Lunarpages gets personal

Over at Web Hosting talk, someone claiming to be an employee of Lunarpages posted what he/she called the truth (here’s a link):

how bout a little from you Merlain’s Lair?

Merlain’s Lair = Scott Wilson
Merlain’s Lair = Disgruntled X-employee of Lunarpages
Merlain’s Lair = The guy that knew Lunarpages was “testing” the 404 error page and getting ready to make an announcment when his “Cybersex” buddy Tracie got fired from Lunarpages. So he started posting BS regarding LP. (and still does)
Merlain’s Lair = the guy that only posts when he has a chance to talk smack about his x-employer (get a life)

go search his posts. He mix’s very little truth with his spin.

But you know what, no one really cares. ML so go ahead.
I am currently a LP employee, and I was his co-worker. I’m just tired of seeing his crap.

Here’s my spin. I have been with the company (LP)for almost 4 years. They have almost 200k customers and people get fired for not treating customers right or doing their Job in a negligent manner. ….right tracie? They also treat their employee’s right.

The company was started by 2 guys in a room over a garage, and now they have over 100 employee’s……with 4 Data Centers. They ALWAYS attempt to do the right thing, by customer’s and employee’s……..PERIOD

Like with any company of size….some people love them and some don’t. usually spammers and abusive type customers are the ones that don’t like LP from what I have seen…ya, just like merlain’s Lair….how would ANY company like to have an employee with his mentality in the ranks?

Glad your gone Biatch

Screenshot:

And then again after some replies from people chastising him/her for posting anonymous:

I’m posting anon because if i didn’t merlains liar would try to have me fired.

hahah,

He know’s that LP staff are not allowed to play the trolling games that go on here, as a matter of fact a meeting was called today to remind us of that because he did just that, sent an email or called to try to have me fired, nice try.

I am not posting here to represent, or take up for, defend or otherwise promote LP. But as a matter of truth i thought it was relevant to let you know that I DO happen to know what I’m talking about.

As anyone can see reading this….Truth is not much of what these people are about

Any forum will ban a person for abuse…even this one. MLiar was mod at LP forums and he knows what will get you banned there..so him getting banned and then posting screens shots, and then his little posse doing the same, wow…big deal.

How long you think it will take me to get banned from Midphase where you currently mod their forum MLiar? lets see, then i can start taking screen shots and acting like a vindictive self serving puke like yourself? ….And while we are trying to get people fired…I wonder how long they will keep you there once I start taking some screen shots letting them know they type of person they have running their forums.

Moral of this story folks is this: Don’t take everything you see in forums for face value…if someone is too loud on a subject, they usually have a “Motive”.

I have one too…I don’t like MLiar (never did) But at least I’m honest about it.

I won’t be back because I respect my job, but that isn’t to say I won’t be on your *** Mliar

wanna see who can get who fired first? apparantly you do, and make no mistake…this is personal.

Screenshot:

I found the second post odd. To say the least. Holding a meeting just to tell everyone don’t troll? Yet he does anyway? Weird.

As for motive, I have one: The truth. If nothing else, it helps me to come clean for my wrong-doings while employed at Lunarpages.

“sometruth” posted I got fired and who Merlin’sLair really is. MerlinsLair is indeed Scott. I’m not sure he was hiding that fact, but I confirm it’s true. ‘sometruth’ claims I was fired. That is also true. That’s about where the truth in “sometruth’s” post ends.

Scott resigned from Lunarpages several months before my job ended with Lunarpages in June 2007. He, as well as I, had no way of knowing about the 404 pages because we did not work at Lunarpages during that time. The Lunarpages 404 fiasco happened in October 2007. Here’s a post about it on Web Hosting Talk. Note the dates.

The only proof I have of when my job ended is this blog post: Hunting posted on July 11th, 2007, and this letter of recommendation I received on August 2nd 2007 from Lunarpages.

Why did I get fired? Here’s the events that led up to it (prior to these events, I had never received anything but praise and positive feedback for my performance — double check that letter of recommendation if you’re in doubt):

Remember this from my Dreamhost and Lunarpages post?

Maybe sometime I’ll tell you all about the time they orchestrated their biggest reduction in force ever, and left a few of us to play it out alone while they ran off to a vacation in the Grand Canyon on the week the RIF took place.

I got fired by Amy a week after this took place. Here is the semi-short story version:

Chad, the operations manager asked me to trim people from my team. “Trim the fat” is the term that was used. This came on the heels of them removing the toll free number from their website and raising prices on domain registrations.

He asked me to do a mini-review of each member of my team and let him know which few I’d recommend firing. I gave him two names of people that weren’t working out. He took my mini review list into a meeting, then came to me late (quitting time) on Friday afternoon and told me on the following Monday I was to let go seven people from my team. He gave me the list of names, and told me eight more people were being let go from the phone support team. Fifteen people total were going to be let go on Monday. He then told me effective immediately:

• Phone support was no longer going to be offered on the weekends
• Phone support hours during the week were being cut back
• Dedicated chat (a service offered with dedicated hosting) was shutting down for good
• Managed service for dedicated hosting customers was no longer going to be free

He said he expected there would be morale issues and some may even quit once this all took place. I agreed. It was going to be a rough day. He instructed me to tell people this was due to ‘budget cuts’ if anyone asked what was going on. (I ended up saying we were restructuring as I felt ‘budget cuts’ sounded more negative than ‘restructuring’.)

He then informed me he wouldn’t be around on Monday (the day of the firings), Tuesday, or Wednesday as he and his brothers, Clay (the manager of the in-house phone support team), Chase (not sure what he did at Lunarpages) and his father (the owner of Lunarpages) had a pre-planned fishing trip to the Grand Canyon they “just could not cancel”. So I was on my own to fire the seven from my team. After consulting with the human resources manager, I did as I was asked on the day I was asked to do it. It was hard. I had knots in my stomach, but I did it.

That Monday was not a fun day and there was indeed morale issues and people threatening to quit. I tried to voice my concerns to Amy as the day progressed and people kept coming to me in a panic. It didn’t go well. She wouldn’t understand how there could be any sort of morale issues or why people would want to quit. My conversations with her over this continued to deteriorate so I gave up. I couldn’t get through to her. I just wanted to find a way to brighten the spirits of remaining staff who were justifiably worried and scared, especially since Amy sent out questionnaires to all of them asking them to justify their jobs and document everything they do. (This didn’t help the morale issue at all… but she wouldn’t see that).

My mistake in this was contacting her via IM chats. I should have called her. I came across stronger than I meant to and I take full responsibility for that. I followed it up the next day with a phone call and apologized if I came across strong. I explained my intentions and re-voiced my concerns. She seemed open and receptive to the phone call.

To back up a bit: I had worked for Lunarpages for 3.5 years. I had taken only one 8 day vacation in that entire time. This does not count a few days off I took when my mother was in a horrible car accident that resulted in her having a broken back. I took very little time off for this as I was able to work from my mother’s hospital room using the hospital’s WIFI connection and my laptop. This also doesn’t count the few days off I took when my stepfather passed away.

Backing up a bit further, Christmas 2006 I asked for five days off. It was approved. Then it was taken away at the last minute because they felt it just wasn’t a good time for me to take any time off. I complied. The following April (2007) I asked for five days off at the end of June. This was approved.

Back to the day of the layoffs/firings: it took place one week before my pre-scheduled vacation that I got approved in April. Since the owner, Chad, Clay, and Chase went on vacation DURING the RIF, I didn’t think there would be an issue for me to keep my pre-scheduled vacation the week AFTER the RIF. When Chad got back from his own vacation, he informed me he didn’t think I should keep my vacation. He said it was a bad time.

…

At this point it had been over two years since I had any real time off. I worked hundreds of overtime hours (I was on salary so no overtime pay) for them and had done everything they asked me to, fair, moral, immoral, right, or wrong: EVERYTHING. So it really stung to hear him say these words the DAY he got back from his own vacation.

At this point you can imagine how “impressed” my husband was. He was actually downright livid and it was going to cause some serious issues between us if I canceled our getaway. (We already had a hotel booked..) So I told Chad I was taking the vacation. He asked me to cut it short at least. I said I couldn’t do that. Amy then confronted me about it and was shocked I was taking my full vacation. I explained the situation (Lunarpages canceling my vacation at Christmas, not having a vacation in over two years, that this was pre-planned, etc). They both made it clear they weren’t happy that I was going to keep my vacation.

This made no sense to me at all. Why would it be OK for most of the managers to take a vacation during the RIF but it wasn’t OK for the assistant manager to take a pre-approved vacation after? By then things had already settled down some. I could see it if this was a case of “everyone cancels their vacation” but it only looked bad for me to take one, apparently. I should have listened to my husband. I was being used and abused.

I went on my vacation as planned. I needed it, and I deserved it. So did my husband. Amy and Chad called me on my cell phone in the middle of the vacation (we were still in our hotel room) and fired me for not being a team player and for being resistant to change.

So, am I disgruntled? Not now. I was. Oh I was very disgruntled. I was devastated when this happened. I loved my job and the people I worked with. It ruined our vacation as I was a wreck for the rest of it. It took me about a month to get over the sting of it all. Then I enjoyed the rest of my summer with my children and family.

Now, I have a wonderful job with awesome people. It was a blessing in disguise for Lunarpages to let me go. I am a much happier and healthier person now. Working there gave me a lot of experience and I learned a lot. I formed friendships with several of my co-workers that are still intact today and for that I’m grateful. So it wasn’t ALL bad.

[tags]lunarpages,lunarpages sucks,lunarpages get personal,dreamhost billing fiasco,lunarpages 404[/tags]