PM research website

[steamedlou]

Does anyone have a clue what is going on with PM research? Their website has been down for over a week at least. I called a couple of days ago and they said they were working on it. A little hard to believe. Their site was not rocket science. Hope they are not having business problems. I use them alot for piping, lubricators etc.

 

[Sshire]

Based on googles " unsafe site" messages, it appears that they got hit. Like many small companies, they probably don't have a dedicated IT dept so it takes time.

 

[steamedlou]

ah thanks. wow interesting. but sure as hell with the $ they are loosing by not being on line they better be hiring someone from the outside to fix stuff quick.

 

[Sshire]

My thoughts exactly. In addition, a blast email to their mailing list which explained the situation would have also been a good idea.

 

[Wizard69]

My thoughts exactly. In addition, a blast email to their mailing list which explained the situation would have also been a good idea.

Unfortunately this again is a small business, their entire IT system could be running on one computer. I suspect you are right about getting hit by hackers or other malware, it is a big problem for small business as like you said no IT department. It probably wouldn't of hurt to put up a dummy site while the old one is being repaired. Hopefully nothing is compromised.

 

[Sshire]

PM Research is anything but a small business. We only see the steam engine and boiller end. They are one of the leading manufacturers of protective materials (radome and wing leading edge boots) for business jets and other aircraft.

I love their stuff. High quality throughout and great folks to deal with, even when I call with questions they take all the time necessary to answer.

That said, my small business and thousands of others, is run by a large web hosting service. On and offsite backups, merchant services, 99.99% uptime, 24/7 tech support, email, yada yada. And all for a few hundred bucks a year. Which is why it makes no sense for a company like PMR to be down this long.

 

[Wizard69]

PM Research is anything but a small business. We only see the steam engine and boiller end. They are one of the leading manufacturers of protective materials (radome and wing leading edge boots) for business jets and other aircraft.

I love their stuff. High quality throughout and great folks to deal with, even when I call with questions they take all the time necessary to answer.

That said, my small business and thousands of others, is run by a large web hosting service. On and offsite backups, merchant services, 99.99% uptime, 24/7 tech support, email, yada yada. And all for a few hundred bucks a year. Which is why it makes no sense for a company like PMR to be down this long.

I'm left with the impression that they are in fact a small business. Of course that is relative but I just don't see a huge market for engine kits and many of the other companies, selling kits, are more or less mom and pop businesses.

I do wonder what is up with this rather significant delay in getting their site back up. I have to wonder if it is a sign of trouble for the company. Ive gotten past the google warning only to get a maintenance page. As you say it makes no sense. The only thing I can think of is that they got hacked bad and have lost a significant amount of data. Not a good thing.

Has anybody contacted them by phone?

 

[Sshire]

I spoke with them yesterday to order parts. FedEx Sez they'll be here tomorrow, so I don't see any trouble there.

 

[misfitsailor]

The Google "unsafe website" feature has been pretty useless for me, it flags more than 1/2 of all model engineering sites that I go to lately!

 

[steamedlou]

I phoned in an order day before yesterday and it arrived today. when I talked to them they did say they had been hacked and it was taking awhile to fix. lol wonder how many of our credit card numbers the hackers got?

 

[Wizard69]

Well at least we know what is up!


Computer security is a big problem, lets hope their credit card database wasn't compromised. There is an endless number of ways to breach a system, I have to wonder if a new exploit was used or is PM Research a little lax with their updates.

 

[Tinkerer58]

Talking about websites, I have been trying to subscribe to Model Engineer and Model Engineers Workshop, their website is a dogs breakfast. No instructions and doesn't seem they take credit cards. So I sent and email with various questions and got a response giving me their telephone number if I need assistance and no answers to any of the questions.. What the HELL?? Why do I need to make an international call just to subscribe to their mags. Very poor business, why can't I subscribe using credit card or paypal? I replied 5 days ago to the email and still no response. I also put put a comment on their forum saying it was pretty "p*** poor" and I got abused for using bad language and it was typed as I did here. I think they are pretty sensitive, as far as I'm concerned it is a shame that such a good publication is run by fools.

Can anyone recommend any other mags inline with the above publications because I don't think they deserve my hard earned money.

 

[Wizard69]

I see that Godaddy.com is picking up the Www.PMresearchinc.com web address. This can't be a good thing. I really hope that this isn't a sign that they are gone as a model engineering supplier.

 

[Sshire]

No. They are reconstructing their data. I've spoken to them twice in the last 2 weeks and ordered some fittings which came in 2 days.
Seems to me that their backup strategy needs work.

 

[Wizard69]

No. They are reconstructing their data. I've spoken to them twice in the last 2 weeks and ordered some fittings which came in 2 days.
Seems to me that their backup strategy needs work.

That is an understatement! Two weeks of down time for a sales site on the Internet is just unheard of. It really makes you wonder where priorities are at PM Research.