HostGator.com, L.L.C.

Review: My business is hosted online with Hostgator and since they have been sold to EIG, their service has gone beyond acceptable. Right now there are thousands of websites down because of their Provo data center. My entire business has been down for over 26 hours. I have had to refund lots of customers because they purchased an online service they can not access. My business has lost potential customers, potential affiliates, 26 hours of earnings so far, rankings in Google will be affected and my business reputation is at risk, all because EIG migrated thousands of customers to a lower cost data center. Hostgator support is non existent, my tickets have no reply, their chat system continues to crash and their phone support is unresponsive. There are thousands of websites and business going down today because of Hostgator. A data center does not need 26 hours plus to repair any problems, I will put this down to the fact that Hostgator have removed qualified staff and replaced them with people who can not do the job, once again, to save money and up their profit. I have tried to contact Hostgator and EIG on several occasions today and yesterday but all I get is canned responses. I have a family to feed and today I have earned ZERO all because of EIG and Hostgator. I want my files from Hostgator so that I can move to a more reliable hosting service but I can not get access to my files because my server is still down. I want compensation for this, not free hosting, I want cash compensation. Their hosting plann price does not cover anywhere near my loss. What can I do?Thank you[redacted]Desired Settlement: Hostgator will offer the usual 1 Month free hosting but I do not want that!I have refunded 340 in payments to customer who can not use my website service.I have lost Adsense revenue at around $30.I will lose rankings so my SEO is broken.I have had to spend all day chatting to customers about the problems, over time.My business has taken a big knock on its reputation, who would buy hosting from a website that says "Page can not be found".At least $2000 is what I want for this.

Business

Response:

From: [redacted]

Review: In [redacted] I signed up to reserve a domain name for three months on HostGator. In [redacted] HostGator charged my credit card $83.40 and $15.00. When I contacted the company they said these charges occurred because I had an automatic renewal account. This was NOT made clear at the time of the original purchase and I would not have proceeded with the purchase had I known it was automatic renewal. I believe this to be unfair and deceptive.Desired Settlement: Apply a credit to my credit card in the amount of $83.40 and $15.00 ($98.40 total).

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention and I'll be more then happy to assist you. I'd like to first hopefully bring clarity to the confusion that appears to have occurred, though beyond an explanation I'm also happy to assist with refund if the account will be cancelled. First and foremost though I'm sorry for any frustration or inconvenience this has caused you.

Looking over the supplied information in the complaint however I'm unable to locate either a billing or ticket account. I'm also not finding any call logs from the number you provided which is unfortunate given it appears you likely didn't contact us to resolve this first prior to making your report to the Revdex.com. Can you please provide me a ticket # referencing the account or your primary email address so I can further assist you? Moving to the actual concern, you mention having been under the impression that you had signed up for 3 months. You also note though that you were billed in what seems to be an annual cycle which suggests otherwise. The root of the problem here too is that it seems perhaps either our Terms of Service was disregarded or overlooked during signup, however we do absolutely outline that billing is handled recurring with the card or payment method left on file. That's in section 4 of the agreement which can be referenced here: [redacted]

"You agree to supply appropriate payment for the services received from

HostGator, in advance of the time period during which such services are

provided. Subject to all applicable laws, rules, and regulations, all

payments will apply to the oldest invoice(s) in your billing account.

You agree that until and unless you notify HostGator of your desire to

cancel any or all services received, those services will be billed on a

recurring basis."

Not knowing the exact circumstances of how that was missed, I'd like to again apologize for the frustration, though once I have associated account information we'll get that pulled and refund you if you in fact don't wish to continue using the account and just want it cancelled. We're normally not able to refund domain registrations either which is outlined in the TOS, though given it's clear that was missed it's not a problem to just refund the entire [redacted] payment. I'll look forward to your response and hopefully getting this resolved with you.

Best Regards,

Review: My wife and I registered for a year of hosting for our new website we had hopes of working on. Within the day, our account was suspended, and we received an e-mail. This was fine, as we expected it, given that we currently reside in Japan, and our credit card was tied to a Canadian address. They sent us an e-mail asking for photo ID and a copy of our credit card, which we provided. However, they have yet to reply, nor make any amends to the account suspension. Having received such sensitive information, as our credit card information and driver's license, and not rectifying the situation makes us feel very vulnerable; they have our address, our information, and our credit card information, and now a photograph of both of those items. It seems either like A.)a scam, or B.)poor business practice, neither of which are excusable.Desired Settlement: I just want to begin designing our website, and some assurance that they're an actual business and not exploiting us. If this is resolved with poise and tact, then I may consider using their product after the end of our contract, but they're seemingly unresponsive, with poor lines of communication, making this seem questionable.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

Review: I've been a customer of hostgator for over 10 years. In the last 2-3 years they decided that without my consent they would transfer my business (dedicated) server from the data center it was on when our contract and purchase happen to a new "low cost" data center they use now called "provo". Since it's been moved we have had major issues with up time. The guaranty given by hostgator is 99.9% uptime thus around "99.9% 43m per month or 8h 46m per year". In 2013 we have over 72 hour down time for witch we where only reimbursed one month of hosting (178~ usd). In April 2014 we had around 24 hours of down time if not more (again only 178~ usd reimbursed), and now may 2014 the same data center is causing down time for (as of now not resolved over 5 hours). As it's clear the provo data center is a unreliable and no actual FIX for this issue was done in April as I was promised to insure it would be stable. The issue is the major loss of both confidence that my clients have with me due to this continued disservice as well as the monetary loss from both my clients my my self. I would request either to be moved back to the old data center that was rock solid for 5 years + OR some other solution including proper monetary reimbursement for the above issues.Desired Settlement: I would request either to be moved back to the old data center that was rock solid for 5 years + OR some other solution for the current data center issue as well as proper monetary reimbursement for the above issues.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thanks for reaching out to us via the Revdex.com regarding the recent downtimes in the Provo datacenter facility. Though it’s unfortunate you didn’t contact us directly initially for assistance with this, I’ll be happy to assist you via the Revdex.com system. In the future though we do ask that you reach us via [email protected] both to make us aware firstly, but so that we can resolve this with less haste then may be involved now facilitating this through a third party.

Reviewing your complaint, I’d like to first point out that you were not in fact moved to our Provo facility without your consent, nor did this occur three years ago. Looking back through your ticket history I see in [redacted] on 10-31-2012 you actually requested a hardware upgrade. Due to our recent change of hands to Endurance International Group in 2012, we actually had newer more powerful hardware available then what was being offered through our prior datacenter Softlayer. All the same, this was done at your request, not forcibly without your consent as it appears you’ve painted the picture in the complaint.

That brings me to your next comment regarding it being a low-cost facility. Though it’s true that we’ve migrated business out of Softlayer in an effort to cut costs, I’d like to also make it clear that we’re hosting in our Provo and Houston data centers, both of which Endurance owns outright. So while I understand your frustration with Provo’s network the past few months, the assumption that it’s a low-cost facility isn’t based in truth. The Provo and Houston facilities do actually allow us far greater control over monitoring systems as well, and though that’s not shown it’s worth recently, I’m confident once we’ve finally nailed down the remaining problems within the network, things should stabilize. It’s also worth pointing out that neither of these two Endurance owned facilities is anywhere near as old as Softlayer’s data centers. As is the case historically for most facilities, the longer the data center is online the more stable it will become.

Leading finally to our dedicated server network uptime guarantee which there seems to be confusion over given you’ve noted our shared 99.9% uptime guarantee which isn’t applicable. To clarify this confusion, the actual guarantee on your server covers network inaccessibility by a pro-rated credit for the time the service is considered “down” or inaccessible. Taking the outage in April into account at 24 hours, the actual pro-rated credit owed would be around $6. That’s a slap in the face given the circumstances and we realize that, which is why you were offered a full month’s credit in that instance. With that clarified, while we simply cannot compensate every affected customer for their losses as requested, we hope that the credit and our explanation today make sense. We too have a business to run and do need to keep these credits inline, even though we’ve provided several times over what we promise in writing in our Terms of Service. http://www.hostgator.com/tos#15 Section 15) Uptime Guarantee.

With that all clarified, even though I realize I have disputed a good portion of what you’ve stated has occurred recently the past 2-3 years, I do want to make right on the situation with you. If it’s agreeable, though I can’t compensate you directly towards losses or damages you feel have occurred towards your reputation I’d be happy to offer you a three month credit towards yesterdays 8 hours of downtime. That takes into account the past events you’ve not requested credit for as well, but I hope gestures our interest in righting the situation. I’d also be happy to offer you a migration to our Houston Cyrus One facility. If you’d like to consider that, please feel free to email me directly at [redacted] and I can provide you some more details. In short though the Houston data center was built from the ground up by our staff, and though we are making progress daily within Provo, we honestly didn’t have any control over that facility as it was built and to that end I think you may prefer our Houston facility. I can definitely give you some more insight first though before committing.

Otherwise the 3 months of credit have been applied to your billing and will automatically apply once invoices drafted. That credit should also hopefully give you time to consider the migration without financial cost to yourself in the meantime. I’ll look forward to working with you further.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have contacted them directly via phone. Being unable to speak to [redacted] I spoke to one of his colleagues and found the conversation, explanation and offers to be satisfactory.

Review: I asked for my billing account closed because I was no longer an active customer. This is the response I got: I do apologize, but we are unable to completely remove your billing account from the system.Desired Settlement: Remove my billing account completely because I do not want to deal with phantom bills (like I dealt with last week) for packages I am no longer subscribing.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

The billing account has been cleared of any personal information at this point that can be used to contact you. I cannot remove the client ID unfortunately, however everything else has been redacted that could be used to contact you. More importantly though the credit card was removed as you'd requested when you initially contacted us. It's unfortunate that you didn't bother to inquire further after our initial response given I could have resolved for you, at this point given you clearly don't believe what we've told you please feel free to try and login to [redacted] where you'll see your login no longer exists.

To further support the removal of your account information and login you'll note that you're also unable to reset the password on your billing account([redacted]) as well, given the email/login no longer exists.

If you'd please try and reset

[redacted] at [redacted] you'll see the following 'Email Address not in our system' supporting that we've complied with your request.

If there's anything further I can assist you with please let me know.

Hostgator.com

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: Following my claim and response to ticket-[redacted]. From HOSTGATOR answered by Customer Service, hostgator suspended my account.In late April 2014 , I hired HOSTGATOR hosting service for my domain [redacted] after finishing contract with previous provider . Now I am going to work on the assembly of my website [redacted] (Virtual online store), the banks always require a dedicated IP and SSL certificate to admit payment from customers.Hostgator plan offered me both items. After several attempts with other providers I decided to stay in Hostgator , unlucky they did not meet what they offered . I requested the re- install my SSL certificate , but took over 2 days to respond without any solution . The blame - according to them - is on me.I Was in a hurry and decided to try another hosting service , while HOSTAGATOR took about three days to gve any explanation to the problem, which never was found it. The certificate was never re- issued by HOSTGATOR and I had to install by my own, through Tools because they were confused and or they dont want to collaborate, because they arguemnt they have to many customers and they are not able to attend 24/7 exactly how they manifest in their promise and commercial ads .I expressed my discomfort in an energetic tone, expressing the lousy service they offer, as they take too many days to solve my case and the lack of cooperation of the customer service representatives .Desired Settlement: INDEMNIZATION

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention. While it’s clear having discussed your situation with my customer service team the past week that you’ve been rude and abusive at times towards our staff, my team did attempt to assist you repeatedly the past month with your concerns. Though it’s lamentable at this time to see the allegations you’ve made towards our company and staff sabotaging your site, that’s simply not the case after an audit of the support you were offered, which I completed myself this morning. If you’re able to provide evidence to support these claims, I’d be happy to review the matter again, though at this time reading your ticket responses and chats with our company, it’s fairly clear there is no evidence to support your claims.

With that addressed and out of the way, I would like to also clarify that the delay with your SSL being re-issued after you updated your primary domain name and requested that change, was the result of you not accepting the DCV email that’s sent and required by the SSL service during this issuing phase for several days. That’s entirely outside our hands given the responsibility to accept that fell on your end, though I apologize if our communication wasn’t clear in that regard, though I see that both our frontline staff and billing administrators have all explained this in the various tickets you’ve opened. With my findings supporting that the staff did do everything they could to assist you with your requests in a timely manner, we’ll be unable to provide you the compensation you’ve requested in the amount of $2500. I’m not sure where that figure came from exactly given you’ve neglected to provide any supporting information to make your case, though regardless we’re unable to assume liability for any damages you claim to have occurred as a result of using our service.

Moving forward given it’s clear you are quite dissatisfied with the situation at hand, what we can offer is a full refund as you move your sites to another host and take your business elsewhere. With that said, I do see that Andrea(who you note sabotaged your site and who has been nothing but courteous and professional towards you) did offer to refund your account in full for the two payments you’d made to us thus far, which I think is more then fair given your general unwillingness to work with our staff peacefully. The two payments are included below for the Revdex.com’s reference, as well as the transactions showing the payments being refunded for you yesterday.

2014-05-29 11:34:31 [redacted] PayPal Refund 11.96 Credited

2014-05-29 11:34:29 [redacted] PayPal Refund 14.95 Credited

2014-05-28 10:45:53 [redacted] Paypal Payment 14.95 Completed

2014-04-29 19:14:17 [redacted] Paypal Payment 11.96 Completed

Getting back to the request for what I assume is compensation towards damages you’ve claimed as a result of the use of our service or through sabotage against you as alleged, I’d like to point out our Terms of Service which discusses this directly in Section 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.”

Though I am sorry to see the trouble you had getting started, at the same time it’s pretty clear you were unwilling to work with our staff, so perhaps it is best to just go separate ways. That’s truly unfortunate and while I apologize that we may not agree on the decision, ultimately we’ve provided a full refund which would be the extent that we can assist you at this time. If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know directly via your ticket to us [redacted]

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

While I understand your general frustration, I wanted to update this Revdex.com complaint today and comment on the fact that much of what you've stated is indeed false. You allege in your complaint that [redacted] who works for me removed your website, which you included a screenshot of. That's entirely false, which I have server logs to support. Just after his last ticket response to you prior to you making the accusations in response, you clearly logged into your control panel's filemanager and removed 'modules' for the site, which prevented it from loading. The notion that anything malicious has occurred from our end is something I believe you've fabricated in an effort to slander our company which is unfortunate, though the server access and control panel logs do speak for themselves, referencing access from a location in your country.

At this time, with these findings we'll be unable to further consider the compensation you've requested and now rejected the complaint over. You were offered a full refund of what you'd paid our company which is the extent we can re-imburse you financially. I will also be providing the logs to the Revdex.com should you continue to reject the complaint resolution as well.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Consumer

Response:

Mr.

Review: We have had multiple issues with Hostgator. Initial it was with their forced server migration. Their first attempt failed and had to be rescheduled. We had warned them to make sure all settings and permissions were configured before they initiated the 2nd attempt. After the DNS was changed it took 10 days to have majority of the sites on the server work correctly. Still there was many hours in which we had to pay for our developers to fix the issues caused by hostgator's negligence. We have lost business during that fiasco.Now today another server has gone down causing this client to terminate services with us.We have asked them for their insurance company policy information and they have yet to provide it.Desired Settlement: We would like to file a claim with their insurance company to recoup the loss of business and cover development time needed to repair their mistakes.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention and our apologies if you feel you were refused compensation on this situation. That’s clearly not the case having reviewed your numerous open tickets, however I’ll be happy to discuss the situation from our stand point as well as offer credit towards the troubles you’ve encountered.

As you’re aware, currently the D drive on the Windows server being migrated was in use. That meant we regrettably were unable to take an image of the server and migrate this as we did most of our other dedicated customers as well as another of your servers. Due to this, we did schedule a manual migration and attempted to create the image at another location which you’re aware failed. At that time a second migration was scheduled, just as you note, however given it’s a manual migration and we’re not familiar with your data it seems the expectation from the start was set that we could not guarantee there wouldn’t be issues. We do absolutely strive to avoid any headaches along the way with the migration, though zero downtime is not something we’re going to promise with 100% certainty given we realize issues can and do arise.

I’d like to also point out that while you mention it took us 10 days to resolve the server issues, you’ve also proceeded to submit basically one issue at a time. Had the server been reviewed immediately after the migration was completed and the full set of issues presented initially I can assure you those would have been resolved in a more timely fashion. All the same, we realize that these smaller issues likely didn’t present themselves till the following days, so in that regard we ask your understanding. We can only work with what we have in front of us, and though it did take time it seems our staff was professional, but punctual as well.

That brings me finally to the datacenter outage that occurred yesterday around 11:37EST. I understand that likely affected all your dedicated servers and we’re happy to offer credit towards the outage given we didn’t maintain the network uptime guarantee that’s provided with the server. That guarantee does actually offer simply a pro-rated credit towards the amount of downtime, though given the inconvenience the outage caused we’ve gone ahead and credited each of your servers for a month of hosting. I’ve also added an additional month for the migrations issues you’ve faced. Though I don’t believe our staff caused these problems nor realistically would have been aware of some of the issues given we’re not familiar with your data, all the same the migration didn’t go as smoothly as we’d hoped and discussed with you before hand. In that regard I think it’s fair and I hope you agree too.

To break down the credits, $702 was added towards yesterdays outage which covers service on your three servers([redacted], [redacted], [redacted]) for a month. I also added $309 for the migration trouble which covers [redacted] for an additional month. The total credit comes to $1011.00.

As for policy information for an insurance company to provide you compensation, please understand that we’re regrettably unable to provide compensation like this, nor do we carry an insurance policy as it seems you’ve assumed. Additionally, our Terms of Service discusses liability and damages that can result through use of the service in Section 16, which you may reference here[redacted]

“16.) Disclaimer

HostGator shall not be responsible for any damages your business may suffer. HostGator makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. HostGator disclaims any warranty or merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This includes loss of data resulting from delays, no deliveries, wrong delivery, and any and all service interruptions caused by HostGator and its employees.”

Moving forward while I realize that may not likely be the response you’d hoped for in regards to the insurance claim you want to make, hopefully the credits at least gesture our interest in making right on the situation. We are sorry to hear that you lost a client, however at the same point that’s not something we can directly compensate towards which is why I’ve provided the credits for the service level issues. I’ll also keep an ey on your remaining support requests to ensure those are resolved promptly, however if anything remains unclear or I can assist your further please feel free to respond to me directly in [redacted] which I now have assigned to myself.

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 have been experiencing months of hosting service from HostGator where the server is going down numerous times. Each time I call support, chat with live support, or submit a ticket the issue remains unresolved and the tickets get put "ON HOLD" and remain un-resolved. Each time I talk to support on the phone they are courteous but they can never give me any answers as to why the issues have not been resolved and what the cause(s) are for the frequent problems with their services. They also require me to be on hold for 15-45 min each time I call. When I ask for a supervisor I am put on hold for a long time and they end up saying that none are available. I spent 45min on the phone with support today. I submitted and updated un-resolved tickets today. I also emailed their feedback email for help & answers today to no avail.Desired Settlement: I want the downtime and email problems resolved, I want to not have to call in to get credited for all of the downtime that my servers have experienced, and I want a call from the lead supervisor(s) who are over the re-seller hosting to update me on the progress and to explain why I have been receiving such poor services.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,Thank you for contacting us through the Revdex.com. I’m sorry to see the trouble our support delays as of late have caused you, though we are definitely aware of the staffing issue and working to address that as promptly as we can. Taking a look over your account, I see that your tickets have been escalated to my customer service manager, [redacted]Just to summarize for the Revdex.com, it appears the server this account is hosted from has been experiencing some recent performance related issues which is in turn preventing us from meeting our 99.9% uptime guarantee. While a month’s credit is great when the guarantee isn’t met, as has been noted it is sort of a pain to contact us currently to receive that, and ultimately it’s not a solution which is our goal here. I’ll keep an eye on ticket [redacted] as [redacted] works to schedule a migration to a different server. It shouldn’t be an issue to schedule that off-peak and around your clients given the situation, and I’ll also ensure she provides you full account details before hand as it appears you’ve requested today in the ticket.I believe she’s currently waiting on a migrations admin to arrive for their shift today, but once he’s in shortly they’ll get the process underway and scheduled with you. If there’s anything that I can assist with directly during this work please feel free to request me through that ticket and [redacted] will make sure I’m made aware as promptly as possible. Look forward to getting this resolved for you!

Review: Cancellation of account because of duplicate billings. After cancellation, and expected refund, continued to draft bank account causing overdrafts, fees and overdrawn account.Desired Settlement: Simply refund amounts drafted and refund for charges to account due to unauthorized billings.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for alerting us to this situation. Taking a look into the matter, I see that you did sign-up two accounts, one in 11/2012 and the other in 3/2013 and while you’ve left out quite a bit of detail regarding the account histories and your cancellation requests, I’ll be happy to fill in those details which I believe are important and not to be left out. The two packages are listed below, as well as their start and end dates for clarification.

Start: 11/05/2012

End: 3/18/2013

Start: 3/16/2013

End: 5/28/2014

From what it would appear, given there were three past due notices still in the billing account of [redacted] when it was cancelled via [redacted] in 2013, I assume the second account was setup in 2013 to avoid you paying your past due invoices. That’s unfortunate to see at this juncture, given we would have probably just cleared two of three invoices so you could pay the most recent and re-activate the account, but more importantly I did want to outline this portion of the ticket history, given your claims against our company.

Moving to your cancellation of [redacted] in [redacted] you requested we cancel the account on 3/16/2013, and it was then closed fully on 3/18/2013. Because the account so several months past due, no invoices was offered at that time.

Let’s then fast forward to 5/28 when we received the following response from you:

“Customer Reply - [redacted]

Received on: 2014-05-28 08:46:04 Reply Number: 5

Dear Hostgator,

As a VERY DISSATISFIED CUSTOMER, I do appreciate your notification of the cancellation that was supposed to happen several months ago. Your email did NOT include any indication as to the amount of refund I would be receiving. I have incurred several hundred dollars in bank/overdraft etc. fees because of this error on your part. A total refund of ALL monies paid on this account, is the ONLY recourse I will find acceptable. If that is

NOT the case, all documents regarding this account will be forwarded for legal action.

Kindest regards,

[redacted] Fraud Division”

While I understand you believe the account was cancelled several months back, that’s unfortunately not the case after reviewing your ticket history. While there was a ticket for the prior cancellation of your first delinquent hosting package via [redacted] I’m not seeing a second more recent cancellation request for [redacted] which would have been necessary to close the account per our Terms of Service. For reference I've included the portion of the agreement below pertaining to submitting a cancellation request, which did occur in the case of the first account. Due to that I would assume you'd been aware this needed to occur with your second package.

http://www.hostgator.com/tos

Section E) .

"Cancellation Process.

You may terminate or cancel the Services by giving HostGator written notice via the cancellation

form provided. In such event: (i) you shall be obligated to pay all

fees and charges accrued prior to the effectiveness of such cancellation

and (ii) HostGator may, in our sole discretion, refund all pre-paid

fees for basic hosting services for the full months remaining after the

effectiveness of such cancellation (i.e. no partial month fees shall be

refunded) less any setup fees, applicable taxes and any discount applied

for prepayment, provided that you are not in breach of this Agreement."

If you can provide me a ticket ID referencing the cancellation, we’d be happy to investigate this further, though at this time it’s clear at this time given the lack of a cancel ticket that you simply didn’t cancel the hosting, and thus as our TOS agreement also outlines we continued to bill the card on file.

Regrettably, due to the lack of a cancellation request or evidence to support your claims, we’ll be unable to compensate you towards the NSF fees you incurred at your bank as a result. I’d be happy to re-consider if it becomes clear there is a cancellation ticket for the package, though otherwise at this time we’ll consider the matter closed as the account has been cancelled at your request by our staff, regardless of the apparent negligence to submit a cancellation request as required by our TOS agreement.

If you have any additional questions or comments, please feel free to follow up with me directly via the ticket [redacted], which I've kept assigned to myself.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Review: In 2010, I had a small community forum with less than 100 members which 15-20 were active at anytime. I came home one night to learn they had shut the forum down claiming too many resources are being used. I raised hell and pointed them to larger forums with the same type of hosting. They wouldn't budge, so I moved on and cancelled the account. All said and done.Fast forward to 2013. I had forgotten about that episode when I signed up with them again only to find out my other account was still active but suspended. When I saw all of the trouble I had in 2010, I told them to close the new account and refund the charge. They closed the new account and refunded that amount but applied it to the suspended/over due account which was closed in 2011. Per their TOS, Host Gator provides a 45 day money back guarantee which they have yet to do.Desired Settlement: Refund the charges back to me and everything will be settled.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

Thank you for bringing this recent situation to our attention for further review. I’m sorry to hear of the troubles you’ve experienced, however it appears there is a great deal of confusion as to why this actually occurred which I’ll be happy to explain in the process of getting you your requested refund.

As you noted an account was opened on Jan 1st, 2010 with us which you stopped paying in January of 2011. Regrettably however we require a cancellation request be submitted in writing to discontinue service, which I see happened in the case of your new account, however not in the previous instance meaning we’ve been holding your data in a suspended state for the past 26 months or so until recently when you purchased a newer duplicate account.

Upon doing so you discovered the prior account was not fully closed, then requested cancellation ([redacted]) on the newer of the two accounts which was processed on a pro-rated basis in the amount of $94.99, which did not include the Sitelock service that was ordered annually. While we’d not normally refund that $14.99/yr service, I’ve also ensured that refund was processed as well for you this morning.

These refunds should process back to you through your card issuer within 3-5 business days, however should you still not see them by Friday, weeks end please feel free to contact me directly at [redacted]hostgator.com and I’ll be happy to ensure these do get refunded back to you.

Best Regards,

[redacted] of Customer Service

Hostgator.com LLC

Review: I am the webmaster for a non-profit organization. We have owned our domain name for several years. I took over the maintenance of the site a year ago. At that time, the previous webmaster contacted hostgator.com to change the point of contact to be me. I was then able to log into the account with my email address as username.

Two weeks ago, my website was not found. I contacted hostgator and they told me that my domain name had expired. I asked why I wasn't notified. They didn't know! I said I wanted to renew it and they said I had to do it online. I tried to login and was unable to. The site came back saying that there was no account associated with my email address. I called again. I gave them my phone number and all of my email addresses. They said that none of those were associated wtih the account. They called the phone number on the account and were told by the person who answered that they had a wrong number. They emailed the address on the account (twice) and got no reply.

Today I called again, explained the problem and what had been tried to date, and said that they needed to fix this. The person on the other end of the phone told me to log in. I said I couldn't. He said he would call the number on file. I asked if he didn't have notes in the file showing that all of these things had been tried before. He said yes, was silent for a minute or two (I assume he was reading the file notes) and then said he would email the address on file. Again, I told him that this had already been done and that if he couldn't fix this, I wanted to speak to his supervisor. He said there was nothing they could do. I reiterated that I wanted to speak to his supervisor. He put me on hold. When he came back he told me that his supervisor said there is nothing they can do, and I would just have to wait a few months until the domain name was released. He would not let me speak to the supervisor.

I informed him that this was an unacceptable way to run a business! I understand that they need to protect their customers from having their domain names hijacked, and I appreciate that security measure. But there has to be a way to fix this!!Desired Settlement: It would be appropriate for the company to develop a procedure to resolve valid customer issue such as mine while still maintaining their security practice of protecting customers' domains from being hijacked.

Business

Response:

Hi [redacted],

Review: The HostGator affiliate program is a scam, they will not honor their websites promise of a $35 refer-a-friend program.Desired Settlement: I would like my affiliate commissions to be paid for both the [redacted] account as well as [redacted] which are both paying accounts that I've referred to HostGator and can prove I referred to them.

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, as it’s definitely never our intention to outright deny legitimate affiliate referrals. That said, reviewing your recent ticket/email interactions with our affiliate managers however, it's pretty clear you've committed affiliate system fraud, but also have completely disregarded our Affiliate Terms of Service, which you agreed to during signup for the program. Furthermore, the TOS does in fact explain why you’ve not been paid these commissions yet, but ultimately why you’re now caught up in fraudulent affiliate activity as well, which is quite unfortunate to see given your report here of our own actions to the Revdex.com.

I don't want to jump to conclusions realizing that many customers just simply don't read the agreement due to the legalese these more often then not involve, though at the same point it is your responsibility as the affiliate and our customer to understand the rules outlined in the affiliate TOS agreement. I would like to encourage you to always review these documents in the future, then ask questions if you have them prior to agreeing and signing up, which is a point I know the Revdex.com will stand behind as well. These situations are easily avoided with appropriate due diligence on your end.

Moving to the situation at hand, and to shed light on the situation for the Revdex.com, I'd like to clarify for them that you've not only attempted to signup new accounts through your affiliate link, which is a direct violation of the TOS, but now also cancelled one account and retroactively tried to receive a separate $35 'refer-a-friend' commission, by signing up the same account all over again. You were told in writing by our affiliate team this would not be permitted, then seemingly went ahead and did so anyways. Evidence to prove this point is available and I’d be happy to supply the emails if necessary.

In all honesty, given the refer a friend fraud we should simply close your affiliate account, taking into consideration your earlier fraudulent signups through your account as you attempted to signup your customers and receive the referral commission, though I do want to give you the benefit of the doubt as we try and resolve this moving forward and not simply close the account. Which brings me to my last and final point, in that while we don't owe you any of these commissions given your violating our TOS agreeement, commissions would actually be paid out at 90 days for the affiliate referral, then 60 days for the refer a friend after the accounts are signed up. I suspect that was overlooked when you were presented the TOS during the affiliate signup and seemingly didn't read it, but all the same, you did acknowledge and agree to the TOS agreement. As such, given these were referred on 7/24, it’s difficult to understand why exactly you submitted a Revdex.com complaint not even a week later alleging we have neglected to pay you owed commissions, when the payouts wouldn’t be due for payout for another 2-3 months.

Moving forward, while we will not be paying these out as our affiliate managers explained in accordance with the Affiliate TOS agreement, I did go ahead and leave your account active, so you’re able to refer future accounts. If the fraudulent referrals continue, I will have the affiliate account closed immediately however, as you’ve been warned now several times. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to email me directly via ticket # [redacted], which I’ve assigned to myself for follow up purposes.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Business

Response:

Hello Again,

Thank you for your response as well as your general understanding with the situation. I'd be happy to have the affiliate team provide those two commissions now that I believe we're on the same page with one another. My apologies too for the lack of a resolution from their end initially, though to their defense, they do end up having to protect the system from such activity day to day, and I think were simply just looking out for our greater good, while admittedly reading too far into the matter. That's unfortunate in this case, given it seems there was confusion on your end with how this all worked, though regardless of where that resulted from, I'm happy we could discuss the matter, get everyone involved on the same page and ultimately work towards a resolution.

If it’s agreeable, given the affiliate system is somewhat problematic in terms of modifying commissions after the fact, I’d be happy to provide a credit on the hosting account towards both the commission that wasn’t paid in 2012(due to DNS not being pointed to our servers at the time it would have been paid out), but the more recent refer a friend commission as well. The credit comes to $85 this way and would simply just apply itself towards your open hosting account. I’ve gone ahead and applied that now, but if you have any further questions or concerns with the credit or commissions the credit replaces please let me know.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Consumer

Response:

Thanks for taking care of this, in the future I'll check in with your affiliate team before opening any new accounts so that we don't run into this issue again.

How might I go about checking the credit on my open account?

Thanks again for all your help today!

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: Initially I purchased a 6 month subscription to hosting services by HostGator, LLC. When I bought the plan, I went back and deleted my CC information so that I would not be billed again when the time ran out. They billed me for another six months on [redacted] anyway with no notification that the account was due for payment. I contacted HostGator and they cancelled the account within 2-3 days but they have not refunded my money for a service I do not need/want. I requested they credit my money back ($59.70) and I heard nothing from them. I sent another message insisting action be taken and still nothing.Desired Settlement: I want my $59.70 returned to me because I shouldn't have to pay for something I'm not using.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

We appreciate the chance to address this complaint as we are always sorry to hear when a customer has paid for services that were not intended to be renewed. As of [redacted] we have provided a full refund of the recent payment totalling $59.70. I've also had a chance to review the account to determine why the automatic renewal took place and found that the card on file had unfortunately not been removed as was stated in the initial complaint.

In these cases unless we receive a cancellation request prior to the renewal date, it is agreed that any card on file will be automatically charged for renewal. I've also reviewed the cancellation request we received following the renewal and apologize that our agent handling the request did not more immediately offer the refund.

Please let us know if there appear to be any problems with the refund or if we can help to resolve any further concerns on this complaint and we'll be glad to help.

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 was looking for a new hosting company to transfer [redacted], and [redacted] to because [redacted] has horrible tech support. In web site reviews Host Gator had good marks, so I decided to look into it.On their web hosting page it advertises "Free Weebly SiteBuilder and Website Building Tools" with a picture of [redacted] next to it. It is reasonable assumption that the Plesk is one of the other website building tools offered since it pictures it.Instead of depending entirely on reasonable assumptions I asked a CS agent on chat that confirmed it and even told me it will take 24-48 hours before it is active. [redacted] was a determining factor in my purchase. After I purchased the hosting plan I logged in I had to go under add-ons and select it, and was ALLOWED to do, only t get an e-mail later saying it is not offered even though it is represented on the website, the CS agent assured me it was, and I was allowed to select the option to add it to my control panel. I sent e-mails and chatted with a cs agent for over an hour on this subject without any resolved. They do offer this on their VPS Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and Reseller Package, which are higher in cost, but refused to switch me at no additional costs. The Reseller Package might have been the best thing to switch me to since I do plan on moving another domain to the site, so they might have broke even on this since the lowest reseller plan is about the price of hosting two websites. Only thing I want is what I was promised. They kept referring me to their knowledge base articles in the support section, but why would I go to support when I am looking to purchase. I did not need support until they failed to deliver, and I specifically asked for [redacted]. All I want is what I was promised, and what was offered. Like I said, even though they say they do not offer it in my plan I am allowed to choose it as an add-on option in the control panelDesired Settlement: I have asked them to switch me to the Bronze Reseller at no cost for one month. If I like it then I move my other domain and start paying $24.95 per month, which is what I would have paid anyway. The free month compensates me for the trouble, and gives them the chance to redeem themselves and maybe gain a customer. I tried to work it out before submitting this.

Business

Response:

Hello [redacted],

I am glad we have had the opportunity to correspond regarding your noted concerns, primarily referencing Site Building Options. While I do understand that we were unable to find a technical resolution with which you were pleased, I do wish to reiterate our appreciation of your willingness to permit our attempt to clarify and provide various options to you.

It is my understanding that after careful review of the options presenting, you were able to identify an alternative plan which better met the needs of your organization and whose services you wish to procure at this time. In lieu of your decision, we are more than happy to accommodate your refund request and hope you will accept our sincere regret that we were unable to provide the most preferable solution for your needs.

Should you have any further concerns, you are always welcome to contact us directly, and we will gladly attend to your inquiry and help in whatever manner we are able. Thank you for your time, patience and understanding.

HostGator.com LLC

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: Hello Admin, I have buy one reseller hosting package from HostGator on [redacted], Here are details.[redacted]Amount Paid: $119.76After to buy I move my all domain on this hosting, But from the start day Hostgator team said its take 24 to 48 hours, Then I wait 5 days but no website is working, After 5 days some website working but there was still Data base server issue , I have submit too many tickets and also contact on live chat and Hostgator team reply me. (This does appear to be an issue related to user connections on the server. From the logs it appears that it was taken care of by our monitoring department. However I am unable to determine if it has been completely repaired permanently. We would ask that should it happen again, please let us know immediately.)Hello, The last "Too many connections" error I see was a 3:50am. I do see several restarts of Mysql daemon from 7:48am to 8:13, and none since. Since these would have overlaped with your access time it does appear that the cause of the error was that it was being worked on during that time. I can not reproduce the problem at this time, so hopefully the issue has been fixed by our monitoring team. Should you notice additional issue please let us know. If yo have any questions or concerns please don't hesitate to contact us. Thank you. [redacted] HostGator.com LLC [redacted] And many more, Finally I don't get good services from this company , And I send request to refund me my amount and Hostgator have policy for full refund in 45 days. Now I ask for refund but no can give me any time, And Hostgator said its take 15 days, Its not right, I already lost to much visitor due to this company my all website's are down , Now I need refund from this company please let me know if you can help me for this?Here are ticket's Id which I have submit for error.[redacted]I am waiting for your response.Desired Settlement: Now I have submit request to refund my amount here is ticket ID.[redacted]Please please please help me to get my refund from this company, I am sure I will get positive response from you. Thanks

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] and assigned ID [redacted].

Its issue resolved, Hostgator have sent me my refund, Thanks you so much for help.

Regards,

Review: I contracted with hostgator to have a web site made this summer with some up grades for seo after it was made was given a price of $500 with $800 for seo and $50 per month for inproved wed service . to this day I do not have a working web site and they have charged me almost $ 3,000 That I did not agree to was sick in the hospital and almost died and then I and lied to and rob by billion dollar company I tried to contact them several times and was told I would get refund but did not happen. They have taken from my acct almost $3,000and I don't even have a web site that works if you fill out the contact page it does not work or come to me and the rest of the site is a joke and not finished . I just want my money back and they can keep there unfished not work wed site I have lost thousand of dollar in business from this scamsI know they are a huge company and don't care about one tiny company like mine and have prove it just go to my web site and see for your self that it does not work and is not finished . I have notarized bank statements showing what they charged me and I want my money back and nothing to do with they since I have received nothing from they , They completely droped the ball on my case and just said sorry we are really busy and promised a refund but have not gotten itDesired Settlement: I want my money back and no further business with hostgator

Business

Response:

Good Morning,Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention, however after reviewing your open tickets with our design team I’d like to present a few of my own concerns as it appears you’ve not provided the full truth here in this case in an effort to I assume be issued a larger refund. First and foremost I apologize for any frustration that’s taken place, however we will not tolerate false accusations towards our company, nor will we be refunding you towards the design services which were in fact rendered. Looking over your last ticket with us [redacted] this was explained to you by our Director of Sales, however I’ll be happy to provide the Revdex.com the full ticket if it helps explain our case given you’ve chosen to leave our many key points like the fact that you requested we publish the site incomplete as well as were provided the data. The notion that you were left high and dry while we stole your $3000 as you’ve accused is simply not based in truth.Below is the prior response sent from our Sales Director:Received on: 2014-10-29 13:37:30Reply Number: 40Hello [redacted], I'm following up on your request for a refund. At this time, we have cancelled your SEO services and deleted any open invoices for those services. Upon review of the design services that have been rendered, there is no refund due. Once your website is published, and you have ownership of the site files, the finished product has been delivered. Consequently, refund eligibility does not extend past your final blessing to publish the site. Likewise, our Search Engine Optimization services have also been rendered. It is not possible for us to take our work or time back. As this is the case, we are not able to offer refunds for SEO services that have been performed. However, since you submitted your cancellation request at the same time that you were billed for the next month of service, we have submitted refunds for the $598.00 that you paid for SEO Services. Please allow time for your financial institution to accept, and make the funds available to you. If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to let us know.Warm regards, As was made clear to you in October when this all occurred, we performed the design work and you were provided the data. To that end, the service was rendered and a refund is not warranted, which I don’t believe is unfair in any fashion. We’ve also provided you a refund for the SEO/Marketing that you’d paid for and wasn’t used after the fact. I apologize if you feel they’re is anything dishonest going on here, but that’s not the case as the ticket to our design team outlines pretty clearly. Should this come into further question I’ll be happy to provide the Revdex.com further clarity via the ticket as well, but at this time we consider the matter closed given we provided you the maximum refund we’re willing to provide given you demanded the agreement change after the design work was already partially completed.Best Regards,

Review: I currently host a website using HostGator's service (icedb.com). Over the last year there have been over 6 outages due to connectivity issues in their Provo Data Center. Each time this has occurred hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of websites have gone down across the web including my own dedicated server which I pay a premium for. Hostgator is unwilling to move sites back to their Dallas Data Center which is more stable and they are unwilling to provide refunds for these outages even though their websites states "Every web hosting plan comes with a 45 day money back guarantee, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and is fully guaranteed by the CEO himself.". A 99.9% uptime would mean that the service would not be down for more than about 45 minutes per month yet it seems that every month my service is down for hours and hours and last month for an entire day. This is completely unacceptable in the realm of legitimate web hosting providers. I have lost all confidence in this hosting provider and believe its business practices to be irresponsible, negligent and frankly amateurish.Desired Settlement: I would like a full refund for every month they have not been able to provide a 99.9% uptime and I would like them to remove the claim of a 99.9% uptime from their website since they never meet it AND I would like to be moved to the Dallas Data Center which obviously doesn't crash every 5 seconds.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for reaching out to us regarding the troubles you’ve experienced recently in our Provo datacenter. I’d like to first note that it appears you simply didn’t bother to reach out to us, which would have been the fastest way to resolve this prior to involving the Revdex.com. All the same I realize your frustration and wish for their involvement and offer this only to help expedite such requests in the future via our management team at [email protected] as the Revdex.com notes should occur prior to submitting a complaint.

Moving to the downtime and the notion that we’ve denied you credit, I’d like to point out that your ticket history is completely void of any credit requests post outages. Our terms of service states that all 99.9% uptime requests should be directed to our billing team for review, then to provide the credit as appropriate. Your allegation that we’ve denied such credit though looks completely unsupported thought given the lack of tickets. For reference I’ve included that portion of our TOS agreement below for you:

http://www.hostgator.com/tos#15

Section 15) Uptime Guarantee

“If your shared or reseller server has a physical downtime that falls short of the 99.9% uptime guarantee, you may receive one (1) month of credit on your account. This uptime guarantee does not apply to planned maintenance. Approval of any credit is at the sole discretion of HostGator and may be dependent upon the justification provided. Third party monitoring service reports may not be used for justification due to a variety of factors including the monitor's network capacity/transit availability. The uptime of the server is defined as the reported uptime from the operating system and the Apache Web Server which may differ from the uptime reported by other individual services. To request a credit, please visit http://support.hostgator.com to create a support ticket to our Billing department with justification. Uptime guarantees only apply to shared and reseller solutions. Dedicated servers are covered by a network guarantee in which the credit is prorated for the amount of time the server is down which is not related to our uptime guarantee. “

Given it would appear this agreement was overlooked on your end during signup as you acknowledged the agreement, if you have any further questions after reviewing the agreement itself please let me know. I’m happy to answer any questions and hopefully ensure such confusion doesn’t continue in the future.

Which brings me to my next point, in that we don’t actually own the facility in Dallas you appear to have requested a migration to. We do currently have both a Provo and Houston facility, though due to the number of requests being made and hardware available we’re currently not able to accommodate requests from Provo to Houston. Thats not to say I wouldn’t consider this once hardware is available, but it’s just not an option today sadly. If you’d like to consider this though I’d be happy to create a ticket for you with my customer service escalation team to ensure that gets addressed once hardware is available.

Finally, given we do honor our guarantee and have been providing credit as appropriate I’m going to have to disagree with the notion that you feel we should remove that from our site. If we simply advertised that and didn’t stand behind our promise that may be another situation entirely, however given the credit is provided when requested we’ll not be making that change. I’m sorry if you simply overlooked the TOS previously during signup, though now that I’m aware I did go ahead and apply a 6 month credit to your hosting account. Hopefully that gestures our interest in standing behind our guarantees, even months after the fact, but let me know if I can assist you in any way further. I do want to make right on the situation and look forward to resolving this with you fully. I’ll follow up with you directly via a ticket as well to further plan the migration you’ve requested.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Review: After a complaint, with the services, and get my financial information disclosure over the social media (they disclosure the status of an un paid account over the Social Media).This services is Related to a TradeMark in process to be register.[redacted] who is [redacted] have send me an email saying:"Reviewing your concerns with the tweet we will unfortunately not be able to provide you an apology directly via [redacted]. The staff member that sent that actually brought it to my attention right after it occurred so it could be reviewed. Given he was working with you at the time and it was clear it was a misunderstanding it was removed."he also recognize:"While its unfortunate that he made an incorrect statement, I really dont believe it was intended with any ill will, nor is [redacted] a proper forum for the conversation which really falls on both parties."and after this short description he says:"That brings me to my main concern which is why weve regrettably come to that conclusion. Over the lifetime of your account, I see that youve had between 150-200 live chats with our staff. A great number of these have been escalated to supervisors unnecessarily, which unfortunately inflates the support cost substantially over time."and because of that:"This is an unfortunate crossroads to meet at, however we do want to part ways with you as hassle-free as possible. Ive had all your accounts archived and backups made available for you through an easy download link. Id like to provide you 72 hours to retrieve the data prior to suspending any accounts"This is putting some of our clients what we handle they accounts in a really back position because of they having they to migrate and losing several thousand of dollars in configuration of software in a server, what is under my name but is not of my property.Desired Settlement: I want Hostgator or give as second chance to continue the business relationship what we have from over a YEAR, or provide me no less than 6 months to migrate all our accounts what are more than 60 accounts and due the numbers and the high number of request of clients we have will be impossible to us to handle in a short period of time.

Business

Response:

Review: I purchased a Virtual Private Server hosting service from HostGator and have been their customer for many years. Within the last two months my servers have been down multiple times for many hours and I have received absolutely horrible customer service from them. Examples include being on hold on the phone for 2:30 minutes, my servers being down for 8 hours at a time, HostGator coming up with excuses to force a more expensive package to me (even though my servers are only 2% utilized at this time).Desired Settlement: I would like to receive a full refund for the my hosting for the past two months.

Business

Response:

Review: made a few sites and was set up with alot of inexperienced support members had to call in everymonth way to many times with server issues and or troubleshootingcould not conduct businness proper in the last 3 months, upgraded to resellers and got worstI aked for credit one month prior do to the lack of help and getting the run around, but was ignored, since all my content was already up didnt want to start over, , this last month goes byand I was only able to use resellers billing service for 2 weeks, and they said they dont offer support for resellers billing system so there I am stuck with a service I paid for but cant use.I contacted the billing support for the billing system and they did not help at all. after that I finnally got a hostgator support guy to check and fix and he couldnt do it,then someone went into my files with out my permission and did something to make it work and try to say it was my fault when I had no support in the first place.these guy are liars and need to be shut down for lack of support and not able to refund or credit for that. they always loose the calls of all the mistakes they make!some how they are built to cover up mistakesDesired Settlement: 3 to 4 months of pay for lack of support

Business

Response: