I am having a “do over,” “mulligan,” “new start,” or whatever you want to call it for 2020! I know that I posted earlier in my blog all my aspirations for this New Year but if you haven’t noticed already, that post is gone.

It is a long story but to give you the “Cliff version,” I was having many technical issues with my blog most of last year. (One of the reasons I am so far behind on posting about the Southeast Asia trip we took over a year ago.). In October, I finally got totally fed up and googled “wordpress phone support” where I found an 800 number and called. I spoke with Casper who looked at my webpage and said that I had the wrong domain for my blog. He explained that I needed .org and not .com and for $300 he could transfer my blog over.

I was a tad upset as I had just upgraded my blog for $200 earlier in 2019. I even asked to speak with his supervisor Alex who said that he was sorry but couldn’t apply the $200 I had already spent. I just hung up and weighed my options. A couple days later, I called back and said to go ahead and paid the $300. A week later, Casper notified me that my site was already to go, gave me the new sign-on. I briefly looked it over…it was a new format and I was in the middle of getting ready to fly to Maine to visit my family.

While in Maine, I was super busy, had limited access to the internet and getting on my blog was at the bottom of my “to do” list. Around November, I signed onto my blog. It was extremely slow loading, many of the pictures didn’t download, and in the post was a strange “A” symbol at the beginning of each sentence. I notified Casper by email but of course, I didn’t hear back from him.

Last week, I called WordPress again and Casper answered the phone! I explained that I was still having issues with my blog. He looked on two computers that he had access to and said that he didn’t see any problems. He suggested that I needed to “refresh” my Safari search engine. I called Apple tech support to find out how to do that and they suggested that I just needed to upgrade my computer to the current version. That would take out any bugs or kinks. I did and again, logged onto my blog…same issues.

This week, I called WordPress again and Roy answered. I asked to speak to Casper because I didn’t want to have to give Roy the long history but he said that Casper wasn’t available. I gave Roy the whole history and said that I was upset because I had been charged $300 and my blog was horrible. Roy said that he was sorry for all of my issues that actually both Casper and Alex had been fired for incompetence. Talk about a sick feeling! He further explained that Casper didn’t do anything to my webpage because it was .com and they only work in .org. He assured me time and again that Casper didn’t do anything. I kept asking him why I had the “A” symbols and he said that he didn’t know. I asked about my $300 and he said it was credited back….I went and checked my credit card and I had never been charged…good news!

Roy later offered to transfer my blog to .org for $850. I just said no and got off the phone with him….extremely, extremely upset. I have been keeping this blog since 2007. When I logged onto the “.com” domain, 7 years of my blog was missing. I thought for certain, I had lost years of post about all the wonderful places and memories that we had experienced and enjoyed.

Somehow, I discovered that WordPress.com does not give phone support. They will only “chat” with you on the computer. I logged on and explained it all to them. They went into my site and discovered that yes, my blog was a wordpress.com address but it was not in their domain but a 1&1 domain and they couldn’t help me because it wasn’t their domain. I have to say, that I am totally technically challenged and sort of grasped what they were explaining. My spirits were sinking lower and lower by the minute.

I persisted, continued to ask questions and 3 hours later, with the help of the “Happiness Manager” (they don’t give their name at WordPress.com), I have my blog back.

I am sharing all of this with you because I hope to save another person from the grief and stress that I went through.

Here is what you need to know:

1. If you have your blog with WordPress.com, they do not have phone support. You need to log onto their home page