Customer 22 Hours

[markb1439@yahoo.com]

After careful research, I chose HostGator as our new web provider. My wife signed up for a Baby account last night, and I got to work moving our site over. Tonight, the cPanel login stopped working. I couldn't figure out why until I happened to notice an e-mail saying that it was necessary to call and verify the account to have it set up. Funny, it was already set up last night, and there was no advance warning that this might be required. But now, it didn't work any more and there was an ugly "trouble" page showing up at our domain.

So she called the number specified in the e-mail. After waiting for a while, she was told that this wasn't the verification department. My wife explained that this was the number she had been told to call, and after another wait she was connected to someone else. But that person said they couldn't do the verification because they were having phone problems and couldn't transfer her.

My wife asked why this was even happening, and she was told that her account was "flagged" because she had a "foreign-sounding" last name. Yes, she is Asian. Yes, she has an Asian last name consisting of two letters. But it's her name. The HG rep said that this doesn't happen to all accounts, so my wife was incensed that she was singled out because her name indicated that she is "foreign." My wife felt that this is racism, and I agree. (BTW, she's been in the USA since 1975.) But the person still couldn't actually DO the verification, however she swore that someone would call back and do it within three minutes.

That person did call as promised. He further explained that the account had been flagged because there is a North Carolina address associated with the credit card, yet I had been logging in to work on the site from Ohio. (We are visiting family.) My wife tried to explain that the whole point of a web-based control panel is that you can log in from ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD! Yet we were put through an inconvenience for doing that. As much as we didn't like our previous host (1and1), they NEVER did anything like this.

So, our HG experience can be summarized like this:

1) Signed up for account using valid credit card.
2) Started working on the site.
3) Account was shut down with no warning or advance notice because my wife is "foreign" and because I was accessing the account via the WORLD WIDE Web.
4) I lost valuable time trying to figure out what was wrong with the account.
5) We were given a number to call, although there was no one at that number who could actually do what we were supposed to accomplish with that call.
6) All of this forced my wife to take time away from her nephew's First Communion party.

On top of that, the original credit card purchase was refunded because of this issue. So now, if I really want to stay with HG, I have to go to the online billing section and go through the hassle of making the same payment again. Hmm, let's see...do I really want to stay with a company that locked down an account that was made with a valid credit card, because my wife has a "foreign-sounding" name, or because I actually logged in to the cPanel from a location other than my home? And now I'll never be sure if it won't happen again if I'm attending a trade show somewhere else, or if someone else happens to have an aversion to my wife's name. Stay with HG? It's not looking very good.

Congratulations, Host Gator. This is how you lose a customer in 22 hours. This is B.S.

[GatorPatrick]

Let me begin by apologizing that things did not go smoothly for you. It appears that you were picked up by our fraud monitoring. It's unfortunate that we have to put such policies in place however with online services fraud is rampant and it's necessary that we do these sorts of verifications in order to protect both us and the card holder. I'll have someone in our sales department find out exactly what happened and we'll see if there's something we can do to expedite this process for you.

[markb1439@yahoo.com]

Hi,

Thanks for the apology. I understand the need to protect against online fraud, but this situation was wrong for numerous reasons:

• My wife was singled out for having a "foreign-sounding" name. That's racist in our book. Having an unusual name doesn't make any one any more likely to commit fraud, and we resent that implication.
• We were also flagged for fraud protection because I logged into the cPanel from a place other than the address on our credit card account. That's the whole point of a web-based control panel...to be able to access it from anywhere.
• In a year with our previous provider (1and1), we never had anything like this happen...and they seem to be surviving just fine. If they can stay in business without being so overzealous about fraud prevention, I would think that HG can too.
• Our time was further wasted by being told to call a certain number to verify, yet no one at that number could actually perform the verification. On top of that, one of the people my wife talked to was very rude.
• There was no advance warning that something like this could happen. Our account was suspended and replaced with an ugly "trouble" page with no warning. This resulted in wasted time while we figured out why I couldn't log in, and then while we sorted the situation out. A better way would have been to send a warning, saying that we had a certain time to provide verification info or the account would be put on hold. We resent that our service was interrupted even though we didn't do anything wrong.

I did decide to stay with HostGator, ONLY because I spent a couple more hours researching and determined that HG really does seem to offer a better package than anyone else. (I was very surprised to find out how many other web companies are actually part of the Endurance company.) No matter what, I didn't want to stay with a company that dissed my wife, however she was willing to forgive and forget.

But to be honest, now I will worry every day that something else will go wrong. Once the site is up and running, another interruption like this could be very costly. So you still lost much of the confidence that I had in your company...all within a day.

Hello,

As Patrick has stated before, we apologize for the way this was handled. The reason your account was flagged for verification was not due to the last name. It was because the order was placed so far from the billing address. Again, we apologize you were told that your last name caused you to be flagged, but that is definitely not the situation.

We appreciate you giving us another chance, seeing as how we started off on the wrong foot. You will come to see why we have so many clients though.

[markb1439@yahoo.com]

Hi Seth,

Thanks, and thanks for your direct help with this situation.

I will say that I appreciate the fact that tech support is available within a minute or so in almost every case. I've had several questions about how things work with subdirectories, etc. (since this setup is different than 1and1 in many ways and I'm trying to get oriented).

Except for this glitch, I do see why Host Gator is so strong.

Best regards.

[GatorPatrick]

Since we were able to get this resolved for you and since your overall experience has turned out to be positive can we mark this thread as positive and resolved?

[markb1439@yahoo.com]

Yes, that will be fine.