Customer Service Hall of Shame

[Sparky]

Newbie to this board, hope you don't mind me sharing an experience I recently had with a hosting reseller, and a suggestion for how to jumpstart your business.

Looking for an example of how NOT to handle your customers? Check out NCServ.

Kris Keele at NCServ recently decided to "upgrade" to DirectAdmin from cPanel and move all his customers to new servers. As one of their customers for the last 6 months, I was perplexed when my sites were suddenly offline, so I opened a support ticket.

Big mistake.

Here's the helpful response I got from the customer service oriented tech reps at NCServ
"With over 1500 customers moved in the last month we have had about 20 that claim to have never received information, didn't understand or just didn't do as instructed and asked. Those are the only ones that have had issues also. If you did not receive something then you need to make sure our domains are whitelisted in your mail servers as all Resellers received private instructions... Your site appears to be resolving properly."
Hmmm. Well, none of the messages I received said anything about a new IP addy, and believe me friends, it wasn't an issue of whitelisting. The minor detail of letting people with custom nameservers know that their IP's would be changing didn't seem too important to the Kris Keele and Co.

However, about 24 hours after initially reporting my sites offline, I did get a reply from NCServ support letting me know the correct IP address to access DirectAdmin. So I checked out the new panel.

The NCServ web site lists the (Fantastico) auto-installer as part of their Reseller Hosting Package along with the following scripts:
E-Commerce (OSCommerce, Zen Cart)
Blogs (b2evolution, Nucleus, WordPress)
Discussion Boards (phpBB2, SMF)
Customer Support (Crafty Syntax, and more)
Portals/CMS (Joomla, Mambo, and more)

Unfortunately, if you had a Wordpress blog, OSCommerce site, or phpBB forum running on NCServ, it's gone. "Unable to establish database connection" kind of gone. Since that's the kind of sites I run, you can imagine I immediately asked "WTF?"

Here's the reply I got from Kris Keele
"What you are paying for is hosting service, the freebies are give as a FREEBIE we are under no obligation to support them or give you a time frame of when Installatron will be made available to the public. With the posts you keep making I am reluctant to help you any further, you may take your hosting package somewhere else."
Excellent reply, don't you think? I mean really. Belongs in the Customer Service Hall of Shame.

Instead of fixing the problem and helping me get my sites back online, the helpful staff at NCServ decided instead to belittle me and simply refuse to provide the services I was paying for. When I took offense, what was the ultimate response? "Your fired." My sites were deleted and my access to DirectAdmin denied... I'm locked out until I write a letter apologizing to Kris and his crew for my attitude.

That's right. In the through-the-looking glass world at NCServ, the paying customers are supposed to apologize for the company's rudeness.

Now here's a suggestion for any enterprising host out there. A nameserver report from domaintools can show you the 600 or so domains hosted at NCServ. Either pull up the domain range, 65.18.112.0 - 65.18.127.255, or the nameserver, ns1.ncserv.com

How many of their customers do you think are just like me? Pissed off enough to switch hosts if someone were to make 'em an offer.

[data-hostdirect]

hey, sorry to hear bout that, geeesseee, thats very bad, ive had a few disasters with hosts before now. a lot of them were related to server transfer, from that it seems all they wanted was to get rid of you!

[Feather]

This is no way to do business or talk to your customers. A web host providing slow support or poor support is one thing however not knowing what your doing and being rude to your customers is disgusting.

I suggest doing bit of research into your next host before going with them.

[Coldgansta]

My sites were deleted and my access to DirectAdmin denied... I'm locked out until I write a letter apologizing to Kris and his crew for my attitude.

That is outrageous behaviour from any hosting provider.

That's right. In the through-the-looking glass world at NCServ, the paying customers are supposed to apologize for the company's rudeness..

Any support staff should never be rude to there clients no mater what.


How many of their customers do you think are just like me? Pissed off enough to switch hosts if someone were to make 'em an offer.

If they treat most of there clients like this they will soon be out of business.


"What you are paying for is hosting service, the freebies are give as a FREEBIE we are under no obligation to support them or give you a time frame of when Installatron will be made available to the public. With the posts you keep making I am reluctant to help you any further, you may take your hosting package somewhere else."

Even free account holders should be treat with respect.
If you have 50 free account holders within your hosting business and you treat them all like crap and offer no support and dell there accounts at the slightest thing. Then that could well lead to 1-50 bad reviews for your company=Less sign-ups in the future.

I have free account holders on my servers and treat them the same as paying clients.
NCServ= HALL OF SHAME

[ReadyRick]

Someone is in need of some serious customer service skills. :banana:

[G4br13lle-HD]

Gosh ... I am really sorry for your experience as it is very bad... Guess they don't really know how to run a true web hosting business...

Just ensure you do many researches in deciding your next hosts, checking reviews and ask in web hosting forums will help.. :)

[Qch-justin]

i would leave them now... what kind of provider holds accounts at random?

[trans-it]

Hi, I'm not defending this behaviour and personally I don't know this company but like the others I don`t think anyone should be treated like this. Are they members of this forum?

Regards Terry

[She-Bear]

Hi Sparky,

So sorry to hear of your troubles. I can certainly relate, sad to say.

It happens like this more and more, too - bad hosts and nasty customer service. Rather, customer dis-service!

Since you seemed to have lost a lot of your info anyway, I would be of the opinion to find another host also - a more honest one (a mod on this forum, ldcdc (http://hosthideout.com/member.php?u=2017), offers a review site of hosts that might be helpful to you). It doesn't seem that you got the services you paid for, am I correct in that assumption? So, perhaps since this company has not provided you the services you signed up for, maybe you can ask for a pro-rated refund? And if they are not amenable to that, then you can continue to do what you've done here - report their behavior. There are lots of venues for reviewing a host, and perhaps by doing so you might save another unfortunate person from the bad experience you have undergone.

As an aside: I appreciate the way you did your post also - informative and you showed some examples of exchanges... that is an excellent way to post a thread, good job.

[charlier]

Wow, is all I can really say. If your migrating your users, it's my opinion that it's on you to make sure it's working. And you should be happy that they are willing to even bother to open a support request instead of just walking.

As for just telling you to take your business elsewhere is something I've never heard of. Who gives away business?

Thanks for sharing, I'm printing this and hanging it in my office.

[gvchosting]

there are quite alot of places like this i got scammed once luckaly paypal gave me my money back.

[billiam2003]

That is some pretty bad customer service. I am sorry that happened to you. I belive that a client should be treated the way I would like ot be treated during that issue or problem. So I try to treat the client as if I were getting the reply for support or what not. I also believe in a fast response. I do not think that paying clients should have to way more then a couple hours to hear back from tech support.

[supportfacility]

Sorry to see that this happened to you. Best of luck to choose your new hosting provider.

[RiptideSolution]

After my experience i recently had I would have to say LimeStone Servers has to be put on the Hall of Shame. I now, that may shock some peoples systems, but sweet god it was the worse cutomer service experience I have ever had.

[TechGuy1]

Customer service is the most important aspect in a hosting company in my opinion

[jeff-ay]

no need to mention.
surely your customer will upset if couldn't get you!

[Universal]

Wow, that's really bad. I've read many bad reviews but never heard of any company such as this.