dot.ph negative review #9913 by Lyn Dimaano on Apr 2010


dot.ph got a negative review on and one official response on
dot.ph
dot.ph
2706 Jollibee Plaza Bldg.F. Ortigas Jr. Rd, Ortigas Center,
Pasig , METRO MANILA 1605
PH
☎ Phone 63-2-637-2104 to 05
Customer review #9913
1.5/10
Lyn Dimaano ( -no email- )
Time Hosted 1 to 3 months
Global rating
Features
Price / Cost
Customer Relation
Control Panel
Plan : Start-Up
Time: About a month

Had a good start with this webhosting provider, as I was only looking for a speedier host than faraway Yahoo!. Tech support was limited but accommodating when available -- good that I only needed rudimentary help and could go on after the initial set-up. Uploading files was easy with my software (WYSIWYG WebBuilder), with less constraint than Yahoo Webhosting.

This company does not have 24/7 tech support, and observes 9AM-6PM phone support hours Mon-Friday only, excepting holidays. Not too comforting.

The control panel doesn't work as it should -- can't track site traffic -- and is only minimally helpful. If you're not an expert and need guidance, call tech support, but only during the specified days and time. Still, no traffic count. Also not good.

I was drawn by their site claims "Our servers are the lifeline of the Philippine domain system and have been running continuously -- without a single outage -- for over 19 years." --http://webhosting.dot.ph/our-track-record.html

Well, there's always a first time, and that happened a few days ago. The company was terribly unprepared for the scenario of an outage -- that can't be good for client-sites.

My nearly 3 weeks of good experience was negated by unresolved and unacted upon technical trouble during the Holy Week break. No advisory, no one manning tech support for 4 days! Meanwhile, my site and theirs was unreachable, and because they're also my domain registrar, I couldn't at least do webforwarding to point my domain name to my yahoo-hosted alternative site.

So my business was invisible during the crucial Saturday-Sunday period where we expected peak traffic (what with our market coming in from the Holy Week hiatus).

Today, tech support confirmed there was a problem but this was allegedly solved by Thursday pm. But they were referring to an email problem, not this big one of invisibility. Only when the complaints came in that they found out (which they would have known if they had manned the phones during the holidays).

So there. The lesson is: don't look for track record itself. Look for preparedness, back-up systems, and the like. I don't know if dotph management has learned anything from this experience (heck, I don't even know if they know they have a problem) -- we will see what they'll do to assuage the feelings of angered users.
dotPH live customer support hours are from Monday to Saturday, 9am - 6pm.
Emergency support is available after these hours and on Sundays and holidays. Just leave a voicemail and we'll get back to you within (4) hours.

Marketing representative (registrar@dot.ph, ).

104 out of 108 users found this review to be helpful!

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