• 25 Comments
  • February 27th 2007

How to lose a customer with the least amount of effort

Middle Finger

1) Don’t provide any telephone support

2) When they’re forced to use chat support in their browser, make them wait for 45 minutes to acknowledge their presence

3) Make sure the support rep can barely understand English and is fluent in copying and pasting prewritten responses

4) If you can’t help the customer, blame others and make them call them

5) If your customer manages to find a phone number for the company, make sure every employee in the office refuses to help them, directs them to the chat support that they already wasted half their morning on, and refuse to refund a single cent from the monthly fee they were charged only two days ago

6) Celebrate the loss of a customer and see the effectiveness of blogging in how quickly the true face of your company is shared with the public.

Hosting Zoom

Thank you Reseller Zoom, really, I appreciate all your support. MediaTemple, here I come.

For future search result optimization and those that missed the subject of my anger, let’s throw in an alternative title, “6 reasons why you should never use Reseller Zoom”.

  • http://www.letutor.com Aaron

    Travis,

    I don’t understand why hosting companies act like they are the cable company. I mean the cable company can afford to treat you like crap because you don’t have any options.

    Hosting companies are a dime a dozen so I don’t understand why they just won’t bother helping the people that pay their bills.

    add Network Solutions to your list. They are a little better but still provide bad customer service, lie, and won’t refund any amount of a 1 year paid hosting package that you activated 1 week ago.

  • http://www.letutor.com Aaron

    Travis,

    I don’t understand why hosting companies act like they are the cable company. I mean the cable company can afford to treat you like crap because you don’t have any options.

    Hosting companies are a dime a dozen so I don’t understand why they just won’t bother helping the people that pay their bills.

    add Network Solutions to your list. They are a little better but still provide bad customer service, lie, and won’t refund any amount of a 1 year paid hosting package that you activated 1 week ago.

  • http://www.younggogetter.com/ Travis

    I don’t think any company has the right to act like that. Cable, telephone, internet, they should all have a responsive support system.

    Yeah, Network Solutions is the same, except they did have telephone support when I had to call them for my client last month.

    It’s such a shame that everything is so materialistic and none of the higher powers in companies ever get to see this ridiculous service on the frontline.

  • http://www.younggogetter.com/ Travis

    I don’t think any company has the right to act like that. Cable, telephone, internet, they should all have a responsive support system.

    Yeah, Network Solutions is the same, except they did have telephone support when I had to call them for my client last month.

    It’s such a shame that everything is so materialistic and none of the higher powers in companies ever get to see this ridiculous service on the frontline.

  • http://www.younggogetter.com/ Eric

    These people ripped me off and I was just about to post about them myself. You took the words right out of my mouth Travis!

  • http://www.younggogetter.com/ Eric

    These people ripped me off and I was just about to post about them myself. You took the words right out of my mouth Travis!

  • http://www.younggogetter.com/ Travis

    Unfortunately, I don’t have the time today to transfer to MT. Hopefully tomorrow or the next day.

    Right now The Ad Feed is offline and has been all night because of the Zoom assholes.

  • http://www.younggogetter.com/ Travis

    Unfortunately, I don’t have the time today to transfer to MT. Hopefully tomorrow or the next day.

    Right now The Ad Feed is offline and has been all night because of the Zoom assholes.

  • http://www.letutor.com Aaron

    I agree no company should act like that but oligopolistic companies can kind of get away with it.

    Fortunately hosting companies haven’t banded together to get legislation passed to limit our rights.

    Good luck.

  • http://www.letutor.com Aaron

    I agree no company should act like that but oligopolistic companies can kind of get away with it.

    Fortunately hosting companies haven’t banded together to get legislation passed to limit our rights.

    Good luck.

  • http://aroussi.com/ Ran

    Same here with HZ! I couldn’t agree more. They moved my sites to another server last week WITHOUT MOVING THE ACTUAL FILES!!!

    MediaTemple, Please don’t fail me…

  • http://aroussi.com/ Ran

    Same here with HZ! I couldn’t agree more. They moved my sites to another server last week WITHOUT MOVING THE ACTUAL FILES!!!

    MediaTemple, Please don’t fail me…

  • http://www.younggogetter.com/ Travis

    I had gotten the e-mail a couple weeks back saying they were going to move the server and I had to change the ip addresses at my domain registrar.

    So I did that. I wake up this morning and half of my websites are down.

    After speaking with the first rep he/she said the same thing happened as to you Ran, my files were left on the old server which they shut down for good last night.

    A copy is on the new server but my domains have yet to redirect to it and they can’t help me.

    I’ve lost a few thousand page views today and have no way of explaining to my viewers what happened until this gets worked out.

  • http://www.younggogetter.com/ Travis

    I had gotten the e-mail a couple weeks back saying they were going to move the server and I had to change the ip addresses at my domain registrar.

    So I did that. I wake up this morning and half of my websites are down.

    After speaking with the first rep he/she said the same thing happened as to you Ran, my files were left on the old server which they shut down for good last night.

    A copy is on the new server but my domains have yet to redirect to it and they can’t help me.

    I’ve lost a few thousand page views today and have no way of explaining to my viewers what happened until this gets worked out.

  • http://www.custercapital.com TheBillfold

    Well said, Travis. I especially can relate to point # 3!

  • http://www.custercapital.com TheBillfold

    Well said, Travis. I especially can relate to point # 3!

  • Pingback: How support should be provided -- Young Go Getter

  • http://www.ecwebcreation.com Richard Brown

    I too experienced VERY frustrating problems with Reseller Zoom. The tech support guys were so lazy! They wanted me to do all of the work to transfer from my previous provider. It states on their website that they will take care of all this! They just tell you to do it all, and they are so rude about it too. I actually threw this blog in their face! I am also switching to Media Temple but currently they are not taking on new Grid Server accounts (as of 8am March 20th)

  • http://www.ecwebcreation.com Richard Brown

    I too experienced VERY frustrating problems with Reseller Zoom. The tech support guys were so lazy! They wanted me to do all of the work to transfer from my previous provider. It states on their website that they will take care of all this! They just tell you to do it all, and they are so rude about it too. I actually threw this blog in their face! I am also switching to Media Temple but currently they are not taking on new Grid Server accounts (as of 8am March 20th)

  • http://www.ecwebcreation.com Richard Brown

    Hi all, i tried out Media Temple, the customer service was very good but the hosting plans were very complicated and had a lot of hidden ad-ons. I started out thinking that i would only be paying $25 per month but it became apparent that i would need to spend over $85 per month. After much searching i found this hosting provider:

    Reseller Hosting (https://secure.hostnine.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=richabrown)

    Their rates are very good and they offer great customer service with lots of additional feature such as ModernBill to help keep track and bill your customers. ModernBill has much better reviews than WHM Autopilot provided by Media Temple.

    Also if you use the discount code “h9″ you get 50% off your first purchase, sign up for the year and your save ALOT of money!!!
    (https://secure.hostnine.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=richabrown)

    Just thought i would share this with you all

    Rich

  • http://www.ecwebcreation.com Richard Brown

    Hi all, i tried out Media Temple, the customer service was very good but the hosting plans were very complicated and had a lot of hidden ad-ons. I started out thinking that i would only be paying $25 per month but it became apparent that i would need to spend over $85 per month. After much searching i found this hosting provider:

    Reseller Hosting (https://secure.hostnine.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=richabrown)

    Their rates are very good and they offer great customer service with lots of additional feature such as ModernBill to help keep track and bill your customers. ModernBill has much better reviews than WHM Autopilot provided by Media Temple.

    Also if you use the discount code “h9″ you get 50% off your first purchase, sign up for the year and your save ALOT of money!!!
    (https://secure.hostnine.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=richabrown)

    Just thought i would share this with you all

    Rich

  • http://www.beyondmadisonavenue.com Danny

    Ha! I’ve written up a similar experience with cingular over at BMA:

    http://www.beyondmadisonavenue.com/2006/08/customer-service-is-officially-an-oxymoron/

  • http://www.beyondmadisonavenue.com Danny

    Ha! I’ve written up a similar experience with cingular over at BMA:

    http://www.beyondmadisonavenue.com/2006/08/customer-service-is-officially-an-oxymoron/

  • http://musiciansites.net Aidan

    I too am experiencing problems with Hosting Zoom and I’m starting to look out for an alternative. My problem has been their mail server. My emails are constantly getting blocked because their server is getting flagged for spam. I contacted them about it a number of times and they have responded by getting it de-listed from the blocking lists but it keeps getting relisted so they are not addressing the core problem. They responded fairly quickly to my first emails about the problem but I got no response to my last 2 emails and I cannot send emails from that account for the last 2 days.

    They are very cheap but it starts to get expensive real fast in terms of the amount of my own time I have to waste reporting problems and the reliability really sucks.

    I looked at the link provided by Richard Brown but since it is an affiliate link I cannot really trust it as a genuine recommendation.

  • http://musiciansites.net Aidan

    I too am experiencing problems with Hosting Zoom and I’m starting to look out for an alternative. My problem has been their mail server. My emails are constantly getting blocked because their server is getting flagged for spam. I contacted them about it a number of times and they have responded by getting it de-listed from the blocking lists but it keeps getting relisted so they are not addressing the core problem. They responded fairly quickly to my first emails about the problem but I got no response to my last 2 emails and I cannot send emails from that account for the last 2 days.

    They are very cheap but it starts to get expensive real fast in terms of the amount of my own time I have to waste reporting problems and the reliability really sucks.

    I looked at the link provided by Richard Brown but since it is an affiliate link I cannot really trust it as a genuine recommendation.