BLUEHOST Hosting Company Used to be Just Host really excellent customer service

I just had a pretty scary experience with my website hosting company. First of all this snoop is in no way a criticism of Blue host. I have been with them for years, tried a couple of others along the way like Go Daddy and Ionos but ended up with all my domains hosted in one place. I find it easier that way to manage.

So I get this email that looked completely legitimate saying one of my active was domains was going to be suspended if I didn’t act immediately and log into my Bluehost account by clicking the link in the email. It said it was because Who Is the public domain registry needed updated information and failure to act could mean by domain being suspended. It was completely untrue.

I didn’t check the sender email, which did turn out to be spam, I just clicked the link and tried to log into my account. Luckily for me the login on my phone failed so I ended up logging to Blue Host directly on my PC which broke the email to login link and ended up protecting my account.

Of course when I arrived in my account there were no red flags alerting me to imminent suspension so I was unsure what to do.

I began with the AI chat “Ask Blu” which although did give pretty comprehensive simple instructions it wasn’t prepared to uncover a SPAM request so after about an hour of going around in circles I got a human customer service person to help. Their name was Shashank and He/she immediately figured out the email was fake, alerted me and when I told them I had stupidly clicked the link provided in the email they sent me a password reset to change my password straight away.

I was asked at the end of the customer service process to post a review for Bluehost sharing my experience and because it was so good, once I managed to speak to a real person and the situation was sorted out very quickly with an explanation the email was fake and didn’t come from Bluehost at all, I decided to share what happened here.

In this case nothing bad happened to my account, it wasn’t hacked or compromised in anyway and I was offered privacy protection on every domain at $15 a year per domain if I wanted it.

Domain privacy and protection protects you from;

Spam and other unsolicited emails

Identity theft

Unwanted phone calls and postal mail

Fraudulent domain transfers

Malware and SEO blacklists

Competitors can check which websites they own

It is certainly an additional protection I am considering in the future.

I have been with Bluehost for over 15 years, have no reason to change my website hosting provider and even though they are based in the US and I am in the UK their 24/7 support in this instance was really great. In the past I haven’t had much need to contact support, their website is pretty self explanatory to do basic day to day stuff.

They do have a customer service line 001 801 765 9400 for international customers but be advised international rates do apply.

If you are based in the US you can call 888 401 4678 at any time for help.

I have to say before I knew the email wasn’t genuine I did think Bluehost had maybe used the worry of account suspension and the alert “immediate action required” just to get me to login so they could sell me additional services. This of course was not the case.

I am writing this snoop to warn others if you see an unexpected warning email beginning “do not ignore” or “immediate action required” from anyone you have a relationship with, your bank or credit card company, a social media account or web hosting account like in my case just look at the email address behind the sender name before doing anything.

As soon as you see where the email has actually come from you’ll know it’s fake and to immediately hit delete. And if it looks like it’s real, my advice would be don’t assume it is. Go directly to the company in question and ask them if they sent you the email before acting on it.

Thanks to the staff at Bluehost who resolved my issue, secured my account, restored my peace of mind and provided advice with a tool for the future in their privacy protection.