I've got to be honest. I’m really wondering if I made the right decision by choosing hostgator as my reseller.

A simple request has so far turned into 8 hours of site downtime.

I had hostgator recreate my account to set a different username. The request was completed fine up to that point. However, upon recreating the account I was not given any WHM functionality.

I informed them of this and almost 3 hours later I get a reply only asking what was missing from WHM. This really got to me because the system admin should have simply logged into my WHM to clearly see what the problem was. By him sending me an email it meant I had to reply and then wait another 2-3 for a reply back.

Once my WHM had been down for 5 hours I updated my ticket stating it has been down for 5 hours and that I would like someone to call me instead of corresponding through email as I would like to have this fixed asap.

I then called support and spoke with someone who said they would put my ticket in critical status to get it looked at sooner. This rep did nothing of the sort. I checked my support ticket 20 minutes later and the status of my ticket was the same. At this point I used online chat and requested my ticket be placed in critical status which they finally did.

At 7 hours of downtime I used online chat again. The rep was extremely unhelpful or sympathetic. He offered no assistance other than repeatedly saying I had to wait in queue and wait my turn. He did not care that it had been 7 hours and that I could not restore my user accounts and site. He also told me that because I had updated my ticket at the 5 hour mark that my queue position would have reset. I asked him to have someone call me as this should have been an extremely simple request and I should have been back up and running 7 hours ago. His response…. “We will not call you”. He did not offer to get someone to look into it right away. He did nothing!

So in total, hostgator dropped the ball four times. If the first admin that recreated my account had done it properly I would have had almost no downtime. I understand that mistakes can happen and I accept that. However, hostgator drops the ball a second time when the second admin didn’t simply log into my WHM to clearly see what the problem was. This certainly should have been resolved after the first reply when I said I had no WHM functionality. Hostgator drops the ball a third time when the rep did not follow through with what he said he would do and change my ticket status. And finally hostgator drops the ball a fourth time by having a rep that was completely unhelpful and did nothing to with improve the situation.

I read many hostgator reviews on here before I chose them and to be honest I expected more from hostgator. I’m extremely unsatisfied and discouraged at this point.

I have been using Hostgator for a long time, and I cant remember one time they have screwed up or caused me any unnessesery downtime. The support may have a bit long waiting period, but in most cases they give you a good answer and solves the problem right away.

It sounds to me that you have just been quite unlucky with your services at HostGator.

Have you tried getting some sort of refund, for the actually downtime they caused you?

Ouch! That's not good!

Have you tried getting some sort of refund, for the actually downtime they caused you?

The OP has been unlucky to say the least. I'm sure the owner of Hostgator will come into here and right things.

But I would think a refund should be the least of his worries right now, as getting his client sites up is far more important.

You are right Anthony!

He needs to get his clients sites back up as they are important.

When you get it worked out i would ask for something for making you wait 8 hours just to get your WHM fixed up! The admin whoever did it should of made sure it was working before updating the ticket saying it was Done!

Good Luck with your host and im sure you will see the owner here to update you!

***UPDATE****

Hostgator has finally restored my WHM permissions after 12 hours of downtime on their end.

Let's hope I never have an experience like this again.

Hi,


What is your ticket number with us?

Hi,


What is your ticket number with us?


XJP-967300

I was with hostgator and had OK service. I left because of 2 reasons. One is for their support. Like mentioned earlier, they ask stupid questions and if they just logged in and looked they would see the problem. I had emails on going to fix simple problems for up to 2 days when it should have been fixed within minutes. And my email couldn't have been more descriptive. I even had my wife look at the email and she new what it was asking. She couldn't believe the responses asking the rediculas questions.

Second reason for leaving, is that I had to pay for SSL installs. If I resell SSL certificates, why should I pay for someone else to install them. Plenty of other hosts will allow me to install my own SSL's. (This could be something they offer now, that they didn't in the past).

I now go with ResellerZoom. Their failover services aren't as great as it states on their website, but my uptime isn't bad. At most I have had a 30 minute downtime in 6 months. I wasn't worried about it since none of my hosting accounts noticed. I stay with them because their support works and they are great. I don't have to repeat myself when trying to explain the problems. They are intelegent enough to figure out what I am talking about.

It's exactly what I thought had happened. Sales / billing is trained on how to terminate and recreate accounts. We do not want system administrators doing this as it just leaves more people to make mistakes like terminating the wrong account, forgetting to update billing, etc.

We received your ticket on your reseller username change which requires an account recreation since cpanel won't allow a simple rename to be done correctly. One of our system admins decided "oh I'll break policy as how hard can it be to remake an account" He quickly discovered it's not as simple as that because reseller privileges have to be assigned. He most likely had no clue they even existed, and believed they magically appeared when an account is created.

Three different admins looked at the tickets bouncing it around all night even escalating it to higher level support ques before a fourth veteran admin assigned it to sales at which point the ticket was done correctly in a few minutes time.

I have a feeling every time you called or used chat whoever you reached messaged someone in support to do the ticket as chat / phone support doesn't have any type of access to do this type of request. So in summary it was just huge lack of communication and common sense.

Reseller account recreations are very rare so it's most likely the first time it's reached all the admins that attempted to handle the request. I will be pulling them all aside today to reinforce the company policy, and give them a quick discussion on common sense. The rest of the company will be receiving a news email reminding them of how we handle this type of request.

I apologize for shear lack of stupidity we displayed to you, and have given you a free month of hosting the trouble. If there is anything else I can do for you please do send me a private message. If you come across anything like this again in the future please contact me ASAP.

-brent

Thank you Brent for detailing the events that occurred on your end. I do appreciate the one month credit. However, I would have much more preferred if the downtime did not happen.

As I said in my post. I understand that mistakes can happen and I'm willing to accept that. I simply hope that any future issue's that may arise don't lead to an experience like this again.

Regards,

Steven

its good to hear that they took action on this to give you a free month. but that also dont help the downtime you had to wait for something that should of been so easy to fix!

Good Luck and hope it dont happen again.

Once my WHM had been down for 5 hours I updated my ticket stating it has been down for 5 hours and that I would like someone to call me instead of corresponding through email as I would like to have this fixed asap.Updates do put tickets back at the end of the queue. Reason for me to think twice before doing such. I must say that this system doesn't help with impatient customers (not the case with you), who update their tickets every 15 minutes. They end up ensuring that they will not receive attention for hours.

However, I would have much more preferred if the downtime did not happen.Certainly understandable, it wasn't a negligible amount. At least there's an explanation for what happened, and measures taken.

It looks like a bit of bad luck was also at play, so, better luck in the future!