Folks You Are Not Going To Believe This One

[doneritehosting]

I had noticed live chat had been offline for about 2 hours on my reseller site and contacted support of it. Transcript as follows below.

From me to support...

" Wordpress Reseller Theme Simply Elegant

Ok. I have a question...

Is Live Chat having a technical problem?

Live chat on my site has been offline 2 hours and the leave a message window does not open.

I have verified that live chat is online on 2 other reseller sites On USA based One AU based

The header code for my site has not been modified by me only by plugins I have installed.

Any help would be appreciated as I have not modified any settings in my reseller panel to disable RSP support, I dont even know if you can. "


From Support To Me

" Hello,

Thank you for contacting us.

Currently the Live Chat has been disabled due to technical issues and can be enabled only if the store is accessed via Google.com.

This has been done in order to reduce the spam chatters coming in from the stores of resellers and flooding the chats.

Best Regards,
Adrian Trend "

From Me To Support

" Huh?

You are going to have to do better than that!
What am I supposed to do about the bing campaign I just paid for?

There is no way this is going to work Adrian and I would need to be chatting with someone who can rectify this issue ASAP. This is not a humorous matter to me. "

From Support To Me

Hello,

I am afraid that this is not something i can help you with.

This decision has been take by our managers and can only be rectified by them.

If you wish i could forward your request to them, however they are not present here during the holidays, so the earliest they could respond will be around 2-3 Jan.

Best Regards,
Adrian Trend

From Me To Support

So I just threw away X X X X dollars on advertising far as I am concerned. How come this was not mentioned in the newsletter that was just released?

Yup, you can forward this directly to them, this is not right How can you justify enabling chat for visitors just from google?

From Support To Me

Hello,

Alright, your request has now been forwarded to our managers and you will be notified as soon as they review it and reply back.

Best Regards,
Adrian Trend

End Of Support Ticket

So now fellow resellers We provide 24/7 Chat Only if visitors come from Google! How bout that!

Small edit on this information, I just tried clicking thru to my site from google and chat still does not work on my site.

[Nova-Host]

Wait, what? I'm amazed RSP has gone to this level to basically screw their resellers over, and during the HOLIDAYS no less! Well, donerite, I'm about as pissed off as you are about this now. I also find it rather CONVENIENT for the managers to be on VACATION so they can IGNORE us. Complete BS. I imagine the management makes a few hundred grand a year, so I don't see how they can't afford to hop on the forums and address this issue now instead of making us wait a week (well not a week, but still). I'm utterly surprised, not to mention PISSED that RSP pulled something like this on us. Absolutely unacceptable that they did this to us.

[doneritehosting]

I don't think this is too cool myself I have another hosting gig to redirect my bing campaign to but I wasnt ready to do that just yet. Plus I have always liked RSP's services in the past... but no online sales support????

[doneritehosting]

Hey Yan
Hope your Christmas was good
Well this is not a optimal solution to the situation you are describing. What happens to offline advertising and classified ads? People are going to click online chat because they expect it, Most any site that has its act halfway together provides chat and it is expected. I am also agreeing with you too because it does not matter if you put a flashing neon sign under the live chat "Sales Support Only" people are going to click on it. Chat has become an accepted standard for getting issues resolved easily and quickly all over the world (i prefer and use this method myself also on sites) hence the increased chat traffic which will only worsen as the services grow more popular. If its bot traffic use captcha verification to open the chat window. A red currently offline logo for online chat is going to deter alot of visitors as some of mine hit my site from a search engine "shopping for deals" then return for more information. Not good for offline advertising and classified ads either as the chat logo being offline can relay either alot of problems with the service or worse no staff around to operate the chat service at all or both.

That's my 2 cents,
Charlie

[clivejo]

This has been done in order to reduce the spam chatters coming in from the stores of resellers and flooding the chats.

There seems to be a marked increase in spam this past week or so, and its hitting a lot of different routes (ie WP comments, guest-books, feedback forms) and it seems it is also targeting the online chats. Usually the solution would be a "captcha verification" as Mr Donerite suggests, but it appears this attack can get around CAPTCHA basically rendering it useless.

I dont know what the solution is, maybe build a service like http://akismet.com/ into the chat?

[doneritehosting]

Hmmm if its getting around captcha challenges I don't know what to suggest. You can't make the challenge too difficult or you are shooting yourself in the foot, real people wont take the time to use chat for help.

akismet for wordpress costs after a certain amount of usage dosnt it? This could be an expensive service for RSP to implement given the amount of reseller sites out there. I use a plugin called Anti-Spam http://wordpress.org/plugins/anti-spam/ My comment spam is 0 and there is no captcha challenge. Its also free. Maybe this could be implemented in chat.

[index.html]

Guys Guys calm down. Let me shed some light on the Live chat. 9 out of 10 chat sessions are about support. Even though we made it pretty clear everywhere that the live chat is for PRE-SALES questions only. Thus we have decided to disable the live chat icon if the reseller site is opened up directly i.e. not from a search engine referral (that includes BING as well Donerite so your campaign is safe and sound). And Nova-Host as you can see we are here and no-one is ignoring you...

Hi Yan,

If may help reduce support requests via 'Live Chat' if RSP did not call it 'Support'

At the top of the chat window it says - "Welcome to Online Support!"

Maybe change that to 'Welcome to Sales & Billing" [and place a notice somewhere in red like 'Existing clients - please direct all support requests via a ticket in your control panel']

Just my thoughts.

:-)

[clivejo]

I think they might be in two minds about calling it support or not. I hold my hands up and I do use it for support and they have helped me. Anything more serious they do advise to open a support ticket. But I use it for more general, what would happen if I do this type questions.

For proper support the ticket system is better. Why? Well there is a record of whats been said and done. Multiple technicians can work on the same thread and see whats been tried before, this should prevent the old stereotype of IT support "Hello, yes, ok, try turning it off and waiting 30secs and turning it back on again"

[doneritehosting]

I maintain what I said above... It does not matter if you label it service feedback live chat. People are going to click on it to get support problems resolved quickly, its human nature, "got to get it done yesterday". Live Chat has been accepted as a method for achieving this. There is no stopping real humans from doing this without crippling the chat system as has been done already. A small popup asking human visitors to enable live chat via a cookie with a explaination of why would be a better solution for spam bots than the current solution, at least the visitor understands what is going on and that a crew of support personel is actively working to resolve the issue.

[doneritehosting]

Far as the spam chatters a possible solution is actually on every resellers website that uses rsp support. Each reseller site has a unique site ID at the top of their site. Instead of incorporating a captcha challange why not have a visitor enter the website ID for verification and spam control before initiating a chat session. The answer to the challenge is then not part of the chat form and ought to throw the bots for a loop. Then online chat can be online to everyone and initiated chats will either be new visitors or existing clients looking for help... No spam chats. I do not know how difficult this would be to implement but it could be a workable solution.

[iads]

Great idea Donerite. It can also have the added benefit of letting support know what sites the visitors are coming from so that they can customize their response with your site name inserted.

[Nova-Host]

Brand oriented chat support. That would simply be awesome! And I also once again agree with Donerite as I so often do with his idea of using the website ID as a security question to stop spammers instead of a captcha, it is by far the best idea I've heard as a solution to this issue. We can only hope the RSP management will see it that was and implement it somehow.

[doneritehosting]

Well lets see what Yan thinks of the Idea... If there is too much structural coding to be done or the chat client has to be changed it might not be feasable to implement or fact is even if rsp goes for the idea it might be a long while before we see it they have alot of current projects on the fire for 2014

[Nova-Host]

Good point there, donerite. If by chance they do go with it, it will likely be a few years before we see it, as we know how busy they usually are with all the current projects they are working on. And no, that's not sarcasm, lol, I actually do mean that.

[clivejo]

Considering the fact that the last time I counted there was 219K reseller sites using the Wordpress plugin, that’s a lot of chat spam to deal with! Thats not even counting the stores using the older templates!!

[doneritehosting]

Wow, If they would only participate in the forum.... this would be one Kick (you know what I mean) resource for all resellers and rsp. It's been so long since I signed up that I cant remember, Does the welcome email from rsp include a invitation to join the forum clivejo?

[doneritehosting]

Hey clivejo what do you think would work?

[clivejo]

I don't know. I'm having big issues myself over email spam. Its a global problem right now and putting servers under a lot of pressure.

[doneritehosting]

Sorry to hear that clivejo... dam thing is even if you stop the spam, how do you stop the server load from the bots being all over the server?

[clivejo]

The real problem is how to get people to only use the chat for sales/pre-sales issues only rather than support.

Truth be told this is why most of us resellers are still with you!! I’ve been with MANY hosts who have let me down over support issues and I’ve ditched them as soon as the contract was up and in a few cases I did not wait, I moved EVERYTHING from them. It is a very competitive market. I would seriously ask you to reconsider ending support over the live chat.

When I'm shopping around I often pop into the live chat and basically test them. Ask them a few techie questions about the product they are selling, the majority don't have a clue!! And as a result they have lost my business. Call it petty or unfair, its the honest truth. But this is where your chat stands out from the crowd!! You say "it simply is not worth a dime", but I can guarantee you that you have made some sales purely on what was discussed via a chat session, I am one of them You have a nice friendly and more importantly "knowledgeable" sales team. If I was to offer you feedback I would be encouraging you to make more use of this feature (ie. have a link to the chat direct from the order form to answer last minute queries, have a way of detecting someone in "trouble" or who is looking for an answer to something and popping up a box offering them help)

Would it really be a bad thing to allow more support over the chat feature?

Now this is just a suggestion!! I know there are very obvious issues with it, so bear with me. What about having a few knowledgeable resellers help on the Sales? Like on a commission bases? Given that we are based all around the world and are "available" at different times of the day, you could offer a 24/7 help system!! In a way it would work both ways, giving resellers an insight on what is driving the market, the common FAQ's, what are the technical issues that stop a potential customer signing up. As I said, just a thought, I have noticed most people just want their hands held and for it to "just work".

[doneritehosting]

I'm with clivejo on all that and also this a interesting suggestion. I wouldn't mind helping out on the chat support either. Excellent Support has kept me with rsp for a decade.

I beg to differ with you Yan Most major successful companies do offer live chat support... I'll list a few of them as these are not advertisements but rather related to the direction this thread has taken..

Hostgator - Provides Sales - Billing - Technical Support via live chat and phone
Godaddy - Does Not provide live chat however provides Sales - Billing - Technical Support via phone. It may suck but its there.
bluehost - Provides Sales - Billing - Technical Support via live chat and phone
justhost - Provides Sales - Billing - Technical Support via live chat and phone
Ipage - Provides Sales - Billing - Technical Support via live chat and phone
1&1 - Provides Sales - Billing - Technical Support via phone
FatCow - Provides Sales - Billing - Technical Support via live chat and phone
hub - Provides Sales - Billing - Technical Support via live chat and phone

These are all listed in top ten hosting companies of 2013 and are THE top contenders everyone competes against and set their pricing by... via http://www.top10bestwebsitehosting.com/

[Nova-Host]

I also agree with both donerite and clivejo on this one. Like donerite said, had the support here not been excellent since I joined, I would have never stayed myself. I also agree with donerite again (Funny how much we agree on stuff, isn't it? LOL!) on his list of companies that do indeed offer live chat support. I also agree he isn't advertising them, he is simply providing a small list of hosts with which to compare who offers chat support and who doesn't. Godaddy is the only one on the list that doesn't provide chat support, and as we all know, their support is horrible in the first place. Why they're still around is beyond me. But anyway, yeah, I agree with everything clivejo and donerite have been saying.

[clivejo]

RSP isnt a host as such, it doesn’t market directly. You have to sign up as a reseller to get the services. Therefore it doesn’t satisfy the requirements to be called a web host. Also, as a resellers you wont be able to list your web hosting business either. Reselling is a bit of a grey area.

[Nova-Host]

I suppose that makes sense.

[doneritehosting]

@ clivejo What is actually the definition of a reseller? Whats the dividing line? By Being hard-core, technically A company like steadfast would be the "source" for hosting services servers and such, yet.... even datacenters have to purchase and resell bandwidth whether it be to an individual like me who might (hypothetical here now lol) require cloud services or to a company leasing or purchasing servers by co-location. Even at that a datacenter would still have to have a domain reseller account to sell domains unless they take rsp's route and become their own registrar.

Could I lease some servers from steadfast contract a company third party (we chatted bout this a little) to provide 24/7 phone / chat / tech support / maintain the servers and qualify as a hosting company? If so I am still reselling space, services, domains and bandwidth. Isn't this basicly what we are doing with rsp without the hassle and boat loads of money up front?

Im not trying to start a debate or argument, I'm actually curious.

[clivejo]

No point reinventing the wheel - For defination see - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reseller

A reseller is just that. Sells on the services of other company. As you have said RSP are also resellers as they are purchasing services in the three data centres. As far as I can see they are also a reseller for eNom for domains.

Of course you could lease a few servers from Steadfast and contract a company to do your support. You are in sole ownership of the servers and are responsible for the upkeep of those servers. But the bill will be huge!! You would have to manage billing, domain registrations, reminders, maintenance of servers (planned and emergency), resource allocation, respond to abuse(web/email/network), hacking attempts, backups, clean up in the case of a success hack, and much more... Its a huge job and then there is customers and clients who need to be factored into the equation.

We as resellers leave all the technical stuff to RSP, right down to the billing(another costly procedure). We are basically sales people marketing the final products via our online stores.

[doneritehosting]

By this definition alone "A reseller is a company or individual (merchant) that purchases goods or services with the intention of reselling them rather than consuming or using them." practically all hosting companies are a reseller of some sort... even true blue datacenters

[clivejo]

If your a web host the buck stops at you, you have to sort out any and all issues. With a reseller you pass on the issues up the chain and dont get involved (usually). I like to be the first point of contact with my clients and give advice of number on different solutions (involving other service providers).

This is the problem that most web host directory’s have with listing resellers. Customers could be rating the bad service the reseller is giving them and not the actually provider of the service, or vice-versa. One reseller could have a top rating and another could be totally useless. This is why most wont let you list your business if your a reseller.

[doneritehosting]

I agree this problem is big time with cpanel reseller accounts... rsp's system is not like cpanel / whm.
are you saying whm / cpanel has tainted the opportunity for rsp resellers?

quote If your a web host the buck stops at you, you have to sort out any and all issues. With a reseller you pass on the issues up the chain and dont get involved (usually). "

Not always clivejo if you are co-locating with steadfast your last line is steadfast you are dependant on the techs there... last line to fix things... maybe at extra cost to you... but a bad bad belly flop from steadfast will hurt them reputation wise too...