New User - Piscines Apollo still in business?

[matso]

Hey there

From Windsor, Ontario.

60,000 litre inground pool. Zodiac Duoclear salt system. Currently all is well with the pool. Thinking about adding Borax to counteract my annoying and constant pH drift.

I'm here because I have a Taylor test kit and wanted to restock my supplies - I've ordered from Piscines Apollo Pools the last couple years but I keep getting an error message:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Wanted to look around/ask around here if anyone has any information whether they are closed, or if this is a known problem? I sent an email to an address I found from past orders but I'm not sure if it's one of those automated addresses that might never be looked at.

But now that I'm registered, I can't search or open any threads...lol. I suppose I could always call them tomorrow as well...

I initially came across the company because of this forum. Seemed like they were a crowd favorite. Hoping someone knows the status of the website.

Thanks!
matso

[Watermom]

I don't know about their website but will tell you that until your registration is completed, you will have to log out to be able to see any other pages on the Pool Forum.

Welcome!

[PoolDoc]

. . . membership updated.

I tried to contact Paul and failed. I've emailed him, but have also added a caution note to the testkit page, that Apollo Pool may no longer be a valid Canadian source.

[matso]

I tried replying earlier in the day, but it still hasn't shown up. I will post again.

I got a response from Piscines Apollo earlier this morning (about 5 hours after I sent the email!)

He accidentally blocked some IP addresses, including mine, in an attempt to thwart unwanted traffic.

The site is working for me now. Consider this problem resolved.

[PoolDoc]

It's gonna re-occur, though maybe not with you.

Paul is struggling to exclude ecommerce fraud gangs, apparently from China and Bulgaria. Because he's running on a hosted app, rather than a shared server, the tools available to him are sort of blunt force. And, it's too late in the pool season for him to revise things this year.

I have a lot of sympathy: the cost of one fraudulent transaction can eat all the profits from 5 or 10 legitimate transactions. So at some level it makes sense for him to block internet sections where the ration of good to bad transactions is less than 20:1.

There's not a 'good' way to do this -- it's always a trade-off of cost, privacy, convenience and other values against security and transaction integrity, and even big companies aren't getting it right. AOL, Ebay, and Target have ALL had major security lapses in the last 9 months!