Common sense support


deeve007

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I have a current urgent situation that would easily resolved with some common sense rather than than your support staff deferring to "the rules" that won't allow them to do something.

 

I am working on a site for a client who signed up for Hawkhost AFTER MY RECOMMENDATION (which I'm now starting to regret), and the site is now showing a 500 internal server error, and I also get an error message trying to access phpMyAdmin from Cpanel when logged in.

 

So in other words, I have all their hosting details.

 

I sent an email to support advising them that the site was down and of the phpMyAdmin error. The message back was that as my email address is "not an authorized user for the account in question" they cannot do anything. It will take 24 to 48 hours to have my client respond to my request to do this, they are not online constantly.

 

I am not asking for anything to be installed. I am not asking for access to anything I don't already have access to. I am not asking for anything to be changed. All I am asking is to see why the site is down - surely common sense could prevail here??

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I am not asking for anything to be installed. I am not asking for access to anything I don't already have access to. I am not asking for anything to be changed. All I am asking is to see why the site is down - surely common sense could prevail here??

 

Please PM me your ticket ID but I don't know if we'll be able to make an exception here. While you may have the login details / account information, we cannot provide support or any information about an account to a user who is not authorized. It is against our policies to make any adjustments or really do anything to a customers account without the request being verified by an authorized user.

 

I understand this can be frustrating but we see attempts daily of people trying to acquire information/request changes on websites they're not affiliated with. We cannot risk compromising our customers account, or any details related to the account, so as a result we have the policies we do.

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I have had a similar issues.

 

The issue I have had in the past is non account specific queries/questions seem to require you to be authorized.  I have started support tickets regarding very high server loads, server memory usage and MySQL being down on the whole server and got asked what domain was having issues (even though it was serverwide issues) and then got told I was not authorized for that domain. This wasn't an account specific issue, instead it was a nudge into looking at the issues I mentioned which were not normal as it was a massive spike in server load and memory usage and MySQL being down.

 

It just seems to be a case of support seeming to try and do anything to avoid acknowledging/admitting to an issue to the customer and getting a ticket closed with them doing minimal work. Just a couple of robotic sounding pre scripted support ticket replies.

 

I can understand the need for ensuring that you are talking to the account holder in regards to account specific details but equally I think there does needs to be a "common sense" approach sometimes. HH is the only host I have been with that I am almost afraid of contacting support as it always seems to be a painful experience.  Admittedly it is not all HH's fault but I usually just ignore minor niggling issues now and live with them to avoid (what feels like) going around in circles.

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I understand the confusion / frustration in regards to this however this is a strict company policy we have in the support department(s). If you contact *support* without a e-mail not tied to a account we'll likely ask you contact us from one that is tied to an account.

 

Why?

 

Well you have to realize we often get inquiries from resellers customers (we don't provide support for them, only the reseller) and or visitors of a website will contact us asking information about a website or server which we will not divulge unless you own an account with us (do you want a visitor on your website knowing MySQL crashed due to a flaw on the server?). This is merely a policy to help preserve privacy / security for everyone. We rather be stringent in this regard than to accidentally divulge too much to the wrong people (this includes server information that's not readily available publicly (we'll state we're updating kernels on our status page due to a bug or security concern. We will not divulge it to a random person inquiring)).

 

How can we fix this? I'm not sure - If you're noticing issues with your account / server I think it's reasonable to contact us with an authorized e-mail. Can you elaborate as to why you'd submit an inquiry to us that's not tied to your account (keep in mind you can add numerous e-mails: https://support.hawkhost.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/98/0/how-do-i-add-a-contact-to-my-account )?

 


 

It just seems to be a case of support seeming to try and do anything to avoid acknowledging/admitting to an issue to the customer and getting a ticket closed with them doing minimal work. Just a couple of robotic sounding pre scripted support ticket replies.

 

I see why you think this - we have very strict policies in regards to replying / supporting people who are not authorized to receive that support. This is not our support staff's fault but a policy our upper management (including myself). We rather tread on the side of caution.

 

If you have any suggestions that can make this scenario better please let us know - just understand it's not done blindly / trying to deflect inquiries.

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I have been a customer of Hawkhost for years, the only reason I am contacting you with regards to this client's site is because I referred him to you otherwise he wouldn't be a customer of yours at all.

 

I will hope that PMing you the ticket number can achieve a resolution, this client is often offline for days at a time and I need to get this completed asap.

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I understand this can be frustrating but we see attempts daily of people trying to acquire information/request changes on websites they're not affiliated with. We cannot risk compromising our customers account, or any details related to the account, so as a result we have the policies we do.

 

How can I not be affiliated with an account that I can log in via cpanel & FTP, so able to manage/delete/edit all website files and cpanel settings if I wanted to?

 

Can you elaborate as to why you'd submit an inquiry to us that's not tied to your account (keep in mind you can add numerous e-mails:https://support.hawk...t-to-my-account )?

 

No issues had arisen before now, I really didn't expect any issues to arise, and so had not had client add my email to their account for support purposes. And as has been mentioned above, I have not had this issue with other reputable hosts when it comes to non-account specific information, so didn't even occur to me that it would be an issue.

 

Anyway, PM sent.

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Not meant to interdict, but if you have access to their CPanel, why not just forward emails to yourself and correspond via one of those email addresses? 

 

Or let me speak from a dis-interested customer perspective: If HawkHost started sending support emails with sensitive information about my websites to addresses not on the account, even if I trusted the email address on the other end (and didn't add them to the account for example), it would be highly disconcerting to me as it should be to any paying customer of HawkHost.

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Not meant to interdict, but if you have access to their CPanel, why not just forward emails to yourself and correspond via one of those email addresses?

 

 

Because the actual domain is not pointing to the server yet.

 

If HawkHost started sending support emails with sensitive information about my websites to addresses not on the account, even if I trusted the email address on the other end (and didn't add them to the account for example), it would be highly disconcerting to me as it should be to any paying customer of HawkHost.

 

 

Did you actually read this thread? I was very clear that there is no sensitive or site specific information being asked for, or requesting to happen. Development sites were down for no obvious reason. After checking the site admin, and checking the server via FTP, there was no obvious reason why.

 

But now they seem to be up again, so something was done on the server by HH, but I have had no notification of that either here or via my original email. I don't really regard this instance as a great example of common sense support.

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Because the actual domain is not pointing to the server yet.

 

 

Did you actually read this thread? I was very clear that there is no sensitive or site specific information being asked for, or requesting to happen. Development sites were down for no obvious reason. After checking the site admin, and checking the server via FTP, there was no obvious reason why.

 

But now they seem to be up again, so something was done on the server by HH, but I have had no notification of that either here or via my original email. I don't really regard this instance as a great example of common sense support.

Yes I read the thread, all you get to know as an untrusted source is that there is a 500 error on the server.  Anything else could be revealing of stuff I don't want you to know about as a site owner. 

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