Dell complaints

[DellExpatriate]

I've cooled off a little by now, so let me tell you briefly as I can what happened - and to please fix this so it doesn't happen to someone else. I was equally pissed - if not more so - at IHateDell as I've ever been at Dell Inc.

After registering I went to log in and for reasons unknown, after 3 or 4 attempts it wasn't taking my login. So I took the "I forgot my password" route. Got my new password in the email, and to make sure I was typing every character correctly, I cut & pasted both the user ID AND the password from the confirmation email into the login boxes. 5 tries later I was politely informed that I was being locked out for the next 1150 minutes. I figured out that somehow and extraneous character was being appended to both the user ID & the password, in spite of my meticulous effort to copy ONLY the characters in each, no white space. (Still not sure where that character was coming from? Hidden HTML tags??)

So I thought no problem, email the system admin. (In fact, from the confirmation email: "If you have any difficulties please contact the board administrator.") I searched that board high & low - without being able to log in of course. There is absolutely NO board administrator email available that I could find. Well I did find a link to email one of the moderators, but that link requires a login to use.

Last ditch effort - thought I re-register a different user name under a different email and start over. I did that, and never received the account confirmation email. (Still haven't received it).

I realize it's a tough job making the site spam-proof, but my GOD there's got to be a better way!

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

Sorry. It wasn't the spam security, what it blocks just flat refuses to register you. It applies to Europe and Russia, where most spam originates, plus gmail, which most spambots know how to crack.

There is a bug in the phpbb code. I've run into it myself. Only one of the login links works. I believe it's the one at the top right.

You have to be resourceful to reach the admin. Go to whois, enter the URL, his data comes up. I don't know if it really reaches him, or to what extent he is able to respond. For that matter, I don't know if the whois entry is accurate. The site owner is anonymous.

I have admin rights within the interface, but not within the login permissions or the code itself. In other words, if it locked ME out there wouldn't be anything I could do about it.
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[DellExpatriate]

I'm a little confused, pardon my ignorance...

The site owner is anonymous? To you as well, as a moderator? So it sounds like he doesn't want to be found - either by Dell Inc, OR by people using his website.

I tried the whois entry - it had a reference to another (godaddy) search page that had a name & email address. I may try that, just curious to see if I get a response.

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

The owner has chosen anonymity. From within the site, he can be PM'd with the screenname adminii. But he is not able to address coding issues, to the best of my knowledge he has to contract that out and the site ad income barely pays for hosting.
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'