The Good - to be better

[steelcatcpu]

Hello,

So far I have been impressed with the actual service that is being supplied - I have looked around and x10hosting comes highly recommended.

I am a novice and am looking forward to improving my knowledge as I expand my site.

That being said, I gave my email address during registration and even made an email account attached to my site as an admin and its been working nicely.

I am curious how come a Notice of possible suspension wasn't sent first to any of those addresses prior to an 'ads' suspension which placed the site in limbo for 4 days.

If I had known of the possible error I would have made every effort to fix it - thereby averting any disruption in service as well as saving time of at least three individuals whom I dealt with regarding the suspension of service.

I find that a proactive approach could have saved hassle on both ends, which would in the end save money (or at least valuable time) for all of those involved. Even a form-email stating the error would have been a good deterrent in this situation, especially since generation of those would be relatively easy.

Please take these thoughts into consideration.

Thank you,
CATCPU

http://catcpu.x10hosting.com/

 

[wisdomtool]

Yeap agree, my first suspension caught me by surprise thought I was unsuspend very quickly, maybe an automated email say 3 days before would help.

My site host a not popular forum, so sometimes can easily forgot to login to the x10 forum once every two weeks. If such notification can be done, that can really help ease my task of tracking.

 

[GamingX]

Thank you for the comments. Keep up the hosting.

 

[Chris73]

edited: The customer is always right.

 

[steelcatcpu]

That's not the issue at all.

Your statement is not of the mindset that people can both be aware of a policy, attempt to comply to it in good will, and yet make an error because they are human.

Its in these situations where your customer service lacks because they repeat the mantra "you should have read the policy".

This is a very poor customer service stance and if you worked for me as one of my reps I'd have pulled you aside to explain how it can cost us business. If you would have continued to say things with that mindset to my potential customers I would probably let you go and feel no worse, because I first came to you to let you know of the error.

Technical support nowadays is not all about 'fixing the issue' because really - that can be done anywhere, its about Making A Great Impression Count (M.A.G.I.C.)

The stance taken by you leads me to believe that you don't care that I'm a human on this end and I likely would have a similarly bad experience if I went 'gold' and paid for an upgrade to my account - that is if my site took off at all.

In all - the stance may have cost you a potential sale from me - who knows of the countless other potential sales this stance is costing your enterprise.

 

[Brandon]

Again continuing what Chris73 said, why would we warn you when we in fact laid out in clear print you need to have ads on your site within one week after your account was created.

We are warning you for a policy you agreed to adhere to when you signed up for the account?

Also, for the amount of accounts we suspended per day, it would take forever to warn users first before suspending them. We have over 14,000 free accounts that need to be checked, we suspend a few hundred per day for any reason. I don't think a warning of suspension is needed.

Now about the part of reading the policy, we have it clearly in there that ads must be placed on your pages, there shouldn't even be any 'you should have read the policy', as I am assuming you already read it.

I'm not sure if my views are the same as others, or even what you meant, but that's my input on this problem.

 

[Corey]

Steelcatcpu,

I 100% understand where you are coming from. When we were smaller we used to run the exact way you're talking about, the problem is we were taken advantage of. I wouldn't have time to explain everything we've learned over the past 3 years but I can assure you the way we runs things now is the reason were #1 on a lot of sites.

Our goal here is not to convert people to paid hosting, 99% of the people looking for free hosting can neither afford nor have the desire to upgrade. With 400+ new sign-ups a day it's impossible to provide the level of support you're talking about because almost all of those people do not take it upon themselves to answer their own questions by searching the forums or reading the rules. It would be impossible to pay staff members to hold every members hand, so sadly we do have to be kind of harsh towards the free hosting members so that they learn to help themselves and follow the rules. I can also assure you, our paid members get top priority and are treated very differently and I'm positive they would all agree with the personal level of service we provide when they have issues.

Just for an example why we run things the way they are... the Email option you're speaking of. We tried that before too, warning people before they're suspended, etc... Since we have so many members, a good number of them must have reported that Email as SPAM to Yahoo and AOL which got us blocked from sending Emails to Yahoo or AOL for a few days. You can imagine the headache that caused, no one was getting confirmation Emails for sign-ups, or responses when they Emailed us, thinking we were ignoring them...

So, to summarize, we've been around for 3 years and are one of the most popular free hosts. We've tested and tried many different methods, this is currently the one that is working best for us. We're always very open to receiving feedback, if we can improve something we will do it to the best of our ability. But what you are suggesting has already been tried before

-Corey
Please excuse grammatical errors, no time to proof read now!

 

[GamingX]

Apart from what Corey said, we always assume that the person has read the TOS and there is nothing more foolish than reading the TOS and not following it. It is on the basis of the ads itself that people choose the adenhanced plan. They perfectly know that they have chosen the adenhanced plan and they are required to place ads. The word adenhanced itself speaks about the condition.

 

[steelcatcpu]

There are different mind-sets on customer service methods - and I recognize your situation and the frustration it could cause which would lead to your ultimate decision (and mantra).

However, I'd like to help so - let me add a little bit more before I shut up and step off the soap box.

The largest factor in businesses that falter after initial success is their loss of perspective on prospective clients.
"we got too large, so customer service had to suffer"
"the major ISP blocked us, so we had to stop giving warnings" (god, I hate AOL)

In many occasions - this holds some truth, however, we know you are a talented group of individuals who are capable of solving this problem without loss to quality. The work around and possibly even a way of improving efficiency exists.

How about this ~ an idea. Just to get the creative juices flowing.

If an adenhanced client opens an admin@name.xhosting.com email account - which is controlled by your team - that you can give them a 2 day warning before a suspension if they go through the bother of setting it up themselves and setting that option up.

This can be handled by a macro or have them have the option of signing themselves up for that notification on their account control panel (which makes it their responsibility- and less work for your team).

This way - both problems are handled.
1. People who goof up can be given warnings.
2. No email bouncing, because its internal email
3. People who care enough to go through the trouble get warnings - people who care may be more likely to become customers.
4. People who don't care don't get the warning, no extra effort is wasted on such people. (So you can focus on those who really are interested in your product)

This solves all the major points you mentioned & allows you to concert your sales efforts without having to actually pay for advertising. (Separating quality leads from the chaff)

If you want to retire rich - sell your company and make every employee capable of early retirement then you will need to produce the next "big thing" by standing head and shoulder above all others... so tall that yahoo, google, or other big boys will buy you up (while tripping over each other to do so).

Ok - done. Play ball.

Again, I really do enjoy the product so far - its helping me learn a bit about web development. I don't really have to work for a while - and I like expanding my horizons. For that I thank you for the free service. I'm a frugal kind of guy.

Later,
catcpu

 

[Corey]

This is a valid idea. We can definitely look into making an additional system where users opt in to get certain alerts like suspension information. We have a few things at the top of our list but it can certainly be added on.

-Corey