Average response time from helpdesk?

[piku]

Hey,

Just wondering how everyone is doing w/ their experience w/ BH's helpdesk/support staff. Average response time? Positives/negatives?

TIA,
Sherwin

[timberford]

well i opened a ticket on sunday and i still havent got an answer back which is dissapointing because in the meanwhile my site is down.

[alethea]

The first two days were quick giving me the wrong impression. It's the slowest response time I have known. I think about 4 days now. I don't think I've ever waited more than 12 hours with previous hosts.
alethea

[walker]

Just wondering how everyone is doing w/ their experience w/ BH's helpdesk/support staff. Average response time? Positives/negatives?


My first ticket was opened two Fridays ago. (Although night-time here, it was morning in Bluehostland.) It wasn't answered until the following Monday night. In fairness, response times seem much quicker now. Generally within twelve hours...but I'm guessing it's a bit hit and miss.

I opened a ticket to report a server outage a couple of days ago. It wasn't noticed for nine-hours...and obviously things had been fixed 8+ hours earlier. Yesterday it was impossible to contact Bluehost to report the outage because it was out of hours, their own sites were down, and the emergency telephone option was discarding calls after five minutes. ISTM that an easier mechanism needs to be in place for reporting something as crucial as downtime. That's what caused all the aggro yesterday IMHO. Given previous experience with 9+ hour to four-day support tickets, and this inability to contact Bluehost, how could we be confident they were aware of the problem? Particularly when the DNS problems were still causing outages approx. four hours later?

All resolved now of course, which is great, and I'm really impressed with the professional explanation. I'm sure Bluehost will learn from this incident.

As for telephone support, I've had to call five times now. The queueing time was as follows:

i) Six minutes (to add-on a domain).
ii) Four minutes (to get SSH access).
iii) Five minutes before being hung-up on. (Yesterday).
iv) Five minutes again before being hung-up on. (Yesterday).
v) Nine minutes. (Yesterday. Finally got a 'sleepy' explanation for yesterday's downtime.)

Sometimes the experience can be a bit fruitless. The add-on domain (i) wasn't done properly, so I just suffered the downtime (about two hours for anybody using my UK ISP) waiting for CPanel to detect that I *had* updated the nameservers for my domain, therefore allowing me to perform the add-on.

Over the weekend, I asked somebody to enable to spam box, after being told they would do this if asked. They actually applied a filter to blackhole any email Spam Assassin had filtered as spam, and I lost some genuine email (from the far east -- where they're particularly vulnerable to SA) as a result. I've since worked out how to enable it myself.

There you go. I'm a customer of approx. two weeks, and that wraps-up my support experiences thus far.

[Arubalisa]

I submitted a ticket on Saturday afternoon and received a reply less than 24 hours later. Was surprised :eek: since I did not expect to receive a reply until AT LEAST Monday...

[ranchnachos]

I've had only 2 minor support tickets so far, both regarding Time Zone server information with a message board I'm using.

The first ticket was responded to within 15 minutes, and my second ticket was responded to in exactly 11 minutes.

Needless to say, they were both within normal operating hours for a regular business which resides in the US. (8/9a - 5p)

[thicke]

I called yesterday to get my account upgraded to the new limits and everything (disk space, transfer limit, etc.). I was on hold for about two minutes. I was on the phone with someone for about the same two minutes. My issue was resolved less than a minute after hanging up the phone.

[redsox9]

I have had maybe two or three tickets over the past year-plus with BlueHost and most were answered either the same day or within 24 hours. I've also called the help desk a couple of times and got through relatively quickly; I don't think that I was ever on hold for more than a minute or so.

I would rate my experience thus far as excellent, but I have a feeling that there has been a strong push in the last six to twelve months to increase the number of accounts. Now they are finding that they may be a little understaffed to handle what should have been an expected traffic increase. Hopefully they are looking to correct his oversight.

[timberford]

well i opened a ticket on sunday and i still havent got an answer back which is dissapointing because in the meanwhile my site is down.

i'm still waiting...

[WebJDC]

my first one took 30 minutes
the second one, well it was talking more than a day so i just ended up calling them....and they either hung up on me or we got disconnected. but i fugred it out on my own.

[piku]

My experience thus far:

1) signed up and got a call 30 minutes later for verification
2) submitted request for SSH, got a response right away the same day on Saturday and had it set up
2) submitted a ticket for IP address and PHP5 upgrade on Sunday, didn't really hear anything on Monday and just decided to call today. Got it fixed in less than 30 minutes (w/ 6 callers ahead of me).

So it varies. I was getting worried yesterday though. HTH

[Dave]

Yes... response time will vary according to the current work load and hours. Currently BH has staff working on tickets and phone calls Mon-Sat 6am to 10pm.

You will have the best response if you call in because calls are generally handled in a higher priority. Tickets on the other hand are subjective. It depends on the quality of your ticket. If it is not easy to understand the problem, then this will be delayed because they will pick it up and put it back a few times before anyone seriously looks into the matter. But if the request is clear and simple it may be handled very quickly once it is taken.

BOTOMLINE: Best to call in for urgent matters. Otherwise try and make sure your ticket is clear and concise making sure to identify the symptom or problem as accurately as you can.


. .

[timberford]

sounds like my ticket is one of the ones they dont want to fix...

http://forum.bluehost.com/showthread.php?t=311

[Dave]

sounds like my ticket is one of the ones they dont want to fix...

http://forum.bluehost.com/showthread.php?t=311


Now, is this thread also a ticket you submitted via the BH Support Center?

[timberford]

yes. i thought i'd try my luck here though as well. i opened the ticket on sunday.

[Dave]

Yea your problem seems a little more like a configuration problem than an actual technical problem. I sure hope somone can help you in the forums. I'm very sorry, I don't know enough about that to help you.:o

But I'm sure that if you give them a call, they will tackle it right away for you.

Good luck with that.

Dave

. .

[alethea]

"Yea your problem seems a little more like a configuration problem than an actual technical problem. I sure hope somone can help you in the forums. I'm very sorry, I don't know enough about that to help you.

But I'm sure that if you give them a call, they will tackle it right away for you."

What I don't understand is, if the reason for not replying is as above, why is a reply not simply given to the person saying this. Clearly if someone puts in a support ticket they are wanting help, and to not rely - or put off replying for a long time is at the least rude. The person is left checking all the time thinking 'surely there will be a reply at last'. If support don't know the answer or think the only way the person will get a response is in the support forum, it is not only decent to tell them that, so that they know where they stand and can get on with getting the issue solved.

alethea

[Dave]

Bluehost support is not accustomed to this kind of attentiveness. It would be really nice if they would do that but they just don't very often. Call it lack of concern or experience... They need to really improve in this area.

But what I have learned is that a phone call gets their attention very well. They are good at handling problems over the phone.


Dave


. .

[redsox9]

Bluehost support is not accustomed to this kind of attentiveness. It would be really nice if they would do that but they just don't very often. Call it lack of concern or experience... They need to really improve in this area.

But what I have learned is that a phone call gets their attention very well. They are good at handling problems over the phone.

I support Dave on this assessment. My impression lately, especially since joining this forum, is that BlueHost is still "getting its feet wet" in the support department. That's shouldn't sit well with people, especially BH, and I believe that they are also working to correct this matter.

I have always found that a phone call works in any situation the best because talking through the problem will more likely generate an answer to everyone's liking. There is nothing wrong with the ticket so long as the problem is thoroughly explained; also, it may be sometimes difficult to assess the urgency of a ticket. If they had the ability, they would probably make personal calls to clarify these outstanding issues, but that isn't reasonable to expect. :rolleyes:

Of course, I can't account for why there have been some issues with phone support (getting kicked out of queue after xx minutes, etc.). Again, BlueHost needs to address these support issues if they want to continue to grow as "the" hosting solution.

[grant]

I guess I'll count myself lucky, I only had to call them once when my site was down for a few hours, but it was due to someone running kiddie scripts on the same box that I happen to be on. They were able to fix it rather quickly though. I've been pretty fortunate to not have too many problems.

And yes, a phone call is your best option. Of course, that's easy for us in the states to say though. I feel bad for those that have to pay international calling fees.

[sparke67]

I've had absolutely excellent response times... within minutes!

[scottcrew]

I have been with BlueHost quite a while and have had to call for support and used the help ticket system.
Up until the latter part of last year, I could call support and be on hold for only a few minutes, if any minutes at all. Then it took a little longer roght along the latter part of last year, then again, we were into the holiday season and everything gets tight during that time... now, it is down to only waiting a few minutes... I haven't really had any big problems with BlueHost. When I call in due to a down site, I usually find that it is a DOS attack (or something) or the last time was router that was down. The rest of the times it is usually to finish setting up SSL certs.

I'm npot so sure I like the help ticket system though... sometimes it's good, sometimes I have waited forever for a response... but again, I think it was during the time that the phone hold time was long, too.
I prefer to use phone support.

I'd have to say that, over all, I have been pleased with BlueHost's performance and support.

HTH!

[phaymes]

I just posted a question and received an anwer in less than five minutes.

Needless to say, I was pleasantly suprised.

[flood]

ive submitted 2 tickets so far, 1 minor and 1 significant

excellent response time on both

also pleasantly surprised to find an admin checking and assisting in these forums.. i work a second/third tier support job myself and couldnt imagine any of our guys at the front lines voluntarily

[vegasgwm]

I had several tickets. I'm generally not impressed by the response time and a few times it took more than a day. However, calling on the phone was excelent, about 1 minute wait. Bluehost(Matt) wrote(blog) they don't believe in outside support, but i wonder, wouldn't it help if your customer base is so large. I have a site on another host where the ticket response is always under 5 minutes, absolutly superior support, but they don't offer as much as Bluehost. he, you loose some you win some.

[flood]

if you'd ever had to deal with outsourced support for anything truly critical you'd be very pleased he's taken that stance