I was clearing out some of my old articles I had written in the past, and I ran across this jewel that I wrote over a year and a half ago. This was cut out of my first eBook Lockergnome’s Guide to Web Hosting by myself. Why? I thought it might be a little “on the edge” for your average person interested in learning more about Web hosting.
Your Web Host Thinks You’re Stupid
Now I didn’t just write that title because I thought it would grab your attention. Sure, much of the Web hosting business is about as much fun as watching paint dry. I worked there and I’ll be the first to tell you that. The truth of the matter is that with some Web hosts, you will not get your questions answered.
Now why will you not get your questions answered? “Well, some questions are just not suppose to be answered” is probably the remark they would make. Think of it as your parent telling you, “We will tell you when your older” when you asked them where your baby sister came from.
Here are some questions you might ask your Web host, and the response back you would probably get.
Question: What do you mean by unlimited Web hosting?
Web Host’s Answer: By delivering you unlimited services, we can promise you that your services will always be unlimited. You are only limited by going over the unlimited margin, which in that case we would have to take your Web site down.
As I have said before, and I will say many more times before I die – there is no such thing as unlimited in Web hosting. Everything has its limits in life, and Web hosting is no different. Your Web host can only reasonably give you so much disk space and bandwidth before they run out. They will run out. Think of it as water in a glass. You can only fit so much water into that glass before you overflow.
Your Web host doesn’t like for you to ask hard questions either.
First let me explain what happens to your questions and support requests that go into your Web host. They get dumped into a big database filled with other questions from other Web hosting clients. Each question is usually referred to as a “ticket”. My goal as a Web hosting support person was to close as many tickets as possible.
I remember the days of getting paid next to nothing for answering Web hosting help desk tickets. I would login to the Web host’s customer support system and wait. When a problem would come up, I would open the ticket and check out the question. If it was a hard question, I would watch it sit. If it was an easy one, I would go ahead and answer it.
Now before you say, “You sure are a lazy bastard!” let me explain. I was never trained to handle questions over a certain level of expertise. In some other cases, questions might need a server password I didn’t have. Billing questions could only be answered by the billing team. They were the only ones with all the billing access. Easy questions, or as Web hosts call them “Level One” tickets are answered by the bulk of the support team. Other questions usually fit under the category of “really freaking hard” and take somebody with some server experience to tackle them.
Too many Web hosts don’t have a big enough team or enough time to train everybody on how to answer every question. So if you have ever wondered why it took you three weeks to cancel your billing – now you know.
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