No customer service???

[EricF]

I opened a support ticket on October 3 requesting assistance IN ADVANCE of my contract expiration on October 14. It is now October 29 and I have received NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER. This is not the FluidHosting I signed up with 10 years ago and I will have to find a new hosting company that actually responds to its customers.

Too bad.

[FH-Andrew]

Hello Eric,

Can you provide a ticket number? We aim to respond to support tickets within the first 15 minutes. Your ticket could have been escalated to a manager.

Please can you PM me your ticket number?

[EricF]

Done at 9:44am EDT - how long to wait...

[EricF]

11:40am on Friday - still nothing...

[EricF]

Well, I finally got a response/reaction on my support ticket for billing. Would have been nice to have the information BEFORE renewal so I could have taken action to reduce my footprint and my bill - guess that's a bit much to ask. We're not done until I see the refund posted to my credit card - none of this ACCOUNT credit nonsense.

[EricF]

So, once I got some movement from billing, I discovered that the original extension for 5 years, which I didn't want, was so deeply discounted, which they didn't tell me, that my cost for 1 year in my current configuration is almost 1/2 the cost of the 5 year extension of the larger account. If I had known that, I might have taken a different approach. The lack of transparency on pricing and transactions (since when are there "no refunds for prepaid items" - if there's no discount for annual vs month-to-month, why should I prepay ANYTHING) is really dismaying.

I don't like to suffer in silence, and I don't like to pay for resources I don't use. Meanwhile, the information on the FH website seems very dated, and it's unclear to me that there is still a commitment to above-average service and capabilities. Mark me down as disappointed.

[stanj]

Billing department ticket Nov 4th still have not responded to a to why my card was charged twice in an hour. This is troubling since I never had to worry about being ignored in the past. I don't want to have to change VPS companies.

[stanj]

Eric, what was the secret to getting a billing response? A secret handshake or magical incantation perhaps? Still waiting from Nov 4th.

[EricF]

Stan,
It's still not resolved, but I did get a response this week after bumping my ticket 2 or 3 times (basically, once a week go into ticket and ask what's happening...)

[stanj]

I just got an automated notice my account has ended because of a billing error. The card is valid and good, and has not been charged according to my bank. So not only have they not corrected the $50 double charge which should have paid for the next month but required me to make another manual payment, and they will probably double charge me again, yet still no response to the ticket of Nov 4. Is Fluid going out of business? If they do not want our business the fair and ethical thing to do is tell us.

The last post here trying to get some response, a message come up saying the message would not appear until moderated. It never showed up so there must be a flood of other frantic subscribers needing answers also, for them to resort to silencing us.

[stanj]

I just checked with my bank, after getting another notice from Fluid that my manual payment had an error. There is are funds available yet Fluid keeps coming up with errors. I will be locked out of my server if I can't someone get Some to respond to tell me either to go find another provider or to tell me why they can't answer tickets and charge credit cards.

[stanj]

Update: There has been a response and the matter is being looked into now. Apparently the billing problems are confined to the accounting/billing functions, not related to the servers or technical side of the business.

[EricF]

As of this morning, my billing account is finally correct, with the incorrect charges refunded to my credit card account. While I don't think it should have taken this long or been this complicated, the final resolution is pretty much exactly what I asked for. I do think using the tech support ticket system for billing inquiries is a recipe for poor accountability - nevertheless, I'm satisfied with the outcome and hope we don't have to revisit it for a while.