Skip to main content

An issue with GoDaddy Email Support

While my web site uptime has been fairly good, I have had a variety of issues with GoDaddy's service in the year or so I have been with them. This isn't necesarily odd, though. Look up an ISP or web host on the net, and you will find someone who has has a bad experience with them.

That said, there is one issue that always rubs me the wrong way when dealing with GoDaddy email tech support. The responses I receive are often unhelpful, or just plain wrong, as in the case with the response below. Even worse, although they always claim there is "no problem", the issue I am experiences usually clears up soon after my email support request.

Here was my initial email to them this morning...

ftp access to site welchwrite.com appears slow. Transfers are slow to begin and complete. Ftp updates from Blogger.com also appear to be having issues as my (b)logs are not updating when posting a new entry.


...and here is their response...

Thank you for contacting online support. It sounds like you may have a connection issue as we are not having any of these issue occur on our end. I suggest to check your fire wall settings and run a trace route. Unfortunately the Mac based computers do not come with a built in Traceroute tool so you will need to download one to perform a Traceroute. You can go to http://www.whatroute.net to download a small software application known as WhatRoute which will allow you to perform this action.


Now, I admit, I could and should have told them that I had done some testing and could access other FTP servers correctly, but in my own defense, I didn't mention it because I would assume that someone has tried other servers before sending in the trouble ticket. I guess this is the curse of being a troubleshooting tech somtimes.

Once again, though, this is the typical response. "Problem, what problem? We don't see a problem?" There always seems to be an assumption that the user knows nothing and must obviously be mistaken, despite the fact that they have experienced some sort of problem, or they wouldn't have taken the time to send the trouble ticket.

It is the second part of the message that bother me most, though. I know Macs are not the dominant computer in the marketplace, but I do expect GoDaddy support techs to know that there is a built-in traceroute command on every Mac sold today. In fact, there are at least 2 ways to do a traceroute, that I know of.

First, the geek method is to run the Terminal application and type traceroute domain.com. Second, there is the GUI-based Network Utility available in the Applications/Utilities folder that also includes the ability to do a traceroute.

I think support issues like this bother me more than the average person since I spend my day supporting my computer consulting clients and I have worked in help desk environments in the past. I have been on the other end of the phone and I know it is difficult work, but that doesn't mean you can simply brush off people to clear the ticket, nor assume that everyone writing you is a technology-impaired idiot. We wouldn't be writing if we didn't, at least, think we had a problem. One that we had tried to solve...and couldn't.

** Previous mentions of GoDaddy


Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
Basically godaddy's ftp service is just plain slow.
I also sent them trouble tickets and received similar and even other responses.
I have my own dedicated servers at other providers and they work just fine.
They have a problem and they just don't care.

That's the problem when you either hire inexperienced tech support or you outsource it to India and give them template responses to answer our questions.

Popular posts from this blog

Tiny Wow - Tools That Solve Your Files Problem - Convert to/from many file formats [Shared]

A nice collection of quick, online tools, to convert to and from a variety of file types. Just the site to keep in mind when you need to shuffle one type data into a new system. — Douglas TinyWow & Your Privacy Don't you love finding a great online tool-set that claims to be free, let's you build and interact the way you want, only to be denied access if you don't pay for an account(or sign up for an account). Our site is free. We don't limit. We don't even take sign-ups. Might we take sign-ups one day? Sure, we probably will(but not any time soon). When we do go down that route, what we will NOT do is trick you into spending your time using our tools, only to be denied access before you can download what you have just spent your precious time creating. TinyWow is free. We don't have ads, we don't sell data. We currently have no plans to monetize. Why offer these tools for free? We operate two tech websites: Alphr & TechJunkie. We thought our use

Elsewhere Online: AT&T's Spam Filter Gets A Bit Too Aggressive

This story from TechDirt lays out yet another reason I recommend that folks DON'T use the email provided to them by their ISP. My typical recommendation right now is to get a Gmail account instead. It also points out why I want to manage all my SPAM on my end, without pre-filtering from an ISP. I will gladly manage my spam if it helps to insure that I see as many of my "real" messages as possible. Again, Gmail's tools work pretty good in this regard. Having an alternative email account also insures you will keep the same email, even if you decide to leave your current ISP. Witness all the folks holding onto AOL accounts just to keep their AOL email address. Thank goodness at least that is free now. AT&T's Spam Filter Gets A Bit Too Aggressive You can certainly understand why ISPs offer spam filters. It's a service for users who don't want to be totally bombarded with spam. But what I've never understood is that these ISPs rarely give the user a

On my iPhone…IFTTT (If This Then That) for iOS

IFTTT (If This Then That) for iOS IFTTT (If This Then That) for iOS My best description of IFTTT, both their main web site, and this new iOS app is "a scripting language for the We." It allows you to set up "recipes" that watch one particular service, like Feedly, Evernote, Gmail and more, and then take action on another service whenever a particular action occurs. I use this to automatically save my shared items from Feedly and elsewhere into an Evernote Notebook and also use it to post automatically post information on a variety of services. The iOS app adds to this functionality by allowing you to take various actions on your phone and triggering IFTTT actions whenever they occur. In the case of the iPhone, initiating actions can include adding new contacts to your iPhone, taking a new picture and more.  For more complete information on how IFFTT works, visit ifttt.com    From the iTunes App Store... " Put the internet to work for you. IFTTT lets y