HostGator.com, L.L.C.

Review: I have had Hostgator for several years and am frustrated with their service at this point. For the most part their technical staff members have been professional and helpful. During the last month I have come to my wit's end with them. I called back in February, last month, to report that I was concerned I had been hacked, because of what I saw when I logged into one of my Wordpress sites. I had installed only 2 plugins, yet I saw about 15 of them upon re-login. 3 of the plugins were in German, and when I researched the name of one of the plugins the description said something to the effect of "allows dual access to a website". Another of the plugins said something about [redacted]. If I put those two together, what comes up for me is a hacking situation that somehow involves stealing a site's revenue.This particular site is [redacted].com. I received an email from the admins saying they found no problems. I experienced more evidence that something was wrong, & sent an angry email to the admins saying something WAS wrong. At that point they researched and came back and said they did find malware, but had removed it and everything was clear. For a month now I have not been able to send emails and have had various other problems. They keep saying everything is fine, but it's not. On March 5th, I called in to report other problems and the admins came back and said my site had been blacklisted because 400,000+ spam emails had been sent from 1 of my email accts. They said they fixed things. I STILL CANNOT SEND EMAILS. I do not trust that things are being investigated and fixed properly. In the past I have reported evidence of hackings and have been ignored! I do not trust the safety of my sites and intellectual property. Hostgator has totally bungled this one. I have requested to be moved to different IPs to no avail. I feel like a sitting duck who is pouring my hosting money and marketing efforts down a rathole. Someone at a high Hostgator level needs to get involved to solve this fiasco.Desired Settlement: I'd like to have totally new IPs for all of my accounts and assurance that no malware or hidden back doors are transferred over. I do not know how this works but would like to discuss options with someone at Hostgator who does. I want [redacted] to be on it's own IP as I requested in the first place. Hostgator made it an addon and then told me it was too hard to change. I wish to be compensated for this mess, which has been a HUGE time drain for me. More attentive admins!

Consumer

Response:

AFTER I filed this complaint, I tested a form on my [redacted].com site, and the form still did not work. I called in to Hostgator support, and spoke with a [redacted] L. who was kind enough to test the site and confirmed that he was not able to send email from the site either. I was in contact over a period of several hours with him. He asked me to call him back after a period of time, which I did. He told me that [redacted] was being moved to it's own IP, and I would receive an email when that migration has been completed. He said it would take a while. Today 24 hours later I had received no email, so I called in and spoke with [redacted] R. who said there was no open ticket as the ticket had been closed out and there was no migration that had taken place. I told him I still could not send email from the domain. After over 2 hours on the phone, they finally changed the mailserver IP and tell me that I can now send emails from that domain. This change also seemed to fix some other problems I was having, like not being able to receive email resets for Wordpress admin. panels. I am still unable to access a good portion of the wordpress sites I created over the past month.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for having brought this to our attention. I’m sorry to hear of the troubles you’ve experienced recently after dealing with multiple compromises on your server, however I’ll be more then happy to assist you with getting this all resolved fully. I’d like to first note that it’s somewhat concerning that you would submit such a complaint prior to the matter being resolved which it wasn’t, however given the confusion and general nature of the situation it’s likely best to ensure this is being resolved appropriately, but with clarity as well so the situation can be avoided in the future.

Reviewing your recent security requests I’m not seeing any that were ignored as you allege however if you’d please provide those tickets I’d be happy to review them further. As for the compromises and situation at hand currently, there are actually two entirely different issues occurring. One with an account which looks to have been transferred to the VPS already compromised which we located and cleaned for you during a recent scan, then the second email issue spam, which has been preventing proper email function.

Having reviewed the tickets with our security supervisors as well as having reviewed logs myself it’s clear the first issue with wp-admin is not in fact related to the email blacklisting that was experienced most recently. I’m also seeing conflicting information as to what you’ve reported and what our logs show as being installed to the software. All recent installations look to have been from your area geographically based on the IP in logs, though regardless given the reports it appears multiple scans have been performed on the server to clean it. As for the compromises they appear to be the result of inadequate passwords which is easily preventable, and to that end I’d like to encourage you in the future to use random string passwords, upper and lower case characters as well as numbers and symbols to ensure your passwords are as strong as possible. Avoiding common words and personal information is also a great tip as those are often easily guessed.

As for the delay with the IP blacklisting, I do apologize for the time this has taken to resolve however we do typically get these listings cleared with some patience once we’re able to communicate with the involved spam haus. We also usually will not provide a customer a new IP address after seeing an instance such as this where 400k spam emails were sent which is regrettably the client’s responsibility to keep tabs on, though it’s good to see our staff made exceptions as needed such as in this case. We do certainly take network security and spam sending very seriously here at Hostgator.com functioning with a zero tolerance policy, though given the compromises it was also fairly clear you did not intentionally send the spam. Regardless of where responsibility lies, should compromises of this nature continue in the future we may be unable to provide a clean IP like this meaning you’ll need to remain patient while we reverse the actions taken on the IP address. That can regrettably take the better part of a week at times, though these do ultimately get resolved once the spam haus can release the listing.

Moving to your request for compensation we’ll unfortunately not be able to consider that given the source of the issues resulted in the way of weak passwords being set on the server which were compromised. That’s unfortunately out of our hands, however with my earlier recommendations the situation is typically avoidable.

In closing as for the situation at hand still in that you’re having trouble loading a few sites, I’ll look forward to any other details you can provide about the sites of concern, however if you’d please email me directly at [redacted].com that would likely be the easiest way to work through the remaining concerns.

Best Regards,

Hostgator.com LLC

[redacted].com

Consumer

Response:

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. For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.

[Provide details of why you are not satisfied with this resolution.]

Regards,

I see no attempt on Hostgator's part to resolve this complaint. Rather I see blame and defensiveness, rather than any effort to resolve my issues. If this is typical of their senior management, I now understand their admins attitude. It's the old trickle-down effect. Thank God many of their front line people are humane. [redacted] talks out of both sides of his mouth as far as I can determine. On the one hand he says they gave me sevice that was compromised in the first place. I have tried to tell them this on many occasions, to no avail. On the other hand he says being hacked is all my fault due to weak passwords. It seems to me that at all costs their desire is to put the blame on me, with no attempt to really resolve the bottom line issues.

You will find my response to Hostgator's response below, plus an attachment to support my statement regarding [redacted]. What I hear [redacted] saying on the one hand is my account was compromised BEFORE they even passed it off to me. Since they are providing the service, I do not understand why he would hold me responsible for them providing me with contaminated hosting. What he is saying goes right along with phone calls I have made many times over the years telling them something was not right as the hosting seemed to be contaminated. They always put me off and never really did a thorough investigation. If they had, we would not all be here discussing thi right now.

Since I have been with Hostgator, I have always used [redacted] to build Wordpress sites. No one has ever mentioned a charge for this service. Three days ago Hostgator suddenly cut off my access to [redacted] and said that I have to pay a fee to use it. They also said there is no way I have been using [redacted] to build Wordpress sites. I have built 49 Wordpress sites since I have been on VPS with Hostgator. They have no explanation as to how I built 49 [redacted] sites. What slipshod customer service. You would think we were at war and I am the enemy, rather than a living breathing paying CUSTOMER! They don't seem to have the same definition of that word as I do. With regard to [redacted] they might have just as well used the word 'liar' to my face. The fact is, I HAVE had access to [redacted] for all of the years I have had VPS and there are 49 existing Wordpress sites as evidence. When I asked about the 49 WP sites, they said they did not have an explanation. Unbelievable!

I do not understand why [redacted] I so sure me being hacked in February and having spam sent out in March as unrelated events. I don't really know how hackers work but it is certainly logical that if they found malicious activity inside my part of the server, that they could be related, or the hacker access is still present. In cases like this I would like to feel they are concerned about what has occurred, not only from my perspective, but from their own as well. They have a high reputation in the industry and that is why I chose them. I my case they don't seem to be living up to that high reputation.

Review: I had signed up for a year of web hosting for my anticipated photography business last [redacted] under HOSTGATOR LLC. For a year which I failed to build. I then considered it a loss and forget about it. Until I received an email the other day dated [redacted] that they have sent a bill to me. HostgaTor is a big web hosting company which I even thought has a reputable customer service. But sending me an email billing me for a services that I didnt use is an absurd way of treating previous customer. I THEN TRIED TO CALL THEM ALL DAY TODAY TO CLARIFY THINGS UP TO NO AVAIL. I am then afraid they are trying to collect money from me from the service I did not use and receive. This complaint is my way of letting them know about my issues of them billing me for services I havent used or received. and for others to know how this company works trying to SCAM OUT BILLING PREVIOUS CUSTOMERS THAT HAVE SIGNED UP WITH THEM. Heres the copied and pasted email from them:Dear [redacted],Your invoice ([redacted]) with HostGator is due.To make a payment, please log in with your email address and password at [redacted]Once logged in please click "Pay Bill Online" under Current Invoices. Or click "Make a Payment" on the left navigation bar. You may complete payment by Credit Card or [redacted] on this page.Once paid no further action is needed and your account will remain active.We thank you for your continued business and assistance in helping us to get this resolved. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.Best regards,[redacted]Desired Settlement: I want them to stop bothering me about this issue and to have them explain everything why they are trying to scam people like me out for money. That is all. Thanks.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for contacting us with these concerns. It’s unfortunate that you didn’t reach out to us directly prior to submitting the Revdex.com complaint, however we’ll be more then happy to assist you with a refund for this unused account. To be totally clear we are in no way attempting to scam you, nor would we have remained in business as long as we have if that was the case. The invoice was drafted exactly as outlined by our Terms of Service, and if there’s been any negligence it would actually fall on you as the user, not our company which acted as we stated in writing to you when you signed up.

That said, I’d like to first offer some clarity as to why the account has been invoiced, as well as point out that it’s always important to read a company’s Terms of Service agreement prior to signing up which looks as though it may have been overlooked in this case. Simply walking away as you have without canceling the account is the sole reason it’s been invoiced, so I apologize if you were unaware of that, however encourage you to always read those agreements in the future.

Moving to the interaction with our frontline support when you tried to resolve this, whether you agree or not, we have in fact provided you a service this past 3 years. To clarify that idea further, the space used on the server currently by your account quite simply could have been sold to another user. In that regard, you do have data present and that comes at a cost for us to provide, or have sit idle as the case seems to be here. As our TOS agreement outlines in Section 6: Cancellations and Refunds here: [redacted] we do require that each user submit a cancellation request to cancel their account and prevent future billing.

That doesn’t look to have occurred for either your domain or either of your domain registrations, however digging further into this account I did note that you seem to have used little resources the past 12 months. Because of those findings, even though we technically do not owe you a refund for the service I’d be happy to refund your initial payment of $104.10 which was made on [redacted] for 36 months of service. I’m not sure where exactly the total of 223.20 came from that you’ve requested as you were only billed once in [redacted], however if you can clarify that I’d be happy to consider that towards the refund should I be overlooking anything.

Finally, if you’d please email me directly at [redacted] once you receive my message we can use that as confirmation of the cancellation request and close the account at that time. If you could please also provide me with a mailing address you’d like the refund check sent to, I’ll have our accounting team send that out as promptly as possible for you. Beyond the refund and cancellation if I can answer any other questions or assist with anything further please let me know!

Best Regards,

Review: I have parked two domain addresses with Hostgator in December. I paid for one month of hosting that month to host one of the domains. I paid the additional $9.99 for the domain to be private, but I found out it was never private listed at all. I contacted them, they switched it. I bought the second domain, also to be private. Now both are not private at all. I paid by paypal and they claim their site doesn't recognize paypal payments (yet they accept them as a form of payment), so it took 5 days before it showed I had paid them. Then the next month when it came time for the paypal agreement to pay the hosting for the 2nd month (January 2014) it worked but then they took my credit card on file on their site and two days later charged a month of hosting off that too. I contacted their customer support and waited four days with no response. I went through my bank and paypal for disputes which lasted another 4 days and paypal refunded my money, as well as my bank. My password was changed on my domain parking and also the hosting I paid for. I have had no contact and lost all site files to be transferred to a new host because of in access in a timely manner. I want to switch my domains to a different company, icann locks the names for 60 days, meanwhile the company won't answer me any which way I contact them. I went to facebook and they are deleting everyone's complaint comments for simliar issues all these last two weeks.Desired Settlement: I want both $9.99 payments for private domain listing to be refunded since they were never created private in the first place. I also want a working password to access my domains so when I am allowed to unlock them and transfer to my new host and register the domains there instead. I want control of my domain names.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

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. Looking over the domain privacy it seems as though while privacy was set initially, through toggling that to assist you with the transfers it was inadvertently disable and not restored once it was clear the domain registrations were too new. Either way, that’s our mistake and I apologize for the trouble it’s caused.

Reviewing your ticket history I see that you've also since migrated your sites to another host(ticket #[redacted], so in that regard I'll simply offer you a full refund as we complete the cancellation as opposed to just the domain privacy fees. Not including the February payment that the Paypal subscription looks to have made towards the account and you reversed, it appears we'll be refunding you for two months of hosting, two domain registrations and the privacy charges for each. I’m going to have a senior member of our cancellations team issue the refund, then provide you a confirmation via the prior ticket [redacted] which you can also use to contact me directly as it will remain assigned to myself directly.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Review: My payments stopped 8 months ago, you stop paying it only means you don't need or want the services any longer. I was told at the time there was nothing else needed to be done, that I was clear. today 8 months later wanting to use the services I find $79.60 in past monthly charges for services that were not available to me nor being used by myself any longer. Now customer services says that TOS clearly state that a written cancellation has to be performed to cancel services and stop billing. I signed up for a month to month, no amount of time stated in the contract, nothing that CLEARLY stated in the welcome email or such that I had to use their written cancellation process. The services term actually says "1 Month*"Desired Settlement: clear the charges be made of $79.60

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention, and while we apologize for the alarm and likely frustration you’ve experienced, we do actually layout the cancellation process in our Terms of Service which you acknowledged during signup.

I’ve asked a retention supervisor to cancel the account immediately, and you should have a response in the ticket, but as far as I can tell the account was simply suspended, you weren’t actually making payments through this time. If you’re seeing otherwise please let me know, however please also understand that our TOS does in fact outline this entire process, whether month to month which is setup for recurring payment per the agreement, or longer cycles too for that matter.

You can reference that in Section 11 of the agreement here: [redacted]

Prepayment. ?It is your responsibility to ensure that your payment information is up to date, and that all invoices are paid on time. You agree to pay for the Services in advance of the time period during which such Services are provided. Subject to applicable laws, rules, and regulations, payments received will be first applied to the oldest outstanding invoice in your billing account.

Autorenewal. ?Unless otherwise provided, you agree that until and unless you notify HostGator of your desire to cancel the Services, you will be billed on an automatically recurring basis to prevent any disruption to your Services, using your credit card or other billing information on file with us.

I did want to also mention that there appears to be another pretty similar billing account. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of it, given payments are in fact being made there, but if not please email me directly at [redacted] and we’ll resolve that immediately.

If you have any further questions or concerns please let me know!

Review: I was charged a yearly fee for a domain name which I thought was cancelled over 1 year ago when I cancelled an entire hosting package. I called to get a refund while the charge was still pending in my account.I told host gator this should have been cancelled with my package over 1 year ago and that I had no need for the domain name. Host Gator refused to refund. Despicable customer service.Desired Settlement: Credit the $15 back to my account!!!!!!

Business

Response:

Review: I have a dedicated server with Hostgator. The service is down for more than 6 hours.Desired Settlement: full month refund

Business

Response:

Hi [redacted]

Review: After 2 hours in a chat yesterday with [redacted], I was informed that my problem was resolved. I asked what was done and was told that he had fixed my site so anyone could log in. That was not my problem, in fact that was a new problem and a major security breach in my site. My problem was related to mod_security, and was stated at the very beginning off the chat. I pointed out that he had broken something instead of fixing the original issue and requested a supervisor. He told me to call in and talk to one. I spent 71 minutes on the phone with [redacted] and never got a supervisor. I have currently been on the phone with another low level phone jockey for 90 minutes waiting on a supervisor since no one deemed me important enough to call back. I have requested that someone get on the phone and have been repeatedly told that no one is available and I must continue to waste my time waiting for my issue to be deemed worthy of a supervisor. This is unacceptable customer service.Desired Settlement: I need to speak to a supervisor about my issues with [redacted] and his lack of understanding of my problem. I also need to speak to someone to understand why no supervisors can return calls and why my issue is not important.

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 [redacted] 7:54:57 PM and assigned ID [redacted].

Regards,

Review: I needed everything to be hosted and manage on a single company.- Domain, Namespace & HostingOn the first chat on the live support I was informed that I only had to transfer the domain over to Hostgator since I have already have hosting with Hostgator and they will resolve the rest of the issue. Ref Ticket: [redacted] 1: After Domain transfer- I wasn't informed until I check and recheck with the live support on few occasion that I need VPS Level 3 package or better and the current Level 1 package doesn't support Namespace. Ref Ticket: [redacted] 2: After Server Upgrade- I have agreed to the server upgrade and have ask Hostgator to transfer the data from the old server to the new one. I thought everything was good on this point. Ref Ticket: [redacted] 3: No Data transfer- When I check back again with Hostgator, the customer support told me that I now need to fill in another form for data transfer from the old server to the new one. Ref Ticket: [redacted] Basically from a very simple request to host Domain, Namespace and Server under one company, I need to go through several Ticket (4 in total including the very first one on Domain transfer). I need go through wait time of more than 10 days till this point, I believe the domain transfer took about 5 days however the main issue is that a) A lot of information wasn't not release until each time I recheck on status of the Ticket to make sure everything is working fine.b) The support keep on asking me to fill up new form (ticket) and each of them come with more time required. (Currently the issue is still not resolve)I would not mind if Hostgator support are more open and informed me earlier that I need to purchase Server Level 3, fill up form for server setup and data transfer at the same time. I am sure if I did not recheck on the issue it would still remain on Part 1 because I would expect the domain to be propagated properly. Best part is until this very moment there are still no reply on the ETADesired Settlement: 1. The issue need to resolve within 24 hour.2. Hostgator need to provide free hosting for at least 1 year for this domain in which I could at least have something to provide to my client.

Business

Response:

Review: I believe Hostgator.com is purposely delaying the processing of my refund.On [redacted]h this year I submitted a support ticket to cancel my account with Hostgator.My account was finally canceled on [redacted] after I contacted their support chat line.We have now cancelled [redacted] - [redacted] ([redacted]). This package will no longer be billed Since their email said nothing about my refund I contacted the chat line again on [redacted] to ask the status of the refund.I was told an update would be sent. Nothing.After two days and no response I replied using their email from the 3rd. To ask about my refund. So on [redacted] I sent the email below.During a chat session two days ago I was told that the Refund Admins would respond with an update about my refund. There has been no update.Why hasn't my refund been processed?Still no reply from Hostgator, so on [redacted] I emailed the company that since I had not been contacted I was filing an FTC complaint reference number: [redacted].No email or contact from Hostgator so on [redacted] I called Hostgator Support and after waiting on hold for quite a while someone answered. I explained what has happened up to then and gave him ticket number [redacted]. He asked me to hold while he checked with their Billing Dept. When he returned he informed me that the Billing Dept was processing my refund and I would be updated via email.It's now [redacted] and I have not gotten any updates from Hostgator or my refund.Desired Settlement: I want Hostgator to refund my payment immediately.

Business

Response:

Good Evening,

We'd like to start by apologizing for the delay in returning the recent payment to Mr. [redacted]s. I've since had a chance to get in contact with him to provide more information on the situation and to confirm that the entirety of his payment totalling $179.00 has been refunded as of [redacted].

After review of the related ticket, I've found that the delay was regrettably due to our cancellations department dealing with a much higher ticket queue than we've had previously, which was a result of our recent Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions. Additionally, following the account cancellation, the related ticket was moved into our "Cancellations - Finished" queue which unfortunately has less staff working through these tickets as issues with accounts that are no longer active are not often as urgent as was the refund for Mr. [redacted]s.

Unfortunately this delay was compounded by a call to our staff during which one of our agents incorrectly stated that the refund was being handled during the call on the [redacted] We have forwarded along this finding to our agent's supervisor for appropriate action to be taken as the refund appeared not have been attempted until my processing on the [redacted].

We apologize once again for the delay as such turn around time on ticket responses are not typical even in our cancellations department, and at this time I have confirmed through our merchant account that the refund was successful in the full amount requested.

If there are any troubles with the refund or any further concerns we can help to address, please let us know.

Review: In mid August 2013, we decided to no longer maintain our website at its current level and decided to downgrade our VPS level from 8 to the minimum allowed (which looks like it would have been Level 3). I just noticed on my online banking that I had been getting charged every month for Level 8, immediately contacted HostGator, and after a few days of discussion, it was determined that they wouldn't be able to do anything.During this time, it was obvious that Level 8 was completely over the top for the amount of traffic for our site. On top of that, the server hasn't been working since late November and had been frequently experiencing errors since August. Even if we had wanted this service during this time, it failed to live up to its expectations due to errors and downtime.Neither HostGator nor myself have a record of my downgrade request.Desired Settlement: I would like a refund for the difference between the level I have been charged for and the level I downgraded between August 2013 and now.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention for review. While I can understand the frustration you’re experiencing and do sympathize with the plight this matter creates, reviewing your billing and ticket accounts I’m not seeing any evidence at all to suggest that you did downgrade the account, nor that we’ve “over billed” you since as a result, given we’ve been providing you the level 8 VPS service the past several months.

You also mention the service not working this past fall and winter. There are however no tickets or communications for that matter reporting the issues, or even expressing you had concerns with the service. While I apologize if it wasn’t working as expected, with zero communication from your end regarding issues it’s difficult to assist you regrettably.

I also audited LiveChat transcripts, where I see that you mentioned to our support staff that the account was downgraded from Level 8 to 1. That’s not technically possible on a single VPS container, given downgrading from l8 to l1 requires the removal of cPanel which isn’t feasible without creating a new container and then allowing you to migrate your data to the newer l1 container, prior to us canceling the l8.

With my own findings presented at this time if you believe we’ve overlooked a ticket or communication which would shed further light on this please let me know. Lamentably otherwise we’d really be unable to provide the requested refund given there’s been zero contact from you regarding the downgrade or service issues you’ve made issue of. I’ll look forward to any further details you can provide and hopefully working towards an amicable resolution as we try and resolve this billing concern. Please feel free to email me back directly at [redacted] as so we can expedite the resolution.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Review: I placed a request to have one of my websites that is currently hosted through HostGator be moved over to a VPS Server that I recently upgraded too and have been getting the run around for the last 3 weeks about the website being moved. It really upsets me as a paying customer that they take little to no efforts in making sure services they claim they offer are being provided in a reasonable time frame. They could of called me and told me there would be a delay in the process or they were behind pace and needed some more time, but every time I call they just place another ticket in with no results.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,Thanks for the chance to address these concerns.We've since had an opportunity to investigate this complaint and first and foremost would like to confirm that the migration has been completed. We've also followed up with [redacted] to ensure that all has gone well following the migration but have not heard back on either of our e-mails.In regards to the concerns raised, we have not found that the request had been open for three weeks as claimed, but rather that the request was submitted on the 8th of April, 2015. That said, please note that our migrations services are offered as a courtesy to our customers and are not guaranteed. We also do not promise a time frame on when these courtesy migrations will be completed. Additionally, we do not require a customer to use our courtesy migration services as they are more than welcome to perform this work themselves, or hire an outside developer. While the response time here was not ideal, we are confident our rates are considerably lower than the rate the majority of independent developers would charge for this type of work, which hopefully makes the trade off worthwhile. We do offer qualifying new orders a free courtesy migration, however these migrations must be requested within the first month of purchasing the hosting package, which in this case was nearly 3 months prior. Regardless of that requirement, as a courtesy for the delay in providing an update on the request, we've waived our typical fee for migrations requested outside of the initial 30 days.We have not yet heard back from [redacted] on our e-mails so we are hopeful the request is considered resolved, however if not, we ask that he please follows up on either recent ticket or contacts our management at [redacted] for escalated attention.

Review: I had web hosting service with this company until [redacted] at which time I called and cancelled all future service. At that time I was told that my hostgator accounts were cancelled. To my surprise on [redacted] I received an email that my credit card would shortly be charged for a website renewal. I immediately called hostgator to see what this was about and was told it was an automatic renewal for a website. I never authorized an automatic renewal for this site, which I cancelled months ago. In fact I don't even work in the same industry any more. Hostgator opened a ticket and within 24 hours I received the following reply:"All of your invoices are sent well in advance of the due date and had we heard from you before the due date, we could certainly have cancelled the impending renewal of the domain and removed the invoice, we cannot retroactively cancel a domain renewal."The fact is I check all my emails, including spam, daily and never received any advanced notification. They then immmediately charged my credit card a $** renewal fee before I could cancel my credit card. In summary, I cancelled with them in [redacted] which any reasonable person would think would cancel future automatic renewals. It's only $** but if they do this to a million people they will have stolen $** million dollars.Desired Settlement: I would like my $** back.

Business

Response:

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Good Afternoon,

Thank you for having brought this situation to our attention through your interactions with the Revdex.com. I'd like to first and foremost offer our apologies for the frustration as well as any inconvenience that may have resulted from the charge. It's also absolutely no trouble to refund the charge for you, though I would also like to make sure it's clear why this occurred as it appears a written request to cancel the domain registration was likely never received.

So we can avoid any further confusion and simply get the clarification out of the way, we do in fact require per the Terms of Service agreement which was acknowledged during signup, that all domain registration cancellations be put in writing to our billing department so we can assist you with cancellation of the domain itself. This is done for several reasons, but the primary reasoning behind this procedure is that clients do certainly cancel hosting, however in most instances a domain owner will keep the domain registered for use as they migrate to a different host. It's unfortunate in your instance given you clearly weren't wanting the domain any longer, however I can assure you had we received proper notification regarding your wish to discontinue renewal of the domain that this would have been processed accordingly at the time of your hosting account's cancellation.

Moving to the notion that refunds aren't possible for domains, while this is in fact true per [redacted] policy(The group responsible for seeing domain registrations internationally), I've initiated a refund for the charge of $** as I feel it's the right thing to do. Given this is a lose in terms of the fee being non-refundable this does mean we'll ultimately need to redirect the DNS back to the registrar for the domain, however as it appears you didn't intend to renew the domain hopefully this is not a concern.

The refund itself should be received within around 3-5 business days, so I would imagine likely mid week this coming week. If you don't see the refund back to your account however by week's end please let me know. Should you have any other questions, comments or concerns please let me know.

Best Regards,

Consumer

Response:

I see no message or attachments from Hostgator. The field appears blank on my screen.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

Review: On 3/**/2014 I ordered and payed for a website through Hostgator. A few days later I found out I had made the wrong order. On 3/**/2014 I ordered and payed for the correct website. Not needing the previous website, I tried to cancel it and get a refund since I will no longer be using it whatsoever. Having failed to find sufficient information on the Hostgator's website to cancel and obtain a refund, I called customer service. I was informed that cancellation and refund request could only proceed through a company web page called the Hostgator cancel-your-account web page. I went to the aforementioned web page only to find that it will not accept my UserName and PassWord, a UserName and PassWord that I use to access Hostgator's Online Billing/Support web page and that I was instructed to use. I called technical support on 3/**/2014 and they refused to help me; giving me directions to change my password for the Billing/Support web page, which they told me would then enable me to access the cancel-your-account web page. I did this with the technical support person on the phone line, ([redacted]), and it still did not let me access the cancel-your-account web page to cancel my account, thus letting them keep my money without me having any useable product or services for it.Desired Settlement: I need the website I payed for with my credit card, payed for on 3/**/2014, [redacted], closed and the amount I payed for it, ($119.40), refunded to my credit card; because I cannot access the cancel-your-account web page to request it.

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 3/**/2014 3:37:34 PM and assigned ID [redacted]

Regards,

Review: This report is caused by Ticket [redacted]. [redacted] contacted Hostgator on [redacted]. After five days of no response I intervened as her administrator on [redacted]. I demanded a quick response to the ticket or warned further actions would be taken up to and including a negative report to Revdex.com. As of today, [redacted], no response to the ticket has been given, a total of 12 days after the ticket was opened.Desired Settlement: I demand a complete refund of the whole account excluding the price of Domain Registration due to negligence. [redacted] was reasonable and was trying to work it out with Hostgator, but after discussing it with her she no longer wishes to work it out with Hostgator due to the fact that Hostgator could not tell her why she had a temporary lock on her account nor would they respond to her ticket. She will not be satisfied with anything else but a full refund.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for bringing this cancellation delay to our attention. It's unfortunate to see, however our cancellation and billing queues have recently been higher then usual due to unexpected volumes as a result of our black friday and cyber monday promotions two weeks ago. The delay certainly isn't intentional, however looks to be the result of the request being sent to billing and not through our cancellation form which prioritizes the requests. All the same though once it was moved from billing to retention, I did note a delay there as well which I cannot apologize enough for.

Given the troubles and clear delay, I've gone ahead and refunded the full amount paid towards the hosting account. Though it's been in use the past 4 months and we'd typically only offer a pro-rated refund, given the troubles hopefully this at least signals our interest in righting the situation, given we can't get you the time during the delays back. I'll send a response via [redacted] shortly once the refund is in the works and the account is cancelled. Should you have any other questions or concerns regarding this feel free to respond to the ticket which I'll keep assigned for communication purposes and to ensure a more immediate response.

Best Regards,

Review: I have been the owner of a website for 14 years. I transferred it to hostgator.com for hosting and automatic domain renewal services. I paid for the domain through 10/2014 and continuously paid for monthly web hosting without fail. In October 2013, hostgator.com released my domain to a third party to be sold at auction without my consent and without notifying me.Desired Settlement: I would like hostgator.com to obtain my website back and return it to me. I put 14 years of work into it and it had excellent Google placement, naturally, without having to pay for ad words, etc. I have lost revenue and time and effort, not to mention my domain name that has been associated with my business for 14 years.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

My apologies for the delay in response as I reached out to Enom to see what happened and more importantly what can be done to hopefully resolve this. Having received a response from them last evening finally, I wanted to reach out today to explain the situation. While you note we released the domain to a third party for sale, that’s actually not the case which I’ll clarify.

The major issue which prevented renewal in this instance for your domain was due to the whois information not being kept up to date with accurate and reliable contact data, or more specifically in this case with your email address. Due to the lack of email being provided which is a violation of ICANN policy, Enom the registrar was unable to send you the appropriate renewal notices which you’d normally have received. Though I understand this is extremely frustrating, had the email been provided this entire situation wouldn’t have occurred. The specific portion of those above noted ICANN policies pertaining to this is included below as reference:

That’s in violation of ICANN policy, the body that governs these

registrations and is ultimately not something we can do to prevent if

you choose not to supply the information. The part of ICANN’s policy

which is applicable to this is shown below as reference:

“The

Registered Name Holder must provide "accurate and reliable contact

details" and must "promptly correct and update them" during the

registration term. The details required are stated in Section 3.7.7.1.:

"the full name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number,

and fax number if available of the Registered Name Holder; name of

authorized person for contact purposes in the case of an Registered Name

Holder that is an organization, association, or corporation; and the

data elements listed in Subsections 3.3.1.2, 3.3.1.7 and 3.3.1.8."

“If

a Registered Name Holder intentionally provides inaccurate or

unreliable information, intentionally fails to promptly update the

information, or fails to respond over fifteen (15) days to Registrar

inquiries about the accuracy of the contact details, the Registered Name

Holder will be in material breach of the agreement and the registration

may be cancelled.”

I’d like to also point out that per our Terms of Service agreement, as the domain owner you neglected your responsibility to alert us to the renewal failure which would have allowed us to provide you a more suitable resolution on the matter. The agreement pertaining to this is included below as reference:

“It is the customer's responsibility to notify our Billing department via a support ticket created from [redacted] after paying for a domain. Domain renewal notices and invoices are provided as a courtesy reminder and HostGator cannot be held responsible for failure to renew a domain or failure to notify a customer about a domain's renewal.”

As I mentioned prior, had we been updated of this trouble when the domain initially expired we very likely could have assisted you with it. Even though the domain technically would have moved into the “redemption” period after not being renewed, we do allow a 35 day grace period to renew at normal cost and bring the domain active, as opposed to charging a "redemption" fee as most registry services would. Beyond the initial 35 days of redemption when you can recover the domain without penalty, on the 36-41st days the domain would go to an auction where it's listed for sale. After 42 days should the domain still not be purchased it would then be released and is available again for purchase by whomever. While I wish there was more we could do at this point to reverse what's taken place and correct this, given the negligence on your end we’re unable to compensate you towards the cost of the domain “squatters” sale price of $1000 USD.

While I realize our account of the situation is likely not going to help get your domain back, and that we may not ultimately agree on where the blame falls, I’d be happy to offer you a domain registration free of charge as a replacement as well as credit towards the hosting as you get things back in order. I realize too that may not be desirable given the time you had the domain and work put in towards it, however we're not able to compensate towards your time you state has now been lost. I apologize that we’re unable to take on that burden, however again had this been brought to our attention in a timely fashion once the domain was expired, it would still be under your ownership. Please let me know if you’d like for us to register a new domain name. I’ll be following up with you directly through your ticket # [redacted] as well after my response here to ensure you can reach me going forward if you'd like a new domain registered.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Business

Response:

Hello Again,

While I understand you wish to dispute the facts and place blame on us entirely for this situation, I'm happy to supply support evidence from the email that I was sent from [redacted] directly which outlines in fact that no registrant email was configured when notices would have been sent. While you are correct that [redacted] is configured as the "technical" contact and through our billing system, these notices were sent directly from the reigstrar(Enom), not through our systems. The problem and reason you didn't get their renewal notices however is there's simply no "registrant" email address present which is to where the renewal emails would go. Below is the content of Enom's whois data for your lost domain showing what I've noted above:

ContactType: Technical

OrganizationName: na

JobTitle: na

Name: [redacted]

Address: [redacted]

Phone: [redacted]

Fax: na

EmailAddress: [redacted]

ContactType: Registrant

OrganizationName: [redacted]

JobTitle: na

Name: na

Address: [redacted]

Phone: na

Fax: na

EmailAddress: na <<<<<<<<<<<<<< The required email which is missing.

ContactType: Billing

OrganizationName: HostGator

JobTitle: Owner

Name: [redacted]

Address: [redacted]

Phone: [redacted]

Fax: [redacted]

EmailAddress: [redacted]

ContactType: Administrative

OrganizationName: na

JobTitle: na

Name: [redacted]

Address: [redacted]

Phone: [redacted]

Fax: na

EmailAddress: l[redacted]

Again, we do apologize as we realize the situation is not ideal for either us nor yourself, however had the registrant email address been kept up to date you certainly would have received their renewal notices and this likely would have never occurred. Furthermore, while the notices may have gone missing as a result of negligence in compliance with ICANN policy, had the expiration been brought it to our attention back when it occurred and not 4 months after the fact we could have corrected this with you with minimal trouble. As was offered previously, while we cannot assume responsibility for the cost to purchase the domain back nor compensate for time you feel you lost in the process, the offer still stands to provide you a free domain registration as well as 3 months credit towards the hosting if it would help get you back on your feet. If that's agreeable please let me know via the ticket I noted in my last response and I'll personally ensure this is taken care of for you.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Consumer

Response:

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. For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.

[Provide details of why you are not satisfied with this resolution.]

Regards,

While I appreciate that you are taking this matter seriously and responding timely, I still disagree that either your company or Enon had insufficient contact information for me. I have had the same email address and other contact information on file for years. This contact information was sufficient for contacting me in the past and per your email is listed in every other field which indicates an address. My email address is not the issue. The issue is that your company proclaims to handle domain renewal for its customers and in my case it did not.

I feel that there is something more under-handed going on, or perhaps a mistake was made, which is why I have contacted the Revdex.com. The person I corresponded with who is now listed as the contact for the site was [redacted] I contacted him via the email [redacted] which is listed on the Who.is raw registrar data. He stated that he purchased [redacted] after being the highest of four bidders. This suggests that HostGator sold my site to Enon via auction. I can forward this correspondence to the Revdex.com if needed.

To answer the other issue that you brought up, the nature of my business only requires me to check my website periodically as I only have intermittent orders that require a hands-on approach. This is why I appreciated that your site offered to handle domain renewal. The website was designed to handle all other orders without my intervention, as they are purchases of books, which can be downloaded directly via a link upon successful payment. Incidentally, almost all of my orders for those books come during the months of November and December, prior to the holiday, the same period for during which my site was non-existent for 2013 due to it being released for auction.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

Review: All the files on my website were deleted...ADMITTEDLY on their part it was done by an employee it was not a system issue or crash that caused the problem.. They refuse to recover & rebuild my servies which is costing me a lot of moneyDesired Settlement: Refund of every penny I have ever paid them in the many years I have done business with them & they recover all my files as there are many I do not have backups of. [redacted] of their company has already lied to me about what they have & do not have as he said they have nothing I put up later than 2011..yet on the 1 page they put back up, was one that was built in 2012! This company is full of crooks & I want my stuff fixed & my money back....I will take it the legal route if I have too! Since it was an action taken by THEIR employee not a server issue, their little blanket diclaimer does NOT apply, already talked with a couple of attorneys about that, I am a bail bondsmen & have many lawyers on speed dial

Business

Response:

Good Morning,Our apologies for the delay in response. We appreciate the opportunity to look into this matter, and would be happy to offer you a refund. I've responded to your ticket DDS-[redacted] and will work with you there to refund the request for a full refund of the $855.70 you've paid. To summarize the situation briefly for the Revdex.com's reference, after looking into the situation, it appear our support staff did unfortunately make a mistake while testing an FTP account.During the process of creating a test account and confirming FTP was working for the customer, an error was caused leading to the loss of a file directory within the account. While we unfortunately were unable to restore the account, we do take responsibility for the error and want to be as fair as possible with the customer. With that said however, I would like to also point out that it was the customer's responsibility to retain a local backup of their data, which apparently did not occur. I apologize if that was overlooked when he agreed to our Terms of Service, however this really isn't a situation the customer should have ever been in had they been keeping data backed up. This is referenced directly in Section 27. Backup and Data Loss of our TOS located here: [redacted]27. Backups and Data Loss

Your use of the Services is at your sole risk. HostGator’s

backup service runs once a week and overwrites any of our previous

backups. Only one week of backups are kept at a time. This service is

provided only to shared and reseller accounts as a courtesy and may be

modified or terminated at any time at HostGator’s sole discretion.

HostGator does not maintain backups of dedicated accounts. HostGator is

not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You

agree to take full responsibility for all files and data transferred and

to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on

HostGator’s servers.

Any shared account using more than 20 gigs of disk space will

be removed from our off site weekly backup with the exception of

databases continuing to be backed up. All data will continue to be

mirrored to a secondary drive to help protect against data loss in the

event of a drive failure.

I believe it's also worth noting the section prior to 27, 26 which is a disclaimer waiving responsibility for damages the customer may claim were experienced.26. Disclaimer

HostGator shall not be responsible for any damages your

business may suffer. HostGator makes no warranties of any kind,

expressed or implied for the Services. HostGator disclaims any warranty

of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, including loss

of data resulting from delays, delivery failures, wrong deliveries, and

any and all service interruptions caused by HostGator or our employees.

With those points made, though the situation is certainly unfortunate, had the customer done their due diligence they current wouldn't be in this situation and we could have easily restored their backups likely within a matter of minutes, possibly hours. I'll continue to follow up in the ticket I mentioned above, to ensure the refund is issued and the matter closed to the customer's satisfaction.Best Regards,[redacted]

Review: I ordered a new domain and web hosting package with Hostgator on Saturday to get the black Friday deal. The charge was about $17 for the domain and the first month of hosting. I specifically chose a hosting plan that cost more so I could do the monthly billing. When they charged my debit card the charge was over $65. I have tried to contact them and I have a support ticket in. It has been three business days and no response from anyone at Hostgator. Even if they do refund the over charged amount it takes over a week for the bank to credit the account. When I order something and agree on a price that is it. When they billed my card more than I agreed that was is theft!Desired Settlement: I would like to have a refund for the hosting package immediately. I would also like a public apology acknowledging the credit card theft and the inconvenience of not having my money available during the holiday shopping season. I missed some deals on cyber Monday. I do not want to wait a week for a credit to show up on the debit card; I want the money now. If they cannot do that I would like the hosting refunded on the card and they can pay for one year of hosting for my domain. Thank you.

Business

Response:

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

Review: I have many issues with the level of service host gator has been putting out for the past year. Incorrect billing practices and service issues. My clients sites are hosted with them and have been hacked several times including email accounts. They do not react they blame us their customers as if we have control over hackers.I have Mal-ware now on the server and it is infecting clients sites. Since calling them and getting less than understanding or friendly service I get put off for hours and receive more calls from clients as the Mal-ware is spreading to other sites on the server. Again I am on the phone getting the run around while clients are threatening to leave me and Host Gator does not seem to care that I as their client rely on them to support me so I may support my clients.It is not my fault and I do not like them moving the blame to myself instead of where it belongs the hosting company. It needs to be fixed and not make excuses or put blame. It is now [redacted] and I should not be dealing with this kind of service or issuing refunds to my clients as I am having to do right now.Desired Settlement: Want the issue fixed and better customer service for myself and my clients.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Review: On [redacted]nd I signed up for a hosting plan and purchased a domain name. Since that time the account has been marked 'pending'. Since it took so long to activate the account (which still hasn't happened) I no longer want to be hosted by this company. I have submitted support tickets regarding this [redacted]th, and followed-up on [redacted]th, both times receiving no response.Desired Settlement: I would like the hosting plan cancelled, and my first month payment credited back.I'd ideally like the domain name credited back (giving up the right to the name) but if that can't be done then the domain registration part is fine.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

We appreciate the chance to look into this payment and Mr. [redacted] and I have since spoken over the phone to discuss the situation further. After review, we found that the new purchases on the account did not activate due to previous unpaid invoices from [redacted] for a domain renewal which we did not receive a request to cancel, as is our policy for domain renewals. Unfortunately there was a delay in replying back to the ticket opened with us to discuss the matter as the ticket was initially with our billing department but due to the request for cancellation and refund, it was then moved to our cancellations department where responses are not as immediate as other queues.

At this point we have provided a full refund of the payment totalling $18.03 and have worked with Mr. [redacted] to remove the previous invoices to avoid future trouble in the event any products are added moving forward.

Although I've made sure Mr. [redacted] has my information to reach me, if there are any troubles with this refund or further clarification needed, please let us know and we'll be glad to take another look.

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,

Review: I ordered VPS hosting services from HostGator.com. They did not set up my account correctly; specifically neglecting to set up the cpanel. When I asked them to fix the problem, they insisted that I pay additional fees -- even though I had already paid for the cpanel when I set up the account. When I called to inform them that I had paid for the cpanel, they still wouldn't correct the problem, insisting that I pay an extra fee each month.Desired Settlement: Refund.

Consumer

Response:

This letter is to inform you that I would like to close my comlaint with HostGator.com, L.L.C. Although the company has not resolved the issue, I have decided that I no longer wish to pursue the matter. Filed on 5/9/2014 5:18:30 PM and assigned ID [redacted]

Regards,