My Experience with HostGator

amotaz · #1 09-18-2007, 11:42 PM

I thought I'd share my (literally) one-minute experience with HostGator.

About an hour ago, I purchased my Baby croc hosting account. Paid and received a payment confirmation. They said my account will be setup within a few minutes and that I'll be notified by e-mail including my login information.

A few minutes later, I received a "welcome to HostGator family" e-mail, and that my account was setup successfully. The e-mail included my login information.

Logged on to my account (cPanel).

A minute later (while I was browsing my new account), I got a password popup box. I attempted to login several times but it did not work.

Same minute, I got an e-mail from HostGator staff. It said:

"In order for us to setup your account, we will need you to call us and verify your account. If you are not able to call, you can also respond to this ticket with a scanned copy of a Photo ID such as as a passport, or drivers license. Also please include a scanned copy of the credit card that was used in purchase, if you purchased a hosting account with a credit card. If you paid with Paypal please provide a copy of a current utility bill. Please do so at your earliest convenience to ensure that your account with HostGator is setup as soon as possible."

So, obviously, I need to "call" them or send them a scanned copy of my passport AND the credit card to get my account "setup". (Whatever happended to "welcome to the family"? What was I logged on to a minute ago?)

I replied to the e-mail asking for a reason, and did not receive a reply yet (that's more than an hour).

Talked to Live Support. After close to an hour of discussion (and *long* delays), discussion was concluded with this:
"[Support Agent]: The account will require verification to be activated, I don't have access to the reason why your account needs to be verified. If you choose to not verify the account then it will be closed"

That's about it. I'm still waiting for a "sales admin" to reply to my inquiry.

Has anybody faced the same problem?

Anyway, honestly, I don't feel like "calling" to get my account reactivated.

Thanks HostGator.

amotaz · #2 09-19-2007, 01:07 AM

Update: Account cancellation and refund requested.

***GatorPatrick*** · #3 09-19-2007, 05:29 AM

Verifications are a normal and necessary evil of any Hosting company to prevent fraud. Unfortunately there's alot of people out there who aren't honest and the amount of fraud we get on a daily basis is staggering. I'm sorry you feel it's inconvenient but it's something that we have to do in order to stay in business.

amotaz · #4 09-19-2007, 09:18 AM

Thanks, Patrick. I understand and I agree with you that there's a large amount of fraud attempts.

However, all I asked for was a reasonable justification for deactivating my account. If the verification process is indeed part of your "standard procedure," then you should clearly state that not only on your TOS but on the homepage as well. If it's not standard, then I think I at least deserve a justification.

And regarding if such a procedure is a necessity or not, I believe GoDaddy and Skype people have overcome this "problem" long ago. I didn't have to call Skype to get my account. And neither did I have to e-mail GoDaddy a copy of my passport.

***GatorWesley*** · #5 09-19-2007, 09:32 AM

Unfortunately Egypt is one of the countries that we get a really high amount of fraud orders from and every account that is ordered from there needs to be verified. This is for your protection as well as ours.

amotaz · #6 09-19-2007, 09:39 AM

Exactly my point. Saying that would have sufficed and would've saved me at least 2 hours yesterday.

And if there are no exceptions made and all accounts from Egypt do need to be verified, then it only makes sense to mention that clearly on your website. Do mention that accounts coming from Egypt need to be verified by a phone call or a passport/credit card copy. Same goes for other countries of course.

***GatorWesley*** · #7 09-19-2007, 11:05 AM

I got our pending department to look into this issue further and everything checked out on your account so it is now active. We apologize about the extra time it took to set up this account and we will speak with the person that marked this for needing verification.

amotaz · #8 09-19-2007, 11:59 AM

Thanks, Wesley.

I confirm my account has been reactivated.

***GatorPatrick*** · #9 09-19-2007, 02:26 PM

Can we change this thread from a negative since this issue has been resolved?

amotaz · #10 09-30-2007, 11:54 PM

Hi Patrick,

I've responded privately to your message. I said that despite my issue has been resolved, this does not exactly make a "positive" experience. And I promised to write another review after some time. I, however, told you that you can write "[resolved]" in my thread title.

A couple of days after that, there's obviously been a misunderstanding because you not only added "[resolved]" to the title (which is OK), but you also changed the thread icon to "positive". I, again, replied to you in private and you said it must've been a mistake. You changed it back.

Just today, I was just checking out the forums, and I couldn't find my thread. It turned out that my icon has been changed -- again -- to "positive", and that the thread has been renamed from "My 1-Minute Experience with HostGator" to "My Experience with HostGator".

Please tell me this is a mistake.