Dec 2, 2007
It's now 24 hours since I submitted a top priority support ticket to SmartyHost telling them my website is down. SmartyHost haven't responded, and the website is still down.First, an apology
I hate to post this kind of thing on the blog (I'm mainly wanting to talk about positive things), but if SmartyHost won't respond to my urgent ticket in their own system, perhaps they will consider responding to a public cry for help.Here's why I'm upset.
- Customer emails me asking why his site is offline.
- I visit website and see big defaced message saying "Your site has gone over it's disk space limit".
- I didn't get any notification of this, it just happened.
- I don't see the notification in my spam filter.
- I submit a critical ticket through their system.
- I phone the number on their website. But it's an Australian toll free 1300 number and I live in New Zealand, so the call is blocked.
- I spend an hour searching for an international number for SmartyHost. Nothing in the white pages, yellow pages, or on Google.
- I attempt to login to the FTP and reduce the amount of data, but my password isn't working (it's been several months since I logged in)
- The system blocks me from getting to the reset password area so I'm unable to reset the password, and therefore unable to get into FTP.
- I try to get into the database to chop some space there, but that's "on hold" too.
- I email client in Australia asking him to call SmartyHost on their toll free number.
And something like this has happened before.
Common sense
Last time they cut off the account without warning, I managed to speak with someone and get a promise that they would notify me next time before chopping off service.If I had to login every month to check disk usage on every website I have, I'd be out of business. I do rely on web hosts using common sense when it comes to these notifications, and SmartyHost have again demonstrated a lack of common sense.
It's also quite likely that I have been spoiled by WebDrive and Dreamhost, whose service has been quite spectacular.
Anyone else find it quite disturbing that an urgent support ticket can go unnoticed for 24 hours? Just because it's the weekend doesn't make it acceptable. There is every likelyhood that this ticket won't be seen until Monday morning - I'll update this post if this happens.
Update: Yep, it's now Monday morning and I just got a response to the ticket. That's a little over 48 hours for the "critical" ticket.
SmartyHost
SmartyHost - Feel free to respond to my ticket, or here. I'd really just like the website back online, if that's not asking too much.
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11 Comments
One of my clients websites went down, but I was willing to drive a 60km round trip to the office on a Sunday to sort it out! I work for a small ISP and we have a 24 hr support phone for that reason. Some of the cut-price hosts just don't have the right philosophy/business practice.
Happy new year!
That's really unacceptable!
Now you got your ticket!
I recently tried hosting with smartyhost...total waste of time.
If you're with them, get out.
I got a full refund on the grounds that I was not provided the service that was advertised.Shonky with a capital S.
I have had a horrible experience with my web host called Startlogic based in the USA. My site was down for 32 hours! The support staff refuse to give any information about the cause and trying to speak with anyone on the phone or via their live chat is an exercise in patience!
If you are interested in my experience (ongoing as I speak!) have a look at:
Startlogic: The Outage Saga Continues!
I concur with this very shoddy treatment by Smartyhost.
They are complete unprofessional in their complaint handling when my smarthost sites went down for 3 days after they screwed up an upgrade that was not authorised.
They refuse to give any worthwhile compensation and when pushed get extremely arrogant and upset.
In my opinion you should look for another hosting company.
Yep, definitely recommend moving if you are with them still.
It was quite funny, I asked them why they didn't have an international support number on their site, stating that it was fuckin annoying that there was no way for me to contact them from outside of Australia.
They responded by giving me an international phone number to call, which is not much use AFTER having gone through this whole drama. A logical thing to do would be to take 5 minutes out of their day to add the international number to the website - I see it's still not there.
No after hours service with smartyhost...I hope they give my client a refund so we can happily move elsewhere to host the .com.au domain.
I guess the problem comes with so-called cheap hosting.
Does anyone have a recommendation for an alternative hosting company for a .au domain ?
Don't do it!!! Smartyhost has to be the worst hosting / services company in town.
Is is worth saving a few bucks, but your site is constantly down, support doesn't seem to care less, changes made & you aren't notified. You are off air for the whole weekend from 3pm Friday.
This has happened to our small business in the last 6 weeks! If your time is not valuable & you can live with this sort of aggravation then Smartyhost is for you
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This entire situation is unacceptable.