HostGator.com reviews

I got the distinct feeling working there that we were just the worker bees and that our names didn't matter. You didn't even get to keep your workstation, as you could come in for a shift and someone else would be there. It was "grab a station" but I found that highly annoying. There didn't seem to be a sense of permanence. Also, even though lunch was free every day, it was a grab and dash affair and you only ever had 2 options. Also, they didn't want anyone leaving the building, so you had to either bring lunch or eat whatever they gave you. The quotas were super high, meaning that they wanted you to talk to customers off the phone/chat quick so that you can move on to the 5million other people in queue. Wasn't worth the pay. There were also only 4 or so other female reps in the whole place and you were always looked down upon as if they didn't really think you knew computers. There was also a number to call in if you were going to be late/absent and it was a pain to work through about 3 numbers to get to an actual person to let them know...and usually they had no idea who you were.

There are too many to list, really. The pay is, in fact, quite low for the knowledge and products you are expected to support. They like to tout things like "free beer on friday!" or "5 minute chair massage!." And these things may be successful at distracting some workers from the terrible compensation, by making them think it's a "hip" place to work. They continue to run promotions to gain new customers/subscribers, and they cannot handle the current call/ticket volume. Customers routinely wait on hold for 35-40 minutes to speak to you. 40 minutes! Once they do speak to you, it can be difficult to manage the call, as the customer is reluctant to hang up before the problem is completely solved. They don't want to have to call back, and wait on hold again for 40 minutes, and I can't blame them. They've brought on some temps/contract workers recently to try to help with the call volume. These folks have received minimal training, and more knowledgable techs are already having to pick up the pieces. Whether this trend of hiring temp workers will continue is anyone's guess. I'm sure it ultimately saves the company money, so it doesn't seem implausible. As another reviewer mentioned, they've also farmed some tasks out to India, so I think we can all see where that's headed. The escalation path is broken. So-called level 2 technicians are people with some experience there, and they are taking calls or chats right along side of you... they're not there as a dedicated team to take escalated issues from tier 1, as one might expect. This means they're often just as busy as you, and getting answers to even relatively simple questions can take quite some time. Not their fault. But it is a terrible way to run tiered tech support. You are expected to cover calls that span a wide range of topics. In a Kafkaesque twist, they lock you out of many of the tools needed to effectively solve the problems for the first 90 days (at which point you can take a test to prove that you can type "ls" in a linux terminal.) Which leads you back up the broken escalation path. Which leads you back to taking 30 minutes to solve an issue that probably should take 5. And you also may end up taking calls for topics on which you have zero experience or training. Customers get pissed, think you are an idiot, and question why they've spent their hard earned money with Hostgator. And then you begin to wonder why they have either. If you need a foot in the door in the tech industry, get in, keep your head down, and get out.