HostGator.com, L.L.C.

Hello,We were sorry to hear that Mr. [redacted] was experiencing some issues with his [redacted] hosting package and have since contacted him to offer to escalate any additional issues that he may be experiencing with his hosting package.We also reviewed the recent tickets that were associated with the hosting...

account as well as reviewed the recent call where Mr. [redacted] had been experiencing an issue with his [redacted] package that seemed to have been due to some resource issues that he was having.  In reviewing those interactions the issues being experienced did seem to be resolved however we would be happy to follow up and assist with any issues that are still being experienced.We also understand the frustration with having to wait for live support which is available 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  We use historical data to forecast expected live support requests and work to adjust our staffing when we see changes in those contacts which are reviewed on a regular basis.  Unfortunately there are going to be times when a spike in support requests will extend the time it may take to reach live support as they work to assist with every request that we receive.At this time we have reached out to Mr. [redacted] and have not received any further follow up with any issues that he is currently experiencing that we can assist with.  If there are any further concerns we can help address, we ask that Mr. [redacted] please respond back to the recent e-mail communication or contacts our management at [email protected] and we'll be more than happy to continue to assist with any concerns that Mr. [redacted] has.

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me.

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.  
This response is ridiculous.  First of all, the fact that this "script" was supposedly installed on my Wordpress site has nothing to do with my complaint.  My complaint was the lack of customer service given by HostGator upon submitting a security ticket due to [redacted] blacklisting my domain for possible Malware.  Let me make this clear once again.  My ticket was NEVER responded to - EVER.   Days had already passed before I attempted to contact Live Support and only then did I catch wind of a "plugin" issue that had impacted many of their customers.  The first chat, I was given an apology and was told that my ticket was being escalated etc... days later, nothing.  If it were not for me waiting for an hour or more to get someone on Live Chat, I would have never been made aware of the "mass plugin security issue" they were dealing with.   I would have hoped that if it was known by Hostgator that so many customers had been impacted by this plugin, causing such a horrific delay in support and communication, that some sort of global message would have been sent out explaining the situation instead of NOTHING.Interesting, I recall reading the pre-sales article on the HostGator website multiple times, top to bottom, and it specifically instructs HostGator customers to immediately send a support ticket if such an issue is to occur and to make no file modifications for investigative purposes.  I would imagine there has been some "recent" updates to this article...  I don't recall seeing anything about contacting anyone else for "cleaning services', why would I need to do that if my Host is supposed to provide this service to me as a paying customer in the first place?No, I'm not accepting this at all.  It is an insult to be quite honest.  I also don't appreciate the response "here" being so much more defensive and one sided as the apologetic message I received moments ago in my personal inbox...this is borderline manipulative,I'm concerned by this, I'm still a paying customer and I don't feel comfortable with seeing this type of response and attitude shown here.  Being that the support ticket was resolved, immediately after submitting my complaint to the Revdex.com the very next morning...indicates to me that it obviously wasn't that "time consuming" to resolve after-all.  Let me also mention the fact that the first actual "response" received after submitting my complaint here proceeded to tell me that absolutely NO [redacted] was ever even found on my site and that I could proceed with contacting [redacted] for a site scan.  I had to actually reply back and ask about the "plugin" (which I don't ever recall even installing on my site because my theme doesn't even use this plugin...) and then someone responded again and said, 'oh yeah, there was a plugin issue...'  I have all of this in writing if anyone cares to see it lol...I would simply appreciate HostGator to show some sort of acknowledgement and accountability for the poor communication and handling of this matter instead of trying to point fingers and take focus off the actual reason for my complaint.  I know what I experienced, and I know it could/should have been handled much better than this.I would appreciate an apology, not an attempt to discredit my cause for complaint.
Regards,
[redacted]

[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 have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID 11993940, and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me.  Thank you for your assistance.

The company's hosting services seem to be excellent. However their customer service leaves a lot to be desired. They do not answer their phones anymore, unless it is for Sales and the live chat is unable to handle most problems. With so many choices, you owuld think that they would pay more attention to customer service.

Review: We moved our website to Hostgator and now the site is gone. We asked why one of their employees changed the passwords and he said it was for security. Needless to say he did not know we already were paying for a firewall and then he suggested we get one through them (they just began as a reseller for sitelock), because the person we worked with at sitelock told us so. He then never changed our password back, we have never been able to access the site and we are still having difficult getting someone to answer phone calls. They write the logs in the help area (when you write a ticket), they write the ticket to say what makes their company look like they are doing whatever they need it to say. This is highway robbery literally and My site is loosing money for almost two months now and ongoing. We need someone to help. We hired an administrative person who said they moved the DNS to somewhere else. This is outrageous. They said they would fix it and now they are saying they can't access anything. The password is extremely difficult that we had and impossible to guess. So, sitelock and hostgator our hosting company and security were the only two who knew the password, Oh, and the guy that obviously changed it at hostgator. We have a log we asked him to not change the password and he did anyway. Now we are not able to access our site.Desired Settlement: Fix the site our build from scratch as it was within a week.

Consumer

Response:

This letter is to inform you that HostGator.com, L.L.C. has carried out to my satisfaction the resolution it proposed for my complaint, filed on 6/10/2014 1:03:59 AM and assigned ID [redacted]

Hostgator has an employee who has gone up and beyond to help resolve the issues. There is still a problem, but there are good employees and bad. It is a server problem and we do understand that much. Our developer also said that basically what happens the companies are trying to make money so they bundle too many people on a server and then they offer a higher rate for a VPS. Then your on your own server and you just pay for the privilege.

So, resolution was done in good effort by a gentlemen named [redacted] and he worked diligently toward figuring out the problem. My guess is that you are at the mercy of the employee you draw in many tech companies lacking qualified help.

We are satisfied at this point with progress and we are hoping our retail store is able to sell something this year. This has been very devastating for us and hopefully we will be able to make progress and work with Hostgator more efficiently.

Regards,

Review: The servers at HostGator suffered an outage some time in the late hours of October 28th, 2014 as best I can tell. Two service tickets have been opened and numerous emails through social media and direct to HotsGator have gone unanswered. The company provides vague updates about the situation on social media and their own forum software, but does not provide an ETA to repair. The company offers a 99.9% up-time guarantee - but a 24 hour or more outage certainly violates that guarantee.Desired Settlement: I have paid for service I am not getting. Although all of the sites on my servers are donated to non-profits and social groups, the impact of having those sites down for multiple days is no less devastating. Although I can live with outages as I understand problems can occur, the lack of communication has be irritated beyond belief. How does HostGator plan to compensate its loyal customers?

Business

Response:

Good Morning,Thank you for reaching out and bringing this situation to our attention. I'd like to first and foremost offer our sincerest apologies for any frustration or inconvenience this outage has caused you, though I’d like to also offer an explanation regarding the support volumes and communication which suffered as we experienced volumes much higher then usual.As you’re aware this past week after trying to reach out to us during the outage itself, both chat/phone support volumes were extremely high, which was noted either through IVR on phones or through a pop up on our chat system. The unfortunate reality is that while we do host a great number of resellers on the affected servers, volumes were further elevated as a result of many of the resellers’ resold clients reaching out to us directly for information. We specifically ask resellers prevent their own customers from contacting us in our Terms of Service, as the resold customers aren’t our direct customers, but the resellers. Unfortunately there’s not much that can be done during such an outage to offset the contacts from these additional resold accounts as we try to address our actual customers concerns, but I will add that we’ve been working around the clock ever since to get to everyone.We’ve also requested staff who weren’t scheduled to work extra shifts, or longer shifts in an effort to lessen the delays, but appreciate everyone’s extreme amount of patience. Regardless we also understand the headaches and frustration you’ve all been through and want to do what we can to improve communications in the future. Though updates were being provided through [redacted] as well as through our [redacted] forums on our site which has always been used for this purpose, I’d like to hopefully see email or SMS notifications come into play in the future.Till that’s a reality though, we’ll continue improving upon our current communication channels and really wherever we find areas to improve after the fact when issues like this arise. We’ll obviously shoot to avoid a repeat, though I simply want to make it clear we realize we can make positive improvements. Finally, regarding the service you felt you didn’t receive, we do certainly guarantee these accounts with our 99.9% uptime guarantee, and I see that our billing staff has honored that with the month of credit. At the same point I realize the outage was pretty extreme and likely cost you more then a month’s worth of service. Though we’re also a business and need to keep costs in mind as we compensate the many affected users, I’ve gone ahead and applied an additional two months of credit towards your account. I hope this gestures we’re interested in righting the matter, though if you have any further questions or concerns I can work to personally address as we restore your faith, please let us know via [redacted] which I’ll keep assigned to myself and the management team.Best Regards,[redacted]Director of Customer Service[redacted]

Review: I established an account with the hostgator.com., and payed through the PayPal one month fee. The contract was for one month, only. I asked hostgator.com., many times, through the e-mails and life-chats to cancel the account, however despite all my requests hostgator.com continue sending bills, and refuses to cancel the account. I am filing complaints with the Texas and California Attorneys Generals.Thank you.Sincerely[redacted]Please see below:Subject Please cancel my accountTicket ID KKE-[redacted] Status On HoldDate Created 2014-06-25 11:25:42 Department BillingSubject Please cancel my accountDear Sirs, I could not set up a new shopping cart. Please cancel my account. Thank you. Sincerely, [redacted]Dear Sirs, I would like to cancel the account. Please cancel the account for me. Thank you. [redacted] On Thursday, June 26, 2014 5:48 AM, "[redacted]" Ticket: [redacted] Date: Jul 20, 2014Time: 07:40 PM CSTDear Sirs, This account was cancelled. I was informed by your rep. to inform the Pay Pal, that the account was, only, for one month contract. I did informed Pay Pal that the account is only for one month contract. Thank you. [redacted]Desired Settlement: Please cancel my account and stop harassment.

Business

Response:

Hello,

Review: Hi,The Company hostgator emailed me on [redacted] Jan 2014 to say that a domain name I hold with them is expiring on ** Feb 2014 (i only hold one domain with them, they also attached a .txt file explaining what needs renewing). I replied back to them right away stating to cancel the domain as I no longer need of use it. They replied back saying they will have it cancelled for me. Now on ** Feb 2014 I realised that on [redacted] February they took a payment from me for the amount of $15.00 (Hostgator [redacted]). When I raised a ticket for the issue to resolved, they denied anybody ([redacted]), sending me an email to cancel the domain name and also in my billing panel of hostgator there is no sign of the domain name or even in subscriptions there is no sign of my domain name. I have also asked for a refund of the hosting package which they have taken payment without authorization of $100.00. Please help. Thank you.Desired Settlement: I would like a refund for the domain name of $15.00 and a refund of $100.00 for the hosting package.

Business

Response:

Hello,

Review: I bought a domain from hostgator about 2 years ago. According to their terms of service (even though I bought the domains over the phone) you HAVE to buy their hosting service, which at the time I did not want, nor was I aware that I was purchasing. On top of that I was charged the following year for the same service as a renewal. When I attempted in October of 2013 to remove my domain from HostGator and transfer it to [redacted], I requested information on completing the transfer, which I never received. Despite several phone calls and emails and visits to the website later the domain was never released and expired. I was NEVER notified of this fact either. In another attempt to finish this process, I called HostGator to attempt to resolve the issue again, and was refused allowance to speak to a supervisor, but also was repeatedly blamed for their mistake in not transferring my domain.Desired Settlement: I want my domain transferred at no charge.

Business

Response:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Hostgator.com. My name is [redacted] and I am in the Customer Service department here at HostGator.

I am writing you in response to your complaint regarding your domain registration, as there are several points in your complaint that are not correct, I would like to take some time to clarify. If you feel I have missed some information, or that you would like to provide any new information that you would like for me to consider, please feel free to reply to your support ticket and I will be happy to help.

First, our Terms of Service [redacted] do not require you to host your domain with us in order for it to be registered under your account (or vise versa). We will certainly allow you to only have one or the other, whichever way best fits your needs. Also our phone representitives are not allowed to add billing packages over the phone. They can however, assist you with either a new ticket for your request (which I was unable to locate) where your request would have been manually verified, or they can guide you through the ordering process online. Since your account was initially payed with a credit card, and there was no request in a ticket for this account, I left to conclude that the order was placed online, which would have required the credit card information to be entered manually through the browser.

Next, you stated that you have previously attempted on several occations to request information regarding how to move your domain to [redacted]. Unfortunately, after searching our records based on the information you provided here and the information that we have on file for your account, I was unable to locate any support tickets or phone calls where this information was requested. Since I was unable to locate any record of the previous request, I would like to ask if you may have called in from another telephone number, or emailed in from another address. If that is the case I would like the opertunity to locate those conversations with our staff. This would allow me to reconsider my position with the new evidence in hand.

With that being said, I was able to find a support ticket ([redacted] - cancellation request) and corrisponding recorded phone call from December *, 2013, more than two weeks prior to the experation of the domain cat5videoz.com which occurred on December **, 2013. Where our agent provided information on how to transfer your domain to [redacted]. Your domain was unlocked and made ready for the transfer to the new registrar. However, this transfer would have to be initiated by contacting [redacted] with the [redacted] (authorization) key. The agent mentioned several times in the course of this phone call that additional steps on [redacted]'s side would be needed in order to initiate the process and transfer the domain registration.

Our agent also provided a walkthrough on how to fill out the cancellation request mentioned above. When we received your request to cancel your hosting account [redacted] : [redacted], the option to cancel the automatic renewal of the domain [redacted] was also selected. When our agents processed your request, both were cancelled as you had indicated on the form at [redacted]

Since [redacted] had not been transferred or renewed by the end of the registration cycle on December **, 2013, the domain did expire. After experation, a domain is held for 30 days where the registrant can reclaim the domain by simply paying the renewal fee (in this case $15.00 for [redacted]). After this 30 day window expires, the domain enters a phase called "redemption" were the registrant can pay to retreive the domain before it is released for sale to the public or sold at auction, and is an industry standard process following the exiration of a domain.

Currently, your domain is in the redemption phase, and there are 20 days left to renew prior to the domain being released to be sold. If this is allowed to happen, the domain can be registered at any registrar, and HostGator has no way of ensuring that another buyer would not purchase the domain before you are able to.

Unfortunatly, given the facts I have been able to verify in this case, I see no fault on how our agents have represented HostGator in this situation. I do appologize as I recognise this is not the update that you would like to recieve. However, with the information that I have available to me after my investigation of your complaint, I am unable to justify waiving the fees that have been assessed in this case. HostGator will not be granting your request to cover the cost of your transfer to another provider.

Given that the domain is unlocked and we were able to get the [redacted] key prior to the redemption period. You can attempt to transfer the domain to [redacted] as you wanted, however with the domain being in a redemption status, I can not guarantee the success of the transfer.

Should you have any questions, or would like me to look into any other tickets or calls, please feel free to reply back to this email and I will be happy to assist you further.

Review: I cancelled my $8.95 monthly subscription and upgraded to a yearly one at a discounted rated of $66.72 on 02/28/2013. Hostgator additionally charged me $8.95 for the account I already upgraded. Upon requesting a refund for this unauthorized charged, my account was credited the right amount on 03/04/2013; however I was recharged later that day for same amount. I was then charged $83.40 on 03/21/2013 for an account I paid $66.72 for on 02/28/2013. It is 03/26/2013 and after being assured that this would be taken care of on 03/21/2013; they insist on this statement:"(2:17:35pm)[redacted] L.:Okay, speaking with a billing administrator, we can give you a prorated discount for this plan.(2:20:58pm)[redacted] L.:I have escalated this ticket to an administrator. I appreciate how valuable your time is and how important it is to have this resolved as quickly as possible. Our administrators have begun investigating this issue and will notify you via email the moment there is any new information."They then offered to refund the $66.72 that I purchased myself instead of the $83.40 I had no knowledge of. I am cancelling the subscription I've had less than month but paid for a year and my compensation came back in the form"(2:47:56pm)[redacted] L.:We do have a $45 day moneyback guarantee"Desired Settlement: I would like a refund for the unauthorized charges of $8.95 on 03/04/201 and $83. 40 on 03/21/2013. I am also requesting a refund of the $66.72 yearly subscription purchased on 02/28/2013 a result of me canceling this service due to their incompetence.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Review: Company states 45 day refund, but very shady business practices, lack of training for support technicians and reviewal boards to make you sure customers meet the poorly documented stipulations for refund are keeping me from getting totally screwed by this company. I am very tired of their attitudes and want my money back.Desired Settlement: I would like a full refund for the purchase I made that I was not able to use. Ticket# LIN-[redacted]Invoice# [redacted] Purchase price: $ 228.96

Business

Response:

Hi [redacted]

Thanks for reaching out to us, and I'm sorry to see the troubles you've experienced recently. Though it's unfortunate you didn't just shoot us an email at [email protected] which comes to management and my customer service escalation team, so we could assist you with resolving this, I'll be happy to do so at this time. Reviewing the cancellation ticket you opened, I see that you just opened the hosting package needing cancelled yesterday, though there's also additional notes in the ticket mentioning that you'd changed your mind and were no longer interested in proceeding with the cancellation? I also saw a more recent update from you with some positive feedback about another support staff member which is great to see, though I apologize for any problems you had as you registered and got started yesterday.

If you could please shoot me an update in the ticket LIN-[redacted] with some more information, I'd love to look into this further too. If we screwed something up, I'll get it addressed and the situation corrected, but we'll also have a better understanding of your needs going forward so that either myself or my CS team can ensure you're getting the support you've come to expect from us over the years. I'll look forward to working with you and sorry again that action with the Revdex.com became necessary.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

I just wanted to provide a quick update here today regarding the situation. Though it wasn't clear at first what precisely the frustration regarding our refund policy was over, after reviewing this further with [redacted] whom you spoke with I discovered, that frustration was the result of what's essentially coupon abuse within our billing system, which our Terms of Service expressly forbids. I realize you may not have been aware of that which is fine, though I do want to apologize for the time it took to resolve and any frustration that may still be underlying. We in no way intended to leave a sour taste with you over the matter.

Which brings me to the resolution, in that even though we don't normally allow customers to use coupons like you did to offset the cost of hosting on a prior hosting account, [redacted] did go ahead and get you a discounted billing cycle as well as a refund for the difference. I know that's not quite what you'd hoped for originally, though hopefully this gesture of good faith signals our interest in working with you going forward. If you have any additional concerns or questions in the future, please feel free to reach out to either [redacted] or myself through the assigned tickets in our cs queue.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Consumer

Response:

[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.]

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted] and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me. But I feel I need to reply to [redacted] comments..

Coupon abuse? Shopping around for the best price and service is a fact of life for most of the free world. You are correct, I wasn't aware that current customers aren't allowed to use the coupon on the home page of the hostgator website, but why are new customers given discounts while loyal customers with multiple hosting mackages like myself have to pay full price?

I actually tried to migrate away from your service because there is a better deal out there and found that Hostgator will do everything within it's powers to frustrate the customer into giving up and just staying with you. I was forced to wait 30 - 45 minutes to speak with anyone regarding my issue numerous times only to be provided with "very nice", but ineffective support that left me exactly where I started 30 - 45 minutes prior. When trying to migrate away from hostgator I saw everything from rate limiting download speeds via FTP to multiple failed downloads so that I could not get a proper backup of my website leaving me with no choice but to stay.

You can try all you want to convince me that this is resolved and in your subtle ways make it look like this is due to my breaking Terms of Service, but at the end of the day this issue was only partially resolved and only after reaching Director level within your Company. I will let you go ahead and call this resolved, but if I get anymore treatment like I have witnessed you can guarantee I will be right back on here.

Review: I ordered a year's worth of hosting from them and decided I no longer need it. They have a 45 day money back guarantee and have ignored my requests to cancel my account and refund me.Desired Settlement: I would like a refund for the year I paid for hosting I'm no longer going to use.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention. I'd like to first and foremost offer our sincerest apologies for any frustration or inconvenience this situation has caused you, however I do see that we issued you a full refund for the account on 12/12/2014. Looking over recent processing times for our cancellations queue it does appear it’s been taking quite a bit longer then the noted 72 hours on the cancellation form, though we’re working to allocate additional staff to these queues in an effort to get times back down where they should be.Either way, we do certainly apologize for any alarm the delay caused. I’ll keep the processed cancellation ticket assigned to myself should you have any further questions, otherwise you should have your refund back as noted in the ticket in between 5-10 business days.Best Regards,[redacted]

Review: Company shut down my account after complaining that their hosting service was not working and was website was not live, which is what I pay for. They shut down my account and have not responded to my last 5 emails for support. Their live chat does not work and they are not answering the phone. I tried to lo into my billing panel to cancel my account and I am locked out. I have no way to contact them and they do not respond to any correspondence. They have my billing info and will continue to charge my credit card despite locking me out of my account and not providing the service I am paying for.Desired Settlement: Refund for October 2014 (when they shut down my account) and any future months that have been pre-paid for.

Business

Response:

Hi [redacted]Thank you for reaching out and bringing the situation to our attention. Though I would have been happy to assist you directly via [redacted] had you reached out prior to submitting the complaint to see if we could provide you a better level of support, and address your concerns, I realize at this time that you currently have a cancellation request in and are just looking to move on. I'm sorry to see that take place prior to getting a chance to try and right the entire matter, but all the same I realize you're frustrated with our current support situation, as we've continued to grow the past several years and are experiencing some difficulties as we recruit and hire new staff this year in an effort to keep up with demand. Though we are certainly committed to getting ahead of this problem and are slowly winning the battle as we continue to hire, even going as far as implementing contract workers to help ease the current pains, I also don't want to drag out your headaches any further then necessary.I've asked a supervisor to go ahead and process your cancellation this morning as promptly as possible, though it looks like we’re going to either need to sync up with you and get a [redacted] address we can process a refund to, or simply mail you a check. I see that you requested a refund of October, though if it’s alright in an effort to hopefully leave you with a less sour impression of our brand I’m going to refund the prior 3 months of service to you. That comes to $44.85 US, which I hope is agreeable. We’ll get that refund sorted out though in the open ticket [redacted]. If you have any other questions or concerns beyond my response here, please also feel free to request me in that open cancel ticket in the short term. Once the cancellation is processed, the ticket will just be assigned to me in relation to the Revdex.com complaint, so if I can assist with anything else just let me know!Best Regards,[redacted]Director of Customer Service[redacted]

Review: Sites have been down for over 10 hours with over 30 sites in my reseller account.I have left responses to hostgator on facebook and replies to others and they keep deleting my very factual replies.

They said it was fixed at hour 10 and then it's still not. No one is answering call or getting hung up on, [redacted] person keeps saying PM them but noone is getting responses. this is a huge outage and they aren't updating and when they do making excuses. They even said today on [redacted] they don't have enough techs and need to hire more......

they need to stop taking clients then if they can't handle this.The outage is due to a operating system update....WORST CS ever.Desired Settlement: I can't get the money back that has already been lost to my clients and if I loose a client over this they wouldn't pay what my clients are paying anyways

Business

Response:

Good Morning,Thank you for alerting us to the troubles you experienced last week during our Reseller outage. Though it’s unfortunate you didn’t reach out to our management team directly via [redacted] to discuss your concerns, as the Revdex.com site outlines should take place prior to a complaint being filed, I understand your frustration, and appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns regardless of whether it’s through our own channels or the Revdex.com.Looking over your account I see that you’ve been a customer for many years, so I’d like to first and foremost offer a credit towards the troubles per our 99.9% uptime guarantee. Though that specific guarantee only provides a months credit based on the downtime experienced, and the fact that we didn’t meet the 99.9% uptime promised, I’d like to go one further and offer you a few extra months towards your reseller server. I’ve applied a credit for 3 months at this time, which is available through the billing system for future invoices.In regards to the losses you note may have been experienced, though we do sympathize with the plight the outage caused many of our resellers, at the same time our Terms of Service does outline that we unfortunately cannot be held liable for such damages. I wish there was more we could do to help our clients who did suffer from this, though that’s indeed why our 99.9% uptime guarantee exists. The reality is, that we simply cannot compensate every single reseller involved to the degree you mention losses may have occurred, as we are a business just as yourself and need to keep our own costs during compensation in mind. Hopefully the couple extra months of service gestures our interest in righting the situation, but please let me know if I can address further concerns in regards to the credit or compensation.Finally, in regards to the noted concern with staffing, though it is true we’ve continued to grow over the years since you joined us, we’ve also continued to recruit and hire new staffing in an effort to keep up with the ever increasing support volumes, going as far as starting to employ contract workers this summer and fall to further help the situation. The simple fact here is that it lamentably just wasn’t possible to keep up with the huge increase(several times over our normal volumes) in support requests that resulted, even after calling in unscheduled staff and offering OT to keep people in the office working as long as possible. This also takes a toll on our staff which needs to be kept in mind, as they can’t help if we burn them out entirely, but we’ve done what we could to push staffing and move as quickly as possible through support requests during this time. Best Regards,[redacted]Director of Customer Service[redacted]

Review: I have purchased a hosting plan (business) with the company but due to the lag in the website, id decided to upgrade the plan to another higher end hosting plan ([redacted]). The customer service officer has promised me to do the upgrade and transfer of the data in the business plan to the [redacted] and he guaranteed that the [redacted] can now be used with my new data being transferred. For the whole of 20 months I have been paying more than $100 monthly for the [redacted].

Due to recent low traffic, ive decided to downgrade my [redacted] plan back to a smaller plan, but a new customer service officer told me that all along ive been using the business plan and the [redacted] plan was empty all along.

For the whole of the year plus, I have been paying for nothing.

I did highlight to the manager about this and they promised to refund some cash back to me. But after agreeing, they ignored me and till now there is still no refund at all.Desired Settlement: refund of 12 months please.

Business

Response:

Greetings,

Thank you for reaching out to us regarding this situation. I'd like to first apologize for the frustration and general time it took to refund and resolve the matter with you through [redacted], but it's great to see [redacted] did ultimately come to an agreement on the refund amount for you. Though it's unfortunate in the end to even see this occur, we'll certainly be reviewing support on this end and looking to address any issues that occurred through this frustrating period of time for you, looking obviously to make improvements where we can along the way. If you have any further concerns or questions regarding the matter, please feel free to respond directly to the ticket noted above, which I'll keep an eye on going forward.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Review: I quit Host Gator in January due to all the problems they caused me. They took my site down and blamed on us when it was the fact that they could not deal with the program. Due to their negligence my site was taken down for 6 hours on our busiest day of the year New Years Eve. Then again on January 2,3,4 which is when I moved to another server. They destroyed my website when they took it down which cost me over $500.00 to repair. Host Gator then took out a payment in February after not taking one out in January because I left and I had to close my account due to fraud.I also had to change my bank card, which again caused problems.I have called, written and they insist I am still a customer, which I am not. I need help.Desired Settlement: I would love the money that I had to pay to repair my website restored but I can't see Host Gator doing that. I do have the receipts as we are a community newspaper in NYC. I would like them to quit harassing me and realize I am no longer their because of their negligence. I would like this to go on record so others do not go through what I am going through.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Review: Originally, I wrote to [redacted] stating my account was hacked and was transferred somehow to another domain host. I was lead to believe this by the people at hostgator when I spoke with them on the phone and through email. Also, I was told to contact who now owns the domain name "click registry". I called Hostgator back to see if they can get a hold of them as I had no progress. I was told over the phone they could not help me. Since I was told each time that they could not help me, I took it upon my self to do some searching. What I found was appalling and was done in bad faith. I found that indeed Hostgator transferred my domain name with out my authorization (FOA) to [redacted] then they transferred it to [redacted] and it was then transferred again to [redacted] (aka click registry). I wrote to Hostgator regarding this and was told the transfer was due to the expiration date of [redacted] and payment was received 8 days later. Fortunately, I kept all my billing emails that I received from them. That email was dated [redacted] I paid the invoice on [redacted]. Also, on that email it stated "Once paid no further action is needed and your account will remain active". I have yet to receive a response from them. Where was the good faith. I would like them to get me back my domain name. I have been billed annually $174 since [redacted] for the domain and hosting services. Even more appalling I have been billed automatically even since after that transfer took place!Desired Settlement: Not only do I want my domain name back (as in I pay for it I own it) I want a refund of hosting services that were not even applicable due to not having a domain name!

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention for review. I’ve had the chance this morning to look into the renewal of [redacted] further and would be happy to both explain why this occurred, but also work with you to hopefully register an appropriate domain name as well as refund your hosting fees for the service during the time you went without a domain name.

Having had the chance to review your ticket history, I see that this entire situation actually began in [redacted]. On [redacted] you were sent a renewal notice for the domain name. That seemingly was overlooked however as I see that payment actually didn’t occur until [redacted], which was 8 days past due. Due to the nature of the renewal being past due, we actually outline in our Terms of Service that all domain renewals should be confirmed in writing to our billing team once paid. That ensures the process proceeds without issue and that your domain name isn’t lost, as is the case here.

I believe this information was presented to you initially in [redacted] when you brought the matter to our attention, however for clarity sake I’d like to include it below as well:

[redacted]4 Section 4.) Payment Information

“Subsequently, domain renewals are billed and renewed 30 days before the renew date. It is the customer's responsibility to notify our sales team via email at s[redacted] for any domain registration cancellation. No refunds can be given, once a domain is renewed. All domain registrations, and renewals are final.”

Given this didn’t occur, the domain then went into a redemption period where it would be available to you for a redemption fee. This basically protects the domain name once it expires so you can retrieve it in a timely fashion. The following July however the domain looks to have been released finally, and then purchased by another third party. To be 100% clear we did not directly authorize the transfer of your domain to another registrar or user as you’ve alleged here in your account on the matter.

This was specifically the result of the domain clearing redemption after a year and becoming available again. The other concern I’d like to note is that it’s been more then two years at this time since the domain renewal failed. Had we been made aware of this within a reasonable amount of time, even prior to [redacted] when the domain was released from redemption we could have worked to assist you with retrieving this.

I apologize if the domain being expired and the site down was something you overlooked for the previous two years, however it’s ultimately your responsibility as the domain owner to ensure it’s renewed.

Moving forward while I lamentably cannot get you the specific domain back, I’d like to present a few alternatives that I can register for you free of charge:

I would also be happy to refund the past two years worth of hosting fees totaling $358.80. While the entire situation is unfortunate to encounter, given you weren’t using the service itself to host the domain beyond it’s expiration I feel the refund on both years is the least we can do. Given the time that’s lapsed I unfortunately cannot refund this directly via our billing system, however if you’d like I can either have our accounting dept mail you a check via the post or have the money refunded instantly via [redacted].

Hopefully this gestures signal our interest in making right on what is agreeably a terrible situation, however we look forward to hopefully resolving this with you as we move forward. I’ll look forward to your response and if I can assist with anything beyond what I touched on directly please let me know!

Best Regards,

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution is moving in a good direction. However, I have to disagree with the 2 year payment and request a refund of 3 years due to a recent payment $179.40 paid on [redacted]. Since this occurred from [redacted] and I just currently paid another $179.40 a 3 year payment would suffice. If the 3 yrs are paid I will then consider this complaint resolved and we can move forward.

Regards,

Review: HostGator hosts 2 website for me - [redacted] - using a shared server. I also have email addresses through these sites. For the second time my emails are getting bounced back from some addresses because my server is listed as a spammer. On the first site I send 5-8 emails a day; on the 2nd 20-30 a day. I am not a spammer. Apparently [redacted] of HostGator are [redacted] because I have 2 different server addresses blocked because [redacted] shows them as belonging to spammers. HostGator is damaging my reputation and harming my business by being identified with spammers.Desired Settlement: Change my servers to ones where HostGator doesn't have [redacted] operating.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention. It’s unfortunate that you neglected to reach out to our management team so we could get involved and resolve this sooner, though we appreciate awareness all the same so we can get it addressed once and for all. Looking over your open ticket [redacted] I see that our Security blacklist team is working to delist the IP addressed, though this does take time as they made clear initially when you reported the problem.That said, I’m going to go ahead and just ask our migrations team to move the account to another server for you, which will require a DNS change though should resolve this pretty quickly once the DNS propagates and the IP change takes place. I would like to note just for your own awareness that while we have a zero tolerance policy for spam on our network, it’s not simply a black and white issue as all emails are scored and rated in terms of spam threat. Even normal non-spam emails to an extent can rate poorly which over time may affect the reputation of an IP address. The problem more so then [redacted] is simply the fact that these shared servers host hundreds of users, and then even further possibly thousands of email users. While we shut down and terminate accounts found to be spamming with no tolerance what so ever, inevitably from time to time IPs will become blacklisted. Due to this we cannot explicitly guarantee you won’t see future issues, though hopefully through my contact we can ensure these get resolved much more promptly.Finally, with those above points clarified please be on the lookout for an email reply from our migrations admins in [redacted]. They’ll get this taken care of and the account moved asap to a new IP address. If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to request me directly in the open ticket as I’ve made the staff involved aware of my own involvement.Best Regards,[redacted]

Business

Response:

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]

Consumer

Response:

[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.]

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me.

Review: I requested a dedicated IP for my hosting website. Because Hostgator.com changes IP address often. I have go to my DNS server to type new IP address. So, I checked their sales website for dedicated IP fee. Fee is $2.00 per month. I requested dedicated IP address for my [redacted] windows hosting website. Their response is below: -----------------------Ticket: [redacted]Hello,Thank you for contacting [redacted]. Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, due to the shortage of available IP addresses, we can not assign a dedicated IP address without an SSL installed. There are several providers of low cost SSL certificates that we can install on your account to meet this requirement. I am sorry for the inconvenience this issue has caused.If you have any other questions or concerns please feel free to contact us at your convenience by responding to this ticket, calling ###-###-####, or using our live chat at https://chat.hostgator.com/ Best wishes, [redacted] | ###-###-####-----------------------I don't want to buy SSL certificate. I only need dedicated IP address for my website.Thanks.[redacted]Desired Settlement: I only need a dedicated IP address for my website. I will pay $2 monthly fee.Thanks.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention and my apologies for the frustration or inconvenience the current shortage of IPv4 IP addresses may be creating for you. It's also quite unfortunate that you neglected to reach out to our management team prior to submitting a Revdex.com complaint as is requested during the complaint submission process, however all the same I'll be happy to assist you. I'd like to first and foremost provide some more clarification regarding the IP shortage and currently required justification, but then present your options for acquiring the IP address if absolutely necessary.

As you're aware and was outlined in our response to you via the ticket from our billing team, we are unfortunately currently required through our datacenter and [redacted](the organization responsible for IP allocation) to justify each and every dedicated IP that is assigned.

Wiki article on IPv4 Exhaustion: [redacted]

This first article just explains the IP exhaustion being faced globally at this point with IPv4 IP addresses.

ARIN IPv4 Countdown Article: [redacted]

The second article discusses the final phases of the exhaustion and acknowledges as the body governing our IP blocks that the issue is very real.

Beyond the technical clarity those articles offer we do need to justify an IP address allocations. There are a few ways for this to occur, however the most cost conscious option is to install a cheap SSL certificate at which point we have proper justification and can allocate you the IP. Otherwise should we allocate the IP, once the datacenter audits servers for free IP address as we run out and require more, your IP will be called into question and removed without justification which you currently don't have. I'm sorry that you may not agree on these policies, however the justification is something enforced upon us and somewhat out of our hands. With that clarified there are definitely cheap SSL providers out there in which to acquire a cert, otherwise we do provide SSLs for $50/yr which is fairly typical. Again though, there are cheaper options available, however without the SSL or a more costly justification we simply cannot provide you the IP address otherwise.

If you'd please reply back to [redacted] with any questions or once you have the SSL certificate I'd be happy to personally take care of the installation and IP allocation. I also noticed that you have a VPS server as well, which may have a free IP address available as well. I'm not sure if the site you want the IP for requires it be on a Windows machine, though the VPS is an option certainly depending on what you use both plans for. I'll look forward to your response.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me. I will wait until for the business to perform this action and, if it does, will consider this complaint resolved.

Regards,