Well Hostgator support rocks compared to other services, but I prefer paying other services on VPS like Knownhost than a VPS on Hostgator, I had a terrible experience with Hostgator VPS. It got consumed on their ram with just only one Installation of Autoblogging in Wordpress.
Shared hosting is nice but do not have a forum with more than 5,000 users because they will tell you that you need a VPS and this will happend.
Try other services, look at reviews, in my personal experience I would recommend Knownhost, been working real good with it, just that the support is via email (but they are fast, like 5 min to respond).
So 2 minutes its not so bad in support.