Domain Issue [resolved]

[chrissyg]

I've been a Host Gator customer since 2004, and although they've been fine for the most part, today I'm considering moving on.

I set my domain to auto-renew after I missed its expiration a few years ago. That worked - I got my reminder and invoice as expected, paid it, received confirmation of payment, and went merrily on my way until today, when I stopped receiving email and my site was replaced by a faux search-site page called something along the lines of 'Nanny Family Feud'. Not cool. It's been over a week since Host Gator received my payment (ticket GBA-3426050) via PayPal.

My beef with Host Gator isn't with their internet services, which have been adequate, but with their renewal/billing/support services:
- The domain took moments to renew and should not have been allowed to expire in the first place.
- I initially called and spent 15 minutes waiting on the phone until the person who answered declared it a bad connection, told me to call back, and hung up on me.
- I then turned to support chat, where the representative did get the site renewed, but also informed me that he had no idea why this happened and there was basically no way to prevent this from happening in the future.

My business with Host Gator is quite inconsequential compared to most, but I do still expect it to work. If it doesn't work, I expect to be offered solutions. I'm grateful the problem was resolved fairly quickly, but it was inconvenient and alarming, and that's changed my impression of the company for the worse.

[GatorDHanna]

I apologize for the inconvenience.

The domain process here at HostGator is not as smooth as it could be and is something we are working on improving. We are completely replacing our billing system in the coming months and the goal is to make it much easier and much more reliable to get bills paid and ensure renewals go through when they should.

Can you reply to that ticket with the PayPal transaction ID you used to pay us over a week ago? Our email asks that you reply to the ticket so we can process the renewal and I did not see a reply to that ticket. Did you reply? That is probably why the problem with the renewal occurred.

I've assigned the ticket to me and will go over it and the entire situation in detail as soon as I have that information. I've also informed our sales manager to see what he can do.

Thanks so much and I apologize again for the trouble.