3 Days to Resolve What Should Have Taken 5 Minutes

[mpeychich]

Hello all,

First and foremost, let me say that I am overall pleased with my service here at HostGator. My only issue worth complaining about happened just after i shelled out $219 to upgrade to a standard dedicated server. The box itself is a great machine, I cannot complain there. However, where I feel I was robbed in terms of loss of money, business and faith from my clients was the lack of quality support.

After requesting setup for Ruby on Rails which is the framework of my goal setting and management software, SAMBA and a desktop environment, I was told there would be a $75.00 per 1/2 hour Administrative fee. While I was not surprised about SAMBA and KDE, I was shocked to hear that Ruby on Rails fcgi would cost me that. After all, RoR is listed in the server's feature list. I decided that it would be best to have a systems administrator install Ruby on Rails for me as I am not familiar with the CentOS 4 environment. I set up SAMBA and KDE on my own. After agreeing to pay the $75/0.5hr fee, they got to work. I know how the ticket system works, it bounces you from technician to technician to speed up the process by allowing first available tech to respond. However, throughout the 3 day process which involved 2 sleepless nights while awaiting responses and taking blows from my clients for deployment delays, I spoke to a number of techs all of which seemed to neglect the existing dialog between the prior technicians and myself.

The start of all of this was around ticket #POX-817232.

The initial request was to fix MySQL as it was broken, Install RoR, and to open ports which i will not go into detail as they are not part of my complaint. The MySQL issue was resolved quickly and we moved on to RoR.

Tech:

As for ruby on rails, this is not currently installed on the server. Did you request this install in a previous ticket? Are you wanting this setup through fastcgi or through cgi? Please let us know so we can continue with this.

Yes, I did in fact request this and it was added to my order in a previous ticket. I made this request via phone.

I answered CGI because i was told by the tech that it was used on the shared servers and in a dedicated environment should be plenty fast. He was dead wrong. So I made a simple request to change it to fcgi. cue billign and headaches...

After they told me setup of fcgi (which i paid for) was complete, I received errors all over the place. I should have you guess their solution after brining this to their attention...

THEY PUT IT BACK TO CGI AND CALLED IT FIXED! wtf?

Their solution was to completely disregard my request! So, being pissed like any other person would be for such BS, I called and talked to someone on the phone. I was sick of waiting 3-12 hours between requests which accomplished nothing. While on the phone, I explained the situation and they requested a level 3 tech to help me. While waiting a reply which ended up being a NO, I was accused of copyright infringement! The low level tech grunt had the balls to accuse me of stealing a trademark because it was posted on a piece of software which was developed for and paid by the client who owned the trademark and who requested it be there! Why, thank you for your stupidity, neglect and wit! If you had even read my prior emails in the support system, you would have seen clearly that they were my client and were the reason for why these issues needed to be resolved immediately. After a few more emails and a few more calls on this same issue with similar results, the support desk must have gotten sick of my calling and the level 3 techs sick of my requests to talk. Finally there was a phone dialog which marked the beginning of what was considered be me, productive thought and support. After All of this disrespect on behalf of HostGator Technical Support, I finally was connected to who was introduced as the head of the department and lead tech. Bout damn time! Finally, someone read my previous tickets and listened to my requests and did something right. He acknowledged that RoR was installed wrong and that he didnit know immediately what the errors were. He looked into it and half an hour or later called me on my cell and we walked through the rest of the ticket. After 3 days of no sleep, being called a criminal for trademark violations against my own client, and having one of Europe's largest telecommunications company ride me, the ticket was closed.

After all of this, my faith in HostGator has decreased dramatically and I am currently undecided as to whether I will still be a customer at the end of my paid service. My payment of the service fee is still currently unresolved, however after loosing so much money in both my time, my client's time, and being humiliated by a department's neglect and lack of respect or care, and after being called a criminal over the phone, how can we be asked to pay more? We have already paid with our dignity, we have paid dearly with the loss of trust our client holds in us due to HostGator's lack of attention to time critical needs, and to proper customer care.

-- Matthew Peychich

[GatorBrent]

Hi Matthew,


Looking over the ticket everything was handled properly and it didn't take three days. From what it sounds like this started days before this ticket due to a request you made on the phone? Is that correct? If so do you have any ticket number besides this one related to this issue?


Who did you speak to that accused you of copyrighted material? I definitely need to have a talk with them about this. Thanks!

[mpeychich]

The date I started from was the first contact via phone after requesting the options on my server. The ticket numbers i have are:
#VUR-168576 ==> after requesting features by phone
#CUV-934221 ==> asking me to call for account verification
#ZMT-550198 ==> notifying me that SMB, VNC, and KDE cannot be installed by an admin
#POX-817232 ==> start of service on my server. MySQL fixed, started testing for RoR to find RoR was not installed (which was advertised as a feature)
Last ticket started June 3rd @ 8:00PM and ended June 7th @ 5:31AM

The man who accused me I do not know, it was by phone and I do not have a name. If you feel it would help i can get call logs and we can compare the times i called and narrow it down to those who talked to me.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could keep your idea of time frame to yourself. I personally had T-Systems riding my ass and am fully aware of the time that passed between my original request and the final resolution. I know you mean well, but after the crap ive been through with your so called support, last thing i need is to have my judgment of time frame which i have fully logged to be questioned. As to everything being properly handled, Im sorry that you feel reverting a framework against your client's wishes is proper. Unfortunately you will not see my complaints about that in the ticket system as by that point i was so furious that i made it verbal over the phone.

As I said before i can provide the times in which I called. That combined with recordings for your customer quality assurance should provide you with more than enough information.