rewarding loyal customers

[witchhead]

"Current resellers will need to upgrade to the next highest package in order to take advantage of our new offerings."

Is that your way of rewarding loyal customers?

I am a happy customer/reseller with hostgator for nearly a year now. I feel somehow punished for signing up a year ago as my reseller account is not upgraded according to the new disk space you are offering on the reseller accounts.

As an aluminium (only) reseller I actually get less diskspace (1GB) than a babycroc account (2GB).

It seems like a better idea just to start an new aluminium reseller account and move my sites as it seems you value new customers higher than your exsiting ones.

[sonic]

Originally Posted by witchhead

I am a happy customer/reseller with hostgator for nearly a year now. I feel somehow punished for signing up a year ago as my reseller account is not upgraded according to the new disk space you are offering on the reseller accounts.

As an aluminium (only) reseller I actually get less diskspace (1GB) than a babycroc account (2GB).

Ditto!

Cheers,
Sonic

[cwrebel]

I totally agree. Although I have been happy with HostGator, this is one issue that I am a little peeved about. I for one would love to be able to utilize the autopilot but do not feel that I should have to pay extra because I am an older customer. Hopefully HG will revise this policy.

Regards,
Ed

agreed, it kinda stinks that the customers that have been around forever and rebilled monthly get ripped off, yet the brand new guy can get the best deal going with no guarantee he will even stick around.

[jlgreer1]

I posted this on the reseller chat as well. I hope it isn't spamming!

How much would it cost to add the new disk space to an existing Aluminum account? Would that be a one time fee?

Thanks, Jeff

[hosting4cheap]

Host Gator should look at it this way.


The month of the upgrade we are all on the old plan.
The next month we should get the upgrade. We are not on a contract so each month when we get billed we should be able to benifit from the upgrades.

[chopper]

I totally agree with the frustration felt in regards to this matter, I believe all customers should be rewarded with the extra space without having to upgrade.

I wish i had have waited an extra 2 weeks before switching from my existing reseller company to hostgator than i would have the extra space.

If you do not take care of your long term customers it may prove to be harder to get them back then it would have been to keep them in the first place.
Just my 2 cents
Upgrade everyone!

[Admin21]

I think that 2gig isnt enough space... even 3gig on the higher plans aint enough, well i dont think so.. say you wanted to give ppl 2 gig of space to compete with other hosting companys?

[Passh Reloaded]

You want a suggestion?

On September 8th, Network Solutions is gonna update the DNS tables for ".com" and ".net" domains every 5 minutes. So if you want to change from hosting company, it's gonna take only 5 minutes and not 2 days as now.

On September 8th, everybody with ".com" and ".net" domains or clients, can change to anyother cPanel provider for 1 month or the minimum billing time.

Then, if you want to come back, you'll be again new customers for HostGator with the new features or maybe find a better option that could know the value of loyal customers.

I'll do it if HostGator don't value us.

[chopper]

If you were forced to go to a new host and move all of your files and then completely move back to take advantage of a deal for new customers .

Why would you bother moving back?


With that said,
Is there any information from within the ranks of hostgator what the plan of attack will be for existing customers to keep them happy?

Will look forward to a reply
Mike

[karz10]

I'll be interested to see the response here, I thought people were talking about something that happened before I got here, as I've only been on here a week, but then I looked at the plans, and sure enough I'm missing the boat too.

Basically for me, I had to make a change away from a partner going separate ways, and had to have some control over my domains, and at the last minute, I was looking pretty hard at another provider that offered similar bandwidth/$ as these new plans, but I had done a little more research about HG and figured I'd be good on the 30 day trial...

It's a tough thing, balancing between attracting new customers and keeping existing ones happy. But I'm curious to see how this pans out, I would think that there should be some way for existing customers to be able to get this.

I can imagine how someone who's been with them forever must feel, and I know how I feel just signing up last week

Karsten

[sgt0121]

This may end up being the last straw... just waiting to see how long it will take them to come up with an answer about this.

[jlgreer1]

HG's staff is probably under the weather due to the hurricane that just blew through south Florida. Fortunately, their servers are in Texas! I expect they will respond to this in some way toward the middle of the week. Let's hope it will be positive for existing customers.

Jeff

[Admin21]

Well i spoke to someone on MSN this morning and he/she said to email the sales dep so i did and they said i have to upgrade to the copper plan if i want more space...

What if ppl cant affored to buy the copper plan, then what???

[prhost]

I queried sales :

Kindly clarify for my records, the Disk Space and Bandwidth that I am entitled to utilize.

Response :

Our new plans are for new customers and those that uprade,

Well...what to say...it's their company, and they set the rules.

However, not to say that it hasn't left a bad taste in my mouth, and a degree of annoyance as well, as hostgator is in my mind trying to use strong arm tactics to extract more from you to upgrade. Sort of makes me feel like the rest of the class was given candy, and I didn't get it !!

And all this straight after the confusion of their ambiguous statement claiming a bonus free gig for life...and later stating that that free gig was included in the figure displayed. Confusing, and very wishy washy.

Well...end of the day, it's their company and they set the rules, and if this is the sort of impression they want to leave with their existing customers, so be it. I guess we either take it, or leave it.

it's worse than that, the new kid in class got the candy and no one else. I think the servers here are excellent and support is fair, however things like this make me google for hosting resellers all over again. I really dont see why we dont get the upgrade considering we are not on a contract. I have never heard of a company that suggests you cancel and then rejoin to get the new package? I don't think they should suggest we cancel at all, rather take care of their existing customers. I'll be casually hitting google over the next few days looking for a replacement.

[JZ]

I think everone here is being a bit unfair. It is their right to run specials to attract new customers and to entice existing customers to upgrade. When you originally saw the package you obviously thought that the package was good and at a fair price or you would not have purchased it. This is no different than what cellular phone companies have been doing for years. The other possibility, other than upgrading everyone, is just to stop offering specials. That would eliminate this problem completely.

since you compared it to cellular plans, I currently have --&- and they upgrade their plans for new customers all the time without telling old customers. If you don't say anything you don't get the new deal. All it takes on my part is a phone call to customer service and they upgrade me to the newest deal at no charge even though I have a 2 year contract. I constantly watch their website to see if a better deal has come out and 1 call later and I am on it free of charge. I have done this probably 5 times in the last 5 years or so.

[Admin21]

Hostgator should make any upgrades in space and bandwidth etc avalible to ALL customers new and old alike.. What i like to see in a host is this, i dont want to buy a package say in June and by Say September my package is in the dark ages! while other newer customers are payiong the same price i did for my reseller and getting more space/bandwidth etc... Thats just not right!

I was with HU and i had a reseller with them but it was a tad pricey so i canceld BUT while i was with them ALL accounts got upgraded with an extra 10gig of bandwidth and 2gig of space

And i think that the fact that HG dont seem to look after existing custermers will be the thing that will make me go elce where, I do not want to have to upgrade my account or canelce to get the 5gig of space

[3Cell Hosting]

I have to agree with both Justin and 'Unregistered'. Offers and new plans abound in almost every walk of business. If it was a good deal at the time then you made your buying decision on that basis.

With reference to Customer Relationship Management it is down to HostGator to decide how to handle individual requests. They need to consider the fact that an unhappy customer tells 16 other people (minimum) and that gaining new customers costs more than retaining existing customers. By retaining existing customers and turning them into advocates you increase the intake of new customers. This is not rocket science.

The UK mortgage/banking companies are going through this at present. Some companies will cut a deal while others say 'Goodbye' to their customers. As with everything in this world it is all about choices. I personally feel it is the wrong approach to alienate existing customers but I have to say that based on my original decision to become a reseller I am still happy with the service and the deal I bought.

Just my twopenneth (or should that be 2cents?)
David

[David]

First of all don't shoot me because I just signed up a few days ago and have the new account limits but personally I think it's good to reward existing customers with things like automatic upgrades. I have dealt wth hosts that do automatic upgrades on plans for existing customers, and I think it's a solid business practice. Of course, depending on how large you are, it might not be feasible to do so. That being said, keep in mind those same aforementioned hosts did not offer anything like a 99.9% uptime guarantee (and here's the kicker) for your site. They would have uptimes based on the network infrastructure, not even down to the server level! What do I or any other customer care about if a router or switch went down, we care if out site(s) are up or not. I think this type of uptime guarantee is a great practice, and I know they honor it because I have seen posts on other forums about it. This is just one example, but there are several others that help to distance HG from a lot of the competition. For the price/value ratio, I think they're hard to beat.

David

[JZ]

Well, lets be realistic here. It just is not possible for HG to upgrade everyone without being compensated in some way. GatorJustin said in another thread which I am unable to find at the moment that he would be replying so it is probably just a matter of time. In the meantime I think it would be beneficial to everyone if we would make suggestions as to what you would be willing to do to get the new offerings. One thing that I could think of is paying a one time fee (maybe 20 or 30 dollars) to upgrade your existing account as an alternative to upgrading to the next plan. I, for one, would be interested in finding out what other suggestions that people have. I just don't see upgrading everyone as a feasible option.

Just a note:
HG is a fairly large host. They have over 900 members in the forum alone, and not everyone that gets an account has registered for the forum. If they double the space on their new plans, they would have to purchase many more servers to accomodate everyone. This cost would have to be borne by the existing resellers in some fashion if they wanted to take advantage of the new offerings.

[karz10]

Like I said, I'm waiting to see how it pans out, I see some of both sides, but I wanted to add my .02 about some of the analogies to other business models, particularly, the cellular companies.

As a telecom industry veteran, I know this game all too well. I would say about 10 years ago, someone could have built this case, but in the last several years, the cellular companies did in fact realize they were alienating customers, and they did something about it. As a matter of fact, I started in cellular over 10 yrs ago, so I saw this first hand.

In order to get new customers, they had to agressively advertise the new deals, but existing customers began asking about these deals, and discovered they weren't offered to them. After losing business to other companies, and realizing it was costing them the marketshare they so desparately wanted, they woke up, and began to allow old customers to change to the new plans. However, in the cellular world, there's also the issue of equipment, someone had to brunt the cost of the phone itself, as you may know, the phones cost the carrier or dealer about $100-$200 more than they sell it to you with your plan, but by committing to a term with them, they give you a discount, so that $150 phone is now free, and the $300 phone is only $150.

Then the *upgrade* was born. In cellular however, this did not necessarily mean you had to upgrade your plan, just that you wanted a new piece of equipment, so they *re-termed* you in order to give you a similar discount on the phone that a new customer would get. So, I don't know who your cellular company is, but the vast majority do offer you any current promotions or new packages if you ask for it, the only caveat is usually if you just bought a phone in the last few months, they already took a $100+ hit to get you that phone, so it will be a few more months before they allow you to get another one (w/ a discount), but they'll usually give you any of the new plans. As a matter of fact, I check the plans every few months to make sure I'm on the best one at the time, and I usually change plans a couple times a year, and it usually involves a write-down in revenue for the carrier, or at the very least, I'll get more stuff for the same money (bigger area, more free in-network calling, more overall minutes, etc.)

Even today, maybe close to half of retail outlets for cellular phones are run by dealers, not the cell phone companies themselves. Back in the day, they used to have a lot more retail outlets than the company themselves. The problem was, customer in search of these upgrades/mods were often turned away at their favorite store, because it was something that had to be done *at the corporate store*. Well, it didn't take long for the dealers to realize they were being viewed in a lesser light by the customer because of this, so they fought to have the right to do upgrades too, and eventually got it, so that they could be on equal footing w/ their supplier/competitor. In most cases, the dealer didn't get as much commission on the re-terms as a new sale, but it was something they had to do in order to meet the needs of the customer, and help ensure that customer thought of them and came back the next time they needed something.

The other reason for the new plans, upgrade and re-term being available to customers of the carrier and dealers alike was called *churn*. Someone mentioned on here about they could leave for awhile and come back. While not very feasible for many, some here would probably do that. Back in the day, we were forced to *churn* customers that wanted a new deal. Since no allowance was made for existing customers, they would come in and get the new phones in their wife's name, kid's name, or their company name etc. Or they would buy a new phone and cancel their old phone later. These are the kinds of things that will start happening when new customers are given too much preferential treatment, existing customers get into a *me vs. them* thing and look for any way to get over, and have much less loyalty and will bounce to another vendor at the drop of a hat.

So, the cell phone analogy is really an argument *to give* old customers newly available plans. Additionally, I could show you signs across the board in the industry like that. With long distance, with local phone service, with just about any dedicated telecom, data or Internet service for business, the only difference is that some of the more complicated services that have to be quoted out are typically harder for the customer to realize his provider has lowered rates unless he goes through a pricing analysis.

The reason this is so much like the cellular thing is because HG's rates are right on the Web site, the same site we have to go look for other information like support, or FAQs, so it's inevitable that existing customers are going to see the new pricing, just like the cellular companies who advertise the new deals.

The thing is, this is a competitive market, and for the most part, technology services continue to come down, or you get more services for the same $. In any case, this won't be the last time HG is faced with this decision, and I'm sure future thought will be given to whatever their experience ends up being with this situation.

I don't disagree that I saw some value in the service as it was priced a week or so ago, but HG didn't change the plans for no reason, they must have been losing business to other companies, or not getting enough customers compared to their goal, otherwise they would have left the rates as they were. So for those of us that saw something with HG, apparently some may not have seen enough. Same thing will be the case with existing customers, some will stay, some will go. Then there's the unseen number, the many of you here that have more than one host, you may turn up more new customers elsewhere rather than build out your HG server if you were getting lower rates elsewhere and not on your server here, but you may not cancel this service right away.

I know I feel like I missed the boat signing up a couple days too early, but I have not contacted them yet about it, I was gonna wait and see if I heard anything from them first, so I cannot comment on what their position is at this time. On one hand, I do understand if there is reluctance to offer to their whole base, but they do have their rates widely available, so I'm sure they expect some feedback about that. I just got here, and I don't think I'll be mad if they don't offer me the new aluminum plan, but it would make me feel good about my decision to host here if they do. If they don't, I guess I'll have to consider my options when I begin to fill up my space.

Sorry for the long post, but I felt a need to clarify some of the analogies being used, and provide my .02.

Thanks,
Karsten

[JZ]

I guess we will have to agree to disagree on the cellular phone business. I have been in the cellular phone business for quite some time myself. I have *never* seen a cellular company offer new plans to old customers just by asking. It always involved a contract extension nowadays it is upwards of 2 years. If someone breaks the contract the early termination fees are 150.00 to 250.00 depending on the carrier. Remember, that they are not giving you something without getting something in return. Maybe, if people are willing to sign contracts it will benefit HG to give them the upgraded plans, but I do not forsee them requesting contracts from their customers.

[prhost]

Wow !! That post was worth more than .02 I can tell you that !! Hey - great input. That was well articulated.

As for myself at this stage, whatever the outcome, I intend sticking by HostGator even though I may feel a bit pissed off about missing out on an offer that doesn't really affect me now but I guess would come in handy in the long run.

So be it. On the other side of the spectrum which is support and tech, I feel they know what they are doing and botom line, that's where I want to feel safe and comfortable. Their support is truly 24/7 and I can vouch for that as I am geographically located right now in Hong Kong, and have often sought assistance, or even pointed out a high Disk sda3 reading that has been taken care of immediately.

I am sure that HostGator will come up with a solution to try and appease existing users, as much as is possible within their limits right now, to maintain their reputation in the market as well with their existing clients.

Will be interesting to note their response and attitude.