Friday, May 15, 2009

Net Identity = Hover = Still Sucks

I realized I had never gotten any sort of renewal message for my Net Idenity email address and website: www.joseph.hewitt.org. The site used to be my resume site, but now it just points back to this blog. It is still there however.

That is probably because I don't check the email address associated with that account very often and in the past, very distant past as in back when they didn't SUCK!!!, they used to email account reminders and such to my alternate email address as well. I went to check my hewitt.org email and found out that Net Identity has changed names, sold themselves, or something yet again. They are now Hover. I am beginning to suspect that all this trading, selling, renaming is their attempt to re-brand themselves to avoid the negative reputation. Remind anyone of AIG? Who, by the way, now appear to be about rebrand themselves again because AIU is too close to AIG.

I can't log onto Hover. It redirects me to Hover when I try to go to the old Net Identity URL. It welcomes me, tells me they are now Hover, bla bla bla and then tells me to sign in for the first time using my Net Identity email address and password. I enter my hewitt.org email address and password and I get an error. I can't use their "remind me of my password" function either. It says that both my hewitt.org and Yahoo email addresses aren't in their database. Probably explains why I can't sign on using the hewitt.org one.

I can't even submit a help request; because, because in order to do that you have to sign in. Catch 22.

You can follow my saga of all the problems I have had with Net Identity, their deletion of all my website files, never telling me that they sold the hosting stuff off to another company, then attempting to charge me going over my allotted storage space because they left the archive file of my website there when they restored the files from a backup, their inability to answer even one of the customer service emails I sent them, etc. To be fair Ross Radar did attempt to help me, and as a result I did get one email from customer service, but never got a response back from said customer service guy.

I had planned to ditch the hewitt.org website, because I obviously don't use it anymore. I did, however, want to keep the hewitt.org email address, but I guess they don't want me as a customer.

So in conclusion it appears to be more of the same and in my opinion Hover.com sucks and you should do yourself a favor and avoid them at all cost. I'll repeat that a few times to help webcrawlers find it. Hover sucks. Hover.com sucks. sucks sucks hover.com sucks.

9 comments:

Ross Rader said...

Hey Joseph -

Sorry to hear about your problems logging in. If you ever find yourself in this position, you can always email "help@hover.com" to get in touch with one of our Customer Service Advisors.

NetIdentity Hosting is a completely different company. Sorry if they are causing you problems. One of the reasons we shut down the NetIdentity service was that because we were trying to do too many things and not doing enough of them well. We aren't trying to hide by moving everyone to Hover, just trying to provide a better service to more of our customers (in addition to NetIdentity, we also ran Domain Direct and ItsYourDomain. These are all now moved to Hover).

With the move to Hover, we've introduced a lot of new features - for instance, now you can manage the DNS for your joseph.hewitt. org address and point it anywhere you wish, at no extra charge on top of your email service.

I've added a year to your account at no charge - it sounds like you've had a whale of a time migrating over to Hover. I've also asked my customer service manager to have someone get in touch to get you back in control over your account. From the sounds of it, we might have old or inaccurate information on file for you - otherwise, you'd be getting regular notices about upgrades, migrations, renewals, etc. from us.

Anyways, we can definitely get you back on track. Sorry for the hassle!

Joseph B. Hewitt IV said...

Well you have to admit Mr. Radar earns his pay. Customer service guy who seeks out the customers.

Anyway, I really only wanted to keep the email address since it looks more official.

But, unless he tries to contact me through my yahoo email address I won't get the message. I can't log into Hover to check my mail and since I can't log in I can't access customer support.

Joseph B. Hewitt IV said...

Still can't log into Net Identity, still can't contact anybody, still haven't had anybody contact me.

Jorvic Karbill said...

Yup... after 10 or 12 years with (whoever they are) I'm done with it. The Hover site is absolutely childs play. I did update my account today and pay for another year... only to find out that now I cant use POP3 anymore.

I seem to recall a reassuring email about this netidentiy > hover change that said I only needed to take immediate action if I logged on to webmail.

Perhaps it's just me, but I just went ahead and purchased a similar-yet-just-as-easy domain and pointed it to a new Google Apps account. I'm done with this fiasco. I remeber back in 97 when I set up this account that it was different. I wish it was still different, but either way, Im not playing corporate games after this long of membership.

Clint said...

For the record I have also been a customer of the original Mailbank service, then netidentity, then twocown then Hover. I too have been given the runaround by the poor customer service folks there at Hover. I do not want to bore you with another story but mine is very similar to yours. I have sent an e-mail as one last ditch effort to see if they will stop treating me like crap. I am currently awaiting a response.

Joseph B. Hewitt IV said...

Thing is, it was kind of too late for me regardless. I resigned from my position at Interzone and have put my resume back out on the market. I can't trust my email address with them. I had to put my yahoo email address on my resumes.

Anonymous said...

Manage DNS not working on Hover.com !!!

Better to stay away from hover.com !

Unknown said...

"It better represents you. It's easier to communicate. You never need to change it. Plus, you can use it with whatever email program you prefer. We can help."

What a bold, misleading and inaccurate statement found on hover web site.

I have used an email account for me and my family for nearly 15 years. Out of nowhere email telling me no longer available and in 9 weeks you will not be able to use the domain. Tough 5hit basically. Read our t&cs . You have no rights we can terminate the contract when we want nothing you can do about it.

Each subsequent provider Mailbank, Netidentity, Tucows and now Hover have been less and less competent but I still renew every year.

Today I receive an email telling me I have 63 days to leave as my email addresses are going to be cancelled. A joke I thought or maybe a fishing email scam trying to get me to reveal personal details. Are you having a ¿@#%ing laugh? What is occurring here? Hace you sold off the domain to a large company?
After the unacceptably short notice period given to migrate and multiply and having been treated this way would you really expect me to transfer to another name only for the same to happen again?
Am happy now as have got own address and am in control of domain not just renting it. Also cheaper as I get 5 emails for the same price as 2 from another website hosting company.
Avoid hover / Tucows see other reviews for reasons and ignore the positive review written by the company themselves.

Anonymous said...

it's now the year 2021 and I am in the middle of a hover.com sucks fiasco. It turns out that all of my domain names were transfered to hover without my consent, and all my info is messed up and the dns info is wrong and most of my customers sites are down. What an absolutely horrible company, all the same issues as others and worse.