From the Endurance International Group (they own bluehost, HostGator, HostMonster and JustHost):
The resources of our entire company are focused on the recovery, including our executive team, which is leading these efforts from our command center in Burlington, MA. The team will issue updates at enduranceresponse.com every 30 minutes until all customer services are restored. Following the restoration of services, Endurance will conduct a thorough review of this incident.
You probably recognize the bluehost and HostGator names from this company. They’re having a really rough day with most of their customer sites down.
Kudos to them for setting up a centralized site to direct all customers to for status updates. And their promises of a response every 30 minutes have been kept. The post updates have happened regularly at 3:30pm, 4:00pm, and 4:30pm Eastern Time.
The only downside has been the content of the updates. They feel stiff and almost like really short press releases.
We are working to reboot the core switches.
As a customer, I’d be wondering what that means. It sounds important so must mean that they’re doing something, right?
We apologize for any delays you may be experiencing as well as any disruptions to your business.
Seems pretty widespread so I don’t think “may be experiencing” fits. And “we apologize” still sounds too stiff.
Overall, about what I’d expect from a big company so far. Hopefully their review will be written with more of an eye towards the customer.
What do you think of their responses so far?
My site is hosted by Bluehost and have received nothing. Still can’t get into e-mail. Terrible service. Been with them for 19 months and this is the worst. Luckily for them. Other than this they have been slightly above average.
Ouch! I thought about hosting this site with them. Now I’m glad I didn’t do it!
They might legitimately not have had answers for some of the updates, but the language could definitely have been warmer and more apologetic.
Yeah, it’s definitely okay to say “We don’t know but we’re looking into it.” It’s not okay to say that in a cold, robotic voice.
I was thinking how far fetched it was of them to say they’d have updates every half hour in the first place. I mean, you can’t say, “We don’t know but we’re looking into it.” for ten updates in a row but with such a widespread problem they may not have anything for hours on end. Wouldn’t it have been better to put updates every hour or two to begin with, so they could be sure they’d actually have something to say?
Good point! Frequent updates of the same stale info won’t help much. I’d probably keep it at 30 minute updates but include more info on what’s going on. Something like:
“Our programmers Jim and Adam have ruled out X, Y, and Z now. They’re looking at W as a possible cause. We’ll let you know more with the next update.”
So you’re not giving a lot of new info but you are giving customers something to show that you’re team is moving forward and making progress.