Web Hosting Suggestions

[Sargeras]

They billed me $119 for the next year's hosting fees and I got the email confirming the transaction. So I guess I dodged the bullet of their billing error.

[Winnow]

What an unprofessional email for what happened: (ack?)

Ack. Through a COMPLETE bumbling on our part, we've accidentally attempted
to charge you for the ENTIRE year of 2008 (and probably 2009!) ALREADY
(it was all due to a fat finger)!

We're really really realllly embarassed about this, but you have nothing
to worry about. Please ignore any confusing billing messages you may have
received recently; we've already removed all those bum future charges on
your account (#xxxxx) and already refunded the $140.39 charge on your
credit card.

You should get the money back on almost immediately, within a day or
two max, and there's no need to contact your credit card company or bank
for the refund.

Thank you very very much for your patience with this.. we PROMISE
this won't happen again. There's no need to reply to this message unless
of course you have any other questions at all!

Sincerely,
The Foolish DreamHost Billing Team!

Unfortunately, I didn't get a bonus 140.39 in my account since they never took it out.

[Aslanna]

I don't see it as a huge deal. They made a mistake and corrected it. As long as the service itself is acceptable it's nothing I would really care about.

[Winnow]

I don't see it as a huge deal. They made a mistake and corrected it. As long as the service itself is acceptable it's nothing I would really care about.

I have a major problem with errors having to do with my bank accounts or credit.

For those that had debit cards and overdraft charges, etc, I'm sure it matters. It also potentially could have caused some embarrassment if someone was trying to purchase an item and their credit/debit card bounced at a store or restaurant.

[Boogahz]

Several people lost access to their sites as well. It is unknown whether the two issues are related, but I had two years worth of billing taken out of my account which was NOT set up for autopay AND I cannot access my account. The site has been up-and-down throughout all of this. Some people have had their site shut down for "non-payment," and they noticed that they had received bills rather than automatic payments. Their attitude about it is almost as close to shitty as you can get too.

See the blog at http://blog.dreamhost.com/ titled "Um, whoops." Oh, and they say not to contact your bank. For those people that had overdraft fees, that is bullshit (no, I do not have fees (yet!)), as their "refund" will not cause banks to see that they made an error in drafting funds. Contacting the bank is the only way you are going to get this corrected. I just hope nobody is with Washington Mutual, as they have been total asses about this type of thing when I have dealt with them in the past.

Also, how the hell is taking 7.5 MILLION dollars without authorization not "a huge deal?"

[Aslanna]

Obviously I don't have all the facts! I assumed they simply billed people early who had already signed up for autopay or whatever it is and when they realized the error they refunded those fees. To me that wouldn't be a huge deal. However taking it out without authorization seems like a bad thing.

[Boogahz]

A humorous look at how to make 7.5 million the Dreamhost way:

http://www.toptut.com/2008/01/17/how-to ... -12-hours/

So how do we make 7 million dollar?

Establish a host. It doesn’t have to be quality, downtimes are okay! Set low prices. They don’t have to cover the expenses, you will cover it in 11 years from now, or maybe even sooner. Your aim is to make people sign up using Credit Card or bank transfer. For this purpose, give out coupon codes with *unreliable* discount, but the condition is to pay with credit card, that way you will know for sure what payment method they will use.

Be patient, collecting a massive credit cards list takes time. Meanwhile, try to enjoy it, add goodies to your host, respond with sense of humor to tickets, remember, — they still don’t know why are you so merry.

One sunny day, press the “charge ‘em all” button, and wait a bit longer, only 12 hours left until you are a millionaire. Be patient, collecing 7,500,000 dollars can take a few hours. Probably first you will be billing about $200 to each account but thenyou will lose patience and switch to $9,000 per credit card. remember, time is money, and you can’t afford losing it.

Then, congratulations, you are a millionaire! You might still want to let your hosting run and allow your clients to host their dreams for $10 a month though. The choice is yours. People will make comics, laugh, rage, and give you a bad name… Ignore it, you have 7 millions in your pocket, they are just jealous!

[Fash]

For you Dreamhost fanboys... I hope you like GMail.

Slashdot: Large Web Host Urges Customers to Use Gmail

Dreamhost Blog: What Web Hosting is for

I've never had an issue with email for my hosting clients, so I really wonder how the majority of their support tickets are email related. As for downtime... if I have no problem staying up (current uptime: 938 days 11 hours 50 minutes) then a big company like this shouldn't either.

[Winnow]

I don't use Dreamhost for email.

I use it for speed, huge storage, and uptime of which it's been great over the past several years for me.

[Sargeras]

I don't use Dreamhost for email.

I wish I didn't have to. Their mail filter is horrible.

[Fash]

Well I can stop touting my uptime... There was an explosion yesterday at ~6pm in The Planet's H1 data center in TX, blew up their electrical system, and thousands of servers are down. The fire department wouldn't allow them to turn on their backup generators, so DNS and servers are down for any older EV1 customers.

edit: link: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7011131199

[Winnow]

Well I can stop touting my uptime... There was an explosion yesterday at ~6pm in The Planet's H1 data center in TX, blew up their electrical system, and thousands of servers are down. The fire department wouldn't allow them to turn on their backup generators, so DNS and servers are down for any older EV1 customers.

edit: link: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7011131199

Ouch. Dreamhost moved and upgraded all of their electrical equipment a few months ago due to potential issues. Glad they were preemptive about it. Come on over if you don't mind being double charged accidentally once in awhile!

[Fash]

Come on over if you don't mind being double charged accidentally once in awhile!

No thanks... I've received 5+ years of flawless service from EV1/ThePlanet until this issue. This may accelerate my plans of moving from the one server to the other, though. The newer server I have isn't down, but has no DNS.

[cid]

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosti ... =YWHBIGC50


Yahoo has a nice deal going on right now. Just an FYI