New Potential Customer Questions

[twist3d]

I currently have a reseller at a competitor of yours.

I currently pay $150 a year for my reseller server (old plan from a few years ago) but lately support has been really lacking and they brag about their new GREAT monitoring system but if you ask me nobody is actually monitoring it because my server could remain down for hours or even a whole day unless I say something to them about it.

My question is how actively do you guys monitor your servers?

Do you depend on customers to notify you every time a server goes down or has high load?

How quick is support to answer tickets or get back to the customers?

What is your average uptime for a reseller server?

The staff at my current host just seem too busy hosting contests and other crap instead of doing their job and keeping the servers running.

Thank You and I hope to hear back soon.

[striddy]

Originally Posted by twist3d

What is your average uptime for a reseller server?

I have a reseller account here and in the last 2 years, I've had less than 2 hours downtime.

[twist3d]

Well that's good.

How fast is support at answering tickets?

[GamerFill]

Originally Posted by twist3d

Well that's good.

How fast is support at answering tickets?

I've never opened a ticket personally, but that's only because the live chat here is so great.
I've tried it twice so far, at different times of the day, and I've only had to wait 3 minutes before I was tended to (yes, by a real person). The second time I got support instantly.

Both representatives fixed my problem for me in a matter of minutes, and they know what they're doing.

I'd imagine that the ticket system works just as well; but why wait when you can get live support that quickly?

[regentronique]

I must respond here because i feel that it is completely unacceptable to see a very experienced HostGator forum member telling only the good side of Hostgator and a totally inexperienced forum member telling that the support is so great.

@striddy : You should be ashamed to not tell this potential customer about the recent server isssues hundreds of resellers had to face. They were offline for over 40 hours and many of them were complaining on these forums about it and you even responded to one today. So you knew about this, as well as you knew that several other issues occured on other reseller servers for years. The fact that you were unaffected with these issues do not give you the right to hide the fact to a newly potential customers, unless you have teamed with the other HostGators Fanatics here that with dismiss all HostGator staff wrongdoing and always blame the user for its bad review or comments that are now more and more hidden from the publicly accessible forums recently...

@GamerFill : Maybe you are satisfied with the average and poorly technical knowledge of the LiveChat support here because you are not a power user or an advanced software engineer needing real technical help. But if you took the time to read the dozens of recent commentaries about the constantly degrading quality of the LiveChat support you should be more reserved in your own commentaries.

I have been a HostGator reseller for more than 2 years and i can tell that their support is constantly degrading with LiveChat as well as the ticket support. Tickets response time went from 20 minutes years ago to 3-6 hours recently and i do not tell about the multiple replies we have to do to make the technician understand the real issue we have, because most of them do not read completely our ticket before asking unnecessary questions already answered in our previous posts. At the end it could take 2 days to solve an issue that would have been resolved in 4 hours with a well trained and competent support technician.

I have discussed these issues privately with administrators and the owner here, to finally be responded that it is quite difficult to find and keep qualified staff. I can understand that quite easily, but i cannot understand the manipulations and lies used to hide the problem.

As many other webhosting enterprises, HostGator is facing a staff quality crisis that will be very hard to solve mostly because expansion is the main target for them. But this is no excuse to hide the facts and the truth to new customers. I know that i will be again lapidated because i had the impudence to tell the truth here, mostly by the HostGators Fanatics, but i cannot silence my heart and soul for the benefit of good relations with people here...

P.S. Striddy i have decided to delete our forum friendly relationship because of the recent events, mostly because you have choosen to side with the dishonest people here.

[GatorPatrick]

In response to Reg:

1) The "40 hour outage" that you mention was nowhere near that long, that is a gross exaggeration. For much of this time (while we were working) the server was up and serving pages, albeit slowly due to high i/o by the failing RAID hardware. The way it's presented within the post makes it seem like the norm, when in fact the hardware issues on pantera were due to a very rare 'perfect storm' of sorts due to a combination of a kernel upgrade to a new major revision along with failing RAID hardware. This is something that in my years of working the highest technical issues here at HG I've never seen. That said, we had our best technicians (including myself) working on the server the entire time and we did the best we possibly could in the fastest possible time to return the server to normal service.

We also of course honor our SLA and offer our sincerest apologies to all those resellers affected as this one server out of our 2000+ reseller/shared servers can severely diminish our clients' experience which of course is unacceptable to us.

2) "Maybe you are satisfied with the average and poorly technical knowledge of the LiveChat support here because you are not a power user or an advanced software engineer needing real technical help."

I know for a fact we never make the claim, (we being upper management), that you should utilize LiveChat for advanced technical issues. Brent himself will tell you that LiveChat is meant to be a first tier frontline support solution, and we have it structured as such. As far as degrading technical prowess goes, I can tell you that the training techniques we employ now are far superior to the techniques of old, so I would like to suggest that the 'degrading support' you've observed may be somewhat unique to your perception.

3) We very much appreciate your loyalty to our product for the 2+ years you've been a client and I know that I myself have worked, along with Brent on many of the issues that have been raised over the years by you. It saddens us that this was not to your standards and I'm personally displeased to see any client of ours upset.

4) I feel that it is completely inaccurate to slant the view of our forum & review policies as manipulation and lies. I will not respond any further to that.

And for direct response to the OP's questions:

My question is how actively do you guys monitor your servers? We have dedicated personnel staffed 24 hours a day for every shift (lvl 2+ linux admins) monitoring server loads & service status.

Do you depend on customers to notify you every time a server goes down or has high load? Never, we have a specially coded in house server monitor providing those statistics for us via SNMP 24 hours a day.

How quick is support to answer tickets or get back to the customers? As fast as possible, unfortunately this varies with volume but we shoot for the ticket times to be less than 1 hour.

What is your average uptime for a reseller server? This is not an easy question as we do frequent kernel upgrades (we do our own kernel development in house) for security updates in order to stay ahead of the curve and avoid falling prey to 0-day exploits. It's normal for one of our reseller servers to avoid having a load-caused reboot for several months, some up to a year and more. Our shared/reseller solutions are designed with stability being a primary goal.

That said, I'll issue you a challenge. I'll personally pick up the cost of an aluminum plan for you (out of my own pocket) for 1 month. No credits or freebies, I'll pay the cost out of my own personal gas/food money. If you're unhappy at all at that time you can choose to go to a host of your choice and I'll perform the transfer for you myself. I, along with the rest of the HostGator staff view complete client satisfaction as our number one goal, and I will personally stand behind the product we offer because I truly believe it to be the best in the industry.

[striddy]

Originally Posted by regentronique

I must respond here because i feel that it is completely unacceptable to see a very experienced HostGator forum member telling only the good side of Hostgator and a totally inexperienced forum member telling that the support is so great.

Nice to see you posting here again.

Originally Posted by regentronique

@striddy : You should be ashamed to not tell this potential customer about the recent server isssues hundreds of resellers had to face.

Mr Regentronique,
As you very well know, this is a peer support forum. It is not some place where a forum member can tell another forum member that they "should be ashamed" of their own rightful views or actions. That right is reserved for my late father and living mother, nobody else, and you are neither of these.

Originally Posted by regentronique

They were offline for over 40 hours and many of them were complaining on these forums about it and you even responded to one today. So you knew about this, as well as you knew that several other issues occured on other reseller servers for years.

The OP asked several questions. I answered one of those questions based on my own particular experience, not other peoples.

I am not expected or forced by anyone, let alone you, to tell of other peoples experiences. Those people have their own voices and can tell it as they see it.

Originally Posted by regentronique

The fact that you were unaffected with these issues do not give you the right to hide the fact to a newly potential customers, unless you have teamed with the other HostGators Fanatics here that with dismiss all HostGator staff wrongdoing and always blame the user for its bad review or comments that are now more and more hidden from the publicly accessible forums recently...

Hiding!!! Come on, get a grip. I told my experience. That is totally different to "hiding" something.

Originally Posted by regentronique

P.S. Striddy i have decided to delete our forum friendly relationship because of the recent events, mostly because you have choosen to side with the dishonest people here.

As you choose. Recent events.... siding with dishonest people.... Wow.

It's a real pity that you don't use your knowledge and skills to assist in answering forum posts made by those poor unfortunate customers here at HG who by your own verbiage are being lied to, and having such a horrendous experience with downtime and support.

[GatorBrent]

regentronique I'm very sorry you are not happy with us. If you believe you can find a better reseller hosting company I'd be more then happy to refund every penny you have paid us for the 2+ years of service.

I personally have worked with you on numerous occasions to do everything that we can to make this a good hosting experience. I dare you to find a time I have not personally worked with you to resolve your issues. I don't believe there's anything further we can do to change your mind on how you feel and the last thing I want is for you to continue services with both of us feeling that your opinion will never change.

Please let me know if you wish to take me up on my offer. If you choose not to I'm going to have to ask you to cease posting negative comments about us especially when they are not factual.

[Abomination]

Originally Posted by GatorBrent

Please let me know if you wish to take me up on my offer. If you choose not to I'm going to have to ask you to cease posting negative comments about us especially when they are not factual.

They seem factual to me.

In addition:
You have about 8 fan boys, 8 paid staff members, and about 8 'peer support' people constantly implying that the people with problems were the bad guys somehow because they did not do everything in the exact order they could have.

I've emailed Douglas over some of these issues, and since then most of the 'bad' customer reviews were moved to private forums, but the good ones were allowed to stay.

Your company has issues Brent. There are a huge number of places on the internet, the hg forums you have some control over.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by Abomination

8 'peer support' people constantly implying that the people with problems were the bad guys somehow because they did not do everything in the exact order they could have.

There are two of us, both of whom have spoken repeatedly about moving negative reviews being a questionable practice. Can you please give some examples of what we're "constantly implying"? Thanks.