The billing system is currently closed and will remain this way until Midday, 1st January 2010
The reason for the closure is to ensure that all invoices and orders are charged at the correct rate of VAT when the VAT rate changes from 15% to 17.5% at midnight tonight.
Once the billing system re-opens, users will be able to once again place new orders and access existing accounts.
Christmas and New Year Support
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Over Christmas and the New Year, our support services will be scaled down to critical support only. The changes are as follows:
Wednesday 23rd December: Normal service
Thursday 24th December: Telephone lines close at 6pm
Friday 25th December: Critical issues only
Saturday 26th December: Critical issues only
Sunday 27th December: Normal Service
Wednesday 30th December: Normal service
Thursday 31st December: Telephone lines close at 6pm
Friday 1st January: Critical issues only
Saturday 2nd January: Normal service
Where the support above is for critical issues only, we will be able to provide support ONLY if you have suffered a complete loss of service. Non-critical issues will be dealt with as soon as normal support levels resume.
The helpdesk will be monitored over the Christmas/New Year breaks and an emergency telephone system will be in place to handle CRITICAL issues only. If the call is deemed to be non-critical then you will be advised to submit a support ticket and it will be dealt with when normal support levels resume.
All servers will be monitored as normal 24/7 and on-site technicians will be available to deal with network/hardware issues as standard.
VAT Changes from 1st January 2010
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As you may be aware, the rate of VAT will rise from 15% to 17.5% on January 1st 2010. There will be no change in the existing inc. VAT pricing and if you are not registered for VAT there is no action for you to take.
Business clients who are registered for VAT will see a small increase in the vat exclusive element of their invoice but as they are able to claim back the VAT paid to us and other VAT registered suppliers, the knock on effect is minimal.
The automated billing system will be paused from 30th December 2009 until 2nd January 2010 to allow us to ensure that pricing is correct and that invoices generated show the correct level of VAT. If you have any questions about the VAT change and if you are affected then please do contact the billing department.
Future Plans for 2010
================
Here at Open Mind Hosting, 2009 has proved to be an exceptional year in terms of growth and our hosting base has grown by over 150% in the last twelve months. This is a trend we fully expect to continue through 2010 and we have some very exciting plans in place to support this growth and bring new features to our clients. These include the launch of our integrated support/billing system, expansion of our VPS/Dedicated and reseller offerings, launch of our new corporate site and the possibility of launching cloud hosting which is currently under investigation.
Finally may we take the opportunity to thank you for your business over the last twelve months and wish you and your family a very Happy Christmas and prosperous New Year.
Kind Regards,
Phil Williams
Managing Director
Open Minded Solutions Limited
Tel: 08456 445 789
Int. Tel: 044 8456 445 789
Important Links:
Support Forums: http://www.openmindhosting.co.uk/forum/
Support Portal: http://www.openmindhosting.co.uk/support/
Network Status: http://www.openmindstatus.com
At 13:10 we received an update from LINX to say that their emergency maintenance steps had restored stability and they were advising all peers to re-establish sessions. We followed that advice and began restoring our LINX sessions. This process was completed at 13:48, however a small number of our peers have kept their sessions administratively down. This is their choice but may impact traffic if you would normally cross their network to reach us. We have been monitoring the situation this afternoon and have seen traffic levels return to normal. There have been no further reports of problems.
LINX are planning further ‘tidy up’ maintenance tonight, but according to their descriptions of the works, they do not affect the Open Mind Hosting connections. We are hopeful that this is a conclusion to this incident and that LINX will maintain the resumed normal service.
If any one is still experiencing difficulties please do not hesitate to contact us. We will do what we can to investigate any issues and resolve them for you if we can. However, please bear in mind that the cause of all the problems over the last 24 hours has been outside the Open Mind Hosting network and we may not be able to act for you.
LINX are still reporting that they have ongoing problems and do not know when these will be resolved. For this reason we have started disabling all peering via LINX and traffic will be rerouted via other connections.
This should resolve any outstanding problems with traffic flow via LINX, but this process will take some time to complete. We cannot just switch off a connection like LINX without ensuring that the traffic is properly handled, or there will be negative effects for all clients. Once this process is complete, we will provide further updates.
At 20:10 the issue at LINX resurfaced and traffic via this connection was no longer flowing. Once again this was outside our sphere of control and it was outside the Open Mind Hosting network. Traffic flow was restored at around 20:30.
We are still waiting to hear from LINX regarding the cause of these problems, so we cannot be certain they will not resurface again.
We will keep you updated with more information as soon as we have it.
We have been seeing a return of traffic flow via LINX since around 17:40 and it appears to be holding steady.
There has been no announcement from LINX yet. As soon as we have any further information we will issue a further update. As the connection appears to be operating correctly again this is likely to be tomorrow morning. We are still seeing no issues at all with the Open Mind Hosting network and all traffic coming via our other peers is flowing as normal. The issue seems to be within LINX’s infrastructure.
It seems that the London Internet Exchange (LINX) are currently experiencing problems. Our connections to LINX are no longer carrying traffic and this is having an impact on some clients who would normally cross LINX to reach us. We do not currently have information on the precise cause but the issue has been reported by other IPs connecting at LINX.
We will provide more information as soon as we have it, but unfortunately it seems that the problem is outside our network and outside our control.
Date: 09/12/2009
Time: 17:20
Effect: Increased latency and packet loss for some routes into the our network