Love the service, some issues

[Rendus]

I've been a customer for a couple months now, and haven't had any real problems, and nothing that has required contacting Support before. Over the last few days, I've been trying to give someone FTP access to update parts of a site, normally not a big deal, but when I add an FTP account, it never shows up in CPanel's FTP Manager section. I figured I'd give the live chat support a shot, and.. Well... Here we go, the log in it's entirety:

Powered by CCS
System: Please Wait while connecting to an operator

You''re connected to operator - jule

jule: Hello, Welcome to Live Chat ! ! !

jule: like ?

jule: anonymous@domainname.com ?

rendus: In my cpanel, I cannot add aditional FTP accounts, and see /bin/ftpsh@*edited* for the only account listed.

rendus: My cpanel shows 3 FTP accounts used, but the account listing only shows that one.

jule: Do you see Main Account beside that ?

rendus: No. Just Delete and Change Pass

jule: yeah

jule: they are the standard System Created account

jule: and cannot be deleted

rendus: Alright, that's not a problem then But I still don't see any other accounts listed in my cpanel, but Ftp Accounts 3 / 20 is listed on the front page of it.

jule: Thats not the problem

jule: If you want more FTP account then i can change the setting for you

jule: and make more FTP accounts available

rendus: I don't need more FTP accounts, but I currently cannot manage the ones I have. I can add an account, but it never shows up in the FTP Account Maintenance section of CPanel.

System: Chat session has ended.

Note that I didn't end the session, and my internet connection certainly didn't drop. Instead of getting an "I don't know, please e-mail blah@blah.com" or even an "I don't know, goodbye", I get disconnected.

Now, I don't mind that the person didn't get what I was asking.. They got the /bin/ftpsh@ thing (assuming that's correct, anyway. Seems kind of odd to list that), but the way the rest of my question was handled leaves a bit to be desired.

I'm going to e-mail support and see how that goes, and will update this thread with the results of that, if only to say the problem was/will/will not be resolved.

My experience with Hostgator has been great so far, excepting this support incident - No major downtime, no real glitches on my server, nothing really 'bad' to comment on. They're a great host, in my eyes, especially if you know enough to handle things on your own

[Rendus]

Problem was fixed via email support. Took a few hours, but certainly not a bad turnaround time for a non-critical issue.

[GatorBrent]

This is what we have in welcome email for support guidelines..

Support Guidelines
If you have any questions please check out our FAQ first: Reseller Hosting Help.

Another great place for help and discussion is the HostGator Reseller Hosting Forum.

When to use chat support:

Chat is great for quick questions but horrible for resolving problems. If you ever use chat support and you do not receive the answer you're looking for within minutes we advise you to open a support ticket for the quickest and most appropriate response.

When to use ticket support:

The quickest and best way to get all problems solved and more complicated questions answered is by e-mailing support@hostgator.com The second you e-mail us you will get a ticket number e-mailed back to you. If you do not get a ticket number we did not get your e-mail. The reason ticket support is best for solving problems and answering questions is because your ticket is escalated up the food chain until your problem is solved or question is answered. Most tickets are done within minutes if it is a complicated problem it will take longer as it is moved up to higher level technicians. If you're ever unhappy with a response or need more help simply respond back to the ticket and we will continue to help you.

Please do not open multiple tickets on the same issue or your help process will be slowed down and possibly ignored completely.

Please always provide your main account domain and username as well as a step-by-step of how to reproduce your problem including any login information that may be needed.

When to use phone support:

Feel free to call us for help but keep in mind that for serious issues a ticket will be needed.

[Rendus]

My problem wasn't so much with the fact they couldn't help with the cpanel FTP issue - I was more concerned with the abrupt disconnect without any warning than anything. It's just unforatunate that the chat support can't be relied on for properly answering questions, properly resolving problems, or properly handling customers

My problem was handled a few hours after I sent an e-mail, which isn't bad at all - The presence of chat-based support just sort of led me to believe that they might be useful for something, is all I was looking for a response along the lines of, "OK I can fix that," or "I don't know, please submit a ticket," or "It's a known problem, sorry," Or even a "Dunno kthx bye!" Instead, they just sort of shrugged and hung up, which.. Isn't a good thing.

If I had gotten even the slightest bit of an answer out of the chat people, this entire post and so many others like it would have never happened. However, instead of asking me to send an email to support@hostgator.com, they gave me what was, in the end, incorrect information, and hung up on me.

I'll avoid the use of chat in the future, which is really unfortunate because it does have potential to route problems to the proper departments, if nothing else, if they were just a little more compitent on the customer service side of things.

I'd assume that their service is being paid for in some way, and discouraging customers from using a support resource that's being paid to support customers seems a bit counterproductive.

Well, enough rambling out of me I love Hostgator's service so far, haven't had any problems worth mentioning other than the support thing, and it wasn't even a real "problem" so much as a complaint about how things are being handled by that particular part of that side of the business.

[Pulp]

i have only had great support with hostgator. yeah, the instant messenger techs can be a little qwerky sometimes as we all know, lol, but i have found that tech support has been second to none for us. i use instant messenger now if i have a really quick simple question that i can't answer myself for reasons of access. always, use email support for tech questions and you'll never be disapointed. i can't tell you the number of times that brent, tim, sandra, or anyone else there has come through for us when we were absoloutley stuck. HOSTGATOR ROCKS!!!

[GatorBrent]

The live chat is very unstable and crashes for many people looking like we exited the chat. May I change your testimonial to a plus? =)

[bagel50]

This seems to me to be the no. 1 complaint that I've heard. history repeats itself. IMHO, (sorry, I've been posting a fair few opinions this morning), this is something that needs sorting. I don't think it's enough to change the welcome email - many existing customers (who granted, should already know about how to use the different types of support, but only from the forums) didn't get that email. Why not just make sure that chat support is better? Level 1 it may be, but still there are sometimes loooong delays in replies, and sometimes inappropriate (wrong) responses. Even for level 1 questions the nature of livechat support is at times quirky. Email support is great in my experience (*really* good), it's just chat support that can be a problem. I think warning should be put on the support pages too, and management should do some quality control. It's probably a difficult issue to deal with, but I really do think it needs to be done.
Olly