Smart Hosting offers up service credit in bid to hang on to clients

After provoking dissatisfaction from customers during its recent support ticket pile-up, Smart Hosting has apologised and offered £10 in service credit. Following Smart Hosting's merger with the equally pint-sized British hosting business Krystal, complaints over a pile-up of unanswered support tickets were met with radio …

[AndyS]

Never heard of them.

No doubt the merger was talked up with language like "streamlining customer support" and "providing a first class customer experience" though.

[Anonymous Coward]

At least...

..he had the gonads to admit they and he had fcuked up big time. Unlike some other CEOs - yes Diana Mary, or Dido as you like to be called, I mean you.

[wolfetone]

"We're sorry we didn't respond to your emails regarding the issues you were having with our hosting, which impacted on your business for a week or two.

To show how sorry we are, and to show you how much your business means to us, here's £10. Don't spend it all at once."

Thats how much you mean to them. £10.

[noboard]

That's £10 credit, so in real terms about 50p

[wolfetone]

Or it could be like one of those vouchers that say the real world monetary value is 0.0001p.

[james_w]

Well I host my site with them and this amounts to 3 months free so I'm pretty happy with that. And I did get a response, it was longer than usual yeah, but I got a response. More than I got from Heart last year you cynical lot.

[Big_Boomer]

I also host with Smarthost and while I had to wait nearly a week for my support query to be answered, I did get an answer. Previous experiences with other hosts were worse than that under normal circumstances. Yes they are small, but they are UK based and unlike the US based ones previously used they seem to actually give a damn about their customers. They had a problem, they dealt with the problem, and they then apologised. A great many other companies need to learn from this. I'll be staying put and will use the £10 to pay for part of my renewal.

[Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese]

"Staff have worked around the clock to restore support, sending over 25,282 responses this month already"

So...25,283 responses then?

[Dabooka]

I'm confused

Granted it doesn't take much, but....

He said it 'was a mistake' which to me kind of implies it was intentional? Not it was a unexpected problem, or unforeseen circumstances or some such, but it 'was a mistake'.

Still seeing the posts above seems actual users are happy with the response, and again a part credit for acknowledging the problem, It's not really for me to comment. But I do wonder what the plan was following the merger.

[Anonymous Coward]

Merging with Ariotek at the same time probably hasn't helped. My domains have been OK in the move but some people, with important sites have had a very poor time over at Krystal.

But I think I trust Drew enough from Ariotek to believe Krystal are good. I know he works for them now, maybe less stressful. Lets hope Krystal don't end up being like 123Reg.