@Hostgator’s Unusually Rare Support Disappointment

Did I wake up in bizarro world? Something seems off…

To preface… I really like HostGator – you provide me with good service, cheap! For the most part (95%) your service has been really solid and I’ve learned to depend on your (for the most part) EXCELLENT customer service. We refer a great deal of business to y’all and will continue to – I’m not one to not recognize the gret things you’ve done so far – I am also grateful that you got my site back up.

It’s frustrating that your 95% is SO FREAKING EXCELLENT and your 5% of bad service is SO FREAKING AWFUL – maybe my expecatations are high – again, I don’t want to overlook the excellent pricing and the ALMOST excellent track record – I left a larger company to come to you – I’m still glad I did!

NJU-13859195 was one of 5 bad experiences out of probably 100 tickets – that’s 95%!

Yesterday I spent several hours updating a favorite 6 year old blog, ContainerGardening.NET. These updates included tweaking the plug-ins, editing themes and other files – a rather intimate manicuring if you will. Part of the plug-in updating included modules that posted fresh articles to Twitter – a useful feature – and I’d noticed they kicked in immediately (this made the problem ‘bigger’ as many Twitter friends were invited to view new posts). To wrap up the evening, I followed the link within the WordPress dashboard, advising a 3.0 to 3.0.1 upgrade. At this point I received an error message:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp() in /home/containe/public_html/wp-blog-header.php on line 14

Instead of panicking, I emailed HostGator asking to look at this site’s error. I’ve been advised by your techs that this is the best way to reach y’all for support and I’d also flagged my email for urgency. Patiently, I waited by email for a response… 15 minutes later – I finally get a reply; What sort of errors are you receiving? Where are you receiving these errors(WHM/cPanel/web browser)? What exactly are you trying to upgrade about the domain? Please provide more information so that we may properly assist with this issue.

FAIL #1 – Robert could have tried the URL I’d provided in the ticket before he responded.

I reply with the specific error message as follows, Can you pull up the website? I can’t – as shared I’m getting the following error – can you at least try clicking on the URL please? Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp() in /home/containe/public_html/wp-blog-header.php on line 14

ANOTHER 30 minutes painfully pass and I receive a smug response from Matthew who was “was able to reprodice the error” (I was able to reproduce his typo by not using spell check!) “pleasure to help you”.

FAIL #2 – WHAT HELP? Site not coming up and customer provided with smug response.

If it was that cut and dry, couldn’t you jump in and help me already? I’d already explained my urgency and how out of several this is in top group of sites. Could I have at least been provided paid options?

I email back, asking for a greater explanation and HELP. The next reply states my work was replaced with a week old backup – BUT that you were good enough to not charge me for this disservice “as a courtesy”. What was courteous about this, exactly? I have no clue why one would even touch the functioning database or change my settings – without my permission, creating unnecessary panic and subsequent unplanned work! I’ve often had to double-confirm any site changes requested, so to have a drastic procedure performed without asking was unexpected. To shove a fee in my face meant you didn’t care about helping, but that I wasted your time. I would have been fine paying a fee if that would have expedited site restoration.

FAIL #3 - Don’t delete/modify customer’s data without asking first. Y’all know this!

FINALLY, Andrew reaches out by telephone to help resolve the error. We burned about an hour undoing many of the things that Nathon had performed during his (in my opinion) administrative overstep.

Nathon had backed up my original data (not settings) – Andrew and I had to troubleshoot issues that were caused by this backup taking up usable space on the server. We were able to free up space using WHM and re-uploaded plugins I had from backup that Nathon had removed. Andrew was also able to help me reconstruct much of the site from screen shot images I was fortunate to have had handy.

We had to restore several settings back to how they were before Nathon’s overwriting of the database (I recognizing me highlighting this – Nathon’s “work” created a bunch of unnecessary work for me and Andrew) – It’s been 5 hours SINCE getting the site online and I’m STILL restoring settings Nathon had destroyed. Had he considered potential consequences of his actions, or read previous tech Matthew’s note, this would have been prevented by replacing 4 files; the database and settings were never damaged.

Andrew’s service – outstanding – up to par with the great service I’ve come to expect from HostGator.

Taking a long time for an urgent support issue wasn’t necessary – perhaps my expectations were out of line from previously awesome encounters with your tech support – as in all seriousness I’m amazed you can offer this 24×7 at the price you do – yesterday was one of 5 bad experiences out of probably 100 tickets – that’s 95%! It’s actually possible that ALL this could have been caused by and easily fixed with the space issue had anyone (ultimately it was me) noticed the error. The first time I saw this was post-Nathon.

Let me know PAID support options too – I’m very grateful for the free/included services, however I’m not closed to the idea of paying more should a key site like this have another issue – Thanks!

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