Why are customer services so crap??

I emailed z-host.com earlier today. They are hosting my website and I had a problem whereby I could not delete one specific item from my MySQL Access Hosts list.

The reply I got almost made me fall off my chair.

They claim that I have used up my monthly quota, and "this might be whats causing the problem". They closed my support ticket on the strength of that!

I reopened it and copied/pasted my site stats to them (see below). I'm using about 2% of my storage space (TWO PERCENT!) and less than HALF a percent of my monthly bandwidth allocation - I don't actually have a site there yet, so there's zero traffic other than webcrawlers and such - but even so there is next to nothing they can download!

Disk usage 2.69 / 100.00 MB
MySQL Disk usage 0.05 MB
Disk space available 97.31 MB
Bandwidth (this month) 1.44 / 2000 MB

It strikes me that if you pay for cheap hosting, you get a horse-filth service. I hope they sort it out now. I've asked that they actually look into the problem this time, instead of making up a bit of BS and hoping I'll go away. :/

I sympothise. But like most things, if something is really cheap (in comparison to others) it means that something else has to go, and that usually means the quality of service.

Cheap service = poor service. Capitalism, don't you just love it?

There is no money in Customer Support, hence no customer support.

If you're looking for an alternative, without bandwidth limitation (no, really) try www.streamlinenet.co.uk

And without proper customer support, you lose customers......

Only company I've ever come across that I've request cust support on and DIDN'T give me any bs was Nintendo, and man are they helpful....

> And without proper customer support, you lose customers......


If only that were true. Look at the big box retail stores, walmart, the top computer manufacturers - they got where they are by cutting costs, with the biggest cost being customer service and support. I remember the good old days when a basic warranty didn't cost extra.

Yep, Customer Support is crap nowadays, there's not many companies out there that seem to be good at it, well, tech ones anyway. Take my ISP, Tiscali...

I updated to Vista, then found there was no drivers for my SpeedTouch modem, no problem, I rang their support line, 20 mins later I got connected to an advisor that couldnt understand a word I was saying, from my address, to my surname, to my broadband enabled phone number.

After we broke through the language barrier, she said she would send me a compatible modem and driver disc, great I thought.

3 days later, the same model SpeedTouch modem and driver version disc that I had came through the letterbox! mmmm

Tried it, didnt work... Googled, ahhh, SpeedTouch modem drivers dont exist for Vista (And thats from the thomspons website, as well as other tech forums)


Rang Tiscali again, same problems in communication, got over it, said they sent me the same stuff I already had, got a reply "Right Mr Denathorn, we will send you a compatible modem and driver disc"

I replied "How, drivers dont exist for Vista yet?",they said "We will send you a special driver disc that will work for the speedtouch modem", So I said "What version is it?", they said "We cannot tell you the version number Mr Denathorn", I said "Well send it anyway..."

It came, I bought a router! :)

Useless

Dabz

What? Acquired by Hewlett Packard and Lenovo? All other things equal I don't think being vulnerable to buyouts / takeovers is a position companies want to be, and I'm fairly sure Compaq and IBM regret scrapping support for non-corporate customers. There is plenty of money in providing good support and subscribing to a customer intimacy value discipline. How else do you explain Apple clawing its way back from the crushing black oblivion?

Dabz. I've had the same problem with Tiscalli... It reminds me of this; Tech support III :

http://www.illwillpress.com/tech3.html

Well, I figured out the problem myself.

Basically what was happening, was that I'd entered my IP address into the Access Hosts list as %xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx%, without realising that the leading % was not required. However, cPanel let me enter it.

Trouble is, when I tried to remove the item, it was passed via URL, and because the first character is a %, it treated the first part of my IP address as a hex code, and tried to delete a host mask that didn't exist in the list.

I finally got around it by entering the first part of my IP in hex format and feed that to cPanel via the URL.

I've e-mailed my hosting company about it to tell them how to fix it, so they know in future, and don't have to bullcrap people because they don't have an answer.

I bet you a tenner they still bullcrap people.

I've had fantastic customer support fro godaddy.com others have said they haven't.. Some say they get a lot of crap from them. But I've had great support.

The only other place that has ever given me great support was:

www.chipotle.com

yeah... the fast food joint.

They have a fantastic sense of humor and are actually helpful... I've asked them all kinds of off-the-wall crap and always gotten some kind of answer.

examples:

me - "Tell me the truth, the secret ingredient is Coca, isn't it?"
them - "Nope, Heroin."

------------------

me - "I'm having trouble getting my girlfriend into bed..."
them - "Did you try hitting her over the head with a burrito?"


-------------------

me - "Why is myspace such crap..."
them - "Because people like you made it."


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me - "How should I make my website look better?"
them - "Pay someone else to design it."

One word: outsourcing

Whatever you do, don't use these people. I had multiple problems with them and they have plenty of bad reviews on the net - I suspect that the only good reviews that they get are fakes from their employees :-\

> How else do you explain Apple clawing its way back from the crushing black oblivion?

What do they have? 10% of the computer market? Hardly a rousing success story.

For the Ipod, is it the ease of use that brings people in? Or the support? (I don't know - I have no real interest in digital music)

How is taking 10% of a market away from a monopoly, from a position of near-bankruptcy, not a success story?

Its the same issue (customer intimacy). The easier it is to use a device, and the more enjoyable figuring things out for yourself is, the less support you'll need.

> How is taking 10% of a market away from a monopoly, from a position of near-bankruptcy, not a success story?

A sales success, sorta, proof that customer service is important enough to charge a premium price - not as a general rule. The decline of Gateway is a good indicator, they used to have great customer service, but people generally did not want to pay the premium.

Get rid of z-host, use dreamhost, good customer service.