I've been hosting my websites with ATLNetworks for several years. Their services are affordable but lately the service has been lacking. Their website advertises 100% uptime (which is technically impossible) and 24x7x365 support.
However, I went to cancel my accounts recently and found that they were startlingly unresponsive. I opened a ticket to cancel my accounts and it wasn't responded to for several days. I then filed a second ticket at critical importance alerting them to the fact I hadn't received any response for so long.
I finally emailed them at [email protected] and they responded to me in the following manner:
"You need to provide 30 day notice prior to the renewal of the domain, please note your accounts are the basic accounts that do not get 24x7 support. Have you tried to call the number on our site, that is manned 24 hours a day seven days a week and that is always available to you. When calling, you must make sure you leave a message if an operator is not immediately available and you will get a call back with 15 minutes."
The most shocking part was that they said basic accounts do not get 24/7 support and that I need to provide 30 days notice to cancel. I have never heard of either of those things before. And currently on their website, they clearly state that ALL accounts get 24/7 support:
atlnetworks.com/about.htm (on the left column)
I responded saying that it was fine and good that I could call someone, but I was under the assumption that their online ticketing system was just as effective (and it requires a lot less time for me generally). I asked again that my accounts be canceled and I received this response:
"You will need to give 45 day notice, if there is a billing prior to that you would be responsible for it. Please try to keep in mind that there are several layers of plans, we have single domain hosting clients that pay close to $200 a month for the hosting of one domain because it is mission critical.
With ALL DUE RESPECT if you get the lowest cost hosting plan available (we are as far as price and the plan you have) priority will be placed on other accounts. We are certainly going to help with server down issues and such, however, programming, cp, Etc. Issues are not always covered.
We want everyone to be happy and try to achieve this, but we do host to 60,000 domains in total and we must have certain guidelines in place. Again, I am very sorry the problems you had."
Note that now they indicate that I need 45 days notice to cancel and they still give me no instructions as to how I actually go about canceling.
I responded yet again pleading for them to cancel my account and can I atleast start my 45 day notice. They responded and said they had cancelled the accounts. Obviously, I'm very unhappy with this process and though it was finally resolved, I don't think this sort of thing should happen to anyone else so I'm filing with you.
0 comments