ON TYPEPAD POSTING PROBLEM

MORE DELL HELL

UPDATE BELOW*

OK, so this may be a bit of a "TypePad Hell" post extending on earlier "Dell Hell" type of posts, like the one yesterday. 

I don't know if other users have experienced this of late, but I'm increasingly having trouble posting to Typepad.  I have a Pro (paying) account, and more often than not, when I hit the "Publish" button, I get a message like this after a minute or two of the "publishing to Typepad" page:

"Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, support@sixapart.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log."

OK, I can understand that...maybe given the explosion in blogs and blogging, the company's servers get over-taxed, especially at peak types.  I mean dial-up online services like AOL had those kinds of issues in the good old, hyper-growth days in the mid-90s (remember the law-suits and state attorney general actions?).

I'm totally willing to cut them some slack, and have to date even though this has been happening on different computers, in different places and at different times for the past few weeks.  I figure, they're just going through a growth phase and they'll fix it soon. 

But this time I actually read the entire error message. 

And what irked me the most was the presumption in the above message that it may have been the user's fault: 

"...and anything you might have done that may have caused the error".

I mean all I did was hit the "Submit" button, for crying out loud.   

Why is the customer guilty before a fair trial with customer service?  Could it not have been a Typepad fault?  And where is this "server error log" they're talking about, and how will it help me figure out and solve the problem?

Where is the respect for the customer here?

Companies have GOT to start paying more attention to this type of things, especially online companies that communicate MOSTLY and ONLY via the online medium to save customer support costs on toll-free phone numbers.

It's called putting your best "customer service" face forward, at EVERY step of the way.

*UPDATE

Sep. 28, 2005, 3:30pm EST:  Having more TypePad service problems.  My latest post got posted five times, as I tried to keep submitting it with no feedback from the server.  That's a first.

Then, it took the better part of half an hour to delete the extra entries.  And there doesn't seem to be any mention of any technical problems on their main site.

Comments

[Warner Crocker]

I've noticed they've been having some trouble lately as well. Don't know if you are aware of their Status Weblog site or not. Here's the url:
http://status.sixapart.com/

It's separate from the main site and seems to post problems shortly after they occur.

[Jay Allen]

Just so you know, that error is actually the default Apache webserver message for an Internal Server error, not something that Six Apart wrote.

[Michael Parekh]

Thanks for pointing that out...am assuming that the Apache stuff being open source is eminently changeable...if so, it may be worth tweaking the words so that the company is putting its best foot forward.