My current hosting company (not mentioning any names, but their "mascot" is a funny-colored furry animal) has just pissed me off for the final time by dicking around with the servers and not telling customers first.
Every time they do this, and it's several times a year, they break something in either my websites, my email accounts, or both. Today it's both, so I am now seriously looking for a replacement.
It never used to matter much, but now I have production sites and can't afford to wait for them to respond. Oh yeah, did I mention they don't offer any kind of telephone support or even publish their phone number? Just a trouble ticket submission form.
My question is, how do you handle maintenance? What steps do you take for advance customer notification, backout plans, offline testing, etc.?