Host Papa review #19360 by Solona Armstrong (solona.armstrong@g...)


Host Papa got a negative review on and one official response on
hostpapa.com
Host Papa
5063 North Service Road, Suite 102
Burlington , ON l7l 5h6
CA
☎ Phone 1-888-959-7272
☎ Phone +1 905-315-3455
Customer review #19360
1/10
Solona Armstrong ( solona.armstrong@g... )
Time Hosted over 3 years
Global rating
Features
Price / Cost
Customer Relation
Control Panel
HostPapa is a SCAM!

I run a green web design business: http://www.sunwisedesign.ca. By green I mean that most of my clients are ENGOs (Environmental Non-Government Organizations), I use web hosting services that run on renewable energy and I myself have and will again run my equipment using off-grid, renewable energy.

HostPapa has been my hosting company of choice for three years. When I first signed up their customer service was excellent: prompt replies and intelligent responses. Soon afterwards, I noticed they were running fairly aggressive campaigns, primarily using Google Ads and a Facebook Page to grow their social media following and customer base. Since their fan base, and I assume customer list, have grown their customer service and their integrity have declined significantly.

Upon logging into a new reseller account using the info provided in HostPapa's welcome email, I noticed one of my clients' names at the top of the screen. Not my company name for which I had enrolled the reseller account. When I brought this to the attention of a HostPapa representative, they told me everything was fine. And magically, the next time I logged in my company name was listed. However, the credit card information on file for that account was still one of my clients'.

HostPapa's representatives often do not read my requests when I submit tickets. Two days after submitting a ticket, I will receive an irrelevant response and on a few occasions it has taken me three tries to finally get an intelligent answer.

Recently, one of HostPapa's representatives used the wrong email address for a support request. My request went ignored because the email was not authenticated. 4 days later, my site is still down.

The real clincher is the HostPapa Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/HostPapa. First of all, it is full of complaints. Second, most of the positive feedback on their wall seems completely fabricated by bogus users. Robert Barentine, a user with a handsome, professional looking profile photo had several positive comments on the Facebook HostPapa wall. When I clicked on Robert Barentine, I discovered he had only 8 friends and his only interest listed was HostPapa. A second user, Jill Grant had no friends and her only interest was HostPapa.

I typed this on their wall yesterday, March 19. This morning, I was removed as a follower from the HostPapa Facebook page. I "Liked" their page again to discover that my comments and those of Robert Barentine and Jill Grant were removed. I am now blocked from commenting on their page. A Facebook search also reveals that those two users have also been deactivated from Facebook entirely.

Is this what social media has come to? Is it right that a company with over 28,000 fans stoop to such depths to get to that size? How do we sniff out the rats and discern the difference between bogus users and those left by genuinely satisfied customers? And what are the consequences of such dishonest uses of social media?
Hi Solona,

Thanks for your email and we appreciate the feedback, even if some of the feedback is critical of our performance. I see you have been (and are still are) an active Hostpapa customer and we do not take your words lightly as to the feedback regarding our performance regarding our customer support.

We do have been a fast growing shared web hosting company thanks to our dedicated and loyal customer base that provides a number of referral clients based on what we believe is a solid foundation of customer support. Of course, like most service companies we are not perfect and we not only strive for continual quality improvements in our staff training, investment in new technologies, etc.

We are a bit disappointed to see that our service of 3+ years is rated a 1/10 but I guess that is something we will have to live with and try to improve on. Considering that we are hear on a third-party forum answering this complaint would be I hope at least a raise to 2/10 :)

In the upcoming months we have added a number of new service features to our business in a direct move to improve our customer satisfaction levels (we hope you will be patient while we implement these in the near future)

1) a new and deep knowledgebase with help articles, videos and quick lookup
2) enhanced training and mentoring programs for our reps,
3) new and improved chat including lookup in our KB
new telephone system for quicker access to customer support and streamlined account lookup
4)interactive blog including customer feedback
5) customer survey and ratings system (net promoter score..you should look it up quite interesting)
6) enhanced customer support metrics that our team reviews weekly including average response time, # of tickets/chats/calls, length of time in queue, etc.
7) live network status update on all our properties and services providing direct feedback related to technical and service issues.
8) social feedback tools i.e. twitter, facebook, etc. (more on that later)
9) launch of a brand new customer control panel (this year)
10) more products and features to help for you and your clients.

With respect to the individual issues mentioned in your post, of course we would like to address them directly with you instead of through this public forum and we thought we did!!

I see numerous tickets over a few week span in March of this year in our support system and our reps getting back to you promptly - although on some I see not to your satisfaction. Which we apologize for that. I also see that our escalations department dealt with social media related "issues" you addressed here in this post and we provided some information. You can see that our Facebook page has been completely revamped and you can expect more indepth information from us moving forward. Our team is also very active on Twitter!

I know this is a long reply but I hope this addresses your issues and we look forward to assisting you in the future.

Marketing representative (Faisal Khan - faisal@hostpapa.com, ).

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