Unfortunately, the reality is somewhat less impressive. The evening services in particular are frequently so crowded that there isn’t even standing space for all the people who want to get on, and if I had been given a pound for every time I was wedged into the vestibule area unable to move and with a businessman’s armpit in my face – well, I wouldn’t quite have enough cash to give up work yet, but I would certainly be able to order Tim’s Christmas present

It was influenced by these experiences that I wrote the following complaint to Cross Country trains a couple of weeks ago.

Dear Cross Country,

I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the inadequate service provided by your company between the towns of Birmingham and Leicester.

I commute on this route every day, normally catching the 17.52 from Birmingham New Street.

Whilst I recognise that this is a peak time commuter train and that it is therefore likely that I will have to stand, there were two occasions last week when the standing conditions were utterly unacceptable due to the volume of people and luggage that had been allowed onto the train.

For a long time I have failed to understand why your company persists in running two carriages on this particular service, when you must be quite clearly aware that it is a route which would benefit from three carriages during the rush hour. Indeed, I find it quite laughable that the driver is forced to apologise every day for the “cramped conditions” given that I have never known the conditions to be any different. It is equally ridiculous when passengers are required to get off the service at Water Orton or Coleshill Parkway in order to allow other people to leave the train.

I am convinced that there must be a legal limit of passengers per carriage above which it is not safe for your train to operate and I am equally convinced that the 17.52 train regularly exceeds this limit. There was one occasion last week where a member of rail staff at Birmingham was standing in front of the doors to my carriage, trying to prevent additional passengers from boarding for their own safety. Despite his best efforts, in the seconds before boarding another few people managed to push their way one, including a gentleman carrying bulky musical instruments. This was clearly extremely inappropriate in the circumstances.

I would suggest that Cross Country consider implementing a system to better control and manage the number of passengers who board each service. Perhaps restrictions should be introduced on travelling with bicycles/push chairs/excessive baggage at peak times. Perhaps there should be staff at platform entrances to count the number of people onto each service. Perhaps only passengers with specific tickets should be able to board specific services. Perhaps you should stop calling at Water Orton – it is somewhat unfair, after all, if people who live in Water Orton (to which there is a perfectly good bus service from Birmingham) fill up the train so that those travelling to Leicester (who have no bus option available) are not able to board. Or perhaps you should launch a fundraising campaign so that we can all contribute towards the third carriage which you evidently cannot currently afford.

Given my extreme lack of success when complaining to Cross Country about rail replacement buses a few years ago, I was rather astonished to actually receive the following reply:

Thank you for getting in touch. We received your email on 11 October 2010.

I am sorry that you find the 17:52 service between Birmingham New Street and Leicester is regularly overcrowded. As we operate a ‘walk on service’ any passenger can board a train at any time. However, I can assure you that our staff will regularly assess how many passengers are on-board throughout the journey and stop more passengers boarding as appropriate. Many passengers would prefer to stand rather than being made to wait for the next available service and we have to cater for those too. This is why we will sometimes allow passengers to continue to board.

However, I can appreciate that is must be frustrating as the 17:52 service appears to be extremely busy on a regular basis. We are limited somewhat by the amount of trains we have available and all of our trains are currently in service so we don’t have any spare trains to be able to currently make this a three coach service. If we were to take a train from somewhere else on the network then this would most likely result in an overcrowded service elsewhere.

I’m afraid withdrawing stops from some of our services is not an option either. Selected service between Birmingham and Leicester currently stop at Water Orton which has been agreed with the Department for Transport. This service level forms part of our franchise agreement so it’s not possible to make any less stops at Water Orton.

But, we do look closely at the likely numbers of passengers on each train as part of our timetable review. And if we have the opportunity to incorporate a longer train on this service then we will make those changes. I will certainly make sure that the information you provided forms part of this review.

Thank you once again for taking the time to get in touch.

I thought that was actually rather a good response, particularly given that my complaint was a little on the rude side, so I was going to left them off the hook. Unfortunately, to add insult to injury, the very next morning my train to Birmingham was delayed. That was enough to push me over the edge and into writing another complaint.

Thank you for your response to my complaint.

I appreciate that many people would prefer to stand rather than wait for the next service. However, there is a limit to the number of passengers who can comfortably and safely stand in any given train carriage and this limit is regularly exceeded on your Birmingham – Leicester services.

Just this morning I was on the (delayed) 07.50 service from Nuneaton – Birmingham, on which the standing passengers were already jam-packed prior to arrival at Coleshill Parkway. The driver asked us all to “move down the train” to allow passengers to board at Coleshill, and most people were good-humoured enough to squeeze even tighter together as requested. However, when the train then stopped at Water Orton and the driver requested that we “move down” again, the atmosphere in my carriage was close to mutiny, even from the seated passengers. There was quite clearly nothing that anyone could do to create more space, short of sitting on somebody else’s lap. The driver nevertheless refused to move from Water Orton on the grounds that there were “another ten passengers waiting to board the train”.

These conditions were not just extremely unpleasant, but clearly unsafe. What chance would any of us have stood in a crash? What would have happened if a child or elderly person were taken ill, or if a member of the public suffered a panic attack from claustrophobia? Suppose a passenger had become violent or abusive? There was absolutely no way a member of your staff could have walked down the carriages to assist with any type of emergency. The train fare on this route is not insignificant and whilst I’m sure the majority of people are realistic enough not to expect that they will always have access to a seat, I think they nevertheless expect to feel safe. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that many transported cattle have better conditions and more space than on some of Cross Country’s commuter routes.

With respect to the 17.52 service in particular, I noted last night that you have a Nottingham service leaving Birmingham New Street at approximately the same time. This appears to have three carriages, in which there were multiple seats vacant as it pulled out of the station last night. Perhaps your strategists could figure out a way to alternate the third carriage with the Leicester service so that regular passengers on each route had a spread of crowded and not so crowded days in the week.

I appreciate that running a successful train service must not be easy, but I have not experienced such problems on any other train operator I regularly travel with. Virgin are very successful at controlling passenger numbers on their Euston – Birmingham services to ensure overcrowding is not severe, and London Midland seem to have an abundance of empty carriages on all of their local routes. Perhaps they would lend you one if you asked nicely!

.

I must confess that I didn’t expect a response to that one at all, but a response I nevertheless received!

Dear Miss Hunter

Thank you for getting back in touch. We received your email on 13 October 2010.

I can fully understand your concerns about the amount of people travelling on some of our trains. Although there is no legal limit on how many people can board a train, the staff on board will regularly look at how many are boarding and alighting from the train. If they believe health and safety is at risk then they can stop people boarding and also advise station staff (if available) to tell people to catch alternative services. Although some trains can get very busy, your safety would never be put at risk. Manufacturers carry out numerous tests and have to prove that their trains are safe even when they accommodate a large number of standing passengers. Although the Senior Conductor may not be able to get through a busy train, they are trained to deal with any issues regardless of how many people are on board.

Some of our services on this route do get extremely busy and it’s fair to say that we’re aware of the problems this can cause. We have a number of two and three carriage trains which operate on this route and we try to take into account the many demands on our fleet throughout the day and this includes looking at the work schedules of each of our trains. Some trains meet peak demands in both the morning and evening rush hours, while other result in a train running during a period of high morning peak demand but by the time the evening peak comes, it is somewhere completely irrelevant to meeting evening peak demand (and vice versa).

We mainly put a two coach Turbostar train on a service that will have to stop at a short platform (like Whittlesea and Manea) at some point during the day due to its work schedule. As we haven’t got selective door operation fitted to all our fleet, we can’t provide three coach trains on these services. Due to health and safety, we can’t have doors opening on to the side of the track where there is no platform. As well as this, we also have to plan where a train will end the day and how it will be used the following day to meet both demand and restrictions such as stopping at short platforms.

I realise that it must have been frustrating to see a relatively empty three carriage service going to Nottingham – but although this service was quiet on departure from Birmingham New Street, the allocation of a three carriage train will have been done after taking into account passenger numbers late on in this journey and also to meet demand on the other trips that the train will take throughout the day.

However, we are currently carrying out a review of where all our trains are utilised and where it’s possible to provide longer trains where they’re needed then we will do so. In addition to this, each train in turn is returning to the depot for engineering work to install selective door operation fitted which should be completed in the next few months. This will give us a greater freedom of where we can use both our two and three coach trains and will overcome the problem of having to accommodate for stops at shorter platforms.

Thank you once again for taking the time to get in touch.

This employee has obviously been on a training course about how to respond to customer complaints I eventually decided that that was as far as I ought to take the correspondence. I did, however, briefly consider complaining again under a different name. If every single person who catches that train was prepared to make a complaint about it then they might actually be forced to do something. Unfortunately, I suspect most people will do nothing more than grumble quietly to themselves

If something is too good to be true … it probably is.

It’s not merely that I created this site for Clare; I had to find somewhere for it to live too.

Not being particularly well versed in hosting I had recourse to my friend, your friend, all of our friends:

Before too long I’d stumbled across a company called 3iX. I couldn’t resist it; how could anyone? It offered us 20GB of storage, unlimited bandwidth, and the ability to host three sites there for the piddling sum of £1.77 per month. “Where’s the catch?”

We found out in early February that Clare’s work PC had contracted a virus from my site. Well colour me shocked! A Google search of the virus name showed that several other sites had caught the same bug … and all were hosted on 3iX.

I got in touch with their live support to discuss the issue. Rather than do anything about it, the jabroni on the end refused to help unless I had a ticket … not that the hard-of-thinking klutz would tell me what that meant or whence I might obtain one.

I eventually found out what to do and submitted the complaint. Later that day I received the following message from them:

Hello,

We have removed unwanted code from your index pages and now your site is working fine. Please check it and confirm.

Please feel free to contact us back in case of any other information.

Regards,

Simon
Host-Care Support Team.

That was jolly nice of them, especially their kind offer of inviting me to contact them. Not being terribly impressed that my supposedly secure account had had malicious code inserted I took them up on that offer. In particular, I asked them what they might do to ensure that this didn’t happen again.

I received an answer the next day. Apparently the secret to not having my account hacked by someone who breaks into their main server and thus gains access to sites hosted on it is to … change my password. Change my password. The sender of the e-mail was nice enough to paste a patronising mail about how to choose a strong password. Heaven forfend my brain be so shrivelled that I not know that opensesame is not as good as xp0Fr~~hT¬¦.

The brain train left the station without that particular employee, I fear.

Not long after my AVG pops up whilst I’m looking at Clare’s site.

In spite of the fact that I had changed the password, Clare’s site had now been infected.

I went into the files and deleted the malicious code and changed passwords again. Two hours later the index files once more featured the bad code.

Pissed off, I responded to the person who sent me the mail about how I needed to change my password to prevent this from happening again.

Thanks, but if I’d wanted a patronising note on how to choose a password, that’s what I’d have requested.

What I asked you was:

WHAT ACTIONS ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE TO ENSURE THAT THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN AGAIN? Don’t you dare attribute the blame to me for the fact that someone somewhere has got their hands on 3iX passwords. (Mine wasn’t the only site housed on 3iX that reported this on that day.)

If you are unable to answer the question yourself THEN DON’T FOB ME OFF WITH STUPID TALK ABOUT HOW TO CHOOSE A PASSWORD; put me in touch with someone who can answer my question instead.

My second question was to ask why I can’t have secure FTP. How do you, in 2008, justify the use of regular FTP?

Third point, and very important: My girlfriend’s site is on the same server, and now hers has become infected too. My site is also now infected with the same code again on the index.php file. This is true even though I changed the password.

Tell me how you propose to deal with this issue before I cease custom with you, get hosted elsewhere, and write a series of posts explaining to readers why I moved.

I expect relevant answers, so think before you respond. You are *this* close to losing a customer.

I never got a response.

A few hours later the virus had returned. I fired off another mail to 3iX:

I’ve already discussed this with you once. The former ticket was PKF-173548.

My site has been hacked and a malicious line of code placed on the index page. No-one else knows my password. If you look at my previous ticket, you’ll see that I researched the name of the virus and found a help thread in the WordPress forums where people said it was a 3ix issue.

The code is back, even though I have changed the password. It seems that there must be something extra that rewrites the bad code after I delete it.

So: I want this problem fixed. I also want answers about how and why this is happening. I want to know why I cannot have secure ftp.

Fix this issue. After that, fix the same thing on my other site http://meddysong.com/ which is hosted on the same server.

I am very, very unhappy about this. The frontpage of your website reads “satisfaction guaranteed”. I am far from satisfied so far. I expect this issue resolved with an explanation about why my password (and others on 3ix) fell into the hands of these hackers.

I expect an answer to all of my questions. If you can’t provide one, put me in touch with someone who can.

I actually received an answer to this one:

Hello,

We have removed unwanted code from your index pages and now your site is working fine. Please check it and confirm.

Please feel free to contact us back in case of any other information.

Regards,

Simon
Host-Care Support Team.

Anything about that seem familiar? Scroll above; it’s the exact same response that I received the first time. That’s right; 3iX either

1. sends you an incorrect response blaming you for their server getting hacked, since you’re obviously too stupid to think of a strong password, even this has no bearing on the fact that they were hacked, not you
2. ignores you altogether
3. pastes a default response because they have so much disdain for their customers that they can’t be bothered to answer questions that are put to them.

Not far off needing a megadosage of tablets to lower my blood pressure I replied:

Did you even pay the slightest attention to what I wrote? I am quite capable of removing the unwanted code myself, thanks. I want to know why I can’t have secure ftp and to whom I can complain, seeing as it’s *your* fault not mine that my site was hacked.

I suppose that you’ll ignore this message too like you’ve done my previous ones, you fucking retards.

With that, I went off to their live support:

Chat24x7: Welcome to 3iX live chat, my name is Susan, please hold for a moment, I am reviewing your question.

Chat24x7: may i know what is the issue ?

Tim Owen: Certainly.

Tim Owen: My sites (I have two on the same server)

Tim Owen: were hacked.

Tim Owen: It was the case that several 3ix passwords

Tim Owen: were obtained by a Serbian IP.

Tim Owen: The support people have removed the code

Tim Owen: but it keeps coming back, even though I’ve changed the password.

Tim Owen: So I am very, very angry.

Tim Owen: I want to know why I can’t have secure ftp

Tim Owen: and what you intend to do about this.

Tim Owen: Every time I’ve mentioned it to the support team

Tim Owen: they either ignore it

Tim Owen: of paste me a patronising mail

Tim Owen: about how to choose a good password,

Tim Owen: conveniently ignoring that it doesn’t matter how good the password is

Tim Owen: if some Serbian IP can actually see them.

Tim Owen: So, I want an apology, I want secure ftp

Tim Owen: and if I can’t have them, then I want a refund and to terminate my contract.

What is the response to this, you ask. Not what one would have expected:

Chat24x7: Network speed and technology

Chat24x7: http://www.3ix.org/data_center.php

Fortunately the respondent recovered:

Chat24x7: What is your domain/site name?

Tim Owen: http://radioclare.com

Chat24x7: Please hold for a moment

Tim Owen: and http://meddysong.com

Chat24x7: we provide secure ftp only with expert and extreme hosting packages

Chat24x7: and you are hosted with Extra hosting package

Tim Owen: oh … so you want more money to give me a service where I’m protected from hackers?

Tim Owen: You know how it says “satisfaction guaranteed” on your front page?

Tim Owen: That’s not exactly accurate.

Tim Owen: I’d suggest putting “if you take us up on our cheaper packages, we’ll allow your password to fall into the hands of hackers, and we won’t apologise or offer you standard protection like secure ftp”. That would be far more accurate.

Tim Owen: So, seeing as I can’t get an apology or protection, how about you give me a refund

Tim Owen: so that I can go to a service that actually cares about the security of their customers?

Chat24x7: To cancel your account please send an email to billing@3ix.org with the subject ‘MONEY BACK GUARANTEE – domain.com’ (specify your site name), use your registered email address to send the request and advise your cpanel username and password as verification. The cancellation and refund will be made within 48 hours.

Tim Owen: And that will be authorised?

Tim Owen: It’s just that your support people have done a wonderful job of avoiding issues like this, so I’m understandably dubious.
Chat24x7: if it is under 30 days money back guarantee than it will be authorised

Tim Owen: It’s not under 30 days

Tim Owen: Sorry, I don’t get hacked to order

Tim Owen: Maybe you’d be nice enough to let hackers see people’s passwords within the 30 days next time then.

Chat24x7: then you cannot get a refund

Tim Owen: Right

Tim Owen: So, about this “satisfaction guaranteed” thing: Can we at least both agree that that is a lie?

Chat24x7: if you want we can reset your account

Chat24x7: you can upload your data and change the password

Tim Owen: But what good is that if my account can be hacked?!

Chat24x7: if you keep changing your password frequently then this can be avoided

Tim Owen: You’re completely skirting around the issue! If things were secure

Tim Owen: I wouldn’t have to change my password at all!

Tim Owen: You people are ridiculous at putting the blame for your security lapses on to the shoulders of your customers.

Tim Owen: It’s nothing to do with me

Tim Owen: that some Serbian IP could see 3ix passwords!

Tim Owen: The responsibility for security lies at YOUR feet in this case, not mine.

I pause for five quiet minutes.

Tim Owen: So … You’ve gone quite

Tim Owen: What do I get? Refund or secure ftp?

Tim Owen: I’ve ruled out the potential of an apology; you staff seem particularly averse to acknowledging that it’s not my fault that you provide an unsecure service

Tim Owen: and will only give me something that can’t be hacked if I pay you some more money.

Tim Owen: I’m unsure whether one would label that ‘ransom’ or ‘blackmail’, but it’s not a good thing, that’s for sure.

Chat24x7: wait am enabling ssh for secure ftp connection

Chat24x7: you can now ssh with hostname as your domain name , port 3131 and cpanel username and password

Tim Owen: Thank you.

Chat24x7: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Tim Owen: No, everything is fine.

Tim Owen: Thanks you, you’ve been much more help than the people

Tim Owen: at the support group.

Unfortunately Secure FTP didn’t help, since the hackers had left in a backdoor or script to replicate the malicious code in the event that I deleted it.

In the meantime they mustn’t have appreciated my earlier line of “I suppose that you’ll ignore this message too like you’ve done my previous ones, you fucking retards”, since they sent me the following e-mail: (Right-click > View Image to see full-scale image.)

And not a few minutes later I receive their answer:

Yes … the same generic answer as every other fucking time!

That was it. I set about finding another host. In my rush I transferred the domain radioclare.com to other nameservers without first downloading the content that was on 3iX. Because of this, I couldn’t log back in to their hosting area. Feel my pain as I endured a conversation with 3iX’s support over 30 miserable minutes that brought a new low to the definition ‘customer disservice’:

Live-Chat: Welcome to 3iX live chat, my name is Mike, please hold for a moment, I am reviewing your question.

Live-Chat: Before the DNS has propagated you can view your site using http://serverip/~username and for cPanel you can use http://serverIP:2082

Tim Owen: It’s not allowing me to log in.

Tim Owen: My name and password were stored automatically as a cookie, so I know it’s not a mistake with the typing.

Tim Owen: So … any chance of an a response here? I need access to my hosting area. i awesome that the DNS hasn’t propogated so quickly. And if it has, could I not have direct access to my hosting area?

Tim Owen: *i assume

Tim Owen: hello?

Tim Owen: any chance of some acknowledgment?

Tim Owen: OK, you’re not paying any attentiont

Tim Owen: i’ll get the site redirected to 3iX again and

Tim Owen: retrieve the database that I need.

Tim Owen: Thanks for being so kind as to ignore me for the last 20 minutes …

Tim Owen: This is the point where you could offer me the nameservers that I’ll need to redirect to …

Tim Owen: Jesus. Is there *any* chance of acknowledgment at all?

Tim Owen: Look! Just tell me what your nameservers are, so that I can get redirected back to this site.

Tim Owen: Hold the front page: “3iX in awful service shock!”

Tim Owen: Right, I’m out of here.

Tim Owen: Thanks for nothing. Fingers crossed you’ll get fired

And that was that. Stick a fork in them, 3iX are done.

Clare and I are now hosted on A Small Orange. So far everything is perfect.

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. Your reward is a free piece of advice: Don’t Use 3iX: They’re Fucking Shit.