Tarkblog

I realize this may not interest some of you, but I think it’s a good story of customer service, so hear me out.

I bought a 2 year web hosting package last weekend from hostmonster.com

This is to host some personal sites and some data backup storage. The cost was $4.95 a month with pretty good terms, storage, flexibility, etc.

I paid for the site using our paypal account, because it has some extra money in it from ebay auctions we’ve done over the past year or so. The total was $118.80, which seemed quite reasonable for 2 years of hosting.

I spent the weekend toying around, setting up some email addresses, putting up a blank web page, etc.

Flash forward to this past Tuesday morning.

I am unable to view the site, or log into my account panel to see what’s going on. I figured it was probably a fluke - I know sometimes problems happen and they have to reboot or what not, and I have no traffic or anything to these sites, so it’s not really business critical for me.

After a couple of hours, I go to their support site where you can chat with a support rep. He proceeds to tell me there’s a hardware failure and they’re estimating about 2 hours to fix. No problem, I can wait.

Throughout the day I wait and sometimes the site works and sometimes it does not. By the end of the night it looks like the computer is back up, but my website and email is notfunctioning. I log into my panel and see that I don’t have any email addresses set up, nor do I have any web pages on the site.

I go back to the chat again and find out that due to the hardware failure, all of those files were lost and I would have to reupload them. Now, this isn’t a good way to start with new customers.

I don’t really think much of it, as what I lost was not all that critical to begin with. I’ll just be sure to be more diligent with backups as I put more stuff online.

I got an email from them as a followup:

Dear Caleb Tennis,

We regret to inform you that there has been a complete failure on the server that hosts your new account. All the websites, email and settings have been lost, however your mysql databases, addon domains and parked domains have not been lost. Because the server is so new, the backups did not have time to run.

The hardware responsible for the failure has been completely replaced, and all the accounts have been recreated. Please upload your web sites again, and recreate any email accounts or forwards that you previously had.

We apologize for the problems this will cause. This is the first time in Hostmonster history that we have had a failure of this magnitude and have not had backups with which we could recreate the customer accounts.

As always, please contact us with any questions or concerns that you may have.

Hostmonster Staff
hostmonster.com

Well, that’s nice. At least they explained it to me. Ok, so they’ve got a strike against them, but I’m not going to give up on them yet.

As I attempt to recreate my site, I’m stuck with a problem. I’ve readded the email addresses, but I am unable to login to check the email. They offer a webmail service, so when I attempt to use that instead of logging me in with “no mail” it comes back with an error of some sort. Basically, something is not right with my account setup and one of their administrators needs to fix it.

So I fire off a support email (it was evening time, so I didn’t feel like doing a chat).

Their support page is broken down into categories (I chose e-mail) then you fill out a small form about who you are (ie, which blahblahblah.com address you have hosted with them) and the problem.

Very soon thereafter I get an email back (I’ve cut out all of the signature stuff):

Dear Customer,

Please give us the domain name in question and also the password or last 4 digits of the credit card on the account in order to look further into the matter. Thank you.

Let’s analyze this:

First, I supplied the domain name as part of the form I submitted.

Second, I didn’t pay for the account with a credit card. I paid for it with paypal.

Third, I would think that in the year 2007 almost everyone in the world knows not to send someone your password via email. I don’t care if they’re an adminstrator or not, there is absolutely no reason to ask for someone’s password like this. It’s a terrible business practice.

So I reply. I’m not sending my password. I don’t have a credit card on file, but I DID pay with paypal and I happened to use the same paypal address as I was sending the email from. I hoped this would suffice, but if not, please let me know what else I can supply to help with the situation.

I go to bed.

Next morning (Friday), there’s no reply.

So I fire off another email saying that I hadn’t heard any more about this and would like to get it resolved.

MEANWHILE…

I’m a Linux dude, and I like having command line access to these types of servers because I’m much faster than using the web based interfaces. So I wanted to get that set up on my account. Hostmonster offers this for no additional charge, but you must fax them a picture ID. Why, I have no idea.

So I made a copy of my drivers license and faxed it to their fax number, about 7:30AM EST. I had a cover page explaining who I was, the website this was for, and the reason I was faxing. I stood at the machine and waited for it to complete the fax successfully. Once it did, I immediately went back to my computer to send them a support email asking for access and explaining that I had just sent the fax.

I went to the support site and chose “Verification”.

I filled out the form and sent it.

About 5 minutes later, I get a returned email from “support-verification@hostmonster.com” telling me that “this address does not accept e-mail”.

Great, so they have a form on their web site set up specifically for “verification” that sends an email to an address they don’t accept e-mails at.

So I went back to the support site, chose “Other” and filled out that form. I explained who I was, the website I was with, and that I had just faxed my ID. I also included a paragraph at the bottom detailing how they had a bad “verification” link that sent emails to an address that didn’t accept them.

A few minutes later, I get this response (verbatim):

Dear customer,

we still have not yet received your fax what number did you fax your id to for ssh?

So I respond with the fax number. I get this response.

Dear customer,

that is the right fax number try faxing it again

At this point I was frustrated. They had lost my fax in the span of about 20 minutes, and had ignored my note about their broken verification system.

I waited for most of the day, and having never heard a response back about the broken e-mail I was facing I decided to close the account (full refund in the first 30 days).

I sent an email to their sales team asking them to close my account. In this email I told them:

Who I was.
The website I was with.
That I didn’t have a credit card on file, but I had paid with paypal using the address that I was sending this e-mail from.
That I would like to cancel the account.

I received this reply:

Dear Customer,

To cancel your account and receive a refund, please verify you are the account’s owner by replying with the last four digits of the credit card or the password on the account — this is for security purposes. You will receive a refund for the unused portion of your hosting, we retain $10 for the domain registration if your domain is registered with us. You will continue to own the domain for one year.

Please let me know if you have further questions.

Good god. I had detailed all of that in my initial email.

So I replied back again stating that I didn’t have a credit card on file and that I wasn’t comfortable sending my account password. Could I not somehow verify my identity in another way.

I got this reply

You can verify you are the accounts owner by replying with the password or the paypal email address.

I did that in the very first email I sent you chumps. It’s the same address as I am sending the emails to you from!

A few minutes later, my account was cancelled and I had received a full refund.

So frustrating. I moved my sites to another service that I have a bit more history and experience with, and all is now well again.

UPDATE

Today, about 30 hours after cancelling my account, I received this mail regarding my problem with e-mail:

I am showing you you requested the account be closed and you received a refund for it. The DNS for SITE is pointing to dns.site5.com so they would be handling all your E-mail at this point. If you are using a mail client such as outlook you may need to update your server settings to match your new hosts requirements, or log into your new hosts webmail service.
Have a great day.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 10:34 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.