3Essentials, Inc.

A DNN upgrade to my website damaged the site, 3essentials has refused to make the repair and stand behind their work.3essentials has been hosting 5 of my websites since April 2011. They also host a handful of my client's websites as well. 3essentials came highly recommended and at the beginning provided fantastic service. Over the years service has declined and writing the Revdex.com has been overdue for a year now.On August 12, 2014 I requested 3essentials upgrade my e-commerce website xxxxx to the current version of DNN 07.03.02. Ticket #IDI-XXXXXX. This is a service 3essentials use to perform themselves and charged $35.00 for. Some time in 2013, they were no longer going to provide that service in-house, but to instead outsource to a 3** party vendor. They made this decision without providing customer notice. This new service, from these mystery vendors cost me $80.00; and apparently does not come with any guarantees. After they finished the upgrade, I noticed they did not provide the necessary post upgrade backup. I emailed them and this was their response "Sorry, but we do not provide backup of sites files in zipped format to customers any more." After several emails back and forth over several days, they created the backup, but had this to say "While taking backup of the files, I received some errors, so to successfully take the backup, I had to stop your site for a few moments. Once the backup was taken I reactivated the site."This was my first clue something was wrong with the upgrade. When starting the site redesign in late October 2014, I noticed something was wrong with all the image managers (Rad editor). I immediately notified 3essentials and opened a ticket #VWL-XXXXXX. Not only did they not resolve this issue, but someone named [redacted] had this to say "Please contact the DNN support so that they can help you better in this case." I sent two responses to [redacted] without any response from 3essentials. It is apparently 3essentials policy to now ignore their customers.For the record, I have no case or affiliation with DNN support and whoever they are, they certainly do not host my site, nor did they perform the DNN upgrade to my site. I don't pay "DNN support" to host my site, or to upgrade my site.I'm no longer interested in back and forth emails, that accomplish nothing but to get me more and more upset, so I have now turned to the Revdex.com to resolve this issue.In conclusion, I have seen 3essential services be eliminated and or outsourced over the years. This is not what I signed up for when I paid for hosting. I expect the same level of professional service I have come accustomed to when I signed up for it. I expect 3essentials to stand behind the services they provide, even if the choose to outsource them. I understand policies change, but that needs to apply to new customers, not existing ones.Desired SettlementI need three things from 3essentials - First, to resolve this Rad editor issue so that I can add images to the website and finish up the redesign of this site that is now down and not generating necessary income. Second, to provide a full refund of the $80.00, so as to remind 3essentials what happens if they do not stand behind their chosen 3rd party outsourced vendors. Third, to provide site backups to any and all websites I own or manage, at my request.Business Response /[redacted]/COMPLAINT: A DNN upgrade to my website damaged the site, 3essentials has refused to make the repair and stand behind their work.ANSWER: I do not understand why he says we refused to make the repair. We responded to the issue. Initially one of our support techs thought it may be a file permissions issue and when that was not the case our support continued to investigate the issue. Initially we were unable to reproduce the problem. We then asked the customer for the specific steps to reproduce the problem. Once the customer replied we were able to see the issue. The issue is an old and common one with DNN. We even have a knowledgebase article that explains the steps to correct the issue. The fix is using features in the application to resolve exactly the type of issue seen; namely that the files on the site are out of sync with the catalog of files in the database.COMPLAINT: On August 12, 2014 I requested 3essentials upgrade my e-commerce website lovedenvercolorado.com to the current version of DNN 07.03.02. Ticket #IDI-XXXXXX. This is a service 3essentials use to perform themselves and charged $35.00 for. Some time in 2013, they were no longer going to provide that service in-house, but to instead outsource to a 3rd party vendor. They made this decision without providing customer notice. This new service, from these mystery vendors cost me $80.00; and apparently does not come with any guarantees.ANSWER: 3Essentials does not outsource DNN Upgrades. The work is done by our support team.COMPLAINT: After they finished the upgrade, I noticed they did not provide the necessary post upgrade backup. I emailed them and this was their response "Sorry, but we do not provide backup of sites files in zipped format to customers any more." After several emails back and forth over several days, they created the backup, but had this to say "While taking backup of the files, I received some errors, so to successfully take the backup, I had to stop your site for a few moments. Once the backup was taken I reactivated the site." This was my first clue something was wrong with the upgrade. ANSWER: Customers have access to download their own files, therefore we do not regularly produce file backups. We do provide database backups as customers are unable to create database backups on our older platforms. However, in the case of DNN upgrades, before we begin an upgrade, we do backup both the files and database. If the upgrade requires multiple step upgrades across minor versions, we backup the files and database with each minor version upgrade. We also provide a backup of the completed upgrade. Our staff did erroneously reply that we do not provide site backups. A backup of the site after the upgrade was complete should have been made.That an error was received on attempting to zip the site is not an indication of anything wrong with the site. While zipping up the files, if an open file is locked and therefore in use, it will not be zipped and the zipping process will produce an error stating as much. The solution here is to stop the site so the file(s) is released, then zip the files. Once completed the site can then be started again. The support technician simply informed the customer that the site was stopped for a few minutes in order to zip the files.COMPLAINT: When starting the site redesign in late October 2014, I noticed something was wrong with all the image managers (Rad editor). I immediately notified 3essentials and opened a ticket #VWL-XXXXXX. Not only did they not resolve this issue, but someone named [redacted] had this to say "Please contact the DNN support so that they can help you better in this case." I sent two responses to [redacted] without any response from 3essentials. It is apparently 3essentials policy to now ignore their customers.ANSWER: In our response, we approached the issue believing it to be an issue with file permissions and if the problem persisted did suggest obtaining further assistance from DNN. The customer did reply back on Nov 16 that the issue was still present. And again on Nov 17. Due to support request volume, there are times when it may take us awhile to respond to an issue. Our support team replied on Nov 18 would look into the issue. The customer had stated that the RAD editor was not working. It was working, however a specific feature of the editor was not working; this was the Image Manager. Initially unable to reproduce the problem, our support team asked for the steps to do so. Once the customer replied with that information, we were able to reproduce the issue and resolve the issue. The problem and the solution are an old and common DNN issue. We actually have knowledge base article (a self help site we provide for our customers) that explains the issue and how to resolve it. The fix is using features in the application to resolve exactly this type of issue.COMPLAINT: For the record, I have no case or affiliation with DNN support and whoever they are, they certainly do not host my site, nor did they perform the DNN upgrade to my site. I don't pay "DNN support" to host my site, or to upgrade my site.ANSWER: DNN Software develops the DNN application the customer uses for their web site. 3Essentials does not develop the DNN application nor does 3Essentials have any affiliation with DNN Software. For problems with commercial Content Management Systems (CMS) like DNN or other CMS that may be outside our scope of knowledge we may suggest customers look to the developer for solutions.DESIRED RESOLUTION: I need three things from 3essentials - First, to resolve this Rad editor issue so that I can add images to the website and finish up the redesign of this site that is now down and not generating necessary income. Second, to provide a full refund of the $80.00, so as to remind 3essentials what happens if they do not stand behind their chosen 3rd party outsourced vendors. Third, to provide site backups to any and all websites I own or manage, at my request. ANSWER: The issue with the file sync is an old and common one with the DNN application; an issue that has a well-documented solution found with a quick Google search. In fact, our own article on the subject is at the top of the results when searching. Once we received additional information from the customer, the issue has been resolved by our support team. Since this issue exists in many different versions of DNN, it's more than likely not related to the upgrade at all. Once we notify customers of Successful DNN upgrades the customer has 3 business days to review the upgrade to find any issues, this customer waited well past 3 business days to notify us.Based on our assessment, we performed a successful upgrade. We will not be providing a refund of our upgrade services. The customer has access to download their website files at any time, and providing zipped website file backups is not part of our services. With regard to backups, our customers have a lot of tools made available to them for managing their hosting. The available features have been growing as we have built out newer platforms. We do bill customers that ask us to perform tasks they can perform themselves through the tools they have available. With our older platforms we do provide backups of MSSQL databases as the customers do not have access to produce those. However, customers do have access to their own files and can backup their own files. If customers want us to backup their files for them that is a billable item.

Canceled service without notificationOur monthly payment is debited each month. The credit card attached to the account must have been replaced with a new one. Normally, they notify us if they cannot process payment because of these updates so we can update the card. This time, they did not notify us and just cancelled the account. They deleted our entire website with no way of getting it back. All of the files are gone. We will now have to spend thousands of dollars building a new website because they did not notify us to update the credit card which we would have happily done. This has cost our business a lot of money and caused a lot of confusion amongst our customers and has even cost us new customers. The damage cannot even be measured.Desired SettlementWe require the replacement of our files or adequate funds to rebuild a website from scratch. We estimate this price to be $1500-$2000. Business Response 3essentials values our customers and would never suspend or delete services without first sending notifications. The payment was unsuccessful on March 19, 2016. We sent an email notification to the primary and secondary email addresses that were listed on the account. According to our mail logs, the mail was received. We sent a final notification on March 26, 2016 to the primary and secondary email addresses. According to our mail logs, the mail was received.The customers email service is not hosted with 3essentials, therefore we cannot determine what happened to the email notifications after they were received by the customers email service provider.The customer contacted us via Live Chat on our website and we informed the customer that we did send notifications. The customer stated that they did not receive the notifications. We have recommended that the customer add a Gmail or Yahoo email address to their account in order to receive notifications from us.We have resolved the payment issue with the customer and currently their site is online. 3essentials has multiple methods in which customers may contact us. Email, Live Chat and Phone.Consumer Response The company replaced the files and our website is back up and running. We have always received emails before and we are not missing emails from any other customer or vendor so I'm still not sure why there is such an issue there but I do consider the issue resolved. Final Consumer Response