Do you think hosts should be in business if they can not answer support tickets...

[gotlinks]

Do you think hosts should be in business if they can not answer tickets
lets say in 30 min or less? I would say answer them in a timely fassion,
but what do you consider timely? 1hr - 5hrs - 18hrs?

Setup time: 8 hours
unanswered ticket: going on 3.5 hrs.

some people have a business to run, so hosting never sleeps, regardless
of where the provider is in the world, you wanted to be in this business., and
when a website has issues, and tickets go unanswered for hours on end, well,
that could be money going right down the drain....

What do you guys think?

 

[Tyler]

Depends. How large is their support team and how many customers do they have? If they're getting three hundred or more tickets a day, you can't blame them for six to twelve hour responses. What did you set the ticket priority to? If it's not high, I would say that's a completely reasonable time frame.

 

[Seraphim]

Many hosts are one or two man operations too. During the daytime when they are actively managing their business, they are far more likely to respond quickly to a ticket- I actually do my support live over IRC and can respond in under a minute if I am at my computer when the request is made.

But even the best of people still do need regular sleep, and a lot of smaller hosts run their hosting as well as working a normal day job and taking care of their personal life. It's not always possible to give instant support at all times on a small scale operation.

 

[WL-Michael]

I agree, it doesn't matter if it's an individual or a business as it comes down to the basic necessity of whatever it is that someone is contacting you about. So I'd say at the most an hour (more like 30 mins or less though) is the longest that someone should have to wait for a support ticket to be answered. But at the same time unless it's a 24-hour operation than I do give some hosts the benefit of the doubt if it is after hours, especially with sales.

I take it from your post that you have ordered a new server and the host is nowhere to be found? If so I definitely feel your pain, not with hosting but over the past week I've had to express myself so to speak to online retailers that have tried to take their time after making a purchase with expedited shipping. I hope things get resolved for you.

One thing is for sure, money is running down the drain (or away from a particular business) when you don't answer tickets in a timely fashion.

 

[gotlinks]

Depends. How large is their support team and how many customers do they have? If they're getting three hundred or more tickets a day, you can't blame them for six to twelve hour responses. What did you set the ticket priority to? If it's not high, I would say that's a completely reasonable time frame.

When you send requests via email, you do not get to pick a priority. I see your point, but if they have 24hr, and hopefully they have more
then just one staffer...but I do not thik this is 24hr support, so if it is 12pm mytime, and they are asleep at 1am, then I am screwed for
a few hours. There probably are not a lot of actual 24hr support hosts around, if they are, then I do not know who they are. Some hosts claim
24hr support, but what they really mean is, you can send an email 24hours a day, but does very little good if they are asleep, or
out golfing, and I see that as not really taking their hosting business serious.

 

[Tyler]

When you send requests via email, you do not get to pick a priority. I see your point, but if they have 24hr, and hopefully they have more
then just one staffer...but I do not thik this is 24hr support, so if it is 12pm mytime, and they are asleep at 1am, then I am screwed for
a few hours. There probably are not a lot of actual 24hr support hosts around, if they are, then I do not know who they are. Some hosts claim
24hr support, but what they really mean is, you can send an email 24hours a day, but does very little good if they are asleep, or out golfing, and
I see that as not really taking their hosting business serious.

Just keep in mind some hosts are small operations and resellers. If you order from a reseller -- although this isn't always the case -- they're support team is going to be smaller then the actual host and typically they are a one man operation. I've had nothing but problems with support at 100TB.com who are one of the "bigboy" resellers. So take it from me, if you are looking for great service and customer care you may want to consider going directly to the host.

 

[gotlinks]

But even the best of people still do need regular sleep, and a lot of smaller hosts run their hosting as well as working a normal day job and taking care of their personal life. It's not always possible to give instant support at all times on a small scale operation.

Sometimes when you order, you really do not know their real size, and even less about their support until you are underway...

I take it from your post that you have ordered a new server and the host is nowhere to be found? If so I definitely feel your pain, not with hosting but over the past week I've had to express myself so to speak to online retailers that have tried to take their time after making a purchase with expedited shipping. I hope things get resolved for you.

ordered a vps, he was talking just fine last night...I have had hosts in all manners, I have had sites down 48 hours,
and I have had tickets unanswered for 48 hours, so I am not real calm over this, and not knowing when to expect a reply....

I need to find a host with support and know someone is on duty 24/7 - It may cost a bit more, but maybe worth it.

 

[wswd]

Well, since you're talking about my company, I figured I ought to answer.

You did not submit a single ticket to our Support Dept. Our support tickets are generally responded to in under 30 minutes. In fact, we guarantee it! Our office is staffed Monday-Friday 9am to 5pm Pacific time (Sales and Billing).

What you did do was submit a ticket to our Sales Department (on a Sunday, when our office is generally not staffed), and a Sales Rep. still responded to you in about 45 minutes. The main problem was that you were asking about a special deal I offered you here, and the Support Tech. had absolutely no idea what you were talking about. The ticket was referred to me, and I answered your request in about 3h45m. Your next question was responded to in 2 minutes, the one after that in 8 minutes, the one after that in 4 minutes. After that, you asked about management services, and tried cutting a special deal with our Sales Team. It again was referred to me.

As far as the setup, as I explained to you in the ticket, no payment confirmation was received from PayPal until hours later. Our billing system does not set up any accounts until the payment confirmation is received, and for whatever reason, it didn't happen. A staff member responded to that ticket in 13 minutes. I responded 21 minutes later, noting that your payment had finally cleared (I had to process the order manually, as there was never an automated confirmation received from PayPal), and that the VPS would be set up to your specifications. Less than 45 minutes later, your VPS was deployed.

Anything else you would like answered? We have been in business for 15 years (16 in January), and have had thousands of satisfied clients over the years. We're sorry you weren't satisfied, but at the end of the day, I think your irritation comes from the fact that we would not offer you management services. I did refer you to a management company though.

Anyway, good luck with the next company. Hopefully they'll suit you better.

 

[wswd]

And by the way, completely contrary to our Terms of Service, we have begun the refund process, even though you have not requested a refund. You should see the funds in your PayPal account shortly.

Happy hosting!

 

[gotlinks]

I was showing a little respect by not calling you out.

and while you went into an entire arguement about past tickets...

I was talking about todays ticket...I do not care if it went to sales or support,
today is a valid work day, and it took 4-5 hours to get a response, so I did not
bring up anything prior til today, and your misconfigured billing software is all yours, and
yet I did not even bring that up, you felt free to share that with everyone.

and what killed the deal was your response "we do not provide management period"

ok? ok! we part ways, have a nice day.

 

[wswd]

If you're going to quote me, you might as well at least get the quote right. "We just don't provide management services at all, unfortunately. It's not a money issue, our techs. just don't handle management of VPS or dedicated servers." I then even gave you the link to a management company that several of our clients have used.

Yes, today's ticket (in which you tried cutting a deal for management services with our Sales Department, even though I made it quite clear we offer no management services) was answered by me in about 4 hours. Our Sales techs. cannot respond to a special deal you are trying to make with them. As I mentioned above, the ticket was again referred to me. I was at a Chamber of Commerce event all morning and responded to your personal request as soon as I got back in.

As far as the billing software is concerned, absolutely. I'm not placing the blame on anyone else, although our software is not misconfigured. We took about 20 some-odd orders before and after yours, and yours was the only one that failed. It happens from time to time with Paypal. It isn't the first time we have seen it happened and it certainly won't be the last. It's nobody's fault, it just happened, and as a result, it ultimately took 8 hours for your VPS to be deployed. Sorry you weren't happy with that.

 

[Tyler]

I was showing a little respect by not calling you out.

and while you went into an entire arguement about past tickets...

I was talking about todays ticket...I do not care if it went to sales or support,
today is a valid work day, and it took 4-5 hours to get a response, so I did not
bring up anything prior til today, and your misconfigured billing software is all yours, and
yet I did not even bring that up, you felt free to share that with everyone.

and what killed the deal was your response "we do not provide management period"

ok? ok! we part ways, have a nice day.

I have this feeling nobody is going to be able to make you happy.

 

[The Crasher]

with out reading the most part , i just going post what i feel like

i work for 1 of the biggest providers of internet and we do have a livesupport ( phone support)
but the real answer is 48 hours later if you got luck , that company got some clients who are waiting for about 2 months to get a single reply ( and about 60 calls later and 40 new cases later)

but on the other side , what you expect from a internet provider that get just about 3% complains of there total customers they have ? (average new cases that goes open on 16 hours time is about 30k )

so to explain this part easy

it first depends how big the company is , if it is a small company then they can not affort to pay for staff (average solution time = +- 8 hours)
if it is a big company then they got staff (average solution time = +- 4 hours)
if it is a realy big company then the support is even slower (average response time = +- 5 min , average solution time = +- 48 hours)

so support is not just providing a answer
clients do not care to wait as long the quality is good
if a solution takes long but it fix the problem for a long time .. they are happy that they wait

i know a few company"s who provide a solution in 30 min , but be sure that they need to do it all day long because they provide a temporary solution ( o your weberver is down .. take this backup server until we got your server back online ... )

so it is hard to put a average wait time on support
it all depends on differend things

main thing is , how big is the problem ( ddos attack ?? can take a couple hours to get fixed , do we reply on a ticket to say that we are buzzy ?? not realy)
if it is a big problem , then it just takes long to provide a reply as we take care about the problem and doesnt care to provide a "reply" , but just provide a solution
is it a small problem ... same apply only it takes 5 min to fix it and you got a reply in less then 5 min ( as we fix it when we send a reply )

does having staff make the solution faster ?? not realy as staff is mostly limited to do 2 things
1) providing a reply
2) make sure that your ticket is answered in less the 15 min
3) they can do nothing more then that , or do you provide your staff root acces to your server ?? so they can mess things more up because lack of knowledge ??

ofcourse you got tech staff to , but they wont even bother to provide a reply on a ticket in most cases , they are to solve a major/minor problem ( apache crash , restart/fix apache .. ) and to monitor the systems

so where we are again ?
basicly it does not mather how big your company is , you should always count around 8 hours for a solution
the reply does not mather , it is the solution that counts

as long a company does not understand that part , then they will waste a lot of money/time and get some big security holes and will even get himself destroyed because he wanted to provide the "perfect" solution time

Greetings From PowerChaos

 

[CS Squad]

I have this feeling nobody is going to be able to make you happy.

Judging from his previous posts, and attitude, I believe that no matter what, he will still find something to complain about his service providers, even though the provider has give him the best...

 

[sander k]

You shouldn't be in business when you can't even install your own VPS.

What happens when there goes something wrong with your VPS?
Will it take ages before you find someone to fix the problem for you for free?

 

[CS Squad]

You shouldn't be in business when you can't even install your own VPS.

What happens when there goes something wrong with your VPS?
Will it take ages before you find someone to fix the problem for you for free?

From what I see, he is actually not a hosting service provider, just a consumer.

 

[Derek Flahost]

I have this feeling nobody is going to be able to make you happy.

And I think this is the reason why most reputable hosts never post any offer in his request posts.

 

[wswd]

And I think this is the reason why most reputable hosts never post any offer in his request posts.

I didn't know any better. No clue who he was. Lesson learned for sure!

 

[colorhost]

Well, if i was the customer i would prefer the host responded promptly within 24 hours (Mostly less)

I know we here have someone around the clock, i am not always here though cause i do have a life and personal things to deal with too!

But if the host does NOT respond within a 24 hour period or more, than there is something wrong with that service.

 

[Sain Cai]

Ever think that maybe you're too demanding and you're one of those "problem" customers" that opens 3 tickets per day and demands service in the middle of the night and wants the host to do everything for you, including setting up your VPS for absolutely nothing because you're too ignorant to do it yourself.

So you don't know how to set up a VPS (http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/showthread.php?2242412-I-need-help-setting-up-VPS) can't get your own script to work (http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/showthread.php?2239338-ISO-Reliable-Host-w-PDO-Support) but blame the latter on the host?

Now you come on here and suggest that continually sending in tickets to get 24/7 support because it seems you haven't the slightest idea of what you are doing, yet want free help in having this done for you? Did I sum that up properly?

I think the better title question should be "Should people be asking for advanced hosting when they have no clue of what they are doing?".