BMA

I figure everyone is going to take issue with at least one policy of their hosting company.
To get a fairly objective comparison of hosts, I think you have to go to a hosting review website and see which companies have the highest percentage of satisfaction. I like the set up of this website: http://www.webhostingreviews.com/

If you think your host is bad, notice the satisfaction rate and read the comments on 1an1.com! And they say they're the largest domain registrar in the world!

The "high risk area" qualification sounds kind of bogus, but I can certainly see why a company would want to verify the identity of people placing orders - especially if there are red flags. Companies have to protect their reputation with credit card merchants. If they take too many bogus orders, the credit card merchants can blacklist you and create other horrors. Fortunately, my agency has good customer service, and we've never had a single chargeback despite doing business nationwide and internationally.

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eProHosted

They are such a large hosting company that you would think they could cut back on such a harsh verification process or have a better support team to handle the requests. Perhaps they should review some of their business practices or suffer from the loss of more potential clients. They are one of those companys that are too large to care about all of its clients on a personal level.

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Roly67

I also suffered at the hands of the dreaded "verification" process.

My company is a UK registered, Ltd company with previous HostGator accounts.

HostGator took our order on Friday and returned (refused) payment on Sunday (2 days later). No info on why, so I went into live chat. The chat transcript is at the bottom of this note.

This is just a plain weird way of doing business in my opinion. Well avoided!



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My primary domain is ****.rolosoft.com. Sales processing problems



(12:10:20 PM) System: There are currently 0 people in front of you and 133 chat technicians assisting customers.

(12:10:33 PM) Matthew He: Thank you for contacting HostGator Live Chat, my name is Matthew. I will be happy to assist you today.

(12:10:45 PM) Rowland O’Connor: Hello. Can someone help please?

(12:10:58 PM) Rowland O’Connor: Hi Matthew

(12:11:22 PM) Matthew He: I am pulling up your account at the moment.

(12:11:24 PM) Rowland O’Connor: I’m trying to order a Business package but there seem to be some problems

(12:12:55 PM) Matthew He: What issue are you experiencing when you are trying to purchase a business account Rowland?

(12:13:32 PM) Rowland O’Connor: Purchased by PayPal on Friday. Heard nothing, today Hostgator refunded via PayPal

(12:14:11 PM) Rowland O’Connor: Trying again by credit card but the screen says I already have an account (news to me)

(12:14:26 PM) Rowland O’Connor: Remind password function not sending details to me

(12:14:44 PM) Matthew He: It looks like we attempted to call you to verify the account.

(12:14:53 PM) Matthew He: Before I can disclose private information regarding your account, I will need to verify your billing information.

(12:15:00 PM) Rowland O’Connor: OK

(12:15:00 PM) Matthew He: For security purposes, I will need you to verify your identity by providing the PayPal transaction ID of your most recent payment, or the last 4 digits of the credit card on file for the account, depending on your payment method. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

(12:15:40 PM) Rowland O’Connor: You have successfully signed up for a subscription to HostGator Web Hosting using PayPal.



Your first subscription payment, for $11.96 USD, has already been sent to hostgator.com.





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Subscription Details

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Date of Sign Up: 5 Aug 2011

Subscription Name: HostGator Web Hosting Subscription Number: ********



(12:16:29 PM) Rowland O’Connor: Our office phone is not contactable at weekends, but voice messages can be left

(12:17:22 PM) Matthew He: We would need to be able to call you or you can call us to verify your account. Another method would be that you can submit a scanned copy of a photo ID to verify@hostgator.com if you are unable to call us.

(12:20:25 PM) Rowland O’Connor: Hmm. Wouldn’t have minded doing this if this was made clear upfront (or asked for by email). Sorry Matthew, but I think I’ll be taking our business elsewhere on this occassion – I’m not filled with a warm, fuzzy customer feeling on this (unlike our previous Hostgator account)….Sorry & thank you for your help.

(12:21:00 PM) Rowland O’Connor: closed this chat intentionally.

Absolution

I got burned pretty bad with the first host I have used, ended up loosing a domain name out of it, and I learned my lesson of getting the domain names myself. Now I use http://www.ixwebhosting.com/ and they have been really good to me. I have no complaints really. The few times I had any problems it was fixed right away.

Although apparently a lot of people had bad experiences with IX up times. Which makes it more confusing to me since I always had good communication with them and I was never lied to. I guess it could be the way I treat the customer support?