A Letter of Apology to Readers and Gratitude to Bluehost
After a little research, and a really great experience with my site performance at Eighteen Short Years, I decided to transfer this site domain of Highland Freelance over to Bluehost. What ensued after the transfer – to the fault of absolutely no one but myself! – was a slight wrinkle in my web presence.
So – if you tried to reach me by email through this site and received an error message, I sincerely apologize. My apologies as well if you visited my site on a tablet or smartphone and were greeted with jumbled text. But there is a silver lining here, and that is new advice I have to offer: if you are in the market for a domain host, I cannot recommend Bluehost highly enough.
I appreciate all that the internet has to offer, and I do my best to fix the majority of the problems that arise in my life through youtube videos. But when I realized my website hadn’t transferred properly, my innate desperate need for human interaction kicked into overdrive, and I immediately picked up the phone and called the Bluehost customer service phone number.
Bluehost Customer Service to the Rescue
A kind, courteous, knowledgeable, and extraordinarily helpful customer service agent had me back online in a matter of minutes. With one step left to complete a successful site transfer, I had to apologize that I needed to end the call to drive my son to school. I thought for sure I’d be given directions to finish the transfer on my own, or at best be sent an email with a link to finish the transaction. But, no. This wonderful Bluehost employed human finished the transfer for me, and emailed me the new login details.
Shortly after my site transfer hiccups were resolved, I found that my site transfer had disabled the email account associated with the domain. Once again, my “site transfer on a whim” and I were the only ones to blame for the issue, and once again, I picked up the phone and dialed Bluehost customer service.
The customer service representative who answered this time, literally said something very close to, “oh, don’t panic – no worries – we’ll have your email back up and working in no time.” I tried my best to school my voice and describe my email issue in an even, matter-of-fact tone. Regardless, this representative seemed acutely aware of my anxious, nervous tendencies and my current state of sheer panic. It was as if he had been coached by my mother or husband to say what I needed to hear. No need to worry. All will be well. I can fix this right away.
While it does turn out that “right away” regarding the reparation of email issues through Gmail falls in the range of 24 to 48 hours, I still got off the phone feeling a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders, and my mind at peace.
Takeaways from my Self-Inflicted Site Transfer Debacle
I can spend all day learning, every day, and there will still be more to learn. (Which is actually a really awesome and exciting reality).
It is incredibly difficult to “break” something on a website that is beyond repair. Trust me – it seems I am trying very hard, and as of yet I have not succeeded.
When technology problems arise, Youtube and web content resources are great tools, but nothing (for me at least) trumps human interaction and superb customer service. My favorite businesses will always offer a phone number with a human at the other end. I feel so deeply about this point that I’ve even added buttons on my home and about pages with my contact phone number.
And last, for now at least – Bluehost is rocking some of the best customer service ever. They won my heart, and my business for the foreseeable future. Kudos and thank you, Bluehost.
A Change in Blog Content
Through my transfer, I also decided to move a lot of my previous content on this blog page to my newer site, Eighteen Short Years. I’ll keep posting content here related to my struggles and successes navigating website creation, why blogs matter to me as a consumer (that post coming soon), and more of my thoughts regarding the customer service side of RV travel and outdoor recreation. For stories about my own family’s travel and adventures, feel free to follow me at Eighteen Short Years – I would love to see you there!