Stop upselling during periods of frustration...

[eye2fly]

Please. I do understand you have a premium service. The abilities granted by your servers for such service was part of my migration decision-making process.

If you really want to advertise the way you do business, please show empathy and concern for all your customers, not just your paying ones.

I say this for a reason: Your free service is the showcase of what you are capable of... with some extra features (and, please, let us not consider uptime a feature... as that is a practice that has caused many a hosting provider to fade into the dust) that are worth paying for.

When a person is experiencing an outage, being upsold only adds to the frustration. Imagine it this way: Say your power is out, and when you call the power company, they say: "We understand you are having issues, but for only 19.99 more, we can give you more MwH." Great... when power is up and running.

I won't lie and say I'm not frustrated at the timing of this outage, and the fact that every time I am trying to upsell my services (a.k.a. have the fiduciary capacity to upgrade my services), my provider is down. Reading about upselling to others experiencing the same issue as myself only triggers the negative side of my capitalistic menality.

Sorry for the TL;DR, but I feel this subject required being fully qualified so that you may know it is the respectful advice as is intended.

 

[stpvoice]

Hello,

I understand your frustration, but you must also understand that this is a free service, yet people still treat it like it is paid. Most of the free hosting support team are volunteers (including myself), so the last thing we like to see is someone going "Fix it now! I hate x10!" and so on. Suggesting an upgrade is a discrete way of reminding people that they are getting something for absolutely nothing, and that they should have a bit more respect and patience.
I hope you understand.

 

[LibertyScape]

I read it all because I agree. Nobody answered my question of how long it will be until cPanel and websites are back up.

 

[stpvoice]

It may have helped if you had posted your query in the correct forum.
We have no ETA.

 

[eye2fly]

Well, see on that one Liberty, I can see both sides quite clearly. On one end, they do not want to make a time commitment only to break one, and sometimes giving the nature of a technical difficulty can advertise to a wrongdoer that they are being closed in on. But on our side, we like to feel informed. When I was a technician, I ran into that vicious circle more than once.

On their end, simply updating the post frequently, say every 30 or 60 minutes, that there is communication in the team going on, realeasing what info is releasable, etc... can go a long way to allay concerns.

To the staff: yes, I do in fact have free service, and for that I am thankful as it provides me an outlet to make the money to turn around and show my gratitude in the old-fashioned, free-market way. You time and attention, as well as your prompt responses, are in fact appreciated.

 

[stpvoice]

Hello,

The issue we have is that admins are generally only in the US, which gives us time zone issues. If a service goes down first thing in the morning GMT, then it's not likely to be touched until later in the day when admins come back (saying that, admins do commonly work without sleeping for days). It looks like that is what has happened today.
Also, announcements pose another issue, as staff who are commonly around and are much more widespread aren't supposed to post them without confirmation, which can't be obtained without an admin.

 

[eye2fly]

Fair enough As you probably already know, I'm in the U.S. myself as well... just living on the wrong side of the clock.

But if you can pass the word to your higher ups that if you can at least make frequent posts that say "we are still communicating with our technical team"... it just gives the outward appearance of something getting done to the point where some of the frustration encountered might be allayed... except for internet misanthropes... lol.

 

[stpvoice]

Yes, I'm trying to push for an announcement.

Edit:
Ask and you shall receive. http://x10hosting.com/forums/news-announcements/159909-stoli-issue.html#post824282

 

[stpvoice]

Stoli should be fixed now.

 

[-GH0ST-]

I read it all because I agree. Nobody answered my question of how long it will be until cPanel and websites are back up.

Yet another impossible request. For the staff to come right out and say, oh yeah... it'll be back up in 3 hours isn't just bad business, it's a stab in the dark. Unless there's a server farm right where the admins are (which I doubt - because that's not typically how it works) then they have to communicate with the folks running the server farm and so on. So you see, it's impossible to get this information at this point.

Go outside, call a friend, chill out. It'll be back, and sides, look at it this way, I just made my account just as this issue began, so at least you had the ability to affect your site prior to this, I'm still waiting to simply gain access so I can then begin the build process. In short, keep your pants on dude.

 

[eye2fly]

Unforunately, stoli is not online atm.

 

[Livewire]

It's running slow here but it is loading again, there's still going to be the temporary downtime at times.

 

[Interscopia]

I do agree GH0ST. I mean, it'll be fixed quickly, and it is a free server.

If you are looking for more reliability, just go premium. That's what you are paying for, faster and better support, as paid hosting has a dedicated team to help you.

 

[Corey]

When a person is experiencing an outage, being upsold only adds to the frustration. Imagine it this way: Say your power is out, and when you call the power company, they say: "We understand you are having issues, but for only 19.99 more, we can give you more MwH." Great... when power is up and running.

I think a better analogy would be you're getting power for free, it goes out and you call. They say: "We understand you're having issues, but for $19.99 we can guarantee no outages." See the difference between being upsold when you're not paying for anything vs being upsold when you're paying for something and not getting what you're paying for?

The people upselling you are not paid to do so, they do not get anything. They are pretty much saying if you want guaranteed service there is the option to pay for it.