TCH-Bruce Posted April 12, 2004 Posted April 12, 2004 (edited) I never gave TCH a review but I think most everyone that frequents this forum knows that I think TCH is the greatest web host I've ever dealt with. Now I know some may say I am paid to say that, but I am not a paid employee of TCH, don't let the forum moderator status fool you. I am a customer just as most you are. I've been with several hosts in the last ten years and while some were good, others were down right horrible. Coming here was like a breath of fresh air. What prompted me to even write this? I was cleaning out my sent mail folder and came across this email I sent to my last web host before coming here (names removed to protect the guilty). Hello (name removed), Imagine my surprise yet once again when I came in this morning and found that the webstats and all of our Perl scripts no longer work. So I call over to (old web host removed) and get the voice mail since you have nobody manning the phones when normal business hours start (8am) and I had to wait until after 9am for someone to return my call. When the call was returned I was informed that the web server had been upgraded. Well that may be but why do you not inform your customers when you are about to do updates? I shouldn't have to check my website every day to be sure that everything is working correctly. If it was working yesterday, I expect it to be working today and tomorrow if I don't change anything. I would never have discovered the problem had I not been in the middle of a site redesign and just happened to try to use one of my form pages. We rely 99 percent on business from the website. When I cannot get leads or sales because of scripts not working we are losing money. Since the switch over from (previous old host - they were good but had internal problems) there have been many problems. To date I have stood up for (old web host) thinking that everything would be worked out. I need to be assured I am correct and that you will get this problem in particular corrected as quickly as possible. There are still problems sending email and getting messages back because your servers have been blacklisted as a spamming source. It's not as frequent as it was but it still happens and I would like to see that looked into further. Since email is critical to our business we cannot afford to have this happen either. Why can't you have someone in the office at the open of normal business hours? Yes I know you have 9am-9pm hours but most businesses are in operation from 8am-5pm. That hour just increases our frustration. Why don't you send out email message informing the customers when you are planning a maintenance upgrade? A little communication in advance can go a long way to minimize frustration and dissatisfaction. We are spending good money hosting with you when there are many cheaper alternatives out there. I'm sure you can understand where I am coming from. Sincerely, ---- Bruce Richards Well things never got any better and here I am at TCH. And I must say, even though there were a few problems initially, TCH did everything right to keep me here and more importantly keep me happy. TCH always communicates with their users. When there are problems we know about them and what is being done to fix them. I wouldn't be here if TCH wasn't as good as they are. I was spending $30/mo for that web hosting package and received hardly any service. I cannot believe the service I recieve here for a fraction of that cost. Thank you Bill, and thank you TCH! I look forward to remaining a customer here indefinately. Rock Sign Edited April 12, 2004 by TCH-Bruce Quote
kaseytraeger Posted April 12, 2004 Posted April 12, 2004 Wow, Bruce! What headaches you must have gone through with that other web host. And $30 per month?!? Were they on crack to be charging that much for the lackluster customer support and technical service they provided? It almost makes you wonder if that company is still in business. I'm positive you weren't the only person to make such [legitimate] complaints. Your letter makes me feel very thankful that I found TCH. As a matter of fact, TCH is the very first web host I've ever done business with. I did a lot of research before finding TCH, but still, with all the web hosts out there these days making all kinds of claims, I consider it dumb luck on my part to have made such a wise choice. I must say that when I hear horror stories such as yours, it just increases my sense of satisfaction with the wonderful support here at TCH. Without getting too mushy, I love all my TCH family! You're all great! And, of course, it goes without saying that Rock Sign Quote
TCH-Bruce Posted April 12, 2004 Author Posted April 12, 2004 Kasey, yes they are still in business and the people we rent office space from still use them. A few months ago I tried to get them to switch to TCH too. Then the more I thought about it, I backed off. Why? Because the guy that owns the business is a jerk. But that a story for another day. Quote
kaseytraeger Posted April 12, 2004 Posted April 12, 2004 Kasey, yes they are still in business and the people we rent office space from still use them. A few months ago I tried to get them to switch to TCH too. Then the more I thought about it, I backed off. Why? Because the guy that owns the business is a jerk. But that a story for another day. Ah Bruce, you gave me a good laugh... I would do the same thing if someone was a jerk to me. Let 'em suffer!! Quote
HCSuperStores Posted April 12, 2004 Posted April 12, 2004 Hi Bruce, I agree with your findings. Some of these issues are almost a distant memory. I've only been here a couple of months so far myself. But the bad customer service, the black-listed e-mail, the unscheduled downtime and the supposed server upgrades ... seen it all, hated it all. Unfortunately, as you indicated, it seems to be that the majority of hosting services still thrive in this environment. It just makes me wonder ... But TCH should not be alarmed the these people are still in business. In fact, they should welcome them, because they show how GOOD TCH is and how BAD the other guys are. In the end, there is one number that TCH will be very happy with ... customer retention. While people like Bruce and myself keep searching for a better solution, knowing that one must exist, they will eventually happen upon TCH and take up permenant residence. I know I'm here to stay too! It's always good to remind yourself of where you came from! Quote
DarqFlare Posted April 12, 2004 Posted April 12, 2004 (edited) A lot of opinions are expressed regarding how good it is to see Yahoo! and MSN getting into the search engine market... Competition is good. Even in this case. Competition is very good for TCH, because if it was only TCH out there, nobody would know how great TCH is. Then again, it would be nice if everybody demanded the kind of service we get here at TCH -- then that kind of service would finally become standard and we could get that kind of service in places other than webhosts. Rock Sign I came from another webhost that had intermittent downtimes and upgrades as well... Though, they were cheaper, and my first inclination to come to TCH was because of the multiple MySQL database offering. Haha... Edited April 12, 2004 by TCH-Robert Quote
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