and sometimes misplaced attack. An attack on his own customers who have been patiently waiting for services from their hosting company since July 3rd. Shawn's initial comment unedited:

Speaking in the third person is something Shawn seems to have down to a science. It's like watching a bad Saturday Night Live sketch where an athlete is being interviewed and the reporter looks confused. You typically only see that kind of ego from athletes, superstars or celebrities. You don't expect to see that kind of ego from a person who has caused so much trouble for so many people.

The logical, customer service driven ethic tells you to embrace your customers. Fall on your own sword. Admit your mistakes, be honest and appreciate the agony that you are causing your customers. Shawn's drive seems to be to ignore the agony and go into attack mode. It's disconcerting that someone with more business experience hasn't gotten through to Shawn and explained what good customer service means. Then again, the web hosting highway is littered with the carcasses of services who haven't learned that.

Many people have called Shawn White a liar. If you look at his statements and what he actually says a very reasonable person may come up with that conclusion. If you dig deeper though you always realize that there is one thing always missing ... the information to prove a lie. Misdirection? Exaggeration? Euphemism? Aren't those all synonyms for lie? Yes and no. In this case you can never nail the Jell-O of his statements to the wall of truth and prove a lie.

As the week progressed there was no new Cyberwings data center on- line. Dates were missed. Hourly updates that were promised were not posted. Cyberwings was quickly becoming the Enron of web hosting.

On Friday, July 20, 2002 the rest of Cyberwings crumbled. Until that point a few customers of Cyberwings had been able to access their data on Cyberwings servers at a provider called Rack Shack. On Friday afternoon that ended. Access to the Rack Shack servers wasn't available. In an ironic move that only traffic accident gawkers could appreciate, the status page used by Cyberwings was also hosted on the Rack Shack servers. This meant that Cyberwings wasn't offering web hosting services at all. It took 16 days, but rock bottom was finally touched upon.

When the Rack Shack servers became unavailable the Cyberwings mop up crew came in. Online support staff, composed of paid staff, volunteers and interns, held the company line for an hour.

"We don't know what is happening." "Shawn is calling Rack Shack." "It's a technical issues."

As the hour passed the gentleman who runs Rack Shack, known as Headsurfer, popped into the Cyberwings chat room. He made a plea for Shawn to call Rack Shack to clear something up. Headsurfer was then banned from the room. Clearly it was a case of mistaken identity, but the humor in it all wasn't lost on the customers.

The swarming masses then discovered the support chat room on Rack Shack. They all swung over there to watch the next collision. From the tone and tenor of the conversation one could surmise that it wasn't a technical issue affecting the Cyberwings servers at Rack Shack. A few times the Rack Shack associates implored the Cyberwings staff to have Shawn call them. A simple ten minute phone call would have done it according to them. Alas, either that phone call wasn't made or Shawn never received that message. The Rack Shack servers are still unavailable to Cyberwings clients.

As the day progressed many people played the byte sized version of Sherlock Holmes trying to check on the progress of the new servers Cyberwings was promising. In fits and starts it was discovered that portions of what Shawn promised were coming true, but without a status and update website there was no news from Shawn and nothing concrete to go on.

Many of the customers have come to the realization that the data they have on the Lightship servers may never be retrieved. Many of the Rack Shack customers started feeling the same way. I would suspect, though, that Cyberwings knew this was coming and archived the data.

Later in the evening a Cyberwings staff member entered the chat room and asked for everyone's attention. Again, people sat up, got their log files ready and waited. Was this the announcement of the new servers being ready? Was this the information needed for the Rack Shack servers? Was Zarcon of Zithlem coming back to Earth?

The staff member's comments were as heartfelt as they were inappropriate:

After the comments were made lighters were put in the air, smores were passed around and most people started singing Kumbaya. A few people called Miss Cleo to see if Pam was right, but mostly the feeling was, "What was that?"

We've now gone from speaking in the third person to having a PR person. A good move, but the choice in PR people and the message delivered wasn't the best. One could argue it was the worst possible strategy.

As you can imagine, this was the last straw for most people. Even ardent supporters started making deals with other web hosting services in private messages. Pam played the sympathy card for Shawn. They needed a Blackjack and they got a 22.

With no web servers available and no services to offer the support chat room has morphed into the complaint chat room. Affected customers, onlooker and troublemakers complained publicly and abused the Cyberwings staff.

Oh, yes, the Cyberwings staff. From what I can determine the pecking order is paid staff, volunteers and interns. These people have broad shoulders and infinite patience when dealing with customers. They have done an overall good job in handling their end of the situation. Of course in most cases they don't know any more information than the customers. On Saturday afternoon the Cyberwings staff made the decision to moderate the room and quit taking unnecessary abuse from the public. A good move on their part as there wasn't anything to support.

And that's the saddest part about the Cyberwings saga. A community of excited customers, a team of dedicated and loyal staff and volunteers have been decimated by someone who is learning hard lessons that everyone else is paying for.

Read the First Cyberwings Article

Read the Third Cyberwings Article

Read the Interview with Shawn. J. White

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