Hostgator Horrorshow

radiant13

radiant13

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Last Monday morning woke up to find all my websites were gone. Called Hostgator tech support and they said appears there have been a compromise and all the file folders are empty and there are no backup copies of my sites. They said they will do a reset of my account. At 5:30 pm the account was still not reset so I called them to speed it up so I can start rebuilding my sites. I called them again six hours later and they said they will escalated my ticket. Tuesday morning still no reset so called them and that rep told me she will escalate the ticket. Say what? They said it was escalated the night before, well, somebody was not being truthful.

Half an hour later I get email notification that the account reset has been done. I couldn't get it to work so call them again. Rep checks things out and tells me looks like some Apache file were missing or something along those lines and they will have to reset it again. By Wednesday morning they still haven't reset the account. By that point I had to do something else because I can not start rebuilding my sites at HG without a working account. These are real business sites and revenue is impacted with no website. I opened an account at siteground so I can start the long process of rebuilding. As luck would have it the DNS propagation of the most critical site took over 24 hours and I couldn't start rebuilding that site until Thursday morning. By that time the site has disappeared from the top pages of google and still gone as I write this.

I told the rep I spoke with Wednesday morning that I want a prorated portion of the remaining two and a half year account back because they had not provided me with a working account after two days and I had to started rebuilding my sites
some place else. He agreed that I should be given my money back and that he will attach a note to the ticket explaining my plight and reason for cancellation my account. Half an hour after his ticket was submitted I get an email from the accounting dept. denying my refund for the reason that it is their policy no refunds after 45 days.

It was Friday night around 9:30 pm that I received email from them that my account have been reset. They didn't have a working working account for me for 5 days. And that is the main argument I give them when I get them on the phone to try to get my money back. They always counter with the no refund after 45 days policy. After my last call to them earlier this morning, looks like I'm out $224 cuz they ain't bending no way no how.

Any ideas on how I can get my money from them?

Lesson learned : Back up your shit. Don't rely on somebody else to do that for you.
 
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On Reddit, there's a post from a former HostGator employee talking about his experience there. (I can' post a link, so you have to google it if you want to read it)

Now, the reason why I brought this up is because the guy gives good insight to what is going on at HostGator and what you as a client in the light of that story can and cannot do, what you can and cannot rely on, etc, when it comes to... being a client. You can get things done, but you need to know how, and that post might open up the way for you in dealing with the problem.


If I were you, I'd read that guy's post first, only then you can you start working towards getting your money back. Because if I had to sum up the situation at EIG owned hosting brands, assuming the employee's post wasn't bullshit, NOBODY will feel responsible there. Problems get delegated back and forth and emplyees get paid by the amount they DON'T spend dealing with the problems. If you throw a tantrum, it's THE excuse they are waiting for to disregard your problem completely. There are other ways in which they can ignore the problem, so I recommend you read that employee's post and find out how to dribble (referencing soccer) efficiently...

Part of me believes that guy's story is true because eHost, another EIG owned hosting brand that I was client to, seems to work the same way. I managed to get lots of big things fixed by following the unwritten rules of etiquette, not sure what else to call it. Unless you want to involve the court of course, but... If i were in your shoes, I would just cut my losses when it came to that, unless potential court fees and backlashes were nothing compared to what you lost with the site(s) value (but in this case, rather the $200 sounds like nothing compared to the potential court fees).



But considering what you've gone through already, I'm not sure if you're up to the task of getting rid of your emotions when dealing with the problem, and seeing HostGator as the potential victim instead. "HostGator" might be bad, but the people working in that big bad system are people just like you and me.


Just my $0.02
If it's not helpful, don't hate.
It's my first post here.
 
Last edited:
Hey Thulf thanks for your insights. I did find that reddit post and have read it in it's entirety...it was pretty damn long and sounded legit. I'm going to try using a thing or two that he recommends and hope for a better outcome.
I have not lost my cool on the many calls with their reps but temperature rising, LOL.
Loosing a couple of benjamins ain't going to break me so I'm not loosing any sleep over it.
But I feel that I'm entitle to a refund since they dropped the ball on me big time. I will continue to try to get them to relent.
 
I take it is a little after war, but you can beat the DNS propagation by clearing your DNS cache on your computer :

-> ipconfig /flushdns
-> clear browser cache
-> restart your router and leave it unplugged for 30 seconds

Then, you can edit you hosts file inside your computer to formally attach a website to an IP skipping the DNS resolution.

and append to the file.

domain.com mynewIP
www.domain.com mynewIP

OPen a command prompt and type : ping domain.com and it should return the new websites IP allowing you to work on your websites while it propagates.
 
Hostgator was banned from talking about here at one point, yep that's how bad they were/are. Sorry you had so many crazy issues.
 
radiant13 said:
Last Monday morning woke up to find all my websites were gone. Called Hostgator tech support and they said appears there have been a compromise and all the file folders are empty and there are no backup copies of my sites. They said they will do a reset of my account. At 5:30 pm the account was still not reset so I called them to speed it up so I can start rebuilding my sites. I called them again six hours later and they said they will escalated my ticket. Tuesday morning still no reset so called them and that rep told me she will escalate the ticket. Say what? They said it was escalated the night before, well, somebody was not being truthful.

Half an hour later I get email notification that the account reset has been done. I couldn't get it to work so call them again. Rep checks things out and tells me looks like some Apache file were missing or something along those lines and they will have to reset it again. By Wednesday morning they still haven't reset the account. By that point I had to do something else because I can not start rebuilding my sites at HG without a working account. These are real business sites and revenue is impacted with no website. I opened an account at siteground so I can start the long process of rebuilding. As luck would have it the DNS propagation of the most critical site took over 24 hours and I couldn't start rebuilding that site until Thursday morning. By that time the site has disappeared from the top pages of google and still gone as I write this.

I told the rep I spoke with Wednesday morning that I want a prorated portion of the remaining two and a half year account back because they had not provided me with a working account after two days and I had to started rebuilding my sites
some place else. He agreed that I should be given my money back and that he will attach a note to the ticket explaining my plight and reason for cancellation my account. Half an hour after his ticket was submitted I get an email from the accounting dept. denying my refund for the reason that it is their policy no refunds after 45 days.

It was Friday night around 9:30 pm that I received email from them that my account have been reset. They didn't have a working working account for me for 5 days. And that is the main argument I give them when I get them on the phone to try to get my money back. They always counter with the no refund after 45 days policy. After my last call to them earlier this morning, looks like I'm out $224 cuz they ain't bending no way no how.

Any ideas on how I can get my money from them?

Lesson learned : Back up your shit. Don't rely on somebody else to do that for you.
Click to expand...
You can do a chargeback with your credit card or paypal. Although, I'd try to work with them. But if you do a chargeback, make sure you back up and back up your stuff and download it because more than likely they will auto terminate.
 
Same thing happened to me back in 2012. Hostgator deleted all my sites without prior warning or they do any backup (my fault is that I did not do any backup either). That was because some DMCA complaint. But why delete all my websites? God knows...

Now I am on same host for years without (almost) any problems. Never again on hostgator, lesson learned.
 
It was really good before but now my team is having problem with hostgator as well. We are moving to siteground maybe in next month. Feel sorry for you. Hope you will cover it up soon.
 
I also moved away from hostgator some time back. My experience with them was mixed - some good some bad - and it seemed like with support issues it was pot luck what engineer you got assigned.

One thing I will say though about dealing with very large companies, especially for hosting, is that you have no say in anything - if you don't like something its tough ****. So I moved to a smaller hosting provider (Not going to mention any names) where it was easier to build a relationship and have a bit of give and take.
 
Don't they have some kind of an uptime guarantee. I have used HostGator a long time ago and it was awful in all kinds of ways. I had all kinds of problems and the most annoying part was how slow they were in responding and how support reps claimed simple tasks were out of their hands and that they had no way to get in touch with the server admins who could fix those. What I did was keep a rep on the line for hours until they found a way to sort my problem out. Every time they asked if that was all, I repeat my request. When they said it was out of their hands, I asked to be put through to somebody who can help me and so on an so on. I think we went through the same loop for a few dozen times until they found a way to get me sorted. The rep was pretty bitter and obviously annoyed that I had kept him on the line for so long. I use this tactic with all companies that have designed their support to be intentionally unhelpful and that regularly employ the tactic of keeping everything important out of the hands of the support reps. I know that's really annoying for the reps themselves but I keep them on until they find a way to get things sorted for me and I repeat the same question or request countless times politely and patently.

In the future, when you select a hosting provider, make absolute certain that they are not owned by EIG.
 
It's a well known fact that hostgator and any hosting company owned by Endurance sucks, so just stay away from them.
 
LiquidSnake said:
Same thing happened to me back in 2012. Hostgator deleted all my sites without prior warning or they do any backup (my fault is that I did not do any backup either). That was because some DMCA complaint. But why delete all my websites? God knows...

Now I am on same host for years without (almost) any problems. Never again on hostgator, lesson learned.
Click to expand...


What host is that? I'm looking for something more stable that's why I'm asking :)
 
Shit, and I just got three years with their vps.

Lesson learned here too. I gotta do some backups of my websites.

Thanks for sharing!
 
nichexposure said:
It was really good before but now my team is having problem with hostgator as well. We are moving to siteground maybe in next month. Feel sorry for you. Hope you will cover it up soon.
Click to expand...
You should consider supporting small webhosting companies that are advertising on BHW! :D
 
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