TotalChoice Hosting Blog

The TotalChoice Hosting wall of Penguins!

Collection has been ongoing for about 2 years now.

If you would like to add to our collection, please feel free to mail us your penguin.

TotalChoice Hosting has a fully automated billing system. This system allows our clients full access to their billing information. Our clients depend on the ease and accessibility of this billing system. We get a number of questions in our Billing department about billing issues and access. Listed below are some of the more Frequently Asked Questions that I would like to answer. 

How do I update my billing information?
You can reach the billing system through:

How do I update my Credit Card?
Once you have logged in to your account, go to the top of the page to My Finances and click on Update CC. The system will ask for a password. This is the same password that you used to login to your billing account.

How do I pay my Invoice?
Once you have logged in to your account, go to the top of the page to My Finances and click on Invoices. The current invoice is at the bottom. Click on the Invoice number. At the top is a link to Pay Online. This will pop up a new window to enter your credit card information.

How do I add another hosting package to my existing billing account?
If you wish to order additional products you may use your billing username and password during the ordering process. You will want to select, add this order to my account, during the order process. This will allow you to manage your purchases under one account.

How do I change my billing method?
If you need to switch from Credit card to Paypal or vice versa, please open a Help desk ticket. We will assist with this change.

How can I have my billing in the new system?
This can be achieved through a Help desk ticket. We encourage the move to our newer system and will provide a link to setup a new billing account.

How do I upgrade/down grade my account?
All upgrades and down grades can be done through a Help desk ticket. You do not have to wait until your next billing to do so. This can be done at any time.

I paid through Paypal, why am I still receiving notices that I need to pay?
If you paid using a PayPal eCheck, our system will continue to email you daily until that check clears. Once the eCheck clears, your payment will be marked as paid. We are sorry for this confusion and we ask for you to ignore this email until the payment you made clears

I lost my login for Cpanel. How do I get this?
Please open a Help desk ticket for this issue.

As a security check we ask that you provide us with:

1 – Your full address (Inc. zip code)
2 – your phone number
3 – the last four digits of the credit card being used to pay for the hosting account

The above act as proof of ID, so that we can then reset your password. 

Did you know you can also access the Support Desk through your billing account. Once you have logged in to your account, go to the top of the page to Get Support and click on Contact Support. You can then submit a ticket directly from your account.

Not only will these tips save you time, they make it easier to understand the system. If there are questions that were not addressed here, you can always submit a ticket. We will be more than happy to address your issue.

In an effort to improve our support services, we have brought back the Manager Notification feature to our help desk. This means if you have a problem that has not been resolved to your satisfaction, then you can escalate it to a manager.

This feature is available for every ticket submitted to our help desk and becomes active once a member of our support team responds to a ticket. Once activated, you will then be presented with a link at the bottom of that ticket stating, “Not satisfied with the support you are receiving? Click here to notify a Manager of your issue.”

This link can be accessed whether you a viewing a ticket from within the help desk or the support section of your billing account. Furthermore, each e-mail reply sent from the help desk will also contain a link to access the Manager Notification feature.

Clicking the link will take you to a short form that when submitted will trigger the following actions:

• your comment/request is noted in the ticket
• the ticket is marked urgent and forwarded to management
• a page is sent out to all managers on duty
• a manager will review your ticket and respond with a resolution

We hope you never need this service, but if you do we are here and will do everything within our power to correct any issues you are facing.

I had no idea that we had a local Nascar team. Maybe TCH should sponsor a Nascar team!

While shopping at my local Petco store, I saw this car in the parking lot.

A total new use of Duct Tape!

We at TotalChoice have always made it a point to reduce the response time for issues brought to our attention. But there are a few things that you as a client can do to get your issues rectified in a zap. Here are some quick tricks and tips.

Support.

Among the various means to get in touch with us — Helpdesk, IMs, Live Chat, IRC, I would recommend the help desk as the primary. Why ?

1) It is a secure link and you will have peace of mind that your sensitive information never gets compromised. Help desk is accessible only to  TCH employees currently under contract unlike IM, IRC etc.

2) It allows you to enter critical information like Cpanel logins, servername so that we can search and access your account quickly rather than emailing back and forth requesting more info.

3) This info proves the ownership of the account so that we know the request is coming from a legitimate source.

4) Allows all techs, management and of course yourself to track the progress. You can always quote the ticket id via chat or IM to any of the techs at a later stage.

5) Finally the most significant factor, you do not have to tag along or wait online for the tech to check and reply. Just submit the ticket, get a cup of coffee, watch a couple of commercials, get the garbage out etc etc. By the time you are done, we would have responded back to you.

Now, information is a vital part of getting your issue resolved. Most of the time we get tickets like “My email is not working. Please check”. Some of the things that would be running on the tech’s mind would be :

# Is it for a single email account or for the entire domain ?
# Incoming / outgoing or both ?
# Is the issue on webmail (horde, squirrelmail etc) or on email clients like outlook, thunderbird etc.
# Any error messages ?

So include as much information as possible, and steps to replicate the issue including the logins so that we can get into it straight away. The more information you give, more easier for us to identify and correct the problem.

Contact Address

Ensure that you set a valid, working email as the contact id on billing, domain registration and as cpanel contact address. This should ideally be something that is not connected to the domain or the server hosting the account so that you would receive the email even if the server is down or (…ahem…) if the account gets suspended. You can use any of the free providers like Gmail, Yahoo! etc.

The same holds true while submitting tickets, there is no point in submitting one by setting the contact email to a domain / email account that is not working. But of course, you know that already… silly me

TCH Forums

Our forum — http://totalchoicehosting.com/forums/ — provides a vast array of knicks and knacks which can be used effectively to manage your account. All issues, updates etc pertainting to your server and TCH operations will be reported there. Migrations, upgrades etc are posted well in advance to minimize client issues. All you need to do is sign up and subscribe to the thread designated for your server and any other threads that you feel is needed like General Announcements, Network Maintenance etc so that the alerts reaches you via email.
You can also find members there who are willing to help you out with third party applications, tweaking your site and so on.

HAPPY HOSTING !!