When selecting a webhost be sure to consider the customer service

April 27, 2009 by Curt Siters

We recently changed hosting companies due to very poor customer service. We ran into a situation where we needed their help, or more specifically some information from the ftp logs, and they were unwilling or unable to give us the information we needed to figure out what was going on. I will cover this in a later article.

iPower was our old host and I will not recommend them for several reasons:

• FTP (file uploading) drops the connection sporadically when uploading many files at once
• the shared hosting servers are slow
• whenever you encounter a serious problem tech support is unwilling or unable to help and then they only give the standard answers - operator error and such
• their level 1 tech support is poorly trained

 Our problems started almost immediately after we switched from another company to them and grew worse over time. It wasn't until we switched to our present company (who is more than happy to help us) that we discovered the cause of our problem.

I have working with computers since the late 1980's and know quite a bit about them, including websites, website hosting, networking and more. I don't consider myself a guru, but I am capable of teaching others how to get the most out of their computers.

I am not a Windows fan - I want computers (and operating systems) that will last well past a five year amortization, which is why I prefer Mac. My twelve year old G3 decided  to go on the fritz (I haven't gotten around to getting it back up and running yet) and I had to switch over to a Windows computer. This is when our problems started.

I didn't know it, as I tend to be very careful, but I had picked up a trojan horse, and it took switching to our present host, GoDaddy , to discover this. It took them a few days to get us copies of our ftp logs, but when they did I discovered that the problem was indeed on my end and I took immediate steps to rectify the situation.

As an example of how serious GoDaddy takes things I recently needed some information to get a website up and the level 1 tech was unable to give it to me (I don't think they understood what I was asking for) and asked to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor gave it to me almost instantly, sent me an email copy of it and told me they would be retraining the tech because it was something they should have known.

Without that information I would never have been able to get the site up and running again.

So, before you decide on a web host, talk to the tech support. Ask some simple questions, ask some tough questions. If you don't know what to ask, get a friend to come up with some questions.

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Curt Siters is an Independent Associate for Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. He is also aYoung Living Essential Oils Independent distributor and publishes articles on YourWebReference and at TheVeryEssence. He also does web work such as website design, website maintenance and SEO for websites.

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