I'd like to present AMS Computer Services with this virtual ribbon for all the great help they have provided me on behalf of my clients since 1997. I understand it hasn't always been easy for them, because I demand the best possible service from them. No... I mean it! I have been very demanding at times. I have expected them to treat my clients with the top most priority and professionalism and they have continually delivered. This past week... they went well out of their way to over deliver.

The problem started when the client went out of town for business and asked me to keep an eye on his web based mailing list software that was sending out to a few thousand people. Piece of cake! Right? It was just about finished when I had to retire for the evening. Woke up the next day to check the status and found the account had been suspended.

What the heck?!!!

Because of the amount of spam coming into the account, and the amount of messages going out, the technicians at the NOC (datacenter) have instructions to disable an account in emergency situations. This looked like a lot of spam so they shut it down. I contacted the technical support team and made them understand that there had been a mistake. This was a respected business person, not a spammer, and they were welcome to test the signup process to check (if they didn't want to take my word) that it was a double opt-in list, which had been continually growing over the years. They re-installed the site immediatly.

They looked into it a little more and sent me this message:

It seems so much mail is going through this account that it is causing problems on the server. It is actually filling up mail ques and hard drive partitions causing some mail not to be delivered to the server. I assume they have a large mailing list if they have been accumulating addresses since '97 or '98. It is probably time for this account to start consider upgrading to a dedicated server.

They said they would see what kind of deal they could get the client for a dedicated server, which wasn't a bad deal, but there would be other problems moving it. You see the software that most servers use to move sites isn't perfect, and things get broke. On a site this size, having the client pay 3-4 times more for a website, and then having to pay me for maybe days of work to fix the programming, would be unacceptable. I told support, we could consider this offer if they would guarantee that nothing got broken. Well... software to move sites is only so good... so what to do...?

Two days later they sent me another message:

We wanted to let you know that this server is doing much better so the upgrade for this account can most likely be delayed. It may be something that will need to be considered in the future, but for now the mail issues on this server have been resolved.

Administrators have moved a couple of other busy accounts to other servers and put some safeguards in place to limit the amount of spam going through the server. These steps have stabilized the server for now, since the amount of mail going through the server has been reduced significantly, the large amount generated by the clients account is no longer an issue on the server.

This is only one example. There have been other situations where these people, I feel, have risen above the call of duty to help make sure my clients get the best possible service. Their dedication, commitment and hard work has really been a GREAT help to my business, and they always provide the exact same kind of service that I would want to be able to provide if I was running their company.

Kudos goes to AMS Computer Services for continually providing my clients with the type of top quality service that I want them to have.