UTV Internet: Worst Web Host Ever?

I’m doing a bit of work on a website for someone I know which is hosted with UTV Internet.

I’ve hosted (commercially) with UTV Internet in the past, and I must say I’m not impressed. At all. I placed a call to their support team this evening at 6:30 and it took a full 8 minutes for someone to even answer the phone. When it was eventually answered, it was by a frighteningly unhelpful person who first claimed no knowledge of the problem, passed the buck to another department (but didn’t transfer the call) and then told me the person I needed to speak with was on the other line.

“Fine,” I replied. “please ask him to call me. Your support desk is open until 9:00pm and I’m calling from home, so he should be able to reach me when he’s available.”

The Problem

Now, I’ve hosted websites with a number of professional organisations: 1&1 Internet, Dreamhost and Media Temple and found all to be very good services. UTV Internet, on the other hand are unhelpful to the point of incompetence:

• They have exceptionally poor telephone response times.
• Don’t even bother to send them an email. It won’t be answered.
• Their hosting documentation is aimed at entry-level users. There is nothing useful on the UTV website for anyone with a solid knowledge of web development.UTV Internet actually boasts a range of local business websites. They offer normally expensive ASP.NET web hosting and provide SQL Server databases to power dynamic sites. There is nothing to document these systems or to assist developers to create powerful websites.
• Support staff are unhelpful and not knowledgeable enough to provide a useful service.

How UTV Internet Can Improve

I hate to be so hard on a local firm, but if you’re serious about your website - business or personal - then UTV Internet should be avoided at all costs. If anyone in blog-land is affiliated with UTV Internet, or even a customer, I’d love to hear your opinions. Personally, they’re little more than hosting hobbyists with a big name behind them. I can’t believe how poor this service is.

Let’s end on a positive note. Here’s how UTV can improve their service:

• Hire some more staff. It won’t improve the service immediately, but it’ll get the phones answered a bit more quickly. Customer satisfaction counts!
• Don’t just hire a load of call-centre zombies. Get in some people who know what they’re talking about, who’ll spot all the major problems, resolve them, document them and pass the benefits on to customers.
• Write some proper bloody documentation. The quality of the online guides is piss-poor.
• Embrace Web 2.0. Did your techies fall asleep in the server room and wake up in 2007? We have forums, wikis, blogs these days. Build a bit of a community around your hosting and you’ll find that customers write some pretty helpful documentation (see previous point).

Oh, and maybe hire a consultant to help you improve your site. I am, of course, open to offers.