When you have to send an email like this to your hosting company, you’re already losing the battle. It may be time to start looking for new hosting, no matter how much you like everything else they’ve done for you.

Hi, my name is Scott Vandehey. I have hosting with you guys. I’ve included below the email I sent to the billing department on 5/25. That email was resending an email I never got a reply to, which I sent on 5/20, which itself was a followup to my initial email, since the billing guy didn’t answer all my questions.

I’m really frustrated at my inability to get simple questions answered, and by the fact that there is no way to contact the billing department other than email.

I have been very happy with the support department. I’ve had several difficulties in getting my domains switched over, and they’ve always been very helpful. But the inability to contact billing except by email, and their inability to reply to emails is infuriating. If there’s any way to lodge a complaint with management, I would like to do so. If I had known I was going to have this much trouble just getting answers to simple questions about how I will be billed, I never would have gotten an account here.

Here’s what I need to know:

1) Is there a tutorial or set of instructions anywhere for using the billing website? None of this was explained to me when I signed up, and I don’t know where to find information. There was a ton of information about how to use cpanel, but there doesn’t appear to be anything on using the billing site.

2) Will my card be charged automatically each month?

3) Will I receive any kind of notification each month that my card will be charged? If so, how early will I get that notification?

4) When I tried to pay my existing balance (using instructions I had to get from the support guys, since Billing wouldn’t answer my questions), I got an error (listed below). Does this mean I can’t pay my balance online?

5) Right now, I’m on the monthly plan (being charged $13.95/month). I want to change to the yearly plan, where I’ll pay $9.95/month. How do I do this?

- Scott

I mean, seriously, what’s going on here? There’s no way to call the billing department? (Which, by the way, appears to just be one guy.) I have to send him email, wait four or five days for him to reply, only to find out that he ignored half the questions in my email?

This in addition to finding out that there may be a problem where some but not all of my email isn’t getting through to me. Though it’s somewhat unfair to complain about that, as they’re at least trying to fix that problem.