i ahve had my fare share of horrid hosting providers. I am looking for a hosting service with actual PHONE SUPPORT no stupid ticket system, php, linux based, and cpanel. I hate the sticket system since it takes so long for a reply. Once I had to wait a a week for a ticket reply and then if you have a follow up question you can immagine how long it takes to resolve a problem. Canceling was also impossible. I had to call the bank to block my creditcard to cancel my hosting...how lame.
I am with webhostasp.com and they are great. Support is via email and they always respond within 6-12 hours. Had no problems with them at all!
A Small Orange, support is absolutly amazing via tickets and/live chat. I've just paid over the odds (IMO) for a dedicated from them because I was so impressed with the support of their shared hosting. I'm so glad I did as they've just held my hand for 2 hours, recompiled php, apache and god knows what else in order to make my code work.