Advanced Access Power Outages

Did Advanced Access FINALLY Bite the Dust?

Moderator — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 04:04:26 +0000

After the sale to Dominion Enterprises, Advanced Access continued to spiral downward with a product that lacked new innovation. Once they did come up with some improvements they failed to offer it to their current clients. It has now been reported that Advanced Access is no longer offering websites. Over the years, Advanced Access has been more interested in signing up new accounts rather than addressing issues with their product, and most importantly their ability to stay online due to power outages. Many complained about credit cards being charged for renewals even after they had cancelled their accounts. Others wondered for years WHEN they would be able to upgrade to the NET platform, which turned out to be a bust anyway.

Their site is still up but according to an insider,

effective Aug. 18th the sales departments were closed, the sales team laid off and the AA platform was officially laid to rest.

It’s interesting to note that on their ‘Featured Clients’ page, the most recent addition was back in October 2010 and the one prior to that was way back in November 2008. What does that tell you? A lack of personnel as they kept slip-sliding along? I can recall when they had a new Featured Client every month (and I was one of them).

Agent’s Alternative Vendor Recommendations

Moderator — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:25:22 +0000

I’ve heard alot of not so nice things about Advanced Access. I’m thankful I did not choose to go with them. I use a company called Busy Agent Pro, and they have been wonderful. I’ve had my sites with them for about a year and their customer service is timely, friendly and very helpful. Also, the features for both designing your websites and optimizing them for the search engines far surpasses anything I’ve seen for real estate. You should check them out. They are still selling exclusive market areas.

Oh, and did I mention you can have an unlimited number of websites for no extra cost? Check em out…. http://www.busyagentpro.com and you can even try the free membership first to check things out.

Good luck,

Stacie Robbins

Advanced Access Still Slip-Sliding Along After Two Years

Moderator — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:04:04 +0000

In only ten days this blog will be two years old. As I read the two recent comments (which I will copy into this post) it appears that not much has changed at Advanced Access when it comes to POWER OUTAGES! With reports that websites are once again down, what will be Advanced Access excuse this time? It’s been well over a year since they claimed to have moved their equipment to a fireproof location with redundant back ups.

Why do agents continue to stay with Advanced Access? I know it may be difficult to even think about moving your site once you are familiar with your current back-office setup. However, take my word for it, it’s NOT that difficult to get used to another system! After all, what can possibly make one system more complicated than another? They all offer WYSIWYG as well as html for those familiar with it.

I moved my URL’s away from Advanced Access to Point2Agents and was quite happy there. I had four sites at P2A and still have a couple of free sites at places like RapidListings.com but now host my own main sites. It gives me the freedom of changing whatever I want and have NEVER had my sites go down, nor my email. At first I missed the IDX that Advanced Access offered as well as their custom forms but got used to the ‘handshake’ offered by P2A and opened an inexpensive account with MyContactForm.com to create my own forms that are as good as AA’s. Now that I host my own, I run a single IDX on all of the sites including a foreclosure site that ranks #1 for our area. Right now I am hosting well over 50 sites for under $80/year and many rank on page #1 if not at #1 on Google. I have found that you don’t have to have any PR rank to sit in the number one position if you have the content, keywords, ideal URL, AND back links which AA made us delete. Yes, the Web Gorilla convinced them that it was imperative that we all get rid of our reciprocal links so for those of us that did, we slipped further and further off Google’s radar.

If you look at my www.PreforeclosureSite.com, which was only developed to earn passive income from ebooks, DVD’s, and Google Adwords, you will see that it has NO pagerank yet ranks #1 for keywords “Northern Illinois Foreclosures”, “short sales northern Illinois”, #6 for “bank owned northern Illinois”, #8 for “preforeclosures illinois” and many other keyword phrases.

I’ve had more fun promoting ‘passive’ income sites and hosting them under a master account during these trying times. Google forbids us to discuss our earnings from Adwords so just let me say that it has paid the bills! I have enough of my own sites with massive amounts of interior pages that allow me to slowly pump over 3,000 back links to any new site without swapping with anyone. Don’t be afraid to get out from under Advanced Access’ wing and learn how to fly on your own.

Here are the two recent comments that indicate that nothing has changed when it comes to Advanced Access hosting. It’s especially frustrating when the sites ‘conveniently’ go down over the weekend when buyers have more time to spend online searching for homes.

Kelley’s comment on 4/18/09
“I have my site with them but am becoming increasingly unhappy with them.”

Susan’s comment on 4/19/09
“It’s happening again! Advanced Access websites, Virtual Office and Forums down again ALL WEEKEND. And when you call, their mailbox is FULL! You can’t even leave a disgruntled message.”

Why NOT To Buy an Advanced Access website!!

Moderator — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:17:56 +0000

Here it is May 7th, and I had 226 broken links as a gift from the jerks at Advanced Access. Now, going on over 24 hours, they still have not resolved the issue…please DO NOT buy an Advanced Access website – please spare yourself the bleeding , pain, misery and humiliation from your clients.

jeff
http://www.jeffboyce.net

Advanced Access – Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow. NOT!

Moderator — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:22:39 +0000

After using up the free months I earned as credits that extended my subscription beyond my annual renewal, I finally parted company with Advanced Access this past weekend. There was no cake, no good-will wishes, and no tears. Like leaving an employer that you once loved working for, time and ongoing issues had taken their toll. Looking back, I can’t recall a single upgrade that Advanced Access added to my product in the past four years. I was still using the same virtual office to make website changes, and seldom saw any new templates being offered, if at all. It seems that they were simply running the rubber off the old worn tires, trying to get whatever mileage they could out of them.

Sure, they eventually came out with their 4.0 update but it was never offered to the 3.0 users as promised for well over a year. I’m sure it is plagued with problems, and being designed on a different platform, is undoubtedly just too incompatible with 3.0. Reading the posts on the forum and by agents who asked for their money back, those of us riding on their 3.0 bald tires should probably consider ourselves fortunate. Speaking of the forum, what a graveyard that has become! Seldom is anyone online and when there are posts they usually consist of what appeared over the weekend such as:
Getting Frustrated
Problem Editing Webpage
VO Home Page editor is text only
Problems uploading docs
Design Center File Upload Stopped Working
Template Manager on the Fritz
e-mail not working
Scrambled Stats Again
Forum Posting Stopped Working
Slideshow Builder Broke
Stats not adding up-Please fix
Website is not W3C valid

Typical weekend, though, and very little Customer Support to deal with the questions. If they do answer, about all they can do is send up a ticket so not too many repairs get done until after Monday morning coffee. My site is now hosted by Point2Agents a company highly recommended by the Amigos who sponsor RealTalk as well as teach the ePRO classes. Several months ago, they also stopped recommending Advanced Access of which they, like me, were staunch supporters. I already had three other websites with P2A which rank very well on Page #1 of Google and was always impressed how they were able to make ONGOING updates to their software that continue to enrich them with more and more great features. And, NO, they haven’t had a power outage that comes anywhere close to Advanced Access meltdown last year. In fact, I don’t recall my site ever being down!

If you read what Advanced Access posted on their ActiveRain blog, you can see that a pattern of power outages continue to shut agents sites down. For example, on 05/22/2007, they posted “At this time, Advanced Access is having significant power issues at our offices and all services are currently down. 100% of our resources are dedicated to solving this problem with many various solutions being implemented at this time. There has been no data loss or corruption of your services. We are expecting that all services will be shut off for the rest of the day.” This was followed by a post on 02/25/2008 that said “At this time most systems are up and running. Specifically, certain websites will be running slowly throughout the rest of the day and the Classic 3.0 Virtual Office is currently inaccessible. Email is operating and will be slowly moving through the backlog of messages from the past day and a half. Our entire staff is working diligently to correct these remaining issues and we will continue to keep you updated.”

The question I ask is in regard to their continued comments of “The new data center is a state-of-the-art facility with multiple fiber paths for internet connectivity, redundant environmental control systems, on-staff AC and electrical technicians and on-site backup diesel generators.” Why are sites constantly down due to outages?

Now, I can concentrate on getting my pagerank back to where it was before the Web Guerrilla decided to make an example of it and got me banned by Google for over 30 days. What an airhead, and he never did accomplish what he promised to those at Advanced Access who bought into his BS. They finally woke up when his one-year contract came up for renewal and showed him the door. You never see anything posted by AA regarding his accomplishments, so apparently, even they were unimpressed by the results. Between the unimpressive independent web reporting stats for Advanced Access sites and the lack of proper page identifiers, it is difficult for anyone with an AA site to keep a high Pagerank. I slipped from a PR5 to a PR3 but stay tuned, folks, things are going to be changing for the better!!.

Server Error in ‘/’ Application.

Moderator — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:39:06 +0000

That seems to be the most popular message lately for viewers looking at Advanced Access real estate sites. And to add insult to injury, Customer Support seems to be missing in action! Over the last few days when it comes to giving their clients any answers to the latest problems, CS seems unwilling to post any details. Sites barely load, working in the virtual office is a waste of time since pages never load, IDX is down, and the list goes on and on. We are not talking about just a simple outage that has been corrected, we are talking about several days of poor hosting with no solutions being brought forward from Customer Service. It’s no wonder that the e-Pro sponsors no longer recommend this company!

Advanced Access Finally Running Out Of Steam!

Moderator — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:35:41 +0000

Yep! That’s right folks! Advanced Access has finally run out of gas or so it appears. Several days ago agents were reporting outages about the same time Florida went without power due to a repairman accidentally shutting off the backup switch while making repairs. The only problem is, Advanced Access is based in California and so are their servers! Well, they finally got sites back online with a weak response in the forums stating that ALL 3.0 sites were now functioning. Great AA, but how about telling us what went wrong?

Following the days that this power outage occurred, agents continued to report that they couldn’t accomplish updates in their virtual office area. Advanced Access NEVER ONCE responded to these issues, totally ignoring the bombardment of problems being reported. Agents are seeing blank pages, white lines, partial pages, etc. when working on their pages. Today, I tried uploading a photo and was met by a blank screen that refused to load. I finally had to load it on another site and point at it in order to complete my task.

Today is Sunday when many consumers are looking on the Internet for homes. I tried about ten different AA sites and if I were a consumer, I would have clicked off these sites long before they ever loaded. It is not surprising to see the almost daily posts from agents who are not planning on renewing their accounts. A company that refuses to be upfront with their clients and keep them informed of problems and planned solutions will soon be history. How long can Advanced Access continue to survive on just the revenue from new accounts? I often see numerous “Guests” viewing the forum. If you are one of these, take heed and spend your hard earned money on a winner, not a loser like Advanced Access.

Another DOWN Weekend for Advanced Access Sites

Moderator — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:32:49 +0000

When will it end? Once again Advanced Access can’t seem to get through a busy consumer searching weekend with all of their sites and IDX remaining online! Many agents are currently reporting that their sites are up, then down, then up, then down, like a roller coaster ride. Others have reported that their interior pages are not appearing or their IDX is offline and unavailable for consumers to search for homes. I’m sure that once again we will all see the canned excuse from Advanced Access Customer Support reporting the same old, same old, with no solutions. If I were a betting person, I wouldn’t give this outfit much chance of long term survival since they seem to be on life support already!

Clients Bailing From Advanced Access Sites

Moderator — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:37:08 +0000

While doing some Googling for ‘Advanced Access sites’ the other day, I came across a blog from www.WebNewsForUs.com that made mention of several great looking Advanced Access sites. Upon recognizing many of the agents in the post, I clicked on the half-dozen hyperlinks and wasn’t surprised to find that ALL of the FORMER Advanced Access clients were now hosting their real estate websites elsewhere. I knew that several of them weren’t active on AA’s forum anymore and had gone elsewhere but was surprised to see that ALL the ones that were touted in the article had left. Just another example of the problems that exist at Advanced Access and why some of the greatest sites (as well as agents) that were once hosted there have bailed out. Are YOU a former AA client, and if so, WHY did you not renew with them?

Advanced Access Sites DOWN per Agents & Clients

Moderator — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:34:17 +0000

Well, it seems like Advanced Access just can’t seem to figure out the magic formula to keep the power on. Once again, agents and their clients are reporting that the websites are unavailable. This has been an ongoing problem with Advanced Access for quite some time, even though they claim to have a state-of-the-art backup system in place. The other problem is trying to reach Customer Service to report any problems, as many agents indicate that calls go unanswered or they tire of being on hold forever waiting for a supervisor. All this should change once enough agents bail out and the size of the Advanced Access client base becomes something that they are capable of handling. Is there anyone who can save them before they go under?