good customer service

A virtual chat world where I was once an active member has had quite a bit of downtime lately. I don’t spend much, if any, time there any longer. In fact, the only reason I’ve been checking their forum this week to see if they are back in service is so I can close out my presence and my account there.

One thing that has always annoyed me is how people talk about “withdrawal” when just one of their online places goes down. Unless your internet has completely gone down, and even if it has, aren’t there a bazillion other online and offline things to do? Sorry, pet peeve there.

Another conversation I noted on their forum was someone speculating about price increases since hardware repairs and upgrades were involved. I know nothing about that, but that brings me to my next, and real, topic: have I mentioned how much WiredTree rocks?

I hope I haven’t lost you there, because we both know the answer to that is that yes, I have mentioned it quite a few times since switching VPS providers in May. And like the virtual world I am about to leave, WiredTree has also done some recent hardware upgrades. So will there be a price increase for my VPS? The answer is… NO!

Not only has there not been a price increase, my plan has been upgraded a step and the price remains the same as the old one. Last week I got an email notifying me of the upcoming changes. Here’s an excerpt:

We are pleased to announce we are upgrading VPS resources for all existing customers! We will be phasing out our VPS384 plan and we will be introducing a VPS1024 plan as our new high-end VPS plan. Every VPS plan will be shifted up a step from the plan it is on currently. For example, if you have a VPS384 currently, you will be upgraded to our new VPS512. If you have a VPS768 you will be upgraded to our VPS1024. This “level up” will be occurring for all current VPS customers, and the best part? Your rates will remain the same!

It is so nice to see an improvement or price break given to current clients, not only as a incentive to attract new business.

Today I got the email saying that the change to my server had actually taken place. Here’s an excerpt:

[my_server_name] has been upgraded from a Virtual Private Server 384 to a Virtual Private Server 512 !
Your guaranteed memory has been increased from 384MB to 512MB!
Your bandwidth allocation has been increased from 600GB to 1000GB!
It looks like you used a coupon which gave you a discount on your current plan rate, and we are passing this onto your new plan for you!

Thank You for being a WiredTree client!

Is that great, or what? With several blogs and galleries on this server, I am so, so grateful to have the extra memory and bandwidth and thus, some extra time before a paid upgrade to the next step is needed. A big thanks to WiredTree for taking care of their existing customers.

(NaBloPoMo | July ’09: 29 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 186 of 274)

During the time I was moving my business and personal domains to WiredTree, I mentioned several times how impressed I was with their excellent customer service and technical support. I moved the business domain first, and Monday was the one-month anniversary of the move. Everything has gone quite well this month, with only minor move-related issues that were taken care of almost as soon as I hit “Enter” on the support ticket request.

I was still surprised and pleased to receive a follow-up email from WiredTree customer service manager Joe Doss, checking to make sure that all was in fact going well, reminding me of the different support options, and inviting my general feedback.

I continue to be totally impressed with WiredTree, am very happy to have a great hosting company like this local to me in Chicago, and am feeling very good about my decision to have both my business and personal VPSs there.

I want to say a good word for my former web host, Web.com. I ended up there by way of HostPro being sold to Interland being sold to Web.com. You can see that could have been a recipe for disaster, although honestly I never had the issues with Interland that some of the bad reviews during that time would have predicted. In fact, my overall experience was quite good, with local American 24/7 tech support, available by either ticket or phone, throughout all of the moves. I did not leave because I was dissatisfied with customer service or tech support. Rather, the ownership changes had ultimately resulted in a move away from VPS support, and my aging server was not able to be updated to 21st century standards.

I had a rather frustrating experience while cancelling, though. I cancelled on my billing day and the customer service person who handled the call would not cancel the charge for the coming month. When the automated follow-up email arrived, I expressed my displeasure that the charge was not waived since the cancellation was made on the billing day by a long-time customer who had never missed a payment. Within less than 24 hours, I had a call and an email stating they would reverse the charge. When the credit did not show up online, a customer support supervisor took responsibility for walking the credit through the system and making sure it went through properly. All ended well. I would be happy to continue to recommend them to anyone who needs shared personal or commerce hosting.

So that’s my good customer service story for two companies. Just wish I had more of them!

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 17 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 144 of 274)

Exceeding expectations

Applause where it’s deserved