We strongly believe in being up front beforehand so there are no misunderstandings or nasty surprises. We will update you with your tickets as soon as possible, both good and bad, so that you know we’re doing our best to reach your goals too.
If there’s something you want to know that isn’t covered here, please feel free to ask or visit our FAQs page.
Please only submit one ticket per issue/question and give as much detail as you can, and if possible/appropriate upload a screenshot or example. The more information provided, the quicker we will be able to respond to you.
Unless otherwise agreed with us, please be aware that in raising a ticket you are agreeing to employ The Smart Bear to carry out the requested work and that a charge may be levied if not covered by a
Bear Care Maintenance plan. Please note, there may be a charge for investigating problems - what is known as 'debugging'.
Is your problem a chargeable issue?
If your website is any of the below, any and all work carried out will be on a chargeable basis:
1. If your website is more than 1 month old
2. If your website is not built by The Smart Bear
3. If you have not subscribed to a monthly Bear Care package
4. The issue is not directly related to work previously carried out by The Smart Bear within the last 2 working days.
Support (whether prepaid or ad-hoc) is undertaken during working hours only in the UK (9.30am to 4:30pm), Monday to Friday excluding UK bank (public) holidays. We cannot guarantee the availability of immediate support, but we will make every effort to accommodate the needs of clients where possible (If you have an urgent problem please mark the ticket as urgent).
We aim to answer all tickets within 24 working hours.
If you would prefer to be provided with a quote for the work, please specify 'Quote Only' on the Priority field and we will do our best to estimate (sometimes we are not aware of how much it will cost until after initial investigation. Debugging/investigation is a minimum 15 minute charge, at which point we will advise if there will be any further costs).
Emergencies/ Urgent issues
Whilst we appreciate that urgent issues can be detrimental to your business, we also need, and have the right to have, downtime to spend with our families and to refresh. Whilst we will try to be available as much as possible for critical issues, this might not always be possible out of hours/weekends. We're not always going to be near a computer, or even within reachable contact.
For this reason, we do not provide 'service level agreements' and emergency support requested or undertaken after hours, on weekends, or on holidays may be charged at a higher rate, if available at all.
If you have raised an urgent ticket and you have not heard back from us, it is possible tech has let us down and it has not reached us - at this stage, you may text or whatsapp on 07927533075 to check if we're available to help. Please only use this number in emergencies out of hours.