I am not exactly a "newbie," but I am still learning my way around all of this webmastery stuff (as well as your system) and I have no problem admitting that. Further, as I have changed hosts three times since purchasing my first domain name, I have had to learn three different control panels and companies' ways of doing things in the past three years. It is not hard to get confused!
I purchased a new domain name this week and knew I could host it through my existing account, but since I used a different registrar, I needed some simple questions answered. I was pretty sure I knew the answers, but the terms can get confusing - especially between 2-3 different companies and services!
In particular, I needed a parked domain AND an add-on domain and the latter creates a sub-domain off my existing domain. I needed to install an .HTACCESS file to create the appropriate 301 redirects, which I found out deletes the redirects set in the Control Panel - something NOT mentioned in any FAQ I could find in your Knowledge Base which, btw, relies on a truly awful search routine which returns mostly useless results.
I understand that your elite team of IT specialists consider this elementary stuff too trivial to waste time explaining, but despite my 15+ years of computing and Web experience, I wanted to be sure I was doing the right thing BEFORE I screwed something up.
Your internal redirect function does not support redirecting the domain to the WWW prefix (theweirding.net to land on www.theweirding.net), so I had to create my own HTACCESS file and it deleted ALL the redirects already in place. Had I known it would do that, I could have simply printed said page before I installed the HTACCESS file; instead, I was forced to use a myriad of tools to try and rediscover what all I had redirected! I did not want to go through similar issues setting up this new domain.
Some rather basic concepts can become quite confusing, especially when working through two different systems. What you are told to do and what you actually HAVE to do are sometimes different things, and quite often what you read makes little sense until you are actually doing it - much the way sex with a woman will be for most of your techs! Regardless, I pay money for this and that price includes customer service.
As a former tech support specialist for RoadRunner (I made it all the way to overnight manager!), I know how frustrating it can be.
I don't care.
They get paid to do it and that is their JOB; if they cannot do said job, they should be fired. I don't care about their call time, their ratios, their queue - none of it. I don't appreciate being talked down to, nor treated like the answers to my simple questions are totally obvious to everyone except me.
Fix your KB so it takes less than an hour to find what you're looking for and/or reorganize your FAQs to alleviate the same issue. Change your system so you don't have to login to 23409798 different accounts - one for your cpanel, one for support, another for... pfft! - to do whatever it is you need to do. Since you're all so darned smart, why isn't this already done? Gah!
If you made it easier for us to find the "simple" answers we need, we wouldn't have to drag your techs out of their WoW game long enough to "help" us.
There is no excuse for the way I have been treated by your tech support. Otherwise, I am actually pleased with the services.
© C Harris Lynn, 2008
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