WHMCS [resolved]

[mwalker]

Well that may sound dramatic but I am going to counter with a compliment, I have been a happy Hostgator customer for many years. Customer service is fast, polite and efficient and certainly a match for the best in any industry.

So why then the complaint?

Yesterday our WHMCS license was suspended, this is what we get when trying to login.

Your license key d413fa3a3218 has been suspended. Possible reasons for this include:

• You have attempted to use two or more free trial licenses
• If purchased from a reseller, they have suspended the license for non-payment
• Your license was found to be being used against the License Agreement

This has happened before, in fact this is the third time. We are a small company with two part time staff in the US and a total of three in the UK. Between us we all need access to our sales and support system. So far we have lost 17 man hours. That represents roughly $450 in salaries excluding mine. I can see a couple of orders have come through by the Paypal emails but I do not know what they are for. I don't know how many support requests are outstanding but estimating half a dozen at least.

More worrying is we have a fresh dispute open in Paypal from someone fed up wating for delivery (we sell scripts through the WHMCS system too). I would like to try resolve his problem, trouble is he doesn't reply to his Paypal address and chances are he can't see why he should when he has (if he has) raised a ticket in our WHMCS system.

Two tickets and three direct conversations with Hostgator has not made any difference. WHMCS support say they cannot do anything until Hostgator reply.

So my once strong like for Hostgator is being seriously tested. My business is losing sales and the positive reputation for support is being eroded as each minute passes.

For love nor money I cannot takes sales or service requests from my customers. I am at a loss as to what to do next. The keys to my business are held by Hostgator and for whatever reason they are not giving me access. The result is I have time on my hands and I am talking to Liquidweb who promise better service and better kit, and also a permanent and FULL WHMCS license that is mine to keep and that will never expire.

The ONLY issue I have with making this switch is the hassle, and frankly would not bother if Hostgator actually do something about fixing this instead of talking about it and blaming everyone else.

[GatorFord]

The issue here is likely due to the recent WHMCS license audit which they just performed, we've found the domain for your account and are are re-activating the license for this now. Can you PM me the ticket number you were working with us on this?

[mwalker]

The problem is now resolved. My thanks to GatorFord for yanking someones chain.

Happily not a lot of damage has been done, nothing that some overtime cannot fix anyway, but it is going to be hard to forget what happened.

It is truly sad that an "audit" at Hostgator can have such devastating effect on their customers business.

While GatorFord and the Billing Department have appreciated the gravity and been apologetic the fact remains that the company responsible for the costs and heartache of the entire affair could care less. There are no lessons learned, they suffer no loss. There are no consequences for them.

I doubt anyone will decide not decide to use Hostgator because of this isolated incident, but lets hope we are not witnessing the transition from friendly company to arrogant corporation.