Alligatorsneeze

I've been with Hostgator since around August of 2004. I signed up with a reseller account to use as hosting for both myself and clients. My problems began about a year ago with them, sometime in February or March of 2005 when one of my sites was getting too much traffic. Now, I'm no fool. I understand that shared hosting oversells and anyone who uses too many resources, even if still within their quota, gets kicked off. What really shocked me, though, was no warning. Not even emailing me after they had done it. Nothing, nada. I found out by a member of the site that was suspended, someone I didn't even know, tracking down my phone number and calling me.

I went to a dedicated server after that, but I kept my Hostgator account for the sites that were already hosted on it - about three client sites, as well as this site right here.

Two days ago I come to post a blog and hmm, I get the suspended page. That's weird. I check my email - no notices there. I log into their billing system - nope, account not past due. What the heck? So I go to their online support chat and ask them what's going on. I'm informed that I haven't paid my invoice. What invoice? I have no invoice. I check my bank and I see that I in fact have not paid them since January. But man, I could've swore I put it on automatic pay. And hey, if there's no invoice, how can I pay anyway?! Isn't this a problem on their end? They tell me I need to email sales.

Okay... so I email sales. 12 hours later, they email me back and inform me I have an invoice, charging me all the way back to October. Uhhh? I KNOW I paid in January, I have it in my bank statement. I check their billing system, and they don't even have a backlog of that payment. Something really funky is going on now. Their system is screwed up, but no matter who I talk to (and oh, I've talked to everyone) nobody seems to know what's going on. Sales doesn't talk to support, online support doesn't talk to phone support, so who the hell knows.

Strangely enough, while on the phone with a support guy who informed me I just need to pay the invoice and then dispute it afterwards, I received an email from a different support person that my account had been reactivated, and thank you for the payment. Whaaat? Uh, whatever. At this point I'm just going to take what I can get and run. Now I at least have backups of all my sites and am moving them.

It's just astounding how bad a service this has been. I even posted on their forums about it, in their "Customer Review" section, and it gets MOVED to another section because I can't post a bad customer review simply because I haven't paid. HELLO. I WANT TO PAY, JUST NOT MORE THAN I OWE. I NEED AN INVOICE.

Other problems I've had? Well, let's see. About a week ago my sites reverted back a day and I could get no explanation on why. I had JUST looked at my access logs the day before, happy about a new site that was already getting hits, and the next day - logs are back to a day before. Weird. I contact online support (bad idea, since it's always horrible support) and they have no idea. I guess I imagined things?

UPDATE 4-20-07: Well, they finally just simply decided to take their bogus bonus from my credit card that was filed with them, despite the fact that it's incorrect, I didn't approve of the payment, or anything else. I've never seen such bad service, support in my life. I can't even be bothered to dispute it it's just so amazingly horrible.

UPDATE 10-18-07: I'm still with them, why? I don't know - so lazy when it comes to my own websites. Anyway, so a couple days ago I notice my "main" reseller account, the site is completely missing. Email is no longer working. I log into Cpanel to see that it appears my whole site has disappeared. Cute!