Terrible Support

[Delore]

[Update] For whatever reason, they decided to change this post to 'neutral.' I quote, from the edit page, 'Overall, how would you describe your experience with HostGator?' I chose, and meant negative. Their staff had no reason to change how I rated my experience. So this adds to the list.

Hostgator support is one of the worst support setups I've yet to come across. With hostgator,you will find yourself waiting for hours for a response over live support, if you get one at all. You will get 'canned' answers that can be, and most often are, completely irrelevant, and you will go looking somewhere else.
9 out of 10 live support requests I take end up with me getting told to email a system admin or leave me hanging, left with no answer. The most recent being what should have been a simple question for them, in which I was given the same, irrelevent response three times, was left without an answer for 2 hours, and was left for a second time without a reply after asking them to pay attention to my questions.

A good six or so times now I've been asked my username and password for absolutely no reason. Most of the time it's because they pay no attention to my questions and thus wind up somewhere out in space, pulling their own scenarios out of the blue.

At one point I'd found an error in Hostgator's reseller configuration, and had to go through about 20 minutes of hell trying to get them to realize that they had a problem, which they initially flat-out denied. (This conversation is quoted, in part, below.)

I love seeing this:

[15:26] tech@hostgator.com: for this youo need to email our support dept
[21:55] tech@hostgator.com: please email at sales@hostgator.com, regarding this issue
[21:50] tech@hostgator.com: could you please email at support@hostgator.com, so that our senior admin can look into this issue.
[21:53] tech@hostgator.com: but as the issue is not resolved on live chat you need to email at support so that our senior admins can look into it
[15:44] tech@hostgator.com: please emal to support@hostgator.com
[09:40] tech@hostgator.com: could you please email at support@hostgator.com, so that our senior admins can look into it
[19:15] tech@hostgator.com: please email sales@hostgator.com regarding issue


If you are going to have support operators, it is in your best interest to train them to be able to handle basic functions, otherwise they are not worth the companies money, and they leave a bad image for the customer.
Granted, I have read (nowhere near the live support link, by-the-by), that live support is intended for pre-sales and basic questions. This is fine, if basic to you is expanding the start menu. As for the pre-sales question part, which question have they been asked, post-sale, that couldn't as easily have been asked prior to the sale? As mentioned above, that's a very limiting factor.

And the bug quote, condensed a bit:

Session Start

[17:01] *** tech@hostgator.com (tech@hostgator.com) has joined the conversation.
[17:02] Nolan: Should resellers be able to see all other resellers usernames on the server?
[17:02] Nolan: Doesn't seem like a good idea
[17:03] tech@hostgator.com: what is harm in it
[17:04] Nolan: Well, in the Statistics Software Configuration screen, it apparently lets you remove their privelages to change statistic software.
[17:06] Nolan: I could be wrong - that's just what it seems to do
[17:06] Nolan: I didn't exactly try it
[17:06] tech@hostgator.com: may i know your domainn name please
[17:06] tech@hostgator.com: *domain
[17:06] Nolan: [removed]
[17:06] tech@hostgator.com: your username please
[17:07] Nolan: [removed]
[17:08] tech@hostgator.com: well you can not edit proviledges of any reseller from your reseller WHM Panel
[17:09] tech@hostgator.com: *priviledges
[17:10] Nolan: ...But it does seem to allow me to remove them.
[17:11] Nolan: In the whm, if you go to the left panel, there's a 'configure statistics software' section.
[17:11] tech@hostgator.com: what eaxctly are you trying to do
[17:11] Nolan: You can go in there and click 'user privelages'
[17:11] tech@hostgator.com: please let me know your WHM login details
...
[17:12] tech@hostgator.com: please let me know your WHM login details
(Note: ^ That's a bit of the irrelevant information-gathering I was talking about.)
[17:12] Nolan: [removed] - [removed].... I don't see why it would be sepcific to my whm, though.
[17:13] Nolan: Go there and click user privelages.
[17:14] Nolan: From there, *it would appear* that you can remove other resellers privelages.
[17:19] tech@hostgator.com: thanks for your observation
[17:19] tech@hostgator.com: we have disabled it now
[17:19] tech@hostgator.com: please verify at your end
[17:20] Nolan: Yep, and you're welcome.
[17:20] tech@hostgator.com: thanks
Session Close (tech@hostgator.com): Tue Oct 12 17:21:11 2004

I suppose I should give them credit there, however, as they responded.

That's been my experience to this point. They have the resources to provide good service to their customers, but with a lack of expertise regarding those resources and quick response time to their customers, they lack solidarity and stability.

Caveat Emptor.

[GatorJustin]

Originally Posted by Delore

[Update] For whatever reason, they decided to change this post to 'neutral.' I quote, from the edit page, 'Overall, how would you describe your experience with HostGator?' I chose, and meant negative. Their staff had no reason to change how I rated my experience. So this adds to the list.

Calm down. You forgot to assign an icon the first time around, so I selected one for you. I just clicked the wrong one by mistake - yes, I make mistakes too. Anyone who reds your post can tell that you are not "neutral", and before I had a chance to catch my error you have come in to slam us again for an honest mistake.

As for your issues with support, I can sympathize with your concerns, and apologize if we have not been as helpful as you would like.

-Justin

[Delore]

I appreciate you taking the time to reply, and not being irrational, however, I did assign an icon to the post. It didn't show up from the main page because I'd later edited the post. (Unless editing removes the reference to the icon.) But you have to admit that it isn't hard to take something like that the wrong way, from my perspective.

Thank you.

[Edit: In all honesty, there is no other way to take something like that, from my perspective, so you can't claim I was 'slamming' hostgator again. And, in my original post, I'd mentioned the things I'd liked about hostgator as well, so it really could have been seen as neutral, which is why I assumed they'd changed it, but the overall was and is still negative.]

[GatorBrent]

If you have a quick question feel free to use chat. For a problem or anything that needs to be looked into you need to open a ticket so it can be escalated up the food chain, and we can respond back when we have an answer rather than leave you on hold while it’s being looked in to.

The issue you are talking about is a bug in cpanel which we informed them of in the past and was fixed. Their newest version has reverted back to this bug. No real damage can be done, however we don't like it and will report it to them again.

If a ticket was opened on this issue it would have been assigned to the correct person and you could have got the response I just gave you. I will contact cpanel to notify them of this bug again.

Most tickets are done within minutes, much quicker than any chat is handled. However this isn't something we can fix since it is cpanel. Think of it as emailing us to fix a bug with windows xp, we don't have the code therefore cannot fix it. Cpanel will take a few days to get anything done at which point we will update to latest version.

I’m going to assume you know what your doing when it comes to building web sites. If you know what you are doing contacting someone on chat would be like talking to yourself for an answer. When you open a ticket if lower level tech isn’t sure they can escalate it on up.

[GatorBrent]

Also not every tech has access to your username and password, nor is that kind of thing shown in chat. (you should be thankful)


The problem you talked about would need login information to view it since it's a bug and older cpanel versions don't have it. Someone new to this bug would have to view what you are talking about first hand.

[Delore]

To be absolutely honest, I expected you guys to go off on me with these issues. I am surprised, and impressed that you responded both professionally and kindly, and am also appreciative, as I have a lot of trouble with support issues that seem to be going that way right now, and thus, I will end this issue on that note.

Thank you.