Technical Support Nightmare

I hope no one has had a similar experience as I had yesterday (11/14). I woke up to my blog site down. I’ve had it happen before, but not since I upgraded to a premium theme. Any time before, the site would be down less than an hour. I always got an email giving me notice.

Yesterday was totally different, and I feared I had lost my site to a hacker or some viral attack. When I attempted to log in, I got a page containing a series of error messages. They looked greek to me, and I quickly panicked.

I immediately called tech support with WordPress. I don’t want to sound prejudice, but anytime in the past when I went looking for tech support and the individual’s native language is not English, I have had problems and a horrible experience.

When I gave the tech my web address, the first thing he told me was my website was not secure. I told him he was mistaken, and the address does have the https signature. He laughed at me and said I was wrong. After a few minutes, I gave up on the argument.
He next told me my site was corrupted and it would take twenty-four to forty-eight hours to repair. The cost for the tech support to complete the task would be $299. He further told me it would also require me to add a security certificate costing an additional $199. When I questioned him to explain the cost, especially the security certificate, he again laughed at me. He implied I was ignorant and he and his company knew how to handle the problem. He further tried to entice me by offering the tech support for three months and would wave the sales tax.

All this time, a little voice was going off in my head, “SCAM—Scam, don’t fall for it.” I listened to the tech for several more minutes attempting to convince me I had two choices, hire him to fix my site or delete the site and start over.

Again the inner voice screamed at me. I took down the tech’s telephone number and explained I needed a few minutes to think about this before forking over $500. There is an expression “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” For me, there is another, “if it doesn’t sound right, walk away.”He was still laughing at me for my ignorance when I terminated the call.

I have my domain hosted by Bluehost, and I purchased my premium theme from them. I called Bluehost tech support, and my world turned from gloom and doom to sunshine and resolution. Within minutes he diagnosed the problem and walked me through the process of solving it.

What had gone wrong was a plugin malfunction. The tech explained if I had looked at the error message closer, it did show me the problem. The tech at Bluehost shared that the Social Snap plugin had known issues. By going into my settings and deactivating Social Snap, I solved the problem. My advice, if your site uses Social Snap plugin, go deactivate it.

I learned several lessons with this experience. First, don’t go to WordPress for technical support unless you have a paid support agreement with them. I’m sure WordPress contracts out their technical support for sites like mine that aren’t hosted by them. Second, go to the company that hosts your domain. They are the ones that are responsible for handling technical problems. If you have a premium theme, it should come with technical support. I realize many site owners self-host their sites. My advice to them, make sure you have good tech support to help you. Third, if you don’t have a secured site, make sure you convert it to one. Even then, you aren’t fully secure.

I’m not the only one who has gone through this nightmare. Several bloggers that I follow have posted their experiences. My intention with this post is to share my experience and hopefully prevent panic and hair pulling for someone else.

If you have had a tech experience, share it here. Tell us how you resolved it.

 

Feature Image: Storm by Urmo Parks Photography