Better Support Times

[oneawesomeguy]

I have been a Host Gator customer for over one year and have been so happy with the service that I (ironically) decided to move my reselling business here due to the poor support I was receiving at my old host.

During the past two days, I have been trying to get my files transfered over to HostGator. My old host did not allow complete cPanel backups so I asked them to do the backups for me. I informed Host Gator of this and now between the back and forth and at least 6-hour lag time between ticket responses (my responses are almost instantaneous as I want to get this resolved a.s.a.p.), Host Gator has still not even begun to start the transfer. What sucks the most is that the cPanel backups are now almost two days old and once Host Gator finally uploads them and the DNS changes take effect, the backups will be around 5 or 6 days old. 5 or 6 day old backups are not good at all.

I do realize that some of this is due to my old crappy host and for me now answering questions exactly correct (e.g., I said the backups where in my home directory when they were in my /public_html directory --- if I were support I would have looked there...). But the main issue here are the super-slow response times. Seriously, "the best hosting support" takes six hours or more to respond to tickets?

Being a reseller customer now, this makes me very worried. If a client has an issue, I need to submit a ticket to Host Gator, wait six hours, then wait for a response (hopefully it fixes the issue!), then respond to my client... Oh my God. I am going to have the worst support for my clients possible!

This whole rant is just a suggestion to fix the horrible support system. 6-hour ticket response times, and chat support that can't do anything is not even good enough for crappy hosting companies.

Here are the timecodes from my transfer request:

• Transfer form filled out: 04:46:41 AM | Apr 20th, 2010
• HostGator says they have started transfer process: 05:07:50 AM | Apr 20th, 2010
• I confirm: 05:52:01 AM | Apr 20th, 2010
• HostGator confirms: 06:08:52 AM | Apr 20th, 2010 (notice the super-short response time???)
• HostGator says they can't do backups: 02:51:21 PM | Apr 20th, 2010 (took them long enough to figure it out...)
• I got my old 'crappy' host to make full backups (first they only backed-up one account, then I responded, then they did all accounts), and I responded to the ticket: 01:19:47 AM | Apr 21st, 2010 (my 'crappy' host is actually pretty quick to completely fix my problems)
• HostGator asks for password for main account: 06:16:43 AM | Apr 21st, 2010
• I respond: 06:44:35 AM | Apr 21st, 2010
• HostGator can't find files in web root: 12:24:06 PM | Apr 21st, 2010
• I respond: 12:42:40 PM | Apr 21st, 2010

I mean most of the above is justified, don't get me wrong. My main problems are: slow response times, asking simple questions puts my ticket back to the bottom of the queue, and reseller accounts (or more expensive accounts) not getting priority (as a Business account holder also, I would not mind this).

[GatorJacob]

Hi!

I apologize for the inconveniences and the frustrations, I can totally understand how you feel with the response times.

Do you have a ticket ID for this that you can post / PM me? I'd like to take a look and see what I can do as far as getting this done for you ASAP.

Thanks!

[oneawesomeguy]

Thanks Jacob. I sent you a PM with the ticket number so you can see the specifics.

I just think the ticket response times should be better for everybody but with preference to more expensive accounts (e.g., Dedicated > VPS > Reseller > Shared). Maybe a way for users to increase the urgency of their tickets?

[GatorJacob]

Hi!

Thanks, I got the PM. I've escalated this to our senior transfers administrator. He's having a go at this right now and you should get a response back.

Also, I've escalated this post to my Customer Service Manager as well, as I'm not sure how they are handing escalations right now.

[oneawesomeguy]

Well okay now I am amazed. It took longer to write my original message than to hopefully fix this issue.

My suggestions still stand, however. Please seriously consider improving the support system or adding enough friendly staff members to offer good support times yet keep the prices relatively low.

Last suggestion: If something that takes a little while is being worked on, support staff should send a message like this: "Thank you for submitting a ticket. I am currently working on the issue and will keep you updated. There is no need to respond to this message. Thanks!"

Thanks Jacob.

[oneawesomeguy]

Just wanted to update everyone: The ticket has now been completely resolved. HostGator attended to my needs and kept me updated every step of the way. Nice job, Host Gator!

[oneawesomeguy]

MORE ISSUES!

Okay so HostGator managed get transfer over all my files.

Today, I get an angry email from a client saying his website is down. I look into it and can't find a solution. I immediately call support. I just spent 1 hour and 4 minutes on support with some guy giving me the run around telling me all the reasons why he can't fix my problem and not understanding what I am telling him. OMG.

The issue: The client's website is an advertisement page of some sort with links to search results. I have no idea why this is happening since the site was working perfectly fine before the transfer. What could it be?

Domain Propagation - Yep, could be this. This is what the tech couldn't get off of. Well, I changed my computer's host file to point to the correct IP. Guess what? Same problem.

There could be a problem with the files - Well I created a new test .html file and put it in the main directly. Nope. Same issue.

We tried a bunch of different things when the tech basically said he couldn't help me even though he was seeing the same thing I was. "Weird," he said. I asked to be transfered to someone else and after being put on hold for ten more minutes, I hung up.

All of this while my client is sending me emails asking what is going on...

Seriously HostGator. This is the worst support I have seen from any hosting company. I wish I had not wasted so much of my last two days making the change over to you guys or I would already change hosting companies.

[GatorJoshL]

oneawesomeguy,

I sincerely apologize for the support you received last night, can you please PM the following information:

The domain in question:
The number you called from:
The agent you spoke with:

I will personally take care of all your issues.

Again my apologies, and I want to get your issues resolved and see where our support has failed. There is no reason you should have been on the phone that long over this issue.


Thank you,

[oneawesomeguy]

I sent a PM with the information. I think the issue has been resolved though I am extremely confused and fearful that something like this will happen again. I don't want to spend one more entire night trying to fix created by switching to HostGator instead of having a personal life or sleeping.

I appreciate the level of support from you. I think other support staff may have too many tickets to resolve and are just trying to get people out of the way instead of actually solving issues.

[oneawesomeguy]

UPDATE

Just wanted to give everybody an update so you guys know what happened to this issue should you find this thread from Google or something.

I just spoke to Brendan Clemmer on the phone. He explained everything that was going on with my server in very easy-to-understand terms and let me know that all the websites are currently working. The whole call took ten minutes at most and now I feel confident in HostGator again. He also told me to respond to the ticket so he will get notified if I have any problems. You guys seriously need more people like Brendan.

Another suggestion: Maybe assign a technician per ticket so that person is responsible for solving it. I think a lot of the problems I had were due to someone different responding to the ticket each time. Of course this cannot be perfect as people leave the office or become busy with other problems, but you should try to have more one-on-one support.

Just in terms of cost: I spent over an hour on the phone yesterday plus many many hours talking via tickets on this one issue. If someone had just picked up the phone and given me a call, the issue might have been resolved in ten minutes. I really think this whole ordeal was probably an isolated incident as I have been with your company for over a year already and have not once had any problems with support.

I would not have mind how long this took if this was just for one of my personal websites, but when I have other people relying on me, that is an entirely different issue.

I think that's all I have to say about this. Thanks Josh for you help and dedication to getting this resolved.

P.S. I meant for this thread to be more of a suggestion thread not a "Help me solve my problems" thread. Sorry it kind of turned into that.