It’s normal to hear varying degrees of discord from clients of different hosting companies, that’s really the nature of the beast. It goes for pretty much everything in life. Some love it and some hate it. We make our assumptions based on our personal feelings of someone else’s situation. You can choose to draw your own conclusions from this post I have no control over swaying your decision one way or another.
This is merely a one three six -sided account of what we’ve experienced while dealing with BlueHost regarding this one particular account.
For full disclosure I will tell you that I have not paid a red cent to BlueHost for service. I have had a site hosted through their web hosting via an account belonging to someone else. Also, I waited to post this until said site – as well as both Heather and Mike‘s sites were removed from BlueHost service.
Now that the business is out of the way, let’s discuss.
I hate to go back to this day, but that’s where the story begins….
April 7th, the day that sweet Madeline passed away and the news was making waves around the internet, her parent‘s sites were inundated with comments and visits of support from concerned people around the globe; so much so that BlueHost – their web hosting provider – couldn’t handle the amount of traffic arriving at The Spohrs Are Multiplying. Their only option was to suspend the account in order to re-instate service to the other sites on the shared hosting server.
When Meghan called trying get somewhere with a BlueHost support technician, she was told that the site was running outdated scripts (Heather had WordPress 2.5+ running on her site at the time) and that it needed Super Cache. The plugin was apparently then installed by a BlueHost support technician then the site re-instated. Success!
But it was very short lived as the amount of load on the server increased, BlueHost again locked down the sites. Friends of the Spohrs swooped in hoping to help out by contacting BlueHost directly and asking, pleading that something be done for their sites so people could offer their condolences. A number of people were inundating their call lines and live chat with requests, which were all met with a cool “No” since none were able to provide the vital information needed for BlueHost to allow access to the account.
I, as well as Meghan, had that information – so I tried my hand at getting some help and made a call to their customer support. The support technician was for the most part, polite but not at all understanding of the situation. There was no way they were able to re-instate the Spohrs’ account. No way. No how. Not until all the traffic was diverted from the BlueHost server would they even consider turning the account back on. By this time both Heather and Mike’s site had been shut down for the second time.
I said to the lady, “Please? Anything? It’s not like they’re email spammers. They’ve lost a child and we’re trying to have the site available even just as a condolence page. Just the last post would be fine as a static page so people could still comment and leave a note for Heather and Mike. Something.”
The response was they cannot do that. Sorry. That’s the rules.
So you’re aware. BlueHost has a ‘three strikes you’re out’ policy when it comes to the number of times your site is suspended. Regardless of the reason for suspension you will be required to find hosting elsewhere after the third time the site adversely affects the other users on the same shared server. Despite our best efforts to get something up and running for Mike and Heather – or even the reason for the spike in traffic – BlueHost verbally notified me they would terminate the account based on this ‘three strikes’ rule should the surge of traffic crash the server again therefore could not activate the account.
I tried to purchase a package upgrade by changing the account’s credit card information to my own but was denied as they didn’t have another package option to offer. I tried to buy dedicated hosting, a virtual private server, even a chunk of a shared server – something – to move their sites to keep them up and running. I was coldly informed that BlueHost doesn’t offer those service and our only option was to find Heather’s site service elsewhere.
Section 7.02 Paragraph 3 of BlueHost.Com terms and services reads:
BlueHost.Com will make every commercially reasonable effort to provide additional resources to Subscribers who are using their website(s) consistent with these Terms, including moving Subscribers to newer and bigger shared servers as necessary. However, in order to ensure a consistent and quality experience for all Subscribers, BlueHost.Com does place automated safeguards to protect against any one site growing too quickly and adversely impacting the system until BlueHost.Com can evaluate said sites resource needs.
As far as I’m concerned they did not efficiently evaluate the site resources nor the previous years service Heather has had with their company. Based on the telephone conversation I had with the technician they were not even willing to attempt any rectification.
Prior to Maddie’s passing, Heather’s blog was a small to medium sized site with approximately 500 – 800 page views per day. Two days prior to April 7th there was 233 page views. I’m simply telling you this because Heather’s site was by no means a drain on their system, but under these extenuating circumstances BlueHost simply washed their hands of the site and their client, leaving Heather stranded without the only means she’s been able to express herself – to help herself grieve the loss of her daughter.
(Thankfully two wonderful people stepped in and offered their own dedicated server to host Heather’s site, for as long as it was needed, in order to allow Heather to post and friends and family to send love and support from afar.)
In the meantime, BlueHost‘s political blunder and sloppy handling of this situation had been broadcast across Twitter leaving their president to try and pick up some pieces.
Pieces such as this one from Gary: (the highlighted part was done by me)
From: Gary Dawkins, Bluehost Support Team
Date: Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 7:07 PM
Subject: Re: [#YDF-67126-157] outraged
To: XXXXXXXXXXThe employee’s here at bluehost followed the correct procedures for an account that was causing problems on the server. Once a supervisor was notified of the “situation” that was going on that’s when they went out of their way to help by reactivating the account and even fixing the outdated version of wordpress that the customer had set up. The (sic) surely didn’t have to do this but did so because they had compassion for the customer’s circumstances. I’m sorry if other technicians were not as compassionate as you would have liked them to be, but they did follow company policies about the technical difficulties that were occurring at the time. Please have a great day and we are sorry for any misunderstanding.
They went out of their way? They were not as compassionate as you would have liked them to be? Really? Way to save face Gary.
And for the record: “when the supervisor was notified of the ‘situation’ and went out of their way to help by reactivating the site and even fixing the out-dated version of WordPress….” that was NOT done by BlueHost staff but instead by Jennifer and Bil when they moved Heather’s site to their personal dedicated server. Not only did BlueHost misrepresent their “help” by taking credit for someone else’s work, they LIED about it. They presumably thought they were talking to people who were not all that tech savvy and would be able to get away with misrepresenting their “support” of the site.
Additionally, when I logged into Heather’s site via FTP (file transfer protocol) I found that the SuperCache had not been installed either, just the .zip file of the plugin had been dumped in the root file of their domain (for non-techies: They did nothing except upload a file. It wasn’t even activated).
The DAY AFTER Maddie passed, the president of BlueHost (who is Matt Heaton, though Heather can’t confirm for sure if he is in fact the person that called, because well, she was a little pre-occupied – but KNOWS he identified himself as the President) called her at home. Though his call may have been made with good intentions, it was cold and based solely on a sad attempt to right their social blunder. Based on what Heather’s told me, Matt’s cold, canned response was a typical public relations nightmare recovery speech. It was a sorry-to-see-you-go-but-we’re-really-not-that-bad type call. Even though Heather had decided she was no longer using BlueHost‘s service, this ill-timed phone call was final the deal breaker.
I understand that there are rules in place to protect the users of the shared server. These rules are typically meant to protect BlueHost subscribers from email spammers, as well as sites which have grown too large to be located on a small insufficient shared server. Heather’s site had grown in astonishing magnitude in a matter of hours due to Maddie’s passing, and though she had been a loyal subscriber for the better part of two years and had no previous issues with any of their domains, both Heather and Mike were treated as a nuisance and hindrance on BlueHost; Heather and I wholeheartedly believe that they paid any attention to this “situation” (as Gary called it) simply because of the negative comments flooding twitter and other social media sites. Had we not voiced our dissatisfaction with their handling of the site and service I truly believe they would not have thought twice about their hasty decision to shut down the sites of parents, who only hours before, had lost their daughter.
Why am I telling you all this? BlueHost should be held accountable for their actions. Not only did they provide inconsistent service to their clients, they lied: they made assumptions and, for the most part, misconstrued information. As a community it is our duty to make fellow users aware of these attempts at taking advantage of us.
Due to the amount of traffic Heather’s site has seen over the past month and a half, BlueHost would not have been able to handle the traffic anyway. The site had to be moved to accommodate the more than 10.7 MILLION hits and over 2 MILLION page views it’s seen since Maddie passed away. Regardless of this fact, the way BlueHost went about handling the situation was still less than stellar. They could have been upfront about the fact that they were no longer able to support the site, or maybe moved it to an empty or less populated server in the meantime while an alternative arrangement was made.
Maybe offered SUPPORT rather than wash their hands of the issue.
Would it have truly killed them to take a more compassionate route to fixing the issue? Probably not. Sure, there are rules – but rules are meant to be broken: and if the President of the company is going to take time out of his day to call and “apologize” for their mishandling of this account maybe he could have taken a moment to try and right it by allowing their site to move to a different server with less load or subscribers. How about reimbursing the Spohrs’ their fees for the trouble? Even some sort of condolence would have likely been appreciated had it not been made out of desperation to stop the hateful twitters and negative reviews of BlueHost‘s service.
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It’s fair to point out that Sam is not a BlueHost basher. She set Blog Nosh Magazine up on BlueHost when it moved from TypePad. In fact, we remain at BlueHost today because I have utterly no clue how to move us.
Sam? I think you should probably move us. Not based on potential traffic spikes, but out of conscientious protest.
If you would like to know how to move away from Bluehost They have a link on their Video Tutorials that tells you how to move away. http://tutorials.bluehost.com/transferaway/ In fact they are the ONLY hosting company that does that.
You can also call their tech support for help on moving away, they are very helpful with nearly everything, as long as you own the account. However, I have had nothing but amazing tech support with Bluehost.
I love being at Bluehost and have never had a problem. My brother thought he found a bargain, moved away into what he found was a nightmare and moved back to Bluehost as soon as he could and he will never leave again.
I am truly appalled by the way this company handled this situation. I can’t imagine how Heather must have felt, trying to reach out in the comfort zoneof her blog, and not having it there.
I was one of the readers who helped crash the Spohrs site. After Meghan posted for Heather that Maddie was being admitted, I checked back probably 10 times an hour, until I heard the devastating news.
I tried to re-load the page again and again, not understanding what had happaned. I wanted to know what was going on, and my heart was breaking. My husband was freaking out, not understanding why I was sitting at my computer with tears running down my face, just hitting the refresh button and staring blankly at a screen that would not load.
Bluehost could have done alot of things better. Sure, they couldn’t handle it, and the site would have been moved anyway. Yet had they made ANY KIND OF EFFORT. They would now be in the good graces of those 10.7 million hits. Instead, they are now one of the most hated servers on the internet. I couldn’t count the number of negative tweets I’ve seen.
Good job writing this mama. I’m so glad that there were people like you to handle this all for the Spohrs, and to help Heather get part of her lifeline back. Also, thank you for doing the March for Maddie site, I know it’s alot of work, but it’s amazing.
ali´s last blog post..Tucker the *beeep*
How about reimbursing the Spohrs’ their fees for the trouble?
– The very least that Bluehost could have done was to reimburse said fees on the accounts and done so in a polite and understanding way.
I find it difficult, if not almost impossible that they have situations happen like this every day – an exception could have been made – and it could have been made quickly and taken up the management chain within, if not minutes, surely within hours. There are policies setup for necessary reasons however the bottom line is that when you have an extraordinary situation customer service providers should provide extraordinary service. The fact is if they techs had been compassionate the response of situation, even if it was a less than ideal end result they could have saved themselves negative PR.
How about this Bluehost: “I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your friends daughter. Let us see what we can do for you and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible with a result or else a status within XX hour(s)”. ” See, even if you couldn’t have actually DONE anything quickly you still would have LOOKED like you were trying, which in the end was all anyone was really asking for.
Thank you for writing this, Sam. The unfortunate thing is that BlueHost had the opportunity to make things EASIER, and they didn’t. I know it seems petty, but when I was getting notices not even 24 hours after my daughter had passed that our service was terminated, it was really scary to me. Our blogs were what we’d documented Maddie’s life with, and Bluehost almost completely deleted them. If it hadn’t been for you, Jennifer, Bill, Meghan, Y, Jess, and all the other amazing people, that’s very likely what would have happened.
I understand protocol and all of that. But I think that BlueHost should better train the people who answer their phones so that, should an extenuating circumstance like this happen again, their techs know to pass the situation UP. It’s unfortunate that a PR backlash is really the only reason I was contact by Bluehost at all. Shame, shame, shame.
And thank goodness for the amazing friends I have. Like YOU.
I manage a number of sites professionally and for my self. When clients ask to be hosted with blue host, I categorically deny their service with me. I refuse to be tied into their so called rules and regulations and far from pitiful customer service. They seem overpriced compared to a number of good hosting companies I’ve worked with and your article just confirmed my fears working with them!
Thanks for your clear, concise and touching post. And thank you for clearing the mud of the situation!
Deb@BirdOnAWire´s last blog post..Old School
I already knew Bluehost sucked because of m own dealings with them in the past (TOTALLY unhelpful buttheads and very poor uptime) so hearing about their blunderous handling of this situation only solidified my poor opinion of them. I’m just sorry that Heather & Mike had to experience such shitty treatment during the worst time of their life. Bluehost blows.
Why a company, who had an opportunity to make things easier for someone, during an unimaginable tragedy, would instead choose to make things harder is beyond me. Just because it’s corporate doesn’t make it less cruel.
Marinka´s last blog post..Guess Who’s Pregnant?
If anyone needs help moving from Bluehost elsewhere (I went to Hostgator), let me know. Their customer service and tech support sucks even when you don’t have that many people hitting your site.
Here’s my experience with them:
http://mythoughtsideasandramblings.com/2008/09/03/bluehost-woes-big-gain-for-hostgator/
http://mythoughtsideasandramblings.com/2008/08/20/bluehost-woes/
Lisa´s last blog post..Babies, Hormones, and Life Part II
Very well put Sam. Heather was lucky to have someone like you take the ball and make all the arrangements to get things moved over.
I think this is a good example of where money trumps over human understanding and compassion. I understand that BlueHost is a business and they are there to make money. But you would think, considering the circumstances, they could of put a temporary fix in place while we moved things over so the site wasn’t completely down. A simple gesture such as that would have had thousands of people thanking them rather than talking about how they let a family down.
PrincessJenn´s last blog post..Judging Those Who Judge
Fucking assholes. Thank God the Spohrs have such a wonderful network of friends, you guys truly stepped up. I will make sure to spread this information, it’s not only heartless and morally wrong what they did, it’s just bad business practice. Thanks for writing this.
Florencia´s last blog post..Speech explosion!
Thank goodness you were able to get the blogs moved before bluehost did completely delete them. What a gross mishandling on their part of the entire situation. Yes, there are rules – but it’s hard to believe breaking them this one time would have set any sort of precedent for that to happen too often in the future and they could have potentially gained many loyal users for years to come had we been able to come here today and read instead a story of how helpful they were.
I have sites hosted on bluehost, but in light of this will likely move them when my contract is up.
Diana´s last blog post..The Great Generational Divide of the Mommy Bloggers
I have worked for good companies and for bad companies. The difference is that, when I worked for good companies, I was empowered to make independent decisions to benefit my customers even when those decisions did not align perfectly with “policy.”
At a good company, employees are valued and trusted to be smart and capable of making good decisions instead of just following a rule book.
If the company president were less defensive and more apologetic, it would have gone a long way. You really have to have a hard heart to not want to go out of your way for people who have lost a child.
All of you who helped Heather and Mike deal with this are awesome friends and all of us on the internet, who were constantly refreshing, wanting to know what was going on, thank you for doing this. This was the last thing Heather needed to worry about in this situation.
As a former PR person, I’m shocked the way this was handled. And they deserve the bad press and the bad publicity. While a nice thought for the President to call Heather to apologize, it was purely selfish and inappropriate. It was the WRONG time and there were many other things they could have done. LIKE FIXING IT. And really apologizing for having horrible customer service.
Thanks for sharing the story!
Kristabella´s last blog post..Mary Jane, I Am Not In Love With You
As my swimming lesson kids would say, “THEY’RE NOT NICE PEOPLE!”
Have you conisdered sending this over to The Consumarist? They love stuff like this. http://consumerist.com/
Cute~Ella´s last blog post..He-Ku?
I used to work in customer service before my daughter was born. I like to think I was pretty good at my job. You know what made me good, compassion and understanding for people who needed just that little bit extra. All they had to do was say they were sorry and they would try to get something figured out. Even if they couldn’t do anything at least they tried. It really irks me when customer service professionals don’t practice good customer service.
Lisa´s last blog post..Infant and Toddler Swim Classes
Please remind me never to get on your bad side.
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I am SO tweeting this. BLUEHOST FAIL!
Grr i get mad thinking about this too. What jerks.
I’ve posted my experience with them in trying to help get Heathers site back up too.
I just tweeted this and suggested that a donation to the MOD would be a nice gesture.
They’re still assholes though.
I got my tech career start in the hosting business, for high end clients, and they seem like total scum. The kind of people we would have made fun of. How hard would it have been for them to say “you know, you can’t stay here, but since you’ve been so loyal, and considering what happened, we’re going to do everything we can to help you move and get you back up While we’re at it, we starting a March of Dimes team.”. Instead they were total buttheads.
Good for you for calling them out. You know, if they’re reading this, it’s not too late for a donation. It won’t change anything, but it couldn’t hurt either.
Amelia Aprout´s last blog post..A question of safety.
Thank you for the information, Sam. They will certainly NEVER get my business. And I will make sure they know exactly why.
I sent a link from a different blog about this incident to Consumerist last week. They haven’t run anything yet, so I encourage everyone to do the same with this post so that this really gets out.
People need to be aware of companies that have crap customer service delivered by unfeeling automatons, and those that do right by people when the circumstances call for it.
I don’t have gobs of traffic on my silly little blog, but I made the wisest decision ever to choose hosting with a friend that I went to geek school with. When I exceeded my bandwidth, he was on it pronto! On a Sunday, no less.
I have referred several other bloggers to him, and you will get the best personal service anytime.
http://scorpwebsolutions.com
Rob is the best!
witchypoo´s last blog post..SB Bed And Breakfast Sort Of
I watched the whole scenario play out on twitter where we could get up to the minute information about Heather and Mike and sweet Maddie. It was shocking to me to see how little Bluehost (I just typed Bluehose on accident, appropriate.) was doing to help them in their “situation.” I too was a reader trying to refresh to get information, but was frustrated by their lack of service. Thank you for writing about their ineptitude and their lack of concern for their customers. Bluehost can suck it. Thank you also for helping Heather and Mike in their time of great need.
What a nightmare. I’m by no means a complete tech geek, but I’ve lived and breathed customer service/marketing/public relations for years. This is indeed a big FAIL on their part.
I was curious as to what had happened and as I make future decisions with blogs I own, or in which I participate, it is good to know which services will not go above and beyond in difficult situations.
RC – Rambling Along…´s last blog post..Fallen hero
I can’t believe what horrible customer service that is! I am so glad that there were people like you that know what to do so that the Spohrs didn’t lose everything. I still can’t believe how horrible they were, and the reaction after is really ridiculous. I guess I know what company to avoid like the plague now.
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You’re back!
Test post!
I followed the situation on Twitter, also being one of those that was unable to show my support. I was/am just appalled by it. That’s what annoys me about corporations – they are so concerned with protocols and $$ that they’ll forgo simply compassion and humanity for the sake of it. Ridiculous.
I’ll never host a site with them, ever. I’d rather not have a blog at all.
Maria´s last blog post..I had to, or my balls were gonna shrivel off.
I was one of the ones who called and was absolutely appalled at how I was talked to on the phone. They didn’t care one lick and that’s what ticked me off. If someone would have said, “You know, let me see what I can do,” and still been unable to do anything, that would have been on side of the coin. But the whole, “Nope, we won’t even consider it,” was too much for me too handle at the time. When I asked, “So it’s all about the bottom line, that almighty dollar,” his response was, “Yes.” That’s simply disgusting.
As always, I suggest Surpass Hosting (@Surpass on twitter) for all your hosting needs.
FireMom´s last blog post..Overwhelming Parenthood
I use Suprass as well. This site was just transferred to my own reseller server and I messed it up. LOL That’s why it was all bonkers for a bit.
pretty absurd.
flutter´s last blog post..come and face the strange
Thank you for writing this, the word about bluehost must get out. And thank you for being such a good friend to Heather and Mike during their server nightmare. I can only hope the karmic wheel spins and bluehost pays for their insensitivity.
merlotmom´s last blog post..Notes from the PMS Trenches
So glad this post is back up so that I can comment!
Great to have this info out there, and so awesome of you to get the Spohr’s sites transferred.
I will never use Bluehost, & I’ll let people know about this!
Last blog post by Al_Pal..My new creative outlet: Bread Puddings!
I was so happy they had you working so hard to set things straight and get their blogs up and running. I followed the whole thing and was appalled. It must have been terrifying for Heather and Mike AMID their grief to have to deal with the possibility of losing all they’d written about their beautiful Maddie.
Last blog post by Haley-O..You Said You Wanted Feet….
I am very Sorry for your loss and understand your pain.
I would like to point out that no one likes there site to go down and at the point where the site most likely causing an issue on the server what else could they do but suspend it. Again I am not trying to Blame anyone. Emotions where high all around. As for the WP add on I am impressed they even uploaded a zip. I have contacted a host for script support (silly I know) but they all have the same kind of comment. I am sorry but we do not provide scripting support however we will try to help blah blah blah. If you think about it however its an honor that your Maddie had enough love and support out there to crash a shred server.
I will pray for you and your family and do not mean to have this as an insult. If there is anything to help you please give me an Email at sep.test@gmail.com
It sure shows the true colors of the CEO (“Matt Heaton the Morman Missionary”) of Bluehost.
I send my deepest sympathy for your family at this difficult time.
You. are. awesome.
Thank you for putting this out there!!! and for being such an amazing rock, friend, person!!!
I twittered this. BlueHost’s handling of the situation was appalling, to say the least.
I retweeted Jenn’s tweet. This is so sad and pathetic on part of BlueHost. What did they do? Go out and hire the most inconsiderate people in the universe? So what that you have rules…you’re so coldblooded and heartless that you wouldn’t even bend the rules for a GRIEVING family??? A GRIEVING FAMILY???
I’ve never used BlueHost and I never will. I will let everyone know in the blogging world know about this. Pathetic….
And Heather, I’m sorry for your loss. It’s a shame that you had to deal with this during such a down time. My prayers will be with you and your family.
Last blog post by Terin..Strawberry Banana Pudding
I give you my deepest support in this difficult time.
It sure is amazing how Bluehost lies to their customers. James Grierson , VP of Business Development and Affiliate Management at BlueHost, stated:
Feel free to email James Grierson (james@bluehost.com) or Matt Heaton, CEO of Bluehost, (matt@bluehost.com) and tell them how you feel about what they have done here.
I send my dearest condolences to all involved in such a tragic event.
I am sorry, I entered this discussion a little late. However the discussion concerning Bluehost and James Grierson caught my interest.
James Grierson has personal ambitions of being a politician. He has a blog Grierson2020 where he directly states the purpose of the blog is a launching point for a political career and even hints of wanting to President of the United States. Scary isn’t it?
James Grierson and Matt Heaton of Bluehost and Hostmonster are not nice people. They care nothing more than themselves.
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