WT*!! Hostgator 80% lasted just 5 minutes???

Dazzler said:

ahahaha. I think you're the last one to tell anyone to grow up. Not only are you throwing a tissy fit along with everyone else just because you weren't a part of the 5,000 people who got it, but you're taking it a step further and trying to get them in trouble, which you will absolutely fail at.

Might as well go bitch about every company having sales for black friday. They advertise cheap deals that unless your one of the first in line you will never receive, same fucking thing.

Not trying to be a dick and start stuff but damn people take things way too far. Theres so much more in life that you could be useing your bitching skills for then this. Go bitch about something that matters. Its fucking website hosting, your lifes not over, get over it.

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alexandraM said:

yeah, real deceptive.. aranoid:

i'm sure you'll get real far with the FBI and Hostgator since they said 'while supplies last'
call dateline so they can do a story on it

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Remington said:

What trolling. If you were really so pedantic, you'd WELL know that the FCC and FBI aren't who to report advertising complaints to. Your very mention of them, rather than the proper regulatory agency, shows that you have no idea what you're talking about and just want to get a rise out of people.


Anyway, it's legal, so don't expect any agency to even give you the courtesy of an FOAD response.

For the record:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/baitads-gd.htm


The part I bolded was clearly and adequately disclosed. It's explicitly LEGAL. So eat it.

They didn't "accept a deposit" before their cart switched to the higher price. So, again, LEGAL.

And yes, the agency that regulates ads is the Federal TRADE Commission. Not the FCC (Fed. COMMUNICATIONS Commission, that oversees stuff like TV and radio and usually seems to have nothing better to do than care if someone swears on the air).

As someone who writes a lot of ads, I pay attention to this sort of thing so I don't get woken up one day by feds knocking my door down, and so losers who want to make themselves feel big will only end up wasting their money if they try to sue me.

"Ignorance of the law is no defense" so I make sure to check every time I think of writing some ad that can be considered on the black hat side. Usually the difference between fine-worthy and okay is a matter of 3 or 4 words.



The HostGator deal was a properly-executed black-hat offer that by the looks of it covers all their bases from legal liability.

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Microcon said:

Just FYI this letter came from Brent, the president...

Hi Everyone,

We are going to honor the 80% off for anyone who placed their order between 5am-9am. In order to take advantage of the difference please open a ticket by emailing sales(at)hostgator(dot)com to request we refund the difference.

As you can imagine we are beyond swamped. According to alexa "hostgator" became the number one searched term on the internet beating out walmart, best buy, newegg, and even facebook. We had over 1,000 people in our billing system at a time trying to order. The amount of traffic we saw was 5x greater then an above average slashdot affect.

I knew the billing system would most likely fail to handle the amount of traffic, but what somewhat surprised me was that the hostgator website itself went down.

A few things to keep in mind......

In affiliate commissions alone we will be paying out over 2x the amount of total money collected.

On a whole it will be impossible for us to ever make a profit off anyone who placed an order at 50% let alone 80% off.

We do not have anywhere near 50% profit margin so when you take 50% off we are are losing money before even considering affiliate commissions.

Financially this offering made no sense in any shape or form. If we had offered this deal to existing customers it would have most likely put us out of business. I'm extremely sorry to all current customers who feel you were cheated.

So why did we do this deal?

The amount of exposure and brand awareness we gained from running this deal is priceless.

We are stealing thousands of customers from competitors who would have never of thought about switching to hostgator.

We are able to do something crazy every once in a while without putting ourselves out of business.

I'd love if you all could help me spread this posting to other forums and blogs that have similar discussions going.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

Brent Oxley

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Microcon said:

Just FYI this letter came from Brent, the president...

Hi Everyone,

We are going to honor the 80% off for anyone who placed their order between 5am-9am. In order to take advantage of the difference please open a ticket by emailing sales(at)hostgator(dot)com to request we refund the difference.

As you can imagine we are beyond swamped. According to alexa "hostgator" became the number one searched term on the internet beating out walmart, best buy, newegg, and even facebook. We had over 1,000 people in our billing system at a time trying to order. The amount of traffic we saw was 5x greater then an above average slashdot affect.

I knew the billing system would most likely fail to handle the amount of traffic, but what somewhat surprised me was that the hostgator website itself went down.

A few things to keep in mind......

In affiliate commissions alone we will be paying out over 2x the amount of total money collected.

On a whole it will be impossible for us to ever make a profit off anyone who placed an order at 50% let alone 80% off.

We do not have anywhere near 50% profit margin so when you take 50% off we are are losing money before even considering affiliate commissions.

Financially this offering made no sense in any shape or form. If we had offered this deal to existing customers it would have most likely put us out of business. I'm extremely sorry to all current customers who feel you were cheated.

So why did we do this deal?

The amount of exposure and brand awareness we gained from running this deal is priceless.

We are stealing thousands of customers from competitors who would have never of thought about switching to hostgator.

We are able to do something crazy every once in a while without putting ourselves out of business.

I'd love if you all could help me spread this posting to other forums and blogs that have similar discussions going.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

Brent Oxley

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jeremyok said:

tubeincreaser you got my PM?

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SleepieGirl said:

i got 1 3 year of hosting.
i had it in my cart before hand and then sent the order through right when it started.
then i emailed support and complained that i didnt get the deal...
eazy peezy...
sorry nobody else here git it.

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MiLiTARYiV said:

From what I heard you cant have it in your cart before the sale starts. You have to actually go through ordering it like a normal order. Thats probably why alot us didnt get it is because you already had it in your cart.

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