The importance of honesty and detail in the server status

[prodge]

I've been waiting well over 2 hours for a problem to be fixed this evening, yet it's highly unlikely to happen tonight.

As some of you know, Bluehost cannot currently accept any new add-on domains. This has been frustrating for my colleague, who wanted his domain pointing at my hosted space. Bluehost's NS0. server is timing out, and it affects all customers.

At least four transatlantic phone calls have been made in chasing up this problem, yet all I am told is that it could take 20 minutes... or 2 hours... or... anything! It's almost different every time I call.

Yet, I wouldn't have to do this if the server status page would actually detail this issue instead of pretending everything is fine. As a paying customer, I do NOT like being lied to.

One member of Bluehost staff told me to keep on trying to add the domain. Yeah, a great way to spend the evening, sat in front of a browser window that's remaining static for 10 minutes before timing out!

I've told my colleague to just point his domain back at his old nameservers for the time being. I was optimistic about Bluehost getting this fixed in under an hour, like they usually do when downtime occurs. It seems I have been completely naive in expecting this.

It's a shame. I have been an enthusiastic supporter of Bluehost, I've always praised them on my website forums and recommended them to others. I used to be with another American webhoster, who were very good in the early 00s, but gradually declined in their customer service and gave out intolerable downtime periods. That's why I switched to Bluehost. Please don't tell me I'm going through deja vu here.

We are going to try again tomorrow evening. As I don't expect Bluehost to address my simple request of updating customers on the NS0 time-out issues in their server status, it looks like I am going to have to spend more money and time on a transatlantic phone call to see if they've got the problem fixed or not! I do not want another evening like this, I really feel it could have been avoided.

It's also very telling that support staff take ages to respond to LiveChat requests, driving me to try the sales department to see if anyone is 'alive' at Bluehost. Unsurprisingly, the sales staff are available quickly on LiveChat, very eager to advertise the Bluehost service - one that I am sadly now disappointed with.

[Reverend]

Wait a minute. . . tech support was busy during a major network issue?

And the server status page (that only reports problems unique to that server) doesn't report external problems?

How dare things function in a logical manner! I demand that reality change!

Seriously, while I can understand your frustration, do you really believe that you are/were the only person who thought to try and contact Bluehost via live chat while they were experiencing a major problem?

[redsox9]

Please remember that this is a user-to-user forum. While we sympathize with your problem, we cannot do anything for you here.

Also remember that BH has over 1000 servers and there are several hundred thousand domains sharing these servers. Issues come and go, more often very quickly (less than a minute). On occasion, as you've experienced, the problem lasts much longer... As I see it, time would be better spent by BH support personnel working the problem rather than writing status messages every five minutes.

(I'm also aware that, when contacting support through LiveChat, the people behind the screen have multiple windows opened at once helping customers solve a wide array of problems from the mundane to the more serious. Sometimes a response takes longer for that reason - don't think that they are ignoring you. My experience has usually been, on the few times that I've need to contact them, that I get the answer I need within ten minutes, especially when I come prepared to explain the issue.)