Saved by Google Again
February 23rd, 2006 by MarkI lost a bunch of data and had to rebuild my site, again. Everything’s back now, thanks to the goodness of Google’s cache of my site. Please mail me if you see anything broken or missing. Here’s what happened:
- I asked Hostgator to upgrade my account, so that I could host multiple domains
- There was still a copy of my blog on another of their servers (gator48) left over from the whole migration debacle a while back. Hostgator upgraded that instead of the my site (which is on gator50).
- When I alerted them to the fact that I didn’t want to move off of the gator50 server, due to the fact that gator48 is blocked in China. I said that if upgrading would require changing servers, I didn’t want to move
- Hostgator deleted my account on gator50
- When I asked why they’d deleted my site and said that I needed my data back, they accept any fault. They said that I’d told them to delete my server, which is completely false.
- After numerous emails and phone conversations, I was literally one click away from signing up for an account on Dreamhost. Then, Hostgator completely surprised me by saying that they’d give me a full refund for my 1 year plan I signed up for and continue my service for the rest of my contract. They said they wanted to keep my business.
- Today, AFTER spending 6 hours restoring my site, I received an email saying that they’ll only refund one month and that if I cancel the service, I still have to pay for the rest of the year.
I’m not sure if this is another case of miscommunication, or if they’ve just changed their minds. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.
Update: I was given a full refund, and I can continue to use the service.
Obviously, a refund makes me feel a lot better. Equally obviously, I won’t stay if I continue to have data loss problems every month. The time cost to me to rebuild my site is far more than the hosting fees. However, the fact that they want to keep me as a customer despite my loud complaints during each of the three times my data has been lost or corrupted, tells me that Hostgator is confident their service is improving. If they expected to continue having these difficulties, there’s no way they’d want to keep me as a customer. I’m a frequent blogger, and I get really unhappy about losing a week or two of data as a result of someone else’s actions. It wouldn’t be profitable to have a customer who used tech support so much. They must see improvement coming in one form or another.
:
February 23rd, 2006 at 6:36 am
… http://www.mediatemple.net
February 24th, 2006 at 12:54 am
Thanks for the link, Darin. The thing is, if Hostgator really did give me a full refund, I’m staying. They’ve had some experience hosting me (and others, like John), so they at least have an idea of what China bloggers need as cutomers. From what one of their reps said on the phone to me last night, quite a bit of their help is outsourced. He said they’re getting rid of the outsourced help, though. My guess is that they’ve had communications between in-company and external support teams. The deletion of my content may well have been due to such an error. If it is being improved, and they recognize that they screwed up, I’ll give them another couple chances before I switch.
If they didn’t give me refund, though, then I’ll have to evaluate my options pretty quickly. Right now, Dreamhost is looking like a great option. I know they have a reputation with China bloggers.
February 24th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Mark,
I’ll be writing an update to my “web hosting in China” blog entry soon. I’ll say just briefly now that I had a mostly very good experience with HostGator, and I’m sorry to hear how much hassle they’ve put you through. One thing I’ll note is that HostGator’s “live support” was quite obviously outsourced (to India, I suspect), but they were very good about responding to e-mails. DreamHost, on the other hand, has not been so good so far on the support end. Fortunately, I haven’t had very many issues.