Bluehost saw a woman lying in pain and kicked her a few times just because she’s down and it can. Honestly, I’m still in a state of shock over how bad Bluehost customer service truly was. This post is the explanation of why Bluehost has lost me as a customer. How Bluehost’s actions resulted in some very serious conversations last night on Twitter. It’s a story of how fast bad new travels – and how Bluehost’s total lack of empathy killed their potential to up-sell.

There are a few truths that I hold self-evident:

1. It costs less to keep a current customer than get a new one.
2. The easiest and best way to grow a business is to sell more (services / products) to a current customer.
3. The best new customers are ones referred by happy current customers.
4. The customer is always right, even when they aren’t.

Last night was pretty much the classic nightmare for any blogger – someone had hacked Tchochkes, the blog I started over 2 years ago. We thought the hacker had wiped the database, so we went to our host – Bluehost – to find out if they could recover the site from their backups, because we haven’t been backing up as we should have.

Now, I know you’re going to tell me that I should have been backing up the site myself regularly. I’ve been working in the internet now for 12 years – I have worked for companies when sites have been hacked. I know that backup should be done nightly. It wasn’t. Yes, my bad. That isn’t the point here.

We contacted Bluehost to see if they could recover the site from a recent backup, as their site states:

It turns out that they have “never” done a backup of the site. Then the customer service person informs me that only so many files are allowed for sites to be backed up and we have well passed our limit. I understand and respect this – companies can only do so much, fair enough. However, my automatic response was – why didn’t you let me know? The answer was “we expect our customers to be adults”  and do it themselves, “it’s in the terms and conditions. ”

Excuse me? I’ve made a mistake, am convinced that I’ve lost 2 years of data and hard work of a lot of people (we have over 8 writers now) and you’re insulting me (the adults comment)? Is that really they way they taught you to behave (remember number 4 above)? Bluehost claims to have “24/7 Superb/Responsive Sales/Support”. I am stating quite frankly: this is a lie. They have people working, but the way they respond is the worst experience I’ve had in years. In fact, after the “adult” insult I now hate Bluehost even more than I do the hacker who took my site down!

But I digress, I kept digging with the CSR to find out why Bluehost doesn’t inform their clients that they have gone over a limit for backing up their files. It seems a natural way to get an upsell, and a silly thing to lose out on (see #2 above). I was informed that they only have so much space and that it needs to go to the customer. Which makes me wonder about the claim on their homepage (below.)

I also checked out other hosting sites where I saw that they put a limit on total file size per section (Silver / Gold / Platinum) and the backend system informs the website owner that they are using too much space for their section and need to upgrade. This tells me that this functionality is not over the top and totally feasible to implement. If I were Bluehost it would make sense to me to want my current customers to buy more when they need to – so contacting them and letting them know that they have exceeded the limit for backup would be a courtesy mixed with a potential up-sell. This is a win-win. Why would a company not want to do that?!

Ok, Bluehost didn’t do that. Fine, it makes sense and it could earn Bluehost more money. But Bluehost doesn’t have to. However, it could have been handled like more like this:

“I’m so sorry your site has been hacked. I know that is a really upsetting experience. Unfortunately, you had gone over our limits for backup on your current plan. You’re right that it would be a good idea to inform the customer of something like this. [Back to Number 4 - the quickest way to calm someone down is to tell them that they are right, even when they are not] While I unfortunately can’t help you in this current situation, I would like to help you make sure that it doesn’t happen again. This plan would be perfect for the growth your site has now…”

Instead – I was argued with, insulted and informed that they expect their customers to behave like adults and do it themselves. They even gave me a metaphor that if someone is speeding it is the speeders responsibility to know the law. Another thing I didn’t need to hear at the time. I knew and understood the mistake was mine – but rubbing salt in the wound was wrong. Epic customer service fail. Every step of the way. Empathy – that would have saved this customer from moving. There was zero empathy for my situation. Instead I was insulted and kicked while I was down.

The cost to Bluehost?

Good question. I’m simply one of over 1,000,000 domains that they host. However – I tweeted about it A LOT last night and a bit this morning. 20 people either responded directly with a mention or DM’d (direct message’d) me to send their condolences. This 20 represent those who chose to say something – I have over 2,600 followers on Twitter – I’m sure more read about it but didn’t say anything. I also wrote about it on Facebook where I have over 700 “friends” (I actually have friends on there going back to pre-school – and we moved a lot – I know a lot of people). I’m putting this on my blog and I am actually considering buying www.ihatebluehost.com – because shockingly no one has done this yet – and posting this rant there. Yeah, I didn’t take their “Superb” customer service very well at all.

I guess the real question is: How much would it have cost Bluehost to simply be nice?