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Dotster Delivers Epic Fail

Recently I’ve had the displeasure of using the Dotster control panel. One of my clients had her credit card expire, so both her domains and her hosting subscription lapsed. I was called in to get everything back up and running again.

Well getting the domains renewed was a cinch, and took only a few minutes. However, trying to get the hosting back up and running took a week.

*Day 1* – I tried to log into the Dotster Control Panel, only to discover a message that says the panel is down for maintenance. No clue as to when it was expected back up, or how long it had been down.

*Day 2* – Log in to the system, pull up the hosting subscription, and click on the “Renew” button. It basically says that I can’t renew because there’s already an invoice out for the subscription, I’m given a cryptic error message referring to an invoice number that isn’t in my account. Frustrated, I get on the line with their chat tech support. The person on the other end gives me a list of procedures which will result in a renewed hosting subscription. The only problem? One of the steps refers to a link that *doesn’t exist*. Frustrated, I try to get back on the chat line, but I’m foiled by the queue and never get another person on again. I give up for the time being, and send in an email ticket.

*Day 3* – I receive a response to my ticket, and the same steps quoted by the person I chatted with. I respond that one of the steps doesn’t work, and attach a screenshot.

*Day 4* – No response from email support, so I try the chat line again. I explain that the link isn’t there, and the “customer care agent” basically tells me that they don’t support any browsers on the Mac platform. He then dodged all of my questions about which browsers they do support (I’m guessing IE only).

So, basically, if you don’t use Internet Explorer, don’t use Dotster hosting.