Story: Think about user experience in life
User Experience Design may be terminology, but the user experience is everywhere in life, cafe, restaurant, grocery store, shopping, gym, yoga, bank, and public transit, etc. Literally, every life experience relates to user experience. Because of my daily work, I often think about my experience from the user experience viewpoint.
As a freelance web/graphic designer with UX principles, I would like to describe about what I faced, and how an organization should be. What I faced is that other people are also faced as a consumer. We should talk about it more on publicly.
*Please no mistake, this is for constructive feedback. I am not an activist or do not intend to be abusive.
Insident
I am basically using Bluehost for web hosting. I tested a couple of hosting services. The first contact is not much different for pricing each hosting. However, once I need to renew, many hosting services significantly increase the price. It is a trick for consumers and it is not a good user experience in this industry, web hosting service.
If you searched for a hosting service on YouTube, basically no one recommends Bluehost. Because it is Virtual Network System (VNS), affordable but slow and low affiliates. LiteSpeed web server hosting is popular instead of it. I understand that the loading speed influences SEO. However, unless you have many traffic, loading speed does not matter.
A client has a domain. In this case, I have 2 options, change DNS or transfer the domain. Either way, I have to purchase the hosting service. I am not a beginner. I am quite familiar with this process. As you see above, I purchased 36mo without any options.
Poor user experience:
✓ The price significantly increases when the user renews. (in general, in the web hosting industry)
✓ Bluehost checks the 2 options as default. It costs extra.
Contact and response
I don’t know how this happen, but I received a totally different receipt above, 1 years contract with 2 options.
I contacted Bluehost by chat. I could connect to customer service. I explained the situation. I also explain the affiliate link did not work for this transaction. Anyway, I asked for a cancelation. The operator mentioned contacting affiliate@bluehost.com and stopped to chat. I asked to cancel, so it did not make sense to me. I sent an email. It bounced twice.
I tried to contact the same customer support again. It could not connect for 4+ hours. It was obviously screening(ignored) on purpose. I called 888-401-4678. It could not connect for 1+ hour. I hung up in the end. This is a terrible user experience and unacceptable.
Poor user experience:
✓ You can find this sentence at the bottom. It says, all plans and products automatically renew approximately 15 days before the expiration unless you cancel.
✓ To avoid cancellation, Bluehost customer support told a lie. (contact to affiliate department)
✓ Customer support ignored my chat request for 4+ hours on purpose. (screening a customer and request)
✓ Website mentions customer support 24/7. The phone call did not get through for 1 hour. (gave up, in the end)
Share on social media
If you faced a cancelation issue, it is better to make it public. I know some issues of abusive consumer behavior to the support, but this case is not. My case is totally different situation. Customer support did not respond cancelation request on purpose. I have no idea how they trained(or handed out a manual) customer support for the third-party business.
Result
It took 5+ hours for cancelation. On January 13, 2023, I wasted the whole morning on this issue. Not only Bluehost, but organizations should know how user experience is important. They lose customers their whole life based on these small user experiences.
After the poor user experience
After I faced the issue the last week, I do not willing to contract with Bluehost at this time. I could not forgive their customer support behavior. I have some alternatives, SitGround and H2 hosting. I searched for hosting services before. This is not the latest information. These are not the cheapest option, but SiteGround has a good reputation for customer service. You can find the review online.
I almost moved to SiteGround. I don’t get used to SiteGround. I don’t know if I can develop WP with a temp domain. I looked for a chat, but I could not find it. I looked for a chat for 10 mins, then I gave it up. This is a typical user experience. SiteGround may try to automate the process as much as possible. Then, they ignored what the user really needs. The user needs help, especially non-designers. The FAQ does not work even if there is an answer there.
Poor user experience:
✓ The chat box should be in the right bottom corner without any reason.
Bureau of Consumer Protection
These organizations’ practice is the same as fraud. Should be improved it. Your experience is not only you. 10+ people are facing the same issues. Please report with evidence.
Conclusion: Do not compromise
It was a terrible user experience, but this is a typical issue, hard to cancelation. This is not only Bluehost, but many subscription service providers also ignore customers who are willing to cancelation. The irony is that they have UX designers and make cancelation difficult. Looking back on my experience, what makes me angry is not receiving the wrong receipt. Customer service neglected my request, chat, for 4+ hours on purpose.
I will make it public once I faced the worst user experience to improve customer service in the whole industry.
