Worst Customer Service Ever?
How not to treat your customers:
- Refuse to give out your telephone number.
- Accept email, but only if the originating email address is the one in your database associated with the original setup of the customer's account. As we all know, no one ever changes email addresses, so this is bound to be a good idea.
- Have links on your website to AIM chat accounts, but make sure you're always offline.
- Once the customer finally makes contact with you via an old phone number that he found in his file and used out of desperation, berate him strongly for doing so, and state that you never use this number for support, and warn the customer that he is to never use it again.
- When the customer explains the problem, tell him that it's his fault, not yours.
Sounds pretty bad, huh? Welcome to the wonderful world of HyTek Hosting, LLC, a Connecticut-based webhost apparently run by a group of doofuses that seems to prefer playing with their Xeons over pleasing their clients.
I'm not exaggerating in anything I wrote above, as I've had a client experience each one of those things over the last couple of days in an attempt to get their website back online after their credit card expired and their account was deactivated.
The account has finally been reactivated, but I assure you that it's only temporary, until another account with a host who at least puts on an act of valuing its customers can be established. Unfortunately for HyTek, those aren't very hard to find nowadays.
The definition of irony: as I was posting the above, I lost my connection for a couple of minutes.
Posted by: Bret at May 7, 2008 08:26 PMBret, thanks for the recommendation. I do indeed have a "preferred host" (a company called ValueTech, headquartered in South Carolina but with a server farm in your neck o'the woods). I guess the point is that there's no reason for users to put up with poor service from webhosts, as there are plenty of reliable, competent, and caring providers, and it's not like we're locked into a hosting arrangement (would that our ISP choices were as wide open). Unfortunately, there are still many website owners who don't realize that, or know how to do something about it.
Posted by: Eric at May 7, 2008 10:00 PMdoofi?
doofusses?
ijits!
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Sounds like you already have alternatives, but if you're looking for a good outfit, I've used Alentus for a number of years on a variety of personal and professional sites and applications, and they've done well by me (and are a good bargain for both shared and dedicated hosting).
My favorite was when a pre-Alentus hosting provider of mine decided to terminate the ISDN service I'd purchased from them. But didn't bother to tell me about it. My first clue was the angry phone calls from my client. But at least they said they were sorry. That helped a lot... NOT!
Posted by: Bret at May 7, 2008 08:25 PM