Woke Up And Hostgator Account Is Suspended!
Firstly, I like Hostgator so this has nothing to do with the experience I have had with them up until now. The problem is this, whenever I do experience an issue with Hostgator it tends to be something that effects my entire reseller account and takes a great deal of time to be corrected. Earlier this morning at around 2 am (PST) I receive an email from a few members of the Southern California Domaining Group.
They just arrived in Las Vegas and were letting me know how to reach them once I get there tomorrow. They also went onto say that they tried to go to dnpimping.com and the site forwarded to an Account Suspended screen! Since this is all happening at around 2 am in the morning, I am safely tucked away underneath my comforter dreaming about domain names. This morning I finally woke up around 10:30 am and knew something was wrong when I checked my traffic graphs. There was a slight trickle of traffic for my site, which is definitely out of the norm.
My site normally has healthy traffic patterns during this time period because of domainers from overseas. They tend to visit my site at this time. I was furious! I quickly hopped onto the live chat section of Hostgator’s website and spoke to an account representative named Joshua Ma. The representative was extremely understanding and quickly let me know that there are issues with the current Hostgator billing platform. Apparently I received an email stating that my payment was past due, when I received this email I went ahead and paid the invoice.
All of my sites were up at this time, so I thought nothing of it. On the 21st of January all of my sites are suspended! He explained that the billing system did not recognize the fact that I paid the invoice and still proceeded to suspend the entire reseller account. Here is the conversation between Joshua and I:
Chat Start Date: Jan 21 2010 12:57:29 AM
(12:57:53 AM) Joshua Ma: has entered the chat.
(12:57:54 AM) Joshua Ma: Hello, welcome to HostGator Live Chat.
(12:57:54 AM) Joshua Ma: I will be glad to assist you.
(12:57:56 AM) Joshua Ma: One moment while I look into this. I apologize for any delays.
(12:58:01 AM) Jason Thompson: my hosting account has been suspended
(12:58:09 AM) Jason Thompson: any idea what is going on?
(12:58:11 AM) Jason Thompson: i paid my bill
(12:58:16 AM) Joshua Ma: Was it late?
(12:58:40 AM) Jason Thompson: site was still up
(12:58:43 AM) Jason Thompson: when i paid the bill
(12:58:49 AM) Jason Thompson: why would it be suspended afterwards?
(12:59:03 AM) Joshua Ma: The system is automated if it was paid late.
(12:59:07 AM) Joshua Ma: I will reactivate you.
(12:59:21 AM) Jason Thompson: been down the entire night
(12:59:25 AM) Jason Thompson: i am very upset’
(12:59:26 AM) Joshua Ma: Fortunately we will be moving into a nicer billing system soon.
(12:59:37 AM) Jason Thompson: customers have told me they can’t get to the site
(1:01:14 PM) Joshua Ma: Bear with me for a few moments.
(1:07:11 PM) Joshua Ma: This is still processing sorry for the delay.
(1:07:15 PM) Joshua Ma: Should be about done running though.
(1:07:34 PM) Jason Thompson: Josh you understand my dilemma right
(1:07:36 PM) Jason Thompson: we paid
(1:07:43 PM) Jason Thompson: because we were sent a warning
(1:07:48 PM) Jason Thompson: and still get deactivated
(1:07:50 PM) Jason Thompson: i just don’t get it
(1:08:47 PM) Joshua Ma: Unfortunately when you make a late payment the billing system doesn’t link to the payment. (1:08:56 PM) Joshua Ma: With the new billing system this won’t be an issue any longer.
(1:09:02 PM) Joshua Ma: I do apologize I realize it’s a major inconvience.
(1:09:07 PM) Jason Thompson: what do i tell my customers?
(1:09:08 PM) Joshua Ma: We are working to move to the new system though.
(1:09:30 PM) Jason Thompson: better yet
(1:09:35 PM) Jason Thompson: what can hostgator do for me
(1:09:43 PM) Jason Thompson: as i’ve been down the entire day
(1:09:49 PM) Jason Thompson: a client emailed me at 2am
(1:09:55 PM) Jason Thompson: saying the site was suspended
(1:11:08 PM) Joshua Ma: Unfortunately if it had been paid it wouldn’t have been an issue, I realize it was paid late, but the account still needs to be activated, which doesn’t occur after it’s past due.
(1:15:00 PM) Joshua Ma: Are the sites all back online now?
(1:15:08 PM) Joshua Ma: Unsuspend finished.
(1:15:27 PM) Jason Thompson: yah
(1:15:34 PM) Jason Thompson: still a bit upset
(1:15:42 PM) Jason Thompson: its like the electric company
(1:15:48 PM) Jason Thompson: cutting your lights off
(1:15:52 PM) Jason Thompson: after you paid the late bill
(1:15:55 PM) Jason Thompson: i just don’t get it
(1:15:56 PM) Joshua Ma: I do apologize, in the future with the new billing system this won’t be an issue.
(1:16:05 PM) Joshua Ma: That’s why we are moving to the new system.
(1:16:13 PM) Joshua Ma: This is an issue we have with the current one..
(1:16:16 PM) Jason Thompson: is there some sort of credit i can get for this
(1:16:22 PM) Joshua Ma: We are aware though and working to get it fixed.
(1:16:25 PM) Jason Thompson: when you run an online business
(1:16:31 PM) Jason Thompson: and your sites are down
(1:16:36 PM) Jason Thompson: money is lost
(1:16:37 PM) Joshua Ma: If you email sales@hostgator.com they might credit you, the fact of the matter is payment was late though.
(1:16:52 PM) Jason Thompson: i am fortunate none of my sponsors have complained
(1:16:54 PM) Joshua Ma: I’m sorry the billing system doesn’t update it after you make a payment late.
(1:18:58 PM) Jason Thompson: thanks josh i will take it up with sales
Just so you guys know, I decided to post the entire chat log so you could see how the customer support representative handled the conversation. I also want others who potentially could go through a similar occurrence to know what to do in such a drastic situation. Even though I was extremely furious I was able to ask the right questions and get teh problem resolved within 20 – 30 minutes. Unfortunately that doesn’t make up for the lost time. I lost any and all visitors / ppc clicks which would of come in between 12 – 11am! This is a tremendous amount of suspension time! I can’t say downtime because visitors were still presented with an account suspension screen.
I then went ahead and emailed sales@hostgator.com with the following email:
Hello,
Today I spoke with Joshua Ma in regards to my account being suspended even after I paid my bill. What I don’t understand is we were sent a warning, I proceeded to pay the bill because of this. All our sites were up at the time. I receive a client email at 2am and the entire account was suspended? This is like the electric company sending you a late bill, you paying it and then they still turn the electricity off. I run an online business and have had 8 hours of downtime where my sites could not receive any traffic.
I am writing this email to receive a credit for this problem. Joshua even stated the billing system has issues and your company is doing what it can to switch over to a new system. Unfortunately I was effected directly by this problem and would like a credit to my account due to this.
Chat script has been included below as well.
Now I am waiting for a response. Hopefully Hostgator will do the right thing and credit my account for this problem. Although I was late paying the bill, I still ended up paying it! The account should of never been suspended even if it was temporary. The electrical company sends out warnings that your bill is late. If you pay the late bill, they don’t proceed with cutting the electricity off!
I have a number of minisites running on this account and I am now thinking about spreading the sites out on a couple of different hosting accounts. I would hate for a situation like this to happen again. My online business is directly effected when situations like this happen! Everything is up and running now! That’s how I plan on keeping it!
A special thanks to Oscar from the Southern California Domaining Group for pointing this problem out and to Ron Wells for relaying the message. This is the second time Ron has notified me of a blog issue! 
See you guys in Vegas!
Leave a Comment
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January 21, 2010 3:54 pm
I think Hostgator cut you a little slack in the first place because the bill was past due from what I read.
If the bill was paid on time in the first place, the account would not of been suspended.
It’s not right they shut it down after you paid, but that could of just been a timing thing and there system not noticing you paid.
The moral of the story? Pay your bill on time and you should be good
I use Hostgator as well and never had any issues but I also pay my bill on time.
I’m not knocking you, just pointing out what I think was the problem.
[Reply]
Jason Reply:
January 21st, 2010 at 4:24 pm
When I wrote this entry I already knew the type of comments I could potentially receive. LOL! With that said I don’t feel that Hostgator cut me any slack, the problem with this situation revolves around there billing panel Modernbill. This company has been using this billing panel ever since they started. As a hosting industry veteran I can tell you that MB can potentially be hazardous to the way a hosting company is run.
The mere fact that the associate admitted that the current billing panel was to blame for the hosting account suspension pretty much informed me that I was not necessarily wrong in this situation. Yes the bill was late, but the bill was paid and the account was still disabled after the bill payment was submitted.
The account rep event went on to say that the new billing panel that they are working hard to complete will correct this issue. This tells me that this issue is something which occurs continually. This is the first time it has ever happened to me. I know you are not knocking me Jamie, who wants there first comment on a blog to be one which is negative.
The moral of the story for me is that sometimes mistakes do happen and its important to be proactive to fix any mishaps before they can turn into real problems. Great blog btw Jamie, I have visited your site countless times.
[Reply]
January 21, 2010 4:59 pm
lucky for you It wasn’t that bad, imagine you were spending over $20,000 a day on ppc like many arbitragers still do, youd be fu#!@d. Then again it doesnt happen to them cause of all the safeguards in place.
[Reply]
January 21, 2010 6:25 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by joseph larosa, Jason Thompson. Jason Thompson said: Wake Up And Hostgator Account Is Suspended! http://su.pr/8or24T [...]
January 21, 2010 10:44 pm
Jason, glad to see that your site is back and running. We thought we were having problems out here with out computers and network connections at first.
Looking forward to some good times, networking, and learning some great stuff these next couple of days!
[Reply]
January 24, 2010 6:26 pm
[...] A couple of days ago, Jason from DNPimping.com made a post about how he woke up one morning and hostgator had suspended his account. [...]
January 24, 2010 6:34 pm
To avoid that from happening again just set up auto-payments via paypal. It’s one less thing to remember and it will give you some peace of mind too.
[Reply]
May 3, 2010 8:26 am
I have not been cut off – but I received my bill on the 29th of April, when it was due on the 28th. It will be cut off in 5 days if I do not scrape together the funds. I was expecting some notice – not “by the way, we generated your bill 5 days ago, and you are about to be cut off”. Does anyone else have that issue?
[Reply]
May 9, 2010 12:29 pm
@chris I completely understand. The billing system that they are currently using doesn’t necessarily function the way that it should. Hopefully the new system they are working on fixes these type of issues! Its amazing how I have been indexed on the first page of google for “Hostgator Account Suspended” this just proves there are a number of other people who have experienced the same problem!
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