When Your Fruity Phone Says Our Website Doesn’t Exist — That’s Adorable

Every year, thousands of customers manage to find our website, fill out our forms, schedule service, and go about their day without incident. Then, occasionally, someone with an iPhone sends us a screenshot saying:

“Safari cannot open the page because the server cannot be found.”

That’s adorable.

Our website has been online since 1997. It was there yesterday, it’s there today, and customers are actively using it, while Safari confidently tells someone that we apparently no longer exist. Computers find us. Android phones find us. Most iPhones find us. Yet one particular Fruity Phone has apparently conducted an exhaustive investigation of the Internet and determined that The Maintenance Shop has vanished.

We haven’t.

We Already Tried Blaming Google

Here’s what makes this particularly entertaining. For years, we used Google Forms for many of our online service signups. Every once in a while, we’d hear from an iPhone user who couldn’t get the form to work.

Naturally, the form got blamed. Maybe Google Forms didn’t like Safari. Maybe something wasn’t playing nicely with Apple’s security settings. Whatever the reason, customers couldn’t sign up, and that was our problem even though we didn’t create Google Forms.

So we finally eliminated that variable. We stopped using Google’s form and built our own sign-up system on our own website.

Problem solved, right?

HAHAHAHAHAHA. No.

Some Fruity Phones still refuse to cooperate. Only now does Safari occasionally take it one step further and confidently inform the customer that our server cannot be found.

That’s quite an upgrade.

We went from “I can’t open the Google form” to “I have searched the Internet, and apparently The Maintenance Shop no longer exists.”

Meanwhile, other customers are actively signing up.

Eventually, You Run Out of Websites to Blame

This is where troubleshooting gets fairly simple.

Google’s form wouldn’t work on certain iPhones, so we got rid of Google’s form. We built our own. Now our form won’t work on certain iPhones either. At the same time, our website works on computers, Android phones, tablets, and plenty of other iPhones.

At some point, we have to consider the common denominator.

If your car refuses to start at Walmart, Albertsons, Costco, and Home Depot, you probably don’t call all four stores and demand that they repair their parking lots.

Maybe it’s the car.

Likewise, if Google supposedly doesn’t work, our website supposedly doesn’t work, but both are happily working for everybody else, perhaps Google and The Maintenance Shop didn’t coordinate a simultaneous collapse of the Internet just to ruin your afternoon.

Perhaps it’s the Fruity Phone.

“But My Wife’s iPhone Works!”

We know. That’s part of the fun.

Two iPhones can be the same model, running the same version of iOS, sitting six inches apart, and still behave differently depending on privacy settings, network configuration, VPNs, filtering, Private Relay, security settings, and whatever other assortment of switches Apple has decided should stand between you and the website you’re trying to visit.

That’s why one iPhone can open our website perfectly while another one announces:

“SERVER CANNOT BE FOUND.”

This doesn’t prove the server cannot be found.

It proves your phone didn’t find it.

There is a difference.

If 500 people walk through a door and you walk directly into the wall beside it, the building hasn’t disappeared.

Apple Even Has Instructions for This

This isn’t something we invented because we enjoy picking on iPhones. Well, we do enjoy picking on iPhones, but that’s beside the point.

Apple has its own troubleshooting instructions for situations where Safari won’t load websites. Their recommendations include checking your network connection, VPN settings, website data, JavaScript, and iCloud Private Relay.

Think about that for a moment. The company that built the phone has an entire support procedure for situations where its browser looks at a functioning website and essentially says:

“Nope. Never heard of it.”

So if Safari tells you our server cannot be found while other customers are actively using that same server, we suggest starting with the device that’s claiming the rest of the Internet disappeared.

What Are You Supposed to Do?

First, try switching between Wi-Fi and cellular data. If you’re using a VPN, content filter, security application, or Apple’s privacy features, one of those may be interfering. You can also try another browser, restart the phone, or follow Apple’s Safari troubleshooting instructions.

And before contacting us to report that our website is down, there’s one particularly sophisticated diagnostic test you can perform:

Try our website on another device.

If it suddenly appears, congratulations. You have successfully located our server.

It was right where we left it.

We Repair Houses, Not Fruity Phones

We’re The Maintenance Shop. We repair sprinkler systems, backflow assemblies, doors, siding, plumbing issues, and all sorts of things around your home.

We do not repair iPhones.

We also cannot remotely change the privacy, security, VPN, network, filtering, or Safari settings on your phone. If your particular Fruity Phone refuses to access websites that everybody else’s devices can access, that’s something you’ll need to resolve on the phone.

There is, of course, one alternative troubleshooting procedure we’ve discussed around the office. It involves standing near a sufficiently large body of water, gripping the Fruity Phone firmly in your dominant hand, taking a short running start, and launching it in a graceful arc toward the horizon.

Our attorney would probably insist that we clarify:

The Maintenance Shop does not officially recommend throwing your iPhone into the ocean and purchasing a real phone.

We merely acknowledge that the thought has occurred to us.

More than once.

The Best Part

There is one small problem with this entire blog post that we didn’t notice until we were nearly finished writing it.

If your Fruity Phone is currently insisting that our website doesn’t exist, you can’t read this article.

Which means we’ve just spent all this time explaining the problem to everybody except the people having the problem.

That’s okay.

If you know somebody staring at an iPhone who insists that The Maintenance Shop has vanished from the Internet, pull up this article on another device and show it to them.

Preferably a real phone.

Our website has been here since 1997. Google is still here. The Internet is still here. Our server is still here. Customers are still signing up.

And somewhere, a Fruity Phone is staring confidently into the abyss, absolutely certain that everybody else is the problem.

Think Different, indeed.

𝐍𝐄𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐍 𝐔𝐏 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐀 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐋𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐎𝐔𝐓?

If you need to sign up for a sprinkler blowout, you can do that here:

https://treasurevalleyrepairs.com/sprinkler-blowout-form.html

And if your Fruity Phone tells you that page doesn’t exist… 𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐥, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐲.