Young Holly

I began to have problems with Velcom last week which have been getting progressively worse, and the customer service has been appalling. I am looking for a new host starting today.

I would like some recommendations, please. And I'd also like to share my experience with others so that they can avoid Velcom.

So, I just launched my own website. I bought hosting from Velcom. About a couple of weeks ago, the site went live, and I had a few customers sign up.

Then about a week later, the site went down for about an hour. I don't know why, and since it was only an hour, I let it go. Then it happened again a few days later, this time for over 3 hours.

I had emailed a bunch of people I knew that I thought would be interested in signing up. One person emailed me back, and said, "I'd love to see your site, but it's not loading."

The site was down for several hours. I don't know how long exactly. More than 3 hours, and less than 10. I never received a message from Velcom informing me that there was a problem, so I didn't even know until my friend emailed me back to say it wasn't working. I submitted a tech support ticket to ask why my site was down and when it would be up.

I got a message back saying that it there was a temporary problem with the server and that it was now fixed. I replied saying thank you for fixing the problem, but I want to know why there was a problem in the first place, why I wasn't informed when the problem happened, and I asked how often does this happen.

I received a message back saying: "There was a temporary problem on the server which is fixed now. We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused."

Umm..that's great, but that didn't answer any of the questions I asked. So again, I sent a message with those questions. I got this message back:

"We do apologize for the inconvenience caused to you once more. Please believe that in case of any problems we do our best to resolve them as quickly as possible. If we had any information regarding the estimated time when the issue would would be fixed we would notify you about that.

We value you as our customer and we do apologize for the inconvenience caused to you once more."

You know what? Sending apologies when what I want is answers is not the way to show me that you "value me as a customer."

So I started looking for a new host, since I could see that the customer service sucks. I wouldn't want to deal with them if a more serious problem came up. Well guess what? A more serious problem DID come up, and the customer service was EVEN WORSE this time.

Today, I went to look at my site, and my site's not there. Instead, there's a page that says "This site has been disabled. Please contact your service provider for more information."

Ok. So this is a pretty big deal. I have no idea what's going on. So instead of submitting an email complaint ticket, I decided to call them instead, thinking that this would be a faster way to solve the problem.

I call the support number. An automatic message tells me to press 1 if I require technical support. So I do. I get someone on the other end pretty much right away. "Yay, a human being!" I thought to myself. Well the human being turned out to be a customer service person. When I said that my site was not working and I didn't know why, he asked for the site address, and I gave it to him. Then he said that I would need to submit a tech support ticket online.

I said "I called this number for tech support because I didn't want to submit a complaint online. Aren't you tech support?" He said that he was customer support, and that he was not a technician and that he didn't know what the problem was or how to help me.

So at this point I'm wondering why the automatic message told me to press 1 for tech support if they don't even offer phone tech support. Apparently they only offer customer support who tells you to send an email.

So then again, I said "I called this number because the website says I will get tech support. I want to speak to tech support." And the guy I'm talking to says he can't help me.

Then I ask to speak to a manager. I get the predictable "I'm sorry, a manager isn't available right now." I said, "If you can't help me or at least let me speak to anyone else, any supervisor or manager, I'm going to take my business elsewhere."

He said he was sorry, but that there was no one else available. I told him he had lost me as a customer.

Either he was lying, and there was a manager available, or he was telling the truth and there was no superior person available. Either way is unacceptable.

Maybe some people put up with this, and maybe there are a lot of hosting companies that are like this, but frankly, when I pay someone for a service, I want to receive the service I pay for. If they say they offer something and then they can't provide it, they are lying and engaging in false advertising.

I want a hosting company that can keep my site up, and one that can provide me with satisfactory support if a problem does come up. So far, Velcom has failed me in both respects.

So now I'm looking for a new host, one that has servers in Canada or perhaps Europe, and one that ACTUALLY HAS PHONE TECH SUPPORT, or at least has good email tech support and doesn't lie about having phone tech support.

Cheers.