Uh, hi everybody. I am trying not to get paranoid now, but I bought some pens from http://www.cutepens.com and when I try to load their website I get a 'Parked Page'. I will email them on Monday, but it is indeed very WEIRD. I hope they ship my pens.

Perhaps it has something to do with that major internet outage (more than 60% of bandwith) in India from a damaged submarine telecom cable?

Looks like their domain registration is current. What might have happened is their DNS got overwritten by the default park page for that registrar (I've had that happen and sent some very incendiary notes). This would possibly mean that their email would also bounce, but it's worth a try.

Strange that a domain parked page should show up, though. That usually happens when a website is closed down completely, or redirected by the registrant. I certainly would not direct people to a domain parked page if I were upgrading my website. Maybe it's the cable, but I am dubious as CutePens is located in Australia, or at least the part of their operations I interacted with is from there.

I Googled Cutepens and it seems that they also trade on eBay, judging from what they are selling.

This might be the quickest way to get some answers.

Aha, right, thanks lapidary

I'm in Australia - let me know if I can help. I don't know the company but if you know which state they are in I will try and find them.

Wow, really kind of you, inkypete. I won't bother you, of course, unless ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. Hopefully they'll show up again shortly.

The internet is down right now in many places in Europe and Asia,
and some sites that are down ARE being replaced with parked pages like the one you see.
I would wait a few days.

QM2

There are now three cables that have been cut.

Read the Australian ABC News report.

Now, Aunty ABC, as she is known here, bears the same relationship to Australia that the BBC bears to Britain, and is not known for pushing conspiracy theories.

Perhaps somebody can comment authoritatively on this line -- .

BTW, I had thought that CutePens operated out of India?

I don't even get a parked page, just a white page with the title with a gray bar near the top. If CutePens is in India, then their page will probably be offline for awhile.

You could always write them a letter. The mail can be a lot more reliable than the Internet.

Hmm, I think he should only say this if he can back that statement up ... the reputation of the US isn't exactly good already in the Middle East, and the same is true of Israel of course ... no need to fuel that with conspiracy theories.

Edit: I just read that he only repeats a theory that already goes around on the Internet ... which is full of the weirdest conspiration theories of course

I clicked on the link, and it worked - they are there from my computer.

Working now, but wasn't so a couple of hours ago.

purpledog

Outage also hit Africa. Have a friend in Morocco who lost his internet when the cables went down.

Still getting a parked page, though. Possibly really is the cable problem; thanks everybody. Cutepens is run by an Indian national living in Australia.

You (or your ISP) may have cached the page, because I'm now seeing their pages. You might want to clear your cache (or quit your browser) and try again.

Thanks, D. This has happened before: my ISP has cached the page.

My paypal payment was posted on 2/14 - a followup email was not acknowledged.
Are they gone?

No! All is well. I must have missed an email - but I've learned that my order is on it's way.

I had a problem with an order and cutepens took very good care of me. There was no delay problem. Recently, after trying the replacements, I had sent a big thank you to her w/o expecting a reply, but got one with an apology for how long it took!

So my impression (n of 1 and all that) is that cutepens is normally responsive, but that some varying net problems caused some delays.

Be that as it may, I am looking for an excuse to buy some more from cutepens in spite of my family's temporary ban on unnecessary expenses :-)