This is completely unprofessional IMO. If I am putting up or maintaining a site for a client and something is wrong with the hosting I can't tell them "ahhh.. I put in a support ticket hopefully we will hear something in 24hours.. ahhh.. duh.." On a professional level that is just unacceptable. That is the reason I stopped using hostgator.
Now I can't trust this hostgator guys anymore, once I thought they are wonder hosts but they eventually dropped my expectations after the EIG acquisition. So I have moved from them to a local country web host of mine, at least I never have to wait for 30 to 40 minutes to connect to a Livechat person now.. There are lot of web hosting providers around there, I recommend of choosing local hosing guys with good uptime.. If you are Indian then I can say that your best choice will be Hostocol for sure..