I was almost ready to sign up for a reseller account. That is a big decision. I plan on putting a fair amount of money into promoting my Web-hosting business, and whoever I deal with, I plan on being with a long time.
I am still waiting for a response on the chat session I instigated over an hour ago and it is 2:40 in the morning on the west coast. What would it be like during a busy time of day?
Clicking on the "Support" menu item produces a 403 page error.
There is no "Contact" selection on the menu - no phone number, no e-mail address (unless, of course, these are on the support page which I can't access).

Picture this scenario when you have an irate customer on the line wanting to know why their site has suddenly gone down. Will you lie to them, or will you tell them that you sold them a package over which you have no access, let alone control.

I am only angry because the packages are so good otherwise but this company fails in several aspects of a very important area for resellers.

THE FOLLOWING IS A LATER ADDITION TO THIS POST:
After an hour and 48 minutes, a tech support person finally came on the line. During that time, I had three e-mail correspondences with another company and decided to go with them. The reply tech support person came on the chat line wile I was responding to one of these e-mails, and I missed it. So, out of curiosity, and to give this company one last chance, I reinstigated another chat session. This time, a reply came within five minutes. Below is the entire conversation:
Name: Buddy Logan
Email: buddy@databoysoftware.com
Staff: Gleb
Date: 12 Apr 2004

Buddy Logan: Yeah - are you the only person there?
Buddy Logan: It took an hour and 48 minutes to get a response the last time, and then I missed it!
Gleb: no, I'm not. We have our support team.
Buddy Logan: Is this an unusual situation, or is this the kind of service I can expect from this company?
Gleb: what do you mean exactly?
Buddy Logan: What part of waiting for an hour and 48 minutes did you not understand?
THEN, I GOT THIS MESSAGE:
Your session has expired as your/staff browser did not respond. Please retry.

I have the feeling Gleb didn't want to deal with me. Can you blame him?

It is html chat and it means that your browser initiates and keeps connection online. That's why connection can be broken for any reason that cause your server not to query our server. Security profile change, javascript disabling, modem being hang up ,etc.

All across our site you can find our sales email. To the top 403 error means that access to the url was prohibited. It is default message your browser shows when it cannot connect to some URL or it timeouts. Since we don't configure any access restrictions to our site and it was up al the time (other people submitted trouble tickets and appeared in chat) I assume that your ISP had short time connection timeour that could be for any reason. The most common is router restart.

We have trouble ticket system as well as AIM7ICQ contacts for support

Serge -
Thank you for your reply.
I stand corrected. There indeed is a sales e-mail address on several pages. On two or three it is in the footer, and on a couple it is below the left navigation sidebar. It is not on the "Company" page or the "Support" page, (which I was finally able to get to) two places one might expect to find it. Personally, my e-mail address, as well as my local and 800 phone numbers are posted at the bottom of every page of my commercial sites. But that's just me. Somehow, I feel it's important for my customers to be able to talk to me if they want to.

I went to this forum to blow off some steam because it is very frustrating when, after 2 solid days (about 22 hours worth to be exact) of searching through the web and comparing various reseller packages, I finally find one I want, and they don't pass the final - and one of the most important - test: communication.
VERY IMPORTANT!
I provide my customers good support. I can't do that in this instance without support from you!
Tell me that once I sign up, you'll give me a phone number so that I can call if I have an irate customer on the line, and I'll sign on with you. I like your package.
It's a simple thing. The company I am with now provides that. I've called them three times and had a tech support person on the line in two to three rings.
Chances are I'll never even have to use that line, and, if I did, the conversation would probably take all of 1 minute of your time - but it would allow me to give my customer an honest answer.

I'd been looking at Hostony for a month before signing up, they were having server problems and I was a bit worried. They replaced the faulty server which eased my mind.

I emailed them with various questions and got replies back pretty promptly.I thensigned up for a special account a couple of weeks ago.

Signup was prompt and I was able to access and upload to the site straight away with the site viewable within 24 hours. (of the Dns resolving)

Yesterday I had a problem, submitted a trouble ticket and got a reply within 10 minutes. They checked everything out and I found it was my own ISP having problems.

My previous host usually took around 2 days to reply so I think in terms of customer service Hostony are doing pretty well.

Buddy, maybe you just hit a bad patch, I certainly can't complain about the level of service.

BuddyLogan

Unfortunately, we don't provide phone support.
We have ICQ/AIM/E-mail/HelpDesk/LiveChat support.

As for support hostony is one of the best Ive seen so far they have solved all of my problems. The best way to contact them is to file a support ticket or go onto the live chat.

You can leave a message in live chat if theyre not there and they will send you a response to the email adress you provided.

All companies have trouble sometimes. I think you just came in a bad time 2 in the morning is not a great time to try to get support.

If you do decide to get hostony hosting Im sure youll be glad you did.

I have had no problems with support. I have had a number of issues that they have worked on and resolved.

Dean

hostony solves problems, but in my experience they take their time doing it and often its a quick fix. Such as the reoccurring downtime, frequent "critical phpbb errors", and their slugishness in installing fantastico on my server (my current pet peeve, i've been waiting well over 2 weeks)

Sorry, bu we have Fantastico only at a few servers yet. It will be at all of our servers soon.
If you need it ASAP please Please go to the http://support.hostony.com and fill trouble ticketnd tell me your domain name and I'll transfer it to one of the servers that have Fantastico.

i did that, 2 weeks ago. It was closed by you guys

I have had to re-open a number of tickets that have been closed prematurely. I have had a number of SMTP related issues on server 17. An it is now my understanding that they are getting a new server...

Dean

It will be done as soon as possible.
Sorry for inconveniences.

I have a Hostony reseller account for 3 mos.. I now own over 25 domains.
Any trouble I have had, the support team has fixed or corrected my errors.
I'm new at using cPanel, WHM and Fantasico. Which is the majority of my problems.

And now that Hostony has made flash tutorials, things are much easier to set up.
There is a major learning curve to being a reseller. It can be very frustrating.
Yes I wish Hostony had phone support... but if they did, I'd bet the prices would
be a lot more. For Hostony to absorb the overhead costs.

So I'd rather have the cheaper hosting, using support tickets, forum & ICQ.
It should be obvious the Hostony is improving in offering more services.
And I can't find any hosting that comes close to their pricing.

The only issue I'd like to see, is the ability for me to back up my websites.
If it costs me, so be it. I'd rather have the insurrance of a backup of my own.

As far as I concerned, Hostony is the best for the money.

Check your CPanel.. Icon 9 from the top.. it's entitled BACKUP. Or you can set a Cron Job to do it. Or you can do it through FTP =)

Toph1980

Yes, you can do it from cPanel.