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Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

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Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

#341

Post by philwelch »

Waterluvian wrote: post #309
andrewstuart wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've put this idea forward a number of times here on HN in regards to other big tech companies. Technology companies need an "ombudsman" - a contact that customers can go to when the normal tech support processes have failed. The Ombudsman must not be part of the technology companies ordinary support processes, it must be entirely separate, and have highest level authority to demand action within the company. To avoi…

Steve@apple.com worked amazingly for me back when I bought apple products. Both times I literally get a phone call from someone who has already talked to my local store and has his proposed solution set up for me. But that was like 10 years ago. Not sure if it's still good.

This is also the primary original source of Jeff Bezos’ legendary “question mark” emails.

Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

#342

Post by MrStonedOne »

Edit: the dns record export/import functionality is hidden behind the advance search drop down for some reason. Ignore this entire comment.

From reading the linked helpdoc, apparently your entire domain can get removed from cloudflare if your register stops reporting cloudflare's servers for the ns records.

The mere idea of having to re-enter all hundred or so of our dns records using cloudflares 1.2 second delay at every step of the way add dns record interface because namecheap bugged out for a few seconds is horrifying.

There is no way to export all of these, there is no way to import or mass add and i don't think they can lean on the api to save them here.

Dns records are data, dns records are sometimes important unbacked up customer data. Cloudflare does not offer a way for customers to back this data up, nor a way to restore or recover from a backup but it acts very callous with this data, deleting it in automated systems based on data from 3rd party providers.

Not a good look.

Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

#343

Post by chillfox »

andrewstuart wrote: post #125
jgrahamc wrote: post #83

This is being looked into internally and I am involved. Likely won’t post an update here as it pertains to a customer account (unless customer agrees). BTW If you, dear reader, ever find yourself so frustrated with Cloudflare that you feel like your only recourse is a blog post... my email is jgc@cloudflare.com and I’m happy to hear from people.

I've put this idea forward a number of times here on HN in regards to other big tech companies. Technology companies need an "ombudsman" - a contact that customers can go to when the normal tech support processes have failed. The Ombudsman must not be part of the technology companies ordinary support processes, it must be entirely separate, and have highest level authority to demand action within the company. To avoi…

Here in Australia the ACCC (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission) has suggested tasking the TIO (Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman) with digital platforms.

Basically the way the TIO works like this: 1. The customer must first go through normal support until they get stuck. 2. The TIO sends the Company a nice letter requesting that they get their act together. 3. The Company then has 10 days to fix the issue or the TIO will escalate. 4. Either the problem got solved or the TIO keeps nagging until it is.

Every time the TIO has to mail the company it also charges the company for having to get involved. level 1: $31 level 2: $260 level 3: $475 level 4: $2250

If an issue gets to the end then the TIO can direct companies to implement solutions costing up to $50,000.

This process heavily incentivises companies to actually provide functional support. I don't think your idea of charging the customer $20 to get help with support would achieve anything.

Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

#344

Post by leonardteo »

andrewstuart wrote: post #125
jgrahamc wrote: post #83

This is being looked into internally and I am involved. Likely won’t post an update here as it pertains to a customer account (unless customer agrees). BTW If you, dear reader, ever find yourself so frustrated with Cloudflare that you feel like your only recourse is a blog post... my email is jgc@cloudflare.com and I’m happy to hear from people.

I've put this idea forward a number of times here on HN in regards to other big tech companies. Technology companies need an "ombudsman" - a contact that customers can go to when the normal tech support processes have failed. The Ombudsman must not be part of the technology companies ordinary support processes, it must be entirely separate, and have highest level authority to demand action within the company. To avoi…

I like the idea of the Ombudsman, but in this case I'm not sure that it's really applicable. I disagree that the "normal tech support processes have failed".

I wanted to point out something that may have been missed by many - which is that the OP in this case is a free user. i.e. he is NOT a "customer". He is a user of free services that Cloudflare is providing. It even says so in his post that he's a free account holder and that he's not entitled to tech support, hence why he kicked up a fuss online. My company is a Cloudflare Enterprise customer - when we write in, we get a response typically within an hour by their swat team.

The idea of an "Ombudsman" in this case wouldn't be an actual ombudsman in the spirit of advocating for the customer, but would be more of a "one time support fee" kind of deal. Which I think is fair, but in this case I'm not even sure the OP would have paid it. The OP had a viable option which would have been to upgrade to a Business account and get priority support.

I run a popular platform with 1.5 million registered users and the vast majority of them are free users. We also have the same problem. Most of our support is just swamped with free users mostly asking questions about how to do things (and it's in the documentation, they just don't read or search for it, it's too simple to just email support or blast away on Twitter and @ mention us). I've even had to withdraw from Twitter and Facebook entirely just because I was everyone's "ombudsman" (even if they weren't paying customers).

Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

#345

Post by fluidcruft »

andrewstuart wrote: post #125
jgrahamc wrote: post #83

This is being looked into internally and I am involved. Likely won’t post an update here as it pertains to a customer account (unless customer agrees). BTW If you, dear reader, ever find yourself so frustrated with Cloudflare that you feel like your only recourse is a blog post... my email is jgc@cloudflare.com and I’m happy to hear from people.

I've put this idea forward a number of times here on HN in regards to other big tech companies. Technology companies need an "ombudsman" - a contact that customers can go to when the normal tech support processes have failed. The Ombudsman must not be part of the technology companies ordinary support processes, it must be entirely separate, and have highest level authority to demand action within the company. To avoi…

> To avoid the Ombudsman being overused, you could give it a price of say $20, which is always refunded when the case is resolved.

So basically you give the ombudsman $20, and they keep the $20 if they fail to resolve the problem?

Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

#346

Post by [deleted] »

Operyl wrote: post #47
throwawaydns101 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't work for Cloudflare but I work for another large company that also manages domain names and DNS records. I don't want to risk the possibility that my comment could be interpreted by my employer as conflict the interest.

Probably should have made a mention to that in the first comment.

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

#347

Post by bithaze »

bigiain wrote: post #331
bithaze wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, the horror of recommending a public forum. (/s, of course.) A fair number of questions aren't unique - product questions, how to use an API, etc. Someone may have asked a similar question, in which case you'll find an answer, find it faster than it'll take to hear back from the support team, and it deflects an unnecessary (already answered) ticket. That should be a win all around. Now if you do have a novel quest…

> Oh, the horror of recommending a public forum. (/s, of course.) He _tried_ to request help in their recommended public forum, but could not due to login issues. Seems entirely reasonable to me to then go and ask about out in a different public forum?

And then/also submitted a support ticket, unless I'm misunderstanding their post?

> I spent some time thinking about if it was fair for me to post this on the same day as I filed a support ticket with Cloudflare.

Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

#348

Post by alwillis »

jlgaddis wrote: post #159
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurricane Electric has a pretty solid free DNS offering. I've been using it for like 10 years. https://dns.he.net/ I haven't needed to talk to them much, but one time I tried to add a .ninja domain, and there backend wouldn't handle it. I emailed them to report the problem at 4:49 p.m. I got an email at 7:09 p.m. the same day (2 hours 20 minutes later later) asking me to try adding it again. [1] When a free service f…

Also, HE DNS will "secondary" from your own server. For example, you can run your own DNS server on a VPS or something, and HE will AXFR the zones from your VPS and serve them authoritatively. This allows you to run a hidden master, for example, which I can imagine some HN folks being interested in.

Doing exactly this with HE. Running Knot DNS [1] on Digital Ocean.

[1]: https://www.knot-dns.cz/

Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

#349

Post by eyegor »

gregd wrote: post #259
andrewstuart wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've put this idea forward a number of times here on HN in regards to other big tech companies. Technology companies need an "ombudsman" - a contact that customers can go to when the normal tech support processes have failed. The Ombudsman must not be part of the technology companies ordinary support processes, it must be entirely separate, and have highest level authority to demand action within the company. To avoi…

A properly setup helpdesk negates the need for an Ombudsman. If a tech company cannot get a helpdesk escalation path correct, what makes you think they'll get an Ombudsman scenario correct?

You could also think of it as a "priority lane" for support. Pay nothing, get whoever for support. Pay $x, complaint goes to an engineer. Pay $y, the product manager. Etc. Skips the middleman process for customers that are in a rush.

If a customer is willing to put up 10k to get their issue resolved, it's probably an issue worth resolving.

Re: Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

#350

Post by iudqnolq »

samcrawford wrote: post #139
iruoy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NS1 could be another one to look at. I have never used their services (directly), but I've noticed Netlify uses them for their DNS services.

I've used ns1 for a few years, they've been great!

Do you know what the reliability of their free plan is like?
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