service

[aunkoh]

I am posting the correspondence I just send off to HostGator CEO Brent Oxley. I am hoping I get a response sometime in the next couple of days. I have been completely appalled and pissed off today by the lack of service from the HostGator team. It is ridiculously to keep customers twiddling their thumbs for almost 12 hours without really doing anything to address their rather serious problems.


_____



Dear Brent,

I apologize for being a pain in your ass. You probably find me one of your most annoying customers at this point.

But I felt that I had to come to you directly. I have been waiting for over 11 hours for my problems to be addressed and resolved and am still waiting.

I have just gotten off the phone with one of your support officers. I was on hold - -long distance from Singapore for 15 minutes and then was on the phone with your staff member for another 20 . 15 minutes of that 20 was spend on hold while the person I was speaking to put me on hold to look for other people to help me. She tried finding Michael S, Chad Bean and her superior. At the end of the day, after spending a very expensive 35 minutes on the phone, I was told that she couldn’t help me and that I had to just keep waiting.

This is a tad ridiculous. As you can imagine, I am very upset because the system you guys have leaves your customers completely at your mercy.

As you can see, I waited over 9 hours for someone to address my ticket. Then after responding back immediately, it is now almost two hours and no one has yet responded.

I still don’t know what the issue is and I certainly hope it can be fixed before my work day starts tomorrow.

I hope you take your customer’s issues seriously and can help me get someone to look into this immediately. I have lost time and money for something which appears to be a malfunction on your side.

Thank you,

Aun


_________________
Aun Koh


-----Original Message-----
From: Aun Koh
Sent: Monday, 26 May, 2008 9:06 PM
To: '2675346@tickets.hostgator.com'; 'reboots@hostgator.com'
Cc: 'Chad Bean'; 'brent@hostgator.com'
Subject: RE: Update to ticket FDV-2675346
Importance: High

Michael,

So long as the rebooting does not affect the operations of the various websites and email accounts running on my server, please reboot the server.

The most important thing is fixing the current errors.

May I ask why it took 10 hours for someone to get back to me?

Many thanks,

Aun


_________________
Aun Koh



-----Original Message-----
From: tickets@hostgator.com [mailto:tickets@hostgator.com]
Sent: Monday, 26 May, 2008 8:46 PM
To: aun@atemedia.com
Subject: Update to ticket FDV-2675346


Hello,


Your filesystem is mounted as read-only. We will need to reboot your server to have this filesystem checked and re-mounted. Please submit a reboot request when you would like this done so it can be actioned quickly.


reboots@hostgator.com




Thank you,


Michael S
Server Administrator
HostGator LLC.
http://support.hostgator.com

Your rating will determine what I get paid. Please rate this response at the url below:
https://tickets.hostgator.com/rateticket/7253157/343



From: Aun Koh
Sent: Monday, 26 May, 2008 5:21 PM
To: 'Chad Bean'; 'brent@hostgator.com'
Subject: support
Importance: High

Dear Chad and Brent,

I submitted Ticket # 2675346 at 1127am my time. It is now 520pm my time and I am still waiting to hear from anyone in support. I have gone on Live Chat 3 times and each time I have been told the Lead Admin will tend to my case next but I am still waiting.

As you know, I host a couple domains off my server. My main work email domain is atemedia.com. My wife and I were away for a week and had set up autoresponders for aun@atemedia.com and sulyn@atemedia.com. When we came back yesterday, we deleted the autoresponders. When we did though, we got the following message:

"Fatal! Write Failure: /etc/valiases/atemedia.com. Ignore any messages of success this can only result in failure!"

In the browser, though, the autoresponder was gone so we didn't think anything of it. However, since then, every time someone emails one of us, they get back a blank email from the below email address “chubbyhu@ate.atemedia.com. Below is an example:

From: chubbyhu@ate.atemedia.com [mailto:chubbyhu@ate.atemedia.com] Sent:
Monday, 26 May, 2008 11:43 AM To: Aun Koh Subject:

I can't seem to find a way to turn this off as from what I can see there is no more autoresponder. I tried setting up a new autoresponder and turning one off only to get the same "Fatal! Write Failure" message.

My staff have also fed back to me that over the past week they have had problems with the mail servers. One tried to set up a Forwarder and got the same “Fatal! Write Failure” message.

We are also experiencing the occasional downtime, during which no emails seem to flow for a few hours, after which all come through smoothly.

Is there something wrong with the server I am using? Or something wrong with all the email settings we have?

Please help if you can.

Since every single person who has emailed me or my wife has gotten a blank, mysterious reply from a different email address, you can understand that we’re a tad stressed out.

Thanks,

Aun


_________________

[GatorJoshL]

Good morning Aun,

I have your ticket in front of me here and am going to get this taken care of right now. I do apologize that this has happened and that you are having a bad expereince with support.

The reason that you received such a long wait in the ticket system is because you submitted the ticket at this time:
10:24 PM | May 25, 2008
Then you responded 5 times to the ticket without a response from us:
10:24 PM | May 25, 2008
10:49 PM | May 25, 2008
10:49 PM | May 25, 2008
10:50 PM | May 25, 2008
10:50 PM | May 25, 2008

This is probably because you were hitting refresh in your ticket, which is something that we are aware of but you might not be. Also every time you respond to a ticket before we respond it puts the ticket at the end of the queue because we work oldest to newest tickets.

However, there was a delay in response from us as we are having a very high volume of tickets to our support center due to our password changes that took effect over the weekend.

I do apologize for this and will be handling your issue now, I will give you a call at the number listed so that you will not have to spend the money to call us.

If you need anything further please do let us know.

Thank you,

Josh Loe

[GatorJoshL]

Aun,

I have just tried to call you about this issue, but the number we have on file and that is in your Email will not work for us it is saying that it is busy.

I have just responded to the ticket as your last response was blank. Rebooting the server will take sites offline as Chris stated. The server needs to do a file systems check and will need to be rebooted and be offline for this period of time.

The ticket is assigned to myself so if you respond I will get it right away and submit the reboot request whenever you would like us to.
I do apologize about the confusion.

Thank you,

[GatorJoshL]

Aun,

I still have not received a response from you on when you want the server rebooted. I am sending you an update again about this.

Thanks,

Josh Loe

[aunkoh]

Josh,

1. If you check the actual problem, you would realize that most of the "so-called responses" that kicked my ticket to the back of the line, so to speak, were blank replies from chubbyhu@ate.atemedia.com, WHICH IS THE DAMN PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!

2. Every time, you send me a reply to aun@atemedia.com, of course, as indicated as the problem, you get a blank reply. Did you not read the ticket properly and see what the problem is?

3. My number has never changed. Please note that I am on +8 GMT time. That said my phone was on all night. It is now 803am my time. I did not get any phone calls from you. I will send you and Chad my HP number again immediately via my Gmail account.

4. At present, my Outlook is reporting errors that it cannot connect
to my mail servers so I assume you are doing something. My sites are all down as well. Please call me immediately. As the work day has started, I will need full functionality for these servers for my staff.

Aun

[GatorPatrick]

Aun,

Your ticket was brought to my attention and after trying to contact you via telephone unsuccessfully I went ahead and put your server in a LiveCD and repaired the root partition. The problem was that with the root partition being mounted read only nothing could write to /etc/

I made the decision to do this now since it is late night / early morning there in singapore and I felt it was the best time so that your server would be ready for the start of business tomorrow. I apologize that you had so much trouble with this and please if you ever have issues like this in the future please feel free to PM me directly here on the forums.

Is there anything else at all I can do for you?

[aunkoh]

Patrick, great communicating with you. Thanks for your initiative and your quick action (wish your colleagues were as efficient). The problems are all fixed.