How Much Do You Want To Know?

[TheHostHunter]

The absolute best kind of hosting is one that you almost seem to forget about. If there are no problems for years on end, you get into a nice comfortable state where all you have to worry about is just updating your website and going about life. I've had a couple hosts like this where there just weren't any problems for months/years and I couldn't have been happier to forget that they were even there.

However, sometimes things can go wrong and when it does I'm the kind of person that wants to know everything that happened and sometimes more. I know some companies are scared to divulge too much information, thinking they might scare some of their clueless customers, but I'm not one of them. I know this go wrong and all I want to know what went wrong and how they're going to do to prevent it from being a regular occurrence.

Anyone else like it when the web host is very candid about outages? I tend to leave a host very quickly if they try to sweep problems under the rug instead of facing them head on.

 

[DavidsAwesome]

Sometimes problems can't be solved easily enough that it is worth the host's trouble... but I agree with you that they should be honest.

Heres an example of what I mean... About a month ago, a client informed me that emails weren't going through to hotmail or msn users. I investigated it on our server, and all the logs showed the emails going though, I contacted our DC and they said the problem was on hotmail's side. I contacted hotmail, they didnt want to help me either. I contacted microsoft, they tried to help, but it didn't work. So so far, I've spent a month going in circles trying to find out about a stupid problem that no one cares about except for the people effected. Most people would give up, but I'm still spending hours every day finding out what the problem is, I've tried countless "solutions" that always fail. But throughout the whole time, I've been talking with the customer that told me about it, and he's been completely understanding.
I'm sure I just told you way too much info that you didn't want to know.

 

[Darknight]

LOL, yeah just a little bit to much info
Iv had the same issue befor with a dedicated server from sharktech, I dont know what it was... Never tried to fix it though as the box was only really for IRCd's

 

[Zeppelin]

Being that honest with clients may damage host's reputation, he should be absolutely sure the client will be patient and undrstanding. I mean clients should keep to the business ethics as well, not only hosts.

 

[hostcolor]

Well,
I think that the host should be honest and always tell the real info, even if it can hurt them and of course it depends on the problem and how fast it can be solved - from other side the clients need to be patient - and the only way to make them patient is to explain what the problem is and how you are going to solve it. Even if it host's fault, its better to tell you are messed up and fix it than giving any false answers.

A.

 

[[ih]Demetris]

When i do encounter downtime, i make it a habit of making sure the client understand what is going on or what the issue is. And also what we are doing to correct the issue and keep it from being a reoccuring problem. But as fcolor said client also need to understand that some things do take time. But of course honest and fair business practices takes you a very long way as well..