HostGator.com, L.L.C.

Good Afternoon,Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention so we can get it corrected.  I'd like to first and foremost offer our sincerest apologies for any frustration or inconvenience this situation has caused you, though it's definitely not a problem to review and correct for...

you.  Looking over the billing account I see that the payment actually didn't initially apply itself directly to the client ID, but to our payment processing account.  When that was caught later that afternoon by the billing team they went ahead and applied the payment for you and I think probably should have reached out to you prior to doing so to avoid this unfortunate alarm it caused.Given this occurred manually, the system actually wouldn't process the refund back after 48 hours as part of the pending process, but I've requested a refund be issued and that's taken place for you as of 12/8.  I apologize for the delay in response here as well, though you should have the refund back within a business week or so.  Probably not this week, but I would expect it middle of next week, end of the week at the latest.  Should you have any other questions or concerns regarding this please let me know!Best Regards,[redacted]

Good Morning,While I understand your frustration with the situation, it's also impossible to assist you when there's a complete lack of information being reported to our support staff which seems is the case post-migration.  I definitely apologize that shared servers can and do occasionally become listed with [redacted], but you need to realize with hundreds of thousands of email addresses hosted from these shared servers, problems will indeed arise from time to time.  We do everything we can to prevent these Blacklistings, and actively use a gateway system to minimize the affects these listings have on our customers, though for the couple of dollars a month you're spending, assuming you'll avoid these issues 100% of the time is just not realistic.  This is a shared hosting service and these issues are simply unavoidable, even though we have a zero tolerance policy and actively remove problem accounts as soon as we find them.  If that's not a point that we can reach an understanding on, I'd encourage you to look into semi-dedicated or dedicated hosting options where you'd be the only email address using the server mail sending IP.  If that cost is outside your comfort zone I'd also be happy to offer you a full refund to take your hosted sites to another provider should you think you'll experience better service with another shared host.That said, you've rejected the resolution here in that we migrated your sites for you, and simply not bothered to communicate the problems you've continued to experience.  Though I'm not an unreasonable person, we do need your cooperation moving forward to resolve this through open communication.  If that's not something you're willing to meet us half way on, I'll simply refund your payment and provide backups so you can look elsewhere.  My apologies that this may come to that, but we do need your cooperation as noted several times. I'll look forward to resolving this with you and please feel free to contact me directly at [redacted] so we can expedite an amicable resolution.Best Regards,[redacted]

Good Evening,First and foremost we'd like to offer our apologies
for the trouble reported in this complaint. To provide more
information, here at HostGator we do routinely update our firewalls to
ensure that our customers are protected against malicious activity.
Unfortunately in these two...

cases, following our firewall update, we did
find that some of our settings had been knocked out which caused issue
with outbound e-mail.Following the two updates we did make sure
to restore access to the outbound ports necessary for Mr. [redacted]'s
e-mails, and have taken steps to ensure that these updates are more
carefully reviewed and tested following the changes. At this
time we have been in direct contact with Mr. [redacted] and have worked
out a resolution to the matter that is satisfactory to both parties as
Mr. [redacted] was actually considering an upgrade to a level of hosting
where he will have more control over certain features. We've completed
the provisioning of the new service and have scheduled a few more
contacts with Mr. [redacted] to ensure that this process goes smoothly
for him and his clients.We are in direct communication with Mr.
[redacted] and have provided him with a method to get back in touch with
us if any issues arise during this upgrade, so if we can be of any
additional assistance we ask that he please use that contact to alert
our management.

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this proposed action would not resolve my complaint.  
Wow - Hostgator is an incredibly delusional company. What they are saying is wrong. If they were serious about solving this, they would have called me. They never have. I do not know what verification email they are talking about, since they have not sent anything. If “evidence” of their neglect is mentioned (silly), it is true that I have the recordings, screenshots, etc. of the many hours that I tried to contact them. All I wanted was a simple apology and for the matter to be amicably resolved. At this point, assuming that the transfers are complete, this is formal notice that I want no further communication from Hostgator. I really don’t want anything more to do with this company anymore. I would add that I have requested to be removed from their advertising, and yet still, they are sending advertisements.
Regards,

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this proposed action would not resolve my complaint.  
They have finally resolved the issue after over a week of no answers, being given the "run around", and losing several days of business, however once they issue was resolved, they took it upon themselves to charge my card, after I had already agreed to send in a check, which required yet another call for me sort out.  My main complaint, besides the obvious issue of  not being able to sort out my payment issue, was the [redacted]customer service[redacted].  Which still to this day, in their passive aggressive Revdex.com response proves to be less than satisfactory.  Yes, my account was compromised,  yes I acknowledged that, but at no point was I told nor did I agree or make any statement saying I wanted my credit card removed, or have it be denied any future payments, and if that is an automatic thing they do on their end, I was not notified of this.  Yes, I was given 30 days notice, but that, once again, means nothing as I clearly attempted to make a payment ahead of the payment due date.  I was a victim of identity theft in 2009 and do not like to have to randomly throw my personal information, especially pictures of my ID through email on the internet, so I was less than happy to do so in order to "fix" this issue of their's which one again they never even described to me until they felt the need to "defend" themselves through the Revdex.com.   They twisted my words around in my complaint and made accusations that are not true, attempting to make me look like an it, just to not own up to their mistakes and terrible customer service.  Honestly, if there wasn't a ~30 day hold on domains, I would definitely have switched to a different company and I'm still looking into doing so.  So once again, despite their fluff that no doubt some legal representative of the company threw together to make themselves look better, the bottom line is the entire situation was handled very, very poorly and the company refuses to take responsibility and admit their faults.  So at the end of the day, I expect HostGator to send yet another fluffed up, vague response that makes them look perfectly innocent, but I feel others need to know of this situation and possibly avoid business with them in the future.  I've already share this information with the several tens of thousands of our "followers/fans" and will continue to spread the message not to do business with HostGator.  I will not be reading their response at this point, because the only thing at the end of the day I request that they do, is not treat other clients as they treated me, and stop making excuses for their poor customer service,  and instead do something to fix it.
Regards,
[redacted]

Good Afternoon,We're always sorry to hear about a domain expiring and would be glad to discuss these events further. To provide a brief summary, first and foremost our system automatically sends out an e-mail 30 days before the domain expires meaning there was ample time to address this situation...

but unfortunately after our response to the related ticket on the 21st, we did not hear back with any follow up questions for 2 days, till February 23rd, the domain's expiration date.In the complaint I see it was reported we would not accept payment of any type but this is of course inaccurate as it would be illogical to ask a customer to pay for a renewal then provide no option to submit payment. That said, it is accurate that we informed [redacted] that she would need to pay by check, money order or bank wire due to a previous fraudulent charge on the account. There was a report that [redacted] was not aware of why we put this requirement in place however I have found that on multiple occasions [redacted] referenced the fraudulent charge on her account using her credit card and also stated that our agent confirmed this. Also, there seems to be an impression that we do not accept credit cards for any of our customers, but [redacted] has also acknowledged she has been making payments with credit cards to us for years so we assume she is aware that this is not the case. We never like to make submitting payment more difficult, however in our experience we have found that fraudulent use of a credit card often happens more than once, so we put holds on the account to protect both the credit card holders as well as our company, considering fraud investigations take serious time and cost us funds to the credit card companies. Finally [redacted] also mentions that she had trouble receiving assistance over the phone as well as live chat on the 23rd but after review, found that the live chat and phone call occurred at the same time so it is not surprising they had the same result. The issue here is that our front line support does not have access to address fraud reports due to their serious and sensitive nature so these issues do get addressed via ticket/email by our specific fraud department. The domain in question has now been renewed and we've also received the necessary information from [redacted] in order to restore the option to also pay by credit card on future renewals. I hope this fully addresses all concerns but I've also taken over the related ticket to provide a direct line of communication in case further escalation is necessary.

[A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response.  If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
Revdex.com:I spoke with Michael L at Hostgator this morning. He was very helpful and resolved the issue, refunding me for charges incurred that I was not expecting. He also diagnosed the other charge as a former client for whom I had established an account with Hostgator, but neglected to remove my name and payment information.  Thank you for your assistance, it was the Revdex.com's intervention that brought Michael to the table.[redacted]

Good Afternoon,We appreciate the chance to address this concern and we were sorry to hear that Ms. M[redacted] had trouble canceling her service with us. We certainly do not want to make this process difficult as we do include information on how to cancel in both our terms of service (...

http://hostgator.com/tos ) and a guide on canceling is available through our knowledge base ( http://support.hostgator.com/articles/pre-sales-policies/billing-account-changes...⇄ ). To summarize the process, we ask that our customers submit cancellation requests via our form available at https://hostgator.com/cancel so we have written documentation of their request. We did find that Ms. M[redacted] had spoken with a member of our staff but unfortunately the conversation seemed more about removing the credit card on file instead of making sure the package was canceled. We have since reached out to Ms. M[redacted] directly and have received her confirmation in writing and can confirm that the hosting package has been fully canceled and the unpaid invoice has been removed. There will be no further invoices on this account but if we can be of any further assistance we have established a direct line of communication with Ms. M[redacted] and ask that she please lets us know if we can offer any additional help.

Hello,We were sorry to hear about the concern with the cancellation of Mr. [redacted]'s hosting package.In reviewing the billing account we did find that the service had cancelled immediately rather than at the next renewal date as expected.  To resolve this with Mr. [redacted] amicable we refunded the...

full invoice that Mr. [redacted] had paid for the December month of service.At this time we have not received any follow up questions or concerns from Mr. [redacted].  If any should arise we ask that Mr. [redacted] please respond back to our recent e-mail communications or contact our management team at [email protected] and we will be happy to offer assistance.

Good Morning,
Thank you for your response and while the disregard for our Terms of Service and your own responsibilities is unfortunate to see still having provided an explain. Ultimately though it's not worth the time to argue with you over such a small amount of money.  
I'm going to have this refunded for you promptly today as requested, though I would encourage you in the future to ensure you actually read and understand a service's Terms prior to agreeing to them and signing up.  The frustration and trouble in it's entirety could have been avoided had you done your due diligence initially prior to joining our service and agreeing to the Terms blindly.
We'll provide you an update via email once the refund is processed later today, though I look forward to resolving this with you once and for all regardless of where fault [redacted] lie in the end.  We do stand behind our service and product, so if this refund helps prove that point to you, it's likely a win-win to both parties in the end.
Best Regards,
[redacted]
Director of Customer Service
Hostgator.com

Good Afternoon,We always appreciate a chance to address our customers concerns but before we proceed, we'd like to confirm that that [redacted] account is now active and that we've followed up with an offer to transfer over the initial coupon. Regrettably we have not received any follow up from...

[redacted] quite yet, but we will be keeping an eye out for any response.To provide more information on the matter at hand, we must first and foremost state that as a hosting provider, we receive an incredibly large amount of attempted fraudulent account sign-ups which are purchased with the goal of hosting malware or sending excessive amounts of spam. To prevent these types of orders, we have a number of factors used to evaluate purchases for any common indications of fraud. While we understand how it would be beneficial for our well-meaning customers to know our full set of criteria to work around, this would also allow malicious individuals to dodge our system entirely. In this case, use of a VPN meant that the location of the sign-up was hidden, meaning we were unable to match the sign-up location with the billing information on the credit card used. This is one of the most common tools of malicious individuals, so we do automatically refund these payments and ask that customers please re-purchase their order without use of a VPN.That said, unfortunately there appear to have been a number of inaccurate pieces of information provided in this complaint that must also be noted. We've reviewed all purchases under the name "[redacted]" and have found that the original purchases were made on April 12th, 2015, rather than 5 weeks prior as mentioned in the complaint. We've also found no evidence that our staff denied transferring the coupon to the new purchase or that our staff stated we would not provide the files originally worked on. If this was not the case, we ask that [redacted] please reply to our e-mail to provide more information on where these conversations took place. Finally, please note that we are also upfront about the possibility of a customer having their ID requested as this is available in our terms of service.Regardless, as mentioned initially, the new order and account have been fully activated and we've made sure to move the original files over to the new account. We've also offered to allow an additional coupon to further discount the purchase but we've not heard back on our e-mail. We urge [redacted] to contact us back on the most recent e-mail or contact our management at [email protected] for assistance applying the discount offered, or for assistance with any remaining concerns.

Good Morning,Thank you for bringing the delay with your domain [redacted] keys to our attention.  Though I understand and apologize for the frustration you’ve experienced I’d like to point out that the request for the [redacted] keys was made the day prior to you submitting a complaint.  While...

we understand this turn around isn’t exactly speedy, at the same point we have been experiencing higher then usual volumes resulting in the delay.  Instead of reaching out to us via [redacted] however for assistance as requested here via the Revdex.com, you simply filed a complaint, in our mind perhaps prematurely.I apologize too for the current service level and staffing, though we are working to address this and are seeing positive changes slowly over time the past few months.  We unfortunately can’t just throw untrained staff into our support structure, so please understand we are making improvement and look forward to returning our service to the level you previously came to expect.As my email last week noted, though I was unable to locate your account with any of the information provided here initial in the complaint I did eventually track down the billing account and your open ticket, escalating the request for your EPP keys.  That was processed shortly there after, and since unlocking the domain and providing those keys we’ve heard nothing back from you confirming success on your end.  I did see you rated the ticket response a 0, which is fine as we appreciate any ratings we receive, though ultimately I’d like to ensure you did get the domains unlocked and the keys working to transfer those domains.  As you have my personal email address please feel free to reach out to me directly as opposed to using support given your dissatisfaction and I’ll be happy to address your concerns personally.Best Regards,[redacted]Director of Customer Service[redacted]

Greetings,We've now had a chance to review the communication made in relation to this account but have not found that cancellation was requested in October as reported. Please note that while there may have been assistance offered with pointing a domain name to another provider, we will not...

terminate any contracts until a cancellation request has been submitted as this would mean the permanent deletion of all content on the account. We will not make assumptions about a customer's need for their data, and our customers agree to our terms of service which state that cancellation requests must be submitted via our cancellation request form once the content is no longer needed. Additionally, while 4 months of refunds have been requested, there were only only 3 months of payments made in October, November and December prior to the cancellation request in January, so it is unclear why 4 months of refunds have been requested. We were also disappointed to see these accusations about our staff maliciously modifying any of Ms. [redacted]'s content as she has thus far been unable to furnish any evidence of such actions. From review of the conversations we have under the e-mail address on file, we have addressed each instance where a scan of the account was requested and at those points found no evidence of compromised or malicious content. We've reached out to Ms. [redacted] to provide us with clarification on any evidence she has on these concerns but have so far not heard back. Regardless of these allegations, we are willing to discuss providing a refund for the unused time on the account even though our terms of service were not followed in regards to submitting a cancellation request. That said, as the payments in question are nearly 7-10 months old, the credit card payments can no longer be directly reversed, meaning an alternative method will need to be discussed.We ask that Ms. [redacted] please provide the evidence requested in response to our recent correspondence or contact our management directly at [redacted]@hostgator.com for further investigation and discussion.

Good Evening,We are sorry to hear that [redacted] has been receiving spam and would be glad to address this complaint. First and foremost we must point out that we are a webhosting company that provides customers with web hosting and e-mail accounts. This means that the spam [redacted] is...

referring to is not actually sent by HostGator.com. Although we have spam filtering in place to attempt to block any outbound spam coming from our network, unfortunately it is well known that spammers will do everything they can to find ways to get around these filters. When spam manages to make it off our network, we have a zero tolerance spam policy which can be confirmed here : http://www.hostgator.com/tos/acceptable-use-policy
=========================================
D. Zero Tolerance Spam Policy
We take a zero tolerance stance against the sending of unsolicited
e-mail, bulk emailing, and spam. "Safe lists," purchased lists, and
selling of lists will be treated as spam. We may terminate the account
of any User who sends out spam with or without notice. Please read
http://www.hostgator.com/mailpolicy.html for our generalized mail
policy. Please read http://www.hostgator.com/dedicated-mailpolicy.html
for our dedicated server mail policy.
=========================================When we receive reports of spam from 3rd parties such as [redacted], we take action to suspend these users so they are no longer welcome on our network. Part of our network includes "[redacted].com" which was mentioned in the complaint. Having said that, we have attempted to contact [redacted] as we have only received 1 e-mail from the address provided and replied back to confirm we were taking action against this customer. We have called [redacted] twice and e-mailed multiple times requesting more information on any reports he has sent us that have not been acted upon, however he has refused to take our calls or respond to our e-mails with any information that would support the claims in this complaint.If there are any reports he can provide that we did not respond to, we'll be glad to take another look as we are always interested in preventing spam from leaving our network.

Good Morning,Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.  It’s unfortunate you didn’t first reach out to us directly so we could resolve this through [redacted], but upon further review this morning I see my team did in fact come across your situation recently and worked to...

get this resolved.While you still rated the resolution of that situation poorly through our ticket system, I do see that my Customer Service Manager refunded exactly the charges you demanded we reverse.  He did also clarify that while you believe to have purchased just hosting and a domain, there were in fact several other services ordered as evidence by the packages associated to the account.  I’m not entirely sure if that was intended, though regardless we did refund you fully for those services once made aware.  I apologize for any frustration this led to as well.  If you should ever change your mind about the account cancellation and would like to give us another shot please let us know.  I’d be happy to provide you several months of service just to give it another go if you’d like.  Sorry again for the trouble and please let me know via [redacted] if there’s anything further we can assist you with.Best Regards,[redacted]Director of Customer Service Hostgator.com

Greetings,
Thank you for reaching out to us regarding the trouble getting your account activated.  Though we apologize for the measures and steps we required you to go through, please understand that we do verify some accounts to this extent based simply on the signup information.  This...

is done to put a stop to online fraud through our signup process, which is unfortunately rampant on the internet these days.  The good news however though is that our pending process does do a pretty good job of protecting the company and keeping our costs down ultimately for our customers.
I do see that our staff after requesting some additional information, did get your account activated.  I understand you're having troubles accessing the account and setting up Wordpress reviewing your ticket history, but it appears your domain name still needs it's DNS nameservers updated to match those in the Welcome Email we sent you, otherwise it's not pointing to our server and service.
I've also gone ahead and credited your account for next month's service given the initial delay and trouble getting started, though I will also follow up with you directly in the ticket you have open to ensure you're able to get the DNS and Wordpress working properly.
Best Regards,
[redacted]
Director of Customer Service
[redacted]

Good Evening,We appreciate the chance to review these
concerns and are sorry to hear that Mr. [redacted] has had issues with his
e-mail delivery. That said, we must clarify that we in no do not allow
spammers on our servers. In addition to our zero-tolerance mail policy (
...

http://www.hostgator.com/mailpolicy ), we have strict policy for
verifying new orders to help prevent any malicious individuals from
purchasing accounts with our company. That said, in rare cases
these individuals will find ways to bypass our systems of checks or in
other cases, legitimate customer's will not take the security of their
account as seriously as is necessary which results in their accounts
becoming compromised and used to send spam. In cases where this
occurs, we have a mail filtering system which is used to check outgoing
mail against known spam definitions to catch these messages before they
leave the server. The problem here is that spammers are constantly
monitoring which of their e-mails get delivered and know to adjust their
messages to bypass filtering systems. If any spam does get around our
filters, as soon as we see any evidence of spam coming from our servers,
those customer's accounts are immediately deactivated.In
regards to the specific reports from Mr. [redacted], we have taken action
to request removal from the blacklists reported either upon or earlier
to each of his reports, however we must clarify that blacklisting is not
an issue that will ever be permanently resolved. As spammers will
always find ways around known filtering options or by compromising
accounts, there is no way to ensure that these types of messages will
cease fully when on shared or reseller hosting where the mail servers
are shared with all other customers.As such, we are constantly
working on improving our spam filtering by recently increasing it's
sensitivity and also checking against known spam lists to increase the
data we're working with, however If blacklisting cannot be risked,
customers can also purchase a [redacted] or dedicated server where they will be
the only individual sending mail from their IP address. At
this time we have escalated the related ticket to ensure that
de-listing has been requested and we've also reached out to Mr. [redacted]
to provide a direct line of communication to request escalations if
further issues occur. If we can be of any additional assistance
escalating these matters, we ask that he please replies back to that
communication or contacts our management directly at
[email protected] and we'll be happy to help.

Good Afternoon,We were sorry to hear about the frustrations with our migration process and have taken time to review the conversations in more detail. After investigation we have found that unfortunately there were many issues with the login information provided for the original host meaning we were...

unable to access the account at the previous hosting company.We were sorry to hear that an agent confirmed the migration was complete as we had never sent confirmation that the work was done due to the login issues mentioned above. We have not yet found the call where this was stated but we have flagged the remaining calls for review and will follow up on any agents who provided an incorrect status for the migration.We've also had a chance to call Mr. [redacted] to clarify that since we could never begin the migration, that we did not invoice or charge the account for the work. At that point Mr. [redacted] confirmed he would be handling the migration himself but if we can ever offer escalated assistance with his account, we ask that he please contacts our management at [email protected] and we'll be more than happy to help.

Good Afternoon,We've since had a chance to investigate the spam troubles and have found that further fine tuning of the [redacted] service was needed as the majority of messages still making it through had a lower spam score than the filter was configured to flag. Following our changes we have...

seen a significant drop in the amount of spam making it to the inbox and have a direct line of communication setup between [redacted] and our management. In case further adjustment or investigation is necessary, we ask that [redacted] please reply back to that message or contact us directly at [redacted] and we'll be glad to help.

Greetings,Thank you for reaching out to us regarding your cancellation and refund request via ticket [redacted].  While I understand you believe the pro-rated refund you received was incorrect, after reviewing the ticket it appears perhaps that there's confusion over what a pro-rated refund...

means?  You've requested we fund $54.21, which would actually be the full amount you paid us.  Due to this, while I understand you believe the amount $$23.02 incorrect, that's actually the pro-rated amount for the time left in your hosting package.  Having purchased the hatchling account annually on 9/2/2014 for $54.21 and then a later upgrade fee of $7.96, $23.02 is the correct refund double checking our math.Please let us know via ticket [redacted] if any confusion remains, however the refund is appropriate for the time you used the account.Best Regards,[redacted]Director of Customer ServiceHostgator.com