People buy hosting based on (RAM / CPU / bandwidth) for your buck. They don't buy based on customer service.<p>I think this is OK for the middle of the market - VPS customers, for whom a Linux shell is an adequate interface. (I don't know about the higher end of the market, dedicated servers and up, but I imagine those kind of customers are willing to pay more for quality service).<p>It really sucks for the low-end web hosting market - the kind of services where you get a shared folder on Apache to upload PHP scripts, and a cPanel-type interface for one-click install of Wordpress, Magento, etc.<p>If you're charging customers less than £10/month, any support tickets they open are going to eat massively into your margins. So all these sites have really crappy outsourced service.<p>I once helped a friend who was struggling to install Prestashop on his webhost. The support thread was like "I'm having problem X". "It seems to be fixed now, ticket closed". "No, I'm still having the same problem". "It appears to be fixed now, ticket closed". "It's not fixed, I'm still having the same problem..." Every reply was from a different support rep, meaning their attempt to cut corners in the name of efficiency turned into a massive inefficiency.