HostGator.com, L.L.C.

Greetings,My apologies for the confusion that took place within our retention department. I'm not sure where the miscommunication was, though after finding your response here I've ensured the full refund was in fact issued. Please let me know if you've still not received that, however looking at the cancellation ticket I see *** did confirm this was corrected for you.Best Regards,*** ***Director of Customer Service***

Good Afternoon,
We certainly appreciate the chance to address this concern but we were sorry to hear the hosting account will no longer be neededWe've since had a chance to review this situation in detail and would be glad to provide further detail on the charges and time line of the account
with usBefore proceeding we'd like to confirm that the account and domain name have now been canceled and now further invoices will be generated
In regards to the report that there have been charges in different amounts each month, we see that in *** of this year, both a domain name as well as a hosting package were purchasedThe cost for the domain name was $*** and the introductory price for the hosting package at 20% off was $***After the first month, the cost of the hosting package returned to the full price of $*** which was paid in *** *** *** *** ***
Moving on to the request for a refund of all charges since ***, after review of the recent call, we were sorry to hear that a Revdex.com complaint was threatened prior to *** *** allowing our agent a chance to even locate the account and prior to our staff having a chance to respond to the support ticket requesting cancellation and a refundFrom the call we also understand that this account was setup for *** ***'s *** and there was an understanding between the two that the account was only to remain active for one month. Unfortunately we did not receive any requests to cancel the account until roughly hour before this complaint, so the account did remain active and we've confirmed traffic continued to be received to the website in question
We are of course sorry to hear that this was not intended, however our terms of service do clearly state that the accounts will remain active and will automatically renew using the card initially used to setup the account :
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Billing and Payment Information
BAutorenewal
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
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Considering the full month of the most recent payment was not used, its certainly not a problem to go ahead and refund the charge from the first of this month but unfortunately we will be unable to provide a refund for the previous months considering the site did remain online and we did not receive a request to cancel the service till two days agoAt this time a refund totaling $*** has been provided back to the card used and we see that these refunds typically take anywhere from a day or two, up to a week
Thanks once more for the chance to address this complaint and please let us know if we can offer any further clarification on this situation

Good Morning,Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention. Though it’s unfortunate to discover we did in fact issue a refund and provided confirmation numbers for the transaction via ticket # ***, all the same I understand your frustration and do want to ensure this gets
addressed for you.While we did issue the refund on the 8th which is shown below, as well as in our response to you on the 10th in the ticket, I did notice that we never provided you any timeframe for the actual time the refund would take to process. I've redacted a portion of each of the below ID #s, though if you check your email for that ticket you'll see the full numbers.Dec 10:26:AM Request ID: XXXXXXXXX***MerchID: RXXXXXXX*** Visa USDCredit Card CreditPlease expect the refund to process through the payment processor and bank to your bank/credit account within 5-business days. It will typically occur on the shorter end of this window, though at times does take longer unfortunately, though that’s very much outside our control which I apologize for. Given this was processed last Monday on the 8th, you should see the refund any day now if you’ve not already. If you haven’t seen the refund though by weeks end(ten business days) please let me know via the ticket my team has communicated with you through. I’ll keep that assigned directly to myself, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to me even if you just have further questions.Best Regards,Joshua M***Director of Customer ServiceHostgator.com

Good Afternoon,
Thanks for the chance to address these concerns
First and foremost, we'd like to offer our apologies for any
inconvenience caused by our verification procedureWe certainly
understand this is not the most convenient process, however due to the
incredibly large amount of
fraudulent orders we receive, we have found
it is necessary to verify new orders to ensure the credit cards used are
in fact authorized by the ownerWe also see a large number of
fraudulent account holders who only purchase hosting to send spam or host
malware which in turn effects our well-meaning customers who might be on
the same serverTo prevent this, we use a large number of factors to determine which
orders are considered to have a high risk of fraudulence, however we
also will randomly flag some accounts for verification in order to
ensure quality control
In regards to the delay, at the point of purchase we had just ran a St
Patrick's day promotion meaning that we had a very large influx of new
orders to reviewWe have been reviewing all new purchases manually so
regrettably it did take a number of days before we sent the request for
further verification of the purchaseMoving on to the concern that
this is a violation of privacy, our terms of service does state that we
might request this information, but also we do not force an individual
to verify if they are uncomfortable with this process and we do not
fully accept any funds until the verification is complete
Instead of fully processing the funds, we only create an authorization
on the card which will automatically reverse after roughly hours if
the account is not verifiedI've now made sure to check back on the
status of the reversal and have confirmed that the $should now be
available in the account in question
We are certainly sorry for the delay in requesting the additional
information and although we would have been glad to offer the months
requested, unfortunately it seems Mr*** decided not to complete our
verification process and has moved on to another companyThe good news
we can offer is that we are currently in the middle of launching an
automated tool to handle reviews of our new orders so we are hopeful the
requests will be sent much sooner on future orders
Our apologies once more for the inconvenience and we wish Mr*** all
the best with his new host

Good Afternoon,Thank you for bringing your troubles last week to our attentionI'd like to first and foremost offer our sincerest apologies for any frustration or inconvenience this situation has caused you. Though we can’t simply compensate you towards your time, I’ll be happy to provide you
a credit per our 99.9% uptime guarantee. I’d like to also touch on a few points you’ve mentioned and offer an explanation towards those concerns as well.We’re definitely sorry to see the wait times climb the way they did during this outage, though to put support volumes into perspective as our reseller clients when into a state of hysteria, we typically handle around 30k chats a week. Last week’s volumes were over 60k, just for the couple of days after the outage due to residual issues needing attention and addressed. Phone and ticket volumes were also near double what we’d see over a week during this period of time. Unfortunately, even though we’ve increased our staffing a great deal this year over last in an effort to meet support demands as we continue to grow as a result of our success, there’s just simply no way to forecast such a huge volume, and we’re sorry to all our affected customers. We realize it’s frustrating when you can’t get in touch with us, and to that end were making updates throughout the day to our support forums.Looking back on the outage, there’s certainly room for improvement and we look forward to taking what we’ve learned to further strengthen our support during such events, but also improve communication to keep our clients informed. Finally, while I unfortunately cannot provide you with compensation towards your time spent trying to contact support, the service is certainly covered by our 99.9% uptime guarantee, which offers a month of service as a credit on the account if that’s not met. I realize such compensation isn’t appropriate to even consider given the frustration experienced, so I’ve applied two months beyond what the guarantee promises, totaling three months. I apologize that we can’t provide further compensation, though we do stand behind the service and hope going above and beyond what’s promised shows our interest in righting the situation and moving forward with you. We appreciate your business with us, so by all means please let me know if there are any further questions or concerns at this time.Best Regards,*** ***Director of Customer Service***

Good Morning,Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention and my apologies for the frustration you’ve experienced as a result of your *** *** *** ** *** :: *** *** ticket. Having reviewed the ticket and related notes on the account I’ll be
happy to assist you with this, however I would like to make it clear that this entire situation resulted due to your own negligence and the fact that you’ve not kept your software up to date. I’d like to make it clear as well that your continued rude tone towards our staff over the phone as well as the abuse they’ve suffered up to this point while trying to assist you will no longer be tolerated. Having reviewed those contacts our staff has been professional and courteous to you, while receiving nothing but abuse back as you insist you will not make changes recommended to resolve this. I understand from the complaint that the developer is likely no longer working actively with the software you use, however it’s still your responsibility to keep your software secured which has been overlooked clearly in this case.Given this is the result of a Terms of Service(TOS) violation, I’d like to also shed light on what took place since you simply appear to be waiving any responsibility for what’s taken place here. It appears simply that your software was compromised through a “Tell a friend” email feature on the site resulting in over 17k spam emails being sent. Though this situation isn’t uncommon with shared hosting as customers install software and often forget about it for periods of time, it is a matter we take seriously which is why access was removed on 11/25/when we found the issue and suspend you. We do have a zero tolerance policy towards spam on our network, so while it may certainly be inconvenient to receive a suspension like this, had you simply installed the Captcha we suggested it could have been resolved promptly. We do also outline our mail policy in our TOS and Acceptable Use Policy(AUP) which can be located here:
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** *** *** *** *** ** *** *** *** ** *** *** *** ** *** *** *** *** * *** *** ** *** *** *** *** *** *** ** *** *** ***The other concern we have with the situation is the fact that this suspension took place in November of last year. It wasn’t until 1/2/that you contacted us asking for assistance, and also demanding that you would not be updating the software, nor addressing the problem which is that it’s exploitable in favor of a redirect. While that’s certainly up to you to decide how to handle, I want to make it clear to the Revdex.com that you essentially ignored the TOS violation between 11/25/and 1/2/2015. I don’t believe it’s reasonable to expect a full years refund due to this, given we could have addressed the matter very promptly had you responded when the account was suspended. At this time while we did remove the ‘support/‘ directory as you requested we assist with, I want to also make it clear that the ticket was addressed within about hours While I do understand your frustration, you never even gave us an opportunity to resolve this with you prior to submitting the complaint. Had you contacted *** as the Revdex.com suggests I can assure you this would have been resolved on the 2nd or 3rd almost immediately. Moving forward though you’re welcome to proceed now that we’ve removed the directory, if you’d prefer to move elsewhere I’d be happy to refund you back through the time of the suspend 11/25/2014. I’ll keep your open ticket *** assigned to myself so we can ensure this is resolved, but please feel free to contact me with any questions or if you’d like the refund. I’ve also applied a month’s credit as a gesture of good faith given it appears this is likely all just a misunderstanding. I’ll look forward to working through this with you.Best Regards,Joshua M***Director of Customer ServiceHostgator.com

[A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response. If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ***, and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me They have admitted to their error and refunded my money

[A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response. If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ***, and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me. However; I am not sure why it took another hours for my case to be closed. I will not recommend your service to others and hope that you can use my experience with your company to create a better customer experience for others. Perhaps offer a customer service program where someone can speak to a live agent in under minutes, nobody has that kind of time anymore. My suggestion is that you immediately up your customer service team and remove your ticketing process. It is not an effective means of managing clients

Good Afternoon,We always appreciate a chance to address our customers concerns and we were sorry to hear about the unnecessary duplicate purchaseWe've now had time to investigate this report and from our investigation, we did not find clear evidence of an error in our system which would have
caused the duplicate purchaseIn these cases refund requests are a bit tricky as we did not find any errors in our system during the sign-up, and we did provide a service that was seemingly requestedPlease note that customers do often purchase multiple packages with the same information to use one as a testing environment with the other being used for the live production siteAs such, our system will not automatically alert our staff or the customer if two packages with the same domain are purchasedRegardless, we have confirmed that the 2nd package was unused so while we did spend resources keeping the package available, we'll be glad to work with *** *** on providing a refundThat said, there is a bit of misinformation here as the two packages were purchased under the same billing account, so when the card was placed on file for one package, it automatically paid off the duplicate package as wellAlso, this process is entirely automated so there was no choice or action by HostGator to knowingly charge for an unneeded packageWe always cancel unneeded packages as requested, however in this case we did not receive a cancellation request until recently.At this point we've attempted to reach *** *** on three occasions in order to receive information on the conversations had with our support agents, but unfortunately we have not yet heard backWe'd definitely like to review those communications to honor any guarantees made so we'll look forward to hearing back from *** *** soonWe have a direct line of communication setup via e-mail but if that has not been located, we ask that *** *** please contact our management at *** for further follow up

Good Afternoon,We've since had a chance to speak with Ms*** more directly via e-mail which was most appreciated as we've been able to hear her concerns in more detailFrom that conversation it has been made apparent that a large part of the concern was the conflicting communication she received regarding the status of the ticketAfter review her live chats with our staff, regrettably we did find that an agent very early on had stated the ticket had been escalated when in fact the agent had not followed our proper procedures in order to get the ticket to a supervisorWe've now addressed this with our agent and are confident they now are clear on our escalation proceduresI've also had a chance to clear up a few other concerns Ms*** had on the situation and we've now provided months of service free of charge for the failed escalation on our agentFrom the initial complaint I see that the requested resolution was to have this matter resolved which was completed the day we received the complaint so I hope this credit helps to finalize the matter but if we can address any further concerns, I have given Ms*** a direct line of contact to me in case any urgent matters ever arise again.Thanks once more for the attention today and I'll be keeping an eye out for any updates to our ticket

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

Good Afternoon,
First and foremost, we'd like to offer our apologies for the recent
trouble with this accountTo provide more information, regrettably we
have been dealing with incidents on a few specific servers where spikes
in activity have caused some brief but sporadic instances of
downtime
Although our server monitors have been quickly stepping in to bring all
services back online, we certainly understand how frustrating this might
be due to the recurring nature
Following the first report of this issue, we did escalate the matter
with our system architects who have since put measures in place to
prevent similar spikes, however, as the troubles were caused by a few
different internal processes on the servers, we did need to watch in
real time and correct additional issues as they arose
Since the initial complaint on the 25th, we have seen much improved
performance and we've been keeping an eye out for any reports of trouble
from JoshuaI have not heard back on my e-mail to him so we are
hopeful that the lack of any recent updates from him is indication that
he has not been running into similar troubleOur server logs also
confirm that the server's performance has been much improved over the
last week
In regards to the request for compensation for business losses,
currently we offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee which stipulates that we
will provide one month of service for any month where the server is down
more than .01% of the timeAlthough it is a benefit that our services
remain at a low cost, unfortunately this price point does not allow for us
to insure against potential business loss for recompense
That said, as we understand this situation was more frustrating than
typical instances of downtime, we've extended the hosting package's
renewal date by months on top of the one month credit already
providedThis can be confirmed by logging in at https://hostgator.com/billing
then checking the "Packages" section where the new renewal date has
been set to 08/25/The previous account credit can be confirmed in
the "Account Credits" section
While this is not the full $requested, we do hope this provides
some financial relief while we continue to monitor the server for any
further troubleI've also setup a direct line of communication between
Joshua and myself and have let him know I'll happily escalate any urgent
issues should they ariseWe also ask that if more detail is needed in
the future, that *** *lease reply back to my e-mail to him, or
contact my department at [email protected]
Finally in regards to the *** logs - we're always happy to help
escalate tickets from *** or field basic questions, however it is
not often the best avenue for detailed descriptionsThis is due not
only to ***'s character limit, but also considering those
interactions are not verified to be from the actual account owner,
meaning we have to be careful to not disclose specifics on accountsWe
certainly understand Joshua was simply trying to get assistance where he
could and are confident these options will prove more helpful moving
forward
I hope this fully addresses the concerns raised but if we can be of any further assistance, please let us know

[A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response. If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ***, and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me HostGator and myself have come to a mutually beneficial resoulution to this matter andwish to thank the Revdex.com and HostGator for their expedient response andand satisfactory resolution

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

Good Morning,Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention.  It’s unfortunate that you neglected to reach out to our management team so we could get involved and resolve this sooner, though we appreciate awareness all the same so we can get it addressed once and for all.  Looking...

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

Good Morning,Thank you for confirming you've moved your sites and created a cancellation request [redacted].  I've passed that to a retention supervisor so the account can be cancelled and a refund processed for [redacted] as previously discussed and promised.  Please keep an eye out on the open cancellation ticket, and once that refund has been made they'll provide you a written response confirming as such.  If there's anything further we can assist you with, please feel free to reach out directly in the ticket.

HelloWe understand Ms. [redacted]'s frustration with the current situation and would very much like to have it resolved.  Unfortunately at this time there are two separate parties that are claiming ownership of the account and neither party has provided the requested documentation to resolve the ownership of the account.The security of our clients is extremely important to Hostgator and when the unfortunate situation arose that two parties are stating ownership of the account in question, steps were taken to lock the account down to protect the account and both parties were requested to provide documentation of ownership.We had received confirmation that the requested information would be provided and followed up with the fax number [redacted] on 08/08/16 as requested, however we have not received any of the requested documentation or confirmation that it has been sent from either party.At this time we ask that Ms. [redacted] please send the documents as agreed to on August 8th. Once they have been sent, if Ms. [redacted] could please reply back to our recent communication or contact [email protected] referencing this complaint, we'll be glad to continue working with her to get this resolved.

Revdex.com:
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 9/6/2016 and assigned ID [redacted]
Regards,

We were sorry to hear about Ms. [redacted]'s concern with the service.  In reviewing the account we did find that the recent charges were for the renewal of a domain and whois privacy that Ms [redacted] had also purchased in addition to the hosting service.  The domain names were set to auto renew...

in the domain control tab in the Ms. [redacted]'s account portal.  At the time that the hosting package was canceled the cancellation team had also asked that Ms. [redacted] reply back to the cancellation request if the domain is also to be canceled.  As not reply had been received the domain was still active.  To address that concern as a courtesy those invoices were refunded back to Ms. [redacted].The site-builder that was being offered at the time that the service was purchased was active on the account.  Although it is no longer offered to new clients and has been replaced by a site-builder developed by Hostgator it is grandfathered in for those clients who are using that product.  We were not able to determine why Ms. [redacted] was not able to access that service at the time that the account was reviewed for this communication.We record all support requests and were not able to locate any calls or support interactions prior to the one where the cancellation request had been submitted for Ms. [redacted] but did want to resolve this amicable.  The hosting package was outside the 45 day money back guarantee and would not normally be eligible for a refund however to resolve this a prorated refund was offered to Ms. [redacted] and accepted.At this time the refund has been sent and we have not received any follow up questions from Ms. [redacted].  If any should arise we ask that Ms. [redacted] please respond back to the recent e-mail communication or email or management team directly at [email protected] and we will be happy to offer assistance.

Hello,We are sorry to hear about Ms [redacted]'s concerns with the process that our compliance team follows with these type of concerns.Our compliance team did follow up on the concerns, however would be under no obligation to provide those communications.At this time the content has been taken down that was reported and we have not received any additional reports from Ms [redacted].  If Ms [redacted] has any additional content or links to report we ask that she contact our management team at [email protected] and we'll be more than happy to assist.