Has anyone found a way to successfully escalate a ticket with LunarPages?  I've had several occasions now (including today) where I was completely dead in the water for hours with no response to tickets.  I find this totally unacceptable but with the way their ticket queue works you cannot even update a ticket with more information or it gets kicked back to the end of the queue (how ridiculous is that?).  Today I spent several hours on a semi-holiday finding a workaround to their problem and still have yet to get a valid response from support (11 hours later).   It seems like horrible customer service to me when any question coming into support is treated the same in their queue as down sites and, god forbid, you try to help them out by giving them more information regarding a problem, no soup for you!  You're knocked to the back of the queue again behind all those minor issues.  I've talked to Mitch and others about this but their response was to send an email to some address I can't remember asking them to consider a change.  That was months ago and there's been no response nor any action.  Anyone else as fed up with this as I am?  LP has been good when they've been good (better than my last host for uptime that is) but when they are bad they are bad.

Hi mjnoonan,

Matthew is correct. As long as you log into your helpdesk account you should be able to edit your reply without affecting your ticket in the queue. Adding a new reply will bump the ticket but editing an existing reply should not.

Thanks - I didn't know that thing about editing it not moving it in the queue.  That's is good to know.

Troy, my ticket has now been forwarded to the admin staff and I since I did figure out a workaround that's OK.  If I were still down things would be bad. I waited 9 hours for an original response, then had it forwarded to admin 11 hours later. 

Actually, the response from Michael and Matthew was meant to state that when you log in to helpdesk via the support URL and simply edit your initial response. this would prevent your ticket being bumped to the end of the queue. The system is automated, and the way it works is when a reply is made and you per say reply again before the ticket can be reviewed then it will be bumped to the end of the queue. So, when you log in to helpdesk and edit the response then the system does not see this as a new response to your ticket so it remains in the queue position it has been holding.

To answer your question on escalating a ticket, the support procedures follow as regular support initially answers all tickets, if the issue is a server issue meaning that something on server side is failed then the tech will go to a supervisor to advise of the issue, which then is passed on to the server administration. In cases to where there is an issue with an application not running stable and you are simply wanting to have the issue presented to the server administration this would have to be a case to where no other level of support can do at a server level. Just as any support team has there are levels server administration being the highest. Normally, upper tier techs can look at most issues and resolve them without being escalated to server administration.  

If, this is in regards to the JSP driver you have posted on a previous thread, You want to always include the error in the ticket as usually an error of that kind to where the driver is not present then it would be resolved, as the server administration would be made aware of the issue and they would resolve it.

Send you a PM.

To answer your first, usually a 4 hour response time is a normal standard giving the queue is at a normal flow and not flooded over emergency restore or some server wide issues which sends ticket queues very high and reduces the ability for quicker response times. However, I might suggest that with future tickets to put in as much information on the issue as possible including screen shots if you can, exact errors and so on. I do not work support, I did formerly. I come by time to time, since I have always enjoyed working with Lunarpages and having the ability to help when possible.

I also understand your position on waiting for a response, there is not easy solution to that for the fact all tickets are answered in the order they are received. Even, though some issues such as yours are dire and needs attention asap, it would be difficult to keep a consistent support base if techs pick and choose tickets to work.  

The second question is which I believe Tristan did address being that the driver had some how been removed, I am sure that they have made an audit of the issue and installed the driver again. One thing, I can say is there are abusive accounts on the server time to time which result in such issues. I would say Tristan would be better at addressing the driver issue since she is part of the server administration staff.

This time, I hope my response was less wordy, as my responses are purposely written out in a manner to be as descriptive as possible on information I can provide.

I'm not saying the techs need to "pick and choose" which issues they work on.  I come from a support background and when I did that it was very, very easy to figure out which issues were the critical ones to work on - when a customer was down that was the 1st priority.  Our system made that easy to figure out - I'm saying that LP's system is very lacking in that regard.  A down system, a down site, a down server - that SHOULD BE your priority.  Your system not only hurts your customers by making that impossible to figure out your priorities but it also hurts you in the long run.  Any support area needs to figure out how to address the more serious issues first (and that's best for both you and your customers) but it's apparent that you have not figured out a way to do that yet.  Give your customers a way to escalate (or at least rate) issues - it's a no brainer.

Right! I completely understand what you are saying. I can't say the rule in place is perfect, as I do agree there should be a way to discern tickets in the severity of the issue. I am not sure if any reviews to streamlining processes for support have been made. I have been in the tech support field since 1982, and other fields of support I have worked did have such channels. I am sure Lunarpages does know support needs to expand and improve areas as well. I would suggest email feeback@lunarpages.com which goes to supervisors and higher staff for review.  As, mentioned I do not work in Lunarpages support anymore but I come back to this forum to try and help customers of theirs when I can.

As Troy mentioned there is the issue with customers prioritizing tickets to the highest, which not may not be severe. I think response times even  when ticket queues are very high there should be a protocol in process to work out  queue times so even in those times that 4 hours is still the turn around range in responses. Which, 4 hours is reasonable considering the response times of other hosting companies.