We’re Back

Having gone through the grief of hurriedly re-hosting this blog, now, perhaps, is the time to explain just what happened. Just briefly, I’d like to offer thanks to DK who stepped in and sorted out hosting for this blog – and spent a considerable amount of time sorting out the little matter of importing four year’s worth of archives. In the process we lost the last post – but as that was only a holding notice, it’s a minor loss – although thanks to the two people who left encouraging comments.

I’ve been with Bluehost for nearly three years and during that time it’s been pretty much okay. However, I should have realised that all was not well when the site was hacked last May. I raised a support ticket and was effectively told that it was my problem. I would have thought that any self-respecting host would have been concerned that someone had gained unauthorised access to their servers, but apparently not.

Just prior to our move to France in late November, I received an email from Bluehost advising me that the account had been suspended due to “performance problems”:

Your web hosting account for longrider.co.uk has been deactivated (reason: site causing performance problems).
Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted.

If you feel this deactivation is in error, please contact customer support as soon as possible.

When I called them I was advised that SQL queries had caused havoc with the server. Now, I was annoyed that they had summarily suspended the account without advising me first, but I remained cool and asked the reasonable question; what SQL queries? I was not able to obtain a satisfactory reply to that one. Just vague comments that it must be a plugin or some bad scripting.

Anyway, I did as I was advised and optimised the database using PHPMyAdmin.

On the 19th December as I was driving back home, Mrs L called me to advise me that her email wasn’t working. Then I received an email as before. Again, the site was suspended.

When I arrived home, I called technical support and again went through the charade of trying to get a straight answer to a straight question; what, precisely was going on? What SQL queries were causing the problem? Again, I was told that it must be a plug in or some bad script and that I should optimise the database.

On looking closely at the database, there were some records from Firestats, a plugin that I had removed as a possible offender the first time around. I dropped these entries along with some crud from way back – again, old plugins that were no longer present.

Just to make sure, I nipped in and optimised on a daily basis until Christmas morning when there was a present from Bluehost in the form of another email telling me once more that I was suspended. Fortunately, forewarned being forearmed, I had switched Mrs L’s email account over to an unaffected domain – hosted with someone else, I might add. It’s one thing to disable a rogue blog, it’s quite another to lock down the whole account and disrupt all activities including emails.

This being the third time I’d been summarily suspended, I’d had enough. I’ve better things to be doing with my time than calling the USA and trying to make sense of ambiguous “performance problems” from people who clearly understood it no more than I. Time, I decided, to move on. Still, I needed to access my account to get hold of the latest data since the last backup.

I called support but they were closed for the holiday, so I raised a ticket:

I have received yet another notification that my account has been suspended as it is causing “performance problems”. I have done everything you have asked me to do – I last optimised the database yesterday evening. And yet still this is happening. Frankly, I’m becoming increasingly annoyed. If there is a specific problem then it is not unreasonable of me to expect you to tell me specifically what that problem is and how, exactly it may be fixed – preferably before you pull the plug and disable my site and associated email accounts. I’m amazed that a simple WordPress blog should cause your servers so much difficulty – there is nothing unusual about it and I have removed the plug-in that we presumed was causing a problem. I have also been running optimisation on almost a daily basis since the weekend. What more am I supposed to do?

Please fix this – or tell me how to, and reopen my account so that I can run a back-up and take it elsewhere. I’ve had enough, quite frankly.

Regards

My tone was somewhat tetchy – I had done everything asked of me. I had tried, in vain, to get them to explain what the problem was. Vague responses such as “performance issues” and “slow SQL queries” are not helpful. When calling technical support, I expect expert technical replies to perfectly obvious and reasonable questions. What I got from Bluehost was worse than useless. That the problem persisted was evidence of such.

On the 26th, I tried the phone again as there was no response to the ticket. What I got was little short of a telling off for causing them problems. Excusefuckingme? I am the customer here. I am paying for a service that I am not receiving. I remained calm and collected and asked for access to the C Panel so that I could see what was going on. Not that I had the slightest intention of doing any such thing. I wanted to get everything off the server and onto my hard drive before they had a chance to lock me out again. The admin was apparently in a good mood despite my “causing them problems” and graciously allowed me access to my own data. Cheeky bastard! This is a fine lesson in how not to do customer relations.

In the meantime, someone called Alex responded to my ticket:

customer’s mysql queries are causing problems on the server. customer needs to fix/optimize their queries and implement caching on their web scripts. If customer has already done those things already then they are simply too big for shared hosting and need to look for VPS or dedicated hosting.

Second, what specifically did you do to optimize your wordpress install? Knowing specifically what you have done already will help us suggest what you haven’t done to help the situation.

Here we go again… I’ve done all of that. And I was the one asking them specific questions. Questions that they had so far not answered. Still, I responded to Alex’s questions:

Hi,

I did exactly as I was asked to do – I used phpadmin to optimise the database – indeed, I did this each day since the last time this problem occurred. While the database has grown in size, I am bemused that it should be such a problem – we are, after all, talking about one blog with a relatively low readership that has grown exactly as one would expect over a period of three years or so. There is nothing special about it and it should not be causing performance problems. Had I used other facilitate that you offer; running a business with shopping carts and such, how would the server have coped then?

I make no secret that I am not an expert in SQL – and have no need to be. That is what I expect support to do – to explain exactly what the problem is and to help me resolve it.

As it is, I am busy backing up prior to migrating – while I am patient, that patience has been stretched by a host that pulls the plug arbitrarily without notice leaving emails not working and no access to the data without calling support.

Not good enough, frankly.

As I point out, had I been running a small business, the servers clearly wouldn’t have coped – and I would be suffering financial loss as a consequence. It is here that the true picture starts to emerge; this is not about my site causing problems, it is about it outgrowing shared hosting. Given my site’s modest size, this surprises me, but if that’s the case, so be it. Now, a reputable company would contact the customer and offer this advice and suggest an upgraded service. Not Bluehost; they pull the plug and treat you like a naughty child.

If you are reading this and think I should have seen this coming from a relatively low cost shared host, you might have a point. However, at the time they were not the cheapest and it was not obvious to me that it has grown so significantly. I cannot see what Bluehost can see and I don’t read minds.

Anyway, Alex gets back to me:

Unfortunately we don’t offer that type of service. We supply the tools, but we don’t teach people how to use them all Especially the ones we didn’t create ourselves. We are not in a position nor is it feasible for us to teach people to trouble shoot problems with scripting, mysql, coding, plugins, etc… If there is something server side that is causing the problem then we will fix it. But when it comes to a 3rd party product that is being used, it is not our responsibility to teach you how to use it, or optimize it. You paid for hosting not an education in running a website.

When it comes to optimizing your site, yes going into phpmyadmin is part of optimizing, but there are other things you can do as well. Such for wordpress there is a plugin called super-cache. It helps with how your site queries your database, and other caching issues. Which could greatly optimize your site and allow it to run for a while longer with us before you site and traffic become such that…yes you have out grown shared hosting.

Shared hosting is by no means a permanent solution to hosting needs. Its more of a stepping stone. Most when they get popular and large enough it requires a move to a server that can throw more resources at the site to accommodate its needs. Like our Admin said… if you haven’t tried any caching type plugins, you might want to look into or research this. If you have then maybe its time to take your site to the next level.

Now I’m getting really annoyed – I was not asking for an education (and I certainly wasn’t asking to be patronised in such a condescending manner). I was asking a straightforward question that a knowledgeable technical support officer should have been able to answer; what, exactly, is causing the problem? Alex is behaving like other so-called experts do; belittling those who ask questions. You see this type of behaviour on Internet forums where someone asks what the experienced users consider a stupid or obvious question. There are no such things as stupid questions – only stupid people who think that flaming a newcomer is acceptable behaviour. In my own field of expertise I have to answer the same questions over and over because to the people asking them, they are new. What I don’t do is try to make them look small – they are paying my wages after all.

As for the “blame the third party” approach, I’m sorry, but if you supply the tools, you should expect to have to provide support in the event of hassles with them. If I went to my garage and the mechanic told me that he didn’t support cars that had third party cam belts fitted, I’d walk and find another garage. Indeed, I expect the mechanic to know what he is talking about… On the other hand, maybe I won’t pursue that analogy…

As for the final comments, well, had they pointed this out at first, I wouldn’t be complaining. In the meantime, a little research told me that I was not alone in my experience. Piss-poor customer service seem to be par for the course with this bunch.

My final response was suitably acid. If there was any wavering on my part, I had long since passed the point where this company was getting any second chances. What they were going to get was this highly negative review.

I have been using supercache.

At no time was I asking for an education on SQL – asking you to tell me what the problem is, is not seeking an education, it is a perfectly reasonable question. I can’t fix anything if you won’t tell me precisely what the problem is in the first instance. You are the ones who can see the problem, I cannot. Telling me that it is a “performance problem” or “something to do with scripting” is about as much use as communicating with me in Mandarin.

You supply hosting with a range of tools. It is reasonable to expect support to be able to cope with issues arising from those tools. If you cannot or will not, then don’t supply them and don’t have them on your servers and at the very least, make it very clear upfront that you will pull the plug if they misbehave – had you done so, I’d have not taken out your hosting service.

My problem is that I have paid for a service that I have been denied on three separate occasions. At no time did you contact me beforehand to advise me that there is a problem – and not being clairvoyant, I cannot know that there is a problem unless you tell me. You didn’t; you simply pulled the plug and disrupted my wife’s email service into the bargain – thank you very much for that. It is this, more than anything else that leaves me furious with your service – I am not receiving a service, yet you have my money.

Yes, you are probably right, it is time to move on, but your willingness to pull the plug without prior notice is the most abysmal, reprehensible behaviour imaginable. This is not, by any definition of the expression “customer service”.

That they have not replied speaks volumes. Not that I am expecting them to. They are, without question, the most unprofessional outfit I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. They are happy to take customers’ money having over sold their resources and then when people actually start to use those resources, pull the plug without so much as a by-your-leave.

That I would not recommend them pretty much goes without saying, but I would go further and actively recommend leaving them well alone and that goes for their sister site, Hostmonster.

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Update: I wrote the original post two days ago – but it became lost during the recovery. Since then, someone called Jonathan has replied:

I’ve spent some time reviewing the Slow MySQL Queries logs and what I’m seeing, up until the 26th when there appears a query should the addition of a Cache plugin, before this point resides thousands of slow queries, each suggesting use of Whos Online plugins, as well as other plugins that are poorly constructed, and have simply been running rampant on the server. Who’s Online plugins make database hits for each request made to the server, this counts for the same visitor refreshing the same page, viewing images, as well as any CSS, Javascript, external php files, pretty much everything loaded in association with your site, so with one page load, the Who’s Online plugin can log up to a thousand database hits easily, if there are lots of assets involved, and when we talk more than one visitor at the same time, the whole mess can get out of hand on an exponential level. With this type of abuse, any Shared Host provider would shut down an offending site immediately to prevent !
 outages for the other customers on the same server, as well as any potential damage caused in the process. Our Term of Service are extremely verbose and clear regarding our right to terminate, suspend, deactivate service without notice. We’ve discussed these problems with your account twice before, on the 24th of November and the 21st of December, so you’ve been notified of problems with your database for sometime now. So, here’s where we sit, you’re going to need to remove those Who’s Online plugins, utilize the cache plugins to their fullest extent and we can reinstate the account. Please understand, we do not enjoy suspending accounts, there are many other things to be done, but so long as there exists performance problems, we must seek and remove those sources at all costs, even if it means deactivating an account responsible.

Well, well, well, a proper reply at last. Although Jonathan has carried on with the “blame the customer” approach. Despite the exhortations that I was told, I believed that we had resolved the problems, so treating this as a deliberate act is outrageous. And, again, piss-poor customer service. The resort to the TOS just doesn’t wash. Every company will have terms of service that give them a get out in the event of things going horribly wrong. They are, however, a tool of last resort, not first. Not if you want to stay in business that is. TOS that are used in this manner on what appears to be a fairly regular basis is no excuse for not speaking to your customers and attempting to resolve problems amicably. Had they done so, they would have kept me as a client. As it is, they’ve lost me as a client. They might not be too bothered by this, but they have also lost potential clients who read this and choose not to use Bluehost as a consequence. Anyone who thinks that there is no such thing as bad publicity is wrong.

My response to Jonathan:

Well, finally – a sensible answer to a straightforward question. I asked right at the beginning what was causing the problem; it should not have taken this long to get a straight answer.

As for abuse; this is not abuse – abuse is deliberate. At no time have I acted deliberately and I object vigorously to the inference that I have. On each occasion that I spoke to your support staff, I followed their instructions to the letter. The problem here is not me – it is your company’s inability to identify the problem accurately in the first instance and advise me accordingly. It would have been a simple matter to switch off the offending plugin. And, it is one thing to disable a misbehaving blog, but to lock up the whole account including emails is wholly unacceptable.

Nor, for that matter am I interested in your terms of service as an excuse – they merely provide wriggle room. What I expect is decent customer service and that involves communicating with the customer, providing accurate information. Switching off without notice is a deplorable practice. Had you simply advised me accurately in the first place what the problem was, this could have been resolved amicably. On the previous occasions I was none the wiser – so expecting me to “do something” is unrealistic. I believed, having followed your instructions, that the problem was solved. So, no, I didn’t know that there was still a problem. Like I said before, I don’t read minds.

As it is, I’ve re-hosted the site elsewhere – I want nothing more to do with your company.

It is worth bearing in mind that a satisfied customer might pass on their experience, a dissatisfied one will, most definitely – on average eight to sixteen people. If I treated my clients as your company has treated me, I would be out of business in pretty short order. You really do need to rethink how you deal with your customers. A quick Google confirms that I am not alone here.

All that remains is for you to cancel the account and refund the period of time that I have paid for and been denied.

We will see, eh?

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Another update:

To his credit, Jonathan has responded:

Dear customer,
 I apologize for the lack of explicit communication regarding the initial issue, had this issue been placed in my view a tad sooner we likely could have resolved this issue with little problem. I am forwarding this to our Billing Department so they can put together your refund. I wish you the best of luck in your future ventures and wish you an exquisite new year.
Thanks,

He is right – it probably would have. Too late now. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

2 Comments

  1. Your article pinged on my blog post. Just curious as to where you are hosting now? I’m still with bluehost but with a hair trigger finger. If it was just one site then i would have been long gone but i have about 8 i’d have to move and not looking forward to that.

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