Comments on: Bluehost’s Bad Attitude: Customer Service 101

By: May

May — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:02:20 +0000

Yes. Bluehost customer service is the shittiest. They seemed to have hired a bunch of retards.

By: Donny Bahama

Donny Bahama — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:49:45 +0000

Just curious, but couldn’t you simply add a second blog to the primary domain and (frame redirect) forward the new domain to the second blog? That way you’re logging in via SSL to both blogs, I think…?

By: Carlo

Carlo — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:49:36 +0000

Interesting.
You wrote that
”
After much help from Tom Vilot, I was able to get the Admin-SSL Wordpress plugin working for Contentious.com.
”

Could you please write a few lines to describe how you got it? It may be quite useful. Thanks!

By: doug

doug — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:38:59 +0000

Just for the record:

Despite the uncanny similarities of our notes, I am not Pierre!

By: contentious.com - Finally, a Constructive Response from Bluehost

contentious.com - Finally, a Constructive Response from Bluehost — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:20:56 +0000

[...] I wrote about a spectacularly unpleasant and unhelpful message I received in response to a query I sent to [...]

By: Jim Turner

Jim Turner — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 02:52:52 +0000

This is actually very common. The person actually responding is probably the same guy that developed the site and the same guy that keeps the servers running etc. They only have a few people and none of them are about the customer. They are about the back end inner workings. They never speak to humans and they rarely see daylight. They have lost any skills they may have had to begin with. Now when an issue like this comes up they are not focused on the front end or user. I see many companies like this and it really pays to have a trained person. They should really Hire Doug. Good response.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 01:13:00 +0000

I liked bluehost at first, not least because they have emacs pre-installed

But this is ridiculous. The tone of the reply was just plain rude.

I completely, 100% agree with Doug with regard to the ‘form letter’ email that should have been sent. Sure, it sounds like a form letter. I have received those before, and I have actually appreciated them. It lets me know that at *LEAST* they have received what I sent.

But I particularly like his suggestion that they provide some free trial-offer solutions.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:42:06 +0000

Dreamhost! So friendly!

By: Karoli

Karoli — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:25:56 +0000

I don’t know who is managing Bluehost’s customer service, but I agree with you that this is truly outrageous, and it sounds like the response I’m used to getting from IT guys who think users have no brains or knowledge.

Doug’s suggestion above is a great one and exactly what someone in their customer service department should be setting up.

I’ve been in a service industry for more than 30 years, and that sort of reply is a manager’s nightmare. I’d suggest calling their support number and getting a manager on the line. They may not be able to do what you request, but they should surely be able to find an adequate and fair compromise that satisfies you far more than this lame reply.

By: doug

doug — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:03:42 +0000

So true.

So many businesses do commerce on the internet and yet there is a widespread lack of polite (even short form letter) responses to what must be common requests/problems. I have found this to be especially true in the web hosting industry, where you have basically have only geeks running customer and tech support.

Just thinking off the top of my head, why not email something like this within 24 hours:

Amy,

Thanks for contacting us.

We apologize for the trouble you’ve been having setting up the Wordpress plug-in. At this time we don’t offer SSL ability on add-on domains. Unfortunately, this means that the Wordpress plug-in won’t work on the add-on domain.

To facilitate secure connections to your blog on the add-on domain here are a couple options: [insert free trial offer or some upsell]

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

[Name]
Level 1 Support Engineer
Bluehost.com

As a business you would have a system in place that would then kick this support request into a queue of feature requests that (1) gets reviewed when additional features are considered, and (2) if enough similar requests get made then a polite form response is written and specific plan offerings (free trial, upsell, etc) are put together.

But, who knows, maybe Bluehost has such a system in place, and what you got was the first response from a customer unfriendly geek, and they will address future questions better…