[Ragin Cajun]

Looking for reliable cPanel web hosting? I can tell you one company to avoid: NCServ.com.

Recently, Kris Keele at NCServ.com decided to "upgrade" from cPanel and move all his customers to new servers. As one of their customers for the last 6 months, I was perplexed when my sites were suddenly offline, so I opened a support ticket.

Big mistake.

Here's the helpful response I got from the customer service oriented tech reps at NCServ.com:

"With over 1500 customers moved in the last month we have had about 20 that claim to have never received information, didn't understand or just didn't do as instructed and asked. Those are the only ones that have had issues also. If you did not receive something then you need to make sure our domains are whitelisted in your mail servers as all Resellers received private instructions... Your site appears to be resolving properly."

Hmmm. Well, my site wasn't resolving properly, I couldn't access the WHM for my reseller account, and none of the messages I received said anything about a new IP addy. Believe me friends, it wasn't an issue of whitelisting. The minor detail of letting people with custom nameservers know that their IP's would be changing didn't seem too important to the boneheads at NCServ.com.

However, just shy of 24 hours after initially reporting my sites offline, I did get a reply from their tech support letting me know the new IP address to access my hosting panel. So I checked it out.

The NCServ.com web site lists the (Fantastico) auto-installer as part of their Reseller Hosting Package along with the following scripts:
E-Commerce (OSCommerce, Zen Cart)
Blogs (b2evolution, Nucleus, WordPress)
Discussion Boards (phpBB2, SMF)
Customer Support (Crafty Syntax, and more)
Portals/CMS (Joomla, Mambo, and more)

Unfortunately, after the server migration, if you had a Wordpress blog, OSCommerce site, or phpBB forum running on NCServ.com, it's gone. "Unable to establish database connection" kind of gone. Since that's the kind of sites I run, you can imagine I immediately asked "Care to explain?"

Here's the reply I got from Kris Keele:

"What you are paying for is hosting service, the freebies are give as a FREEBIE we are under no obligation to support them or give you a time frame of when Installatron will be made available to the public. With the posts you keep making I am reluctant to help you any further, you may take your hosting package somewhere else."

Excellent reply, don't you think? I mean really. Belongs in the Customer Service Hall of Shame.

Instead of fixing the problem and helping me get my sites back online, the helpful staff at NCServ.com decided instead to first belittle me and then simply refuse to provide the services I was paying for. When I took offense, what was the ultimate response? "Your fired."

"Officially fired," to be exact. My sites were deleted and access to my hosting panel denied... Believe it or not, I'm locked out until I write a letter to Kris and his crew "apologizing for my attitude and actions."

You read that right, friends. In the through-the-looking glass world at NCServ.com, the paying customers are supposed to tolerate for the company's rudeness. They're doing us the favor of being in business. If you point out their tech reps are being rude or you're being charged for something you're not getting, BAM... Your sites are deleted.

According to Kris Keele, "Lots of companies do it. Sprint fired a thousand customers last year."

That may be true, Kris, but no Sprint employee at any level would be allowed to reply to customers as rudely as you and your staff do. Even more, I'll bet Sprint at least made a TOKEN EFFORT to resolve their customers' complaints before saying, "Thanks for your money. Buh-bye." That's what separates a professional, customer service-oriented company like Sprint from a bozo operation like NCServ.com.

Can somebody please tell me how clowns like this stay in business.