iPowerweb’s Long Hold Times

This past week a friend of mine called me for some help with transferring a domain from one host to another. He had signed up the previous year with the hosting company ipowerweb and was displeased with their support. He wanted to get the auth code that was needed for a domain transfer and could not figure out how to get the information through his vDeck control panel. He stated that he had tried calling the toll free tech support line several times, always giving up after 30-40 minutes on hold. He also claimed that his emails (trouble tickets) were going unanswered.

Since I was familiar with iPowerweb and their hosting platform having used them a few times in the past I decided to see if the claims were true. So I picked up the phone on a Monday afternoon (1:00 pm MST) and proceeded to dial the 24/7 helpline at ipowerweb. I had learned from previous experience that the call center was staffed the highest during the early afternoon. In the past I had not experienced any hold time longer than 27 minutes. My phone has a call timer and as time ticked on I began to understand my friend’s frustration. After one hour and seventeen minutes on hold I finally gave up and tried a different route. After pulling a few strings I was able to get the auth code and help my friend transfer his domain eliteaudio1.com away from iPower.

Now, to be fair to iPowerweb - I later found out that they were in the middle of migrating all of their servers from their existing L.A. datacenter to their new Burlington, MA data center. The massive migration was due to the merger of iPower with Endurance. Not that a giant merger is a valid excuse for insanely long hold times. But, with any cross-country server migration many things can and will go terribly wrong. I would think that as the migration comes to a close, hold times will improve and support will return back to normal/tolerable. I’ve heard that the migration is nearly completed as they plan to close the doors at the L.A. facility in early March, 2008.

iPower is still a solid option in the sea of shared hosting providers, but beginners may be better served by choosing a smaller locally based hosting company. Many ISP’s offer basic hosting packages at a competitive price, and they are usually easier to contact for simple support questions. At my old ISP I could walk in and actually talk to a tech support guy and get help face-to-face. For the price-shoppers that don’t need tech support - check out our cheap hosting top ten list in the right column.

9 January 2008 | Tech Support Test | Comments