When Customer Service Steps Up
by Frank Jovine on 11/12/2008 in Business, Internet
An unfortunate situation occurred almost two weeks ago when TechJaws.com was suspended for abuse. The abuse was caused by overuse of CPU due to a spike in traffic (10,000 visitors) in a two hour period. The policy states that if any shared hosting account utilizes 50% of the CPU resources for more than 30 minutes, it must be shut down to protect the other customers on the same server.
This could easily happen to anyone who is using MySQL on the backend with WordPress. There are many WordPress themes and plugins that make unnecessary database queries which could result in over using CPU resources.
I spoke to Russ Gilman today, Sr. VP of Customer Care for Aplus.net to discuss the site suspension of TechJaws.com on October 31st. Russ was all ears and extremely patient while I explained all the details from start to finish.
Like many companies, Aplus.net has gone through changes in support personal to better care for its customers. In fact, Aplus.net holds security and abuse in high regard to protect its customers from any unnecessary outages due to misuse and or abuse of services. This by far is very high on my list when selecting a host company.
My conversation with Russ went very well, he was very understanding and apologized. In addition, Russ extended an offer to reimburse the money left over from my hosting plan. He also insured me that in the event this same situation occurs again, he will have his support staff handle it more appropriately so that both sides are in a win-win situation.
I appreciate the offer for a dedicated solution, and I will certainly contact you personally around February of 2009.
Thumbs up Russ and Aplus.net!
Hamdani Amin
Nov 12th, 2008
I guess even the web hosting company know the power of social networking and viral report. Didn’t they take action after you promise to post this incident at every web hosting forum and social networking site? New do travel fast.
jlp4u3
Nov 12th, 2008
I am so happy this company came through for you Frank. With the IT industry slowly losing steam, it is good to see reports of companies that are willing to go the extra mile.
Fool
Nov 12th, 2008
I see they aren’t as foolish as I thought, both parties happy? Great to have someone interest in working it out. I retract my previous comment on original post.
Frank J
Nov 12th, 2008
Russ was very professional, sincere and that was extremely important to me. He came through like I would expect from any customer service executive. Aplus was always good to me and I have never had an issue other than the recent mishap which has been resolved.
Frank J
Nov 12th, 2008
Hamdini,
The power of the internet could be good and bad. I never wanted to come across or be perceived as a threat. I waited 4 days to cool off before I wrote that blog.
They did the right thing and I am very happy with the outcome. I highly recommend their services as now we all learned from this.
Frank J
Nov 12th, 2008
Fool – I appreciate the retract and comment!
Julie
Nov 12th, 2008
Frank:
Quite refreshing to finally come across a company that cares about it’s subscribers and net workers. Will gladly give this the big thumbs up on Stumbleupon. I will also share it with other techies that are on my friends list. Best wishes and I hope that you never run into this kind of problem again…but if it should happen that you do…it is nice to know that you have a good company behind you. Kudos to you.
Frank J
Nov 13th, 2008
Julie,
Thank you so much for your support! I appreciate the effort in sharing this with your friends.