Remind everyone that they have to manually clear their comptuers cache.

Please let me know if it continues to be fine, or not.

I hope you don’t have to “refresh” again, and that new posts will load smoothly now without it.

What I’ve been hearing from people is that on their first visit since last night’s repair job, the old posts are still “sticky” and the new don’t appear until they refresh. But then, after that first “refresh,” everything seems okay.

It may be that for some reason the repair doesn’t work till the first “refresh,” but after that things work as they should.

Please let me know whether it works properly for you from now on.

I’d switch hosts, but I doubt others are better at a similar price. I don’t want to pay enormous amounts for hosting, so right now I’m going to stick with this.

I suspect this kind of uneven service and poor attitude are common, so there’s a good chance you’d see the same kind of thing with a different host — even if you paid a lot more.

Cornflour:

I knew I was right that the problem had something to do with computers and software and the internet.

Excellent long-distance diagnosis! I should have listened to you all along. 🙂

Nope, nothing like an apology.

Of course, each time I called, I spoke to a different person. Each person says his (in this case, all were male) name, but it’s not like you can request the same person next time. Plus, except for the last one, there was no one I’d want to request. And all of them had American accents, so this has nothing to do with outsourcing.

I’d switch hosts, but I doubt others are better at a similar price. I don’t want to pay enormous amounts for hosting, so right now I’m going to stick with this.

Everything seems OK for me, now.

The host support people kept denying they had anything to do with it …

Right. The first response is always deny, deny, deny.

… and the first couple of people I spoke to (after the usual looong wait times) not only denied it was their fault but just shrugged it off and said I should put up a note on the blog that everyone who reads it should use a certain browser…

This is absurd. Everyone should buy a Mac and only use the OmniWeb browser, right?

Unfortunately, this kind of attitude is not uncommon in software/services, but IMHO is totally unacceptable. If possible, I’d recommend speaking to someone higher up in the company, someone who actually cares about the company’s reputation for customer service and long-term business prospects. I’ve sometimes gotten good results just by asking to speak to the supervisor of the first-level people I’ve dealt with. Or ask to speak to the supervisor’s supervisor.

… they finally found a weird piece of code they had inadvertently and mistakenly inserted that was causing cached versions of my blog to “stick.”

OMG! Turns out it was their fault after all. What a surprise! And they only discovered it because you kept pushing them to investigate instead of sitting on their butts.

Just a wild guess here: they never offered anything vaguely resembling an apology…

Glad to hear it. Let me know if the problem recurs.