Disappointed with Hostgator

[smiller82]

I posted this on webhostingtalk.com first. I just found the hostgator forums so I have decided to post it here.

I've got to be honest. I’m really wondering if I made the right decision by choosing hostgator as my reseller.

A simple request has so far turned into 9 hours of site downtime.

I had hostgator recreate my account to set a different username. The request was completed fine up to that point. However, upon recreating the account I was not given any WHM functionality.

I informed them of this and almost 3 hours later I get a reply only asking what was missing from WHM. This really got to me because the system admin should have simply logged into my WHM to clearly see what the problem was. By him sending me an email it meant I had to reply and then wait another 2-3 for a reply back.

Once my WHM had been down for 5 hours I updated my ticket stating it has been down for 5 hours and that I would like someone to call me instead of corresponding through email as I would like to have this fixed asap.

I then called support and spoke with someone who said they would put my ticket in critical status to get it looked at sooner. This rep did nothing of the sort. I checked my support ticket 20 minutes later and the status of my ticket was the same. At this point I used online chat and requested my ticket be placed in critical status which they finally did.

At 7 hours of downtime I used online chat again. The rep was extremely unhelpful or sympathetic. He offered no assistance other than repeatedly saying I had to wait in queue and wait my turn. He did not care that it had been 7 hours and that I could not restore my user accounts and site. He also told me that because I had updated my ticket at the 5 hour mark that my queue position would have reset. I asked him to have someone call me as this should have been an extremely simple request and I should have been back up and running 7 hours ago. His response…. “We will not call you”. He did not offer to get someone to look into it right away. He did nothing!

So in total, hostgator dropped the ball four times. If the first admin that recreated my account had done it properly I would have had almost no downtime. I understand that mistakes can happen and I accept that. However, hostgator drops the ball a second time when the second admin didn’t simply log into my WHM to clearly see what the problem was. This certainly should have been resolved after the first reply when I said I had no WHM functionality. Hostgator drops the ball a third time when the rep did not follow through with what he said he would do and change my ticket status. And finally hostgator drops the ball a fourth time by having a rep that was completely unhelpful and did nothing to with improve the situation.

I read many hostgator reviews on here before I chose them and to be honest I expected more from hostgator. I’m extremely unsatisfied and discouraged at this point.

What is the ticket number you received for the issue so we may investigate?

Basil H.
HostGator Technical Support
http://hostgator.com/help

[smiller82]

***UPDATE****

Hostgator has finally restored my WHM permissions after 12 hours of downtime on their end.

Let's hope I never have an experience like this again.

XJP-967300

[smiller82]

Post From Brent on webhosttalking.com

It's exactly what I thought had happened. Sales / billing is trained on how to terminate and recreate accounts. We do not want system administrators doing this as it just leaves more people to make mistakes like terminating the wrong account, forgetting to update billing, etc.

We received your ticket on your reseller username change which requires an account recreation since cpanel won't allow a simple rename to be done correctly. One of our system admins decided "oh I'll break policy as how hard can it be to remake an account" He quickly discovered it's not as simple as that because reseller privileges have to be assigned. He most likely had no clue they even existed, and believed they magically appeared when an account is created.

Three different admins looked at the tickets bouncing it around all night even escalating it to higher level support ques before a fourth veteran admin assigned it to sales at which point the ticket was done correctly in a few minutes time.

I have a feeling every time you called or used chat whoever you reached messaged someone in support to do the ticket as chat / phone support doesn't have any type of access to do this type of request. So in summary it was just huge lack of communication and common sense.

Reseller account recreations are very rare so it's most likely the first time it's reached all the admins that attempted to handle the request. I will be pulling them all aside today to reinforce the company policy, and give them a quick discussion on common sense. The rest of the company will be receiving a news email reminding them of how we handle this type of request.

I apologize for shear lack of stupidity we displayed to you, and have given you a free month of hosting the trouble. If there is anything else I can do for you please do send me a private message. If you come across anything like this again in the future please contact me ASAP.

-brent

Thank you Brent for detailing the events that occurred on your end. I do appreciate the one month credit. However, I would have much more preferred if the downtime did not happen.

As I said in my post. I understand that mistakes can happen and I'm willing to accept that. I simply hope that any future issue's that may arise don't lead to an experience like this again.

Regards,

Steven