Web Host Horror Stories

[moonshield]

I have heard horror stories about some web hosts. Such as the host going under without notice and the sudden cancelation of an account. Has anyone here had any such experiances?

[James]

I'm glad to not have, but I've heard someone's story about how they were 'jipped' out of hundreds of dollars by RackShack (now EV1)

I'll see if I can hunt it down. I think it was at SitePoint's forums...

[Chris]

I've used Rackshack for years and am pleased.

I did have Aletia switch owners on me, their support for a period was horrible, months for a trouble ticket answer.

I also had poor service from another one before that, long long time ago, I don't recall their name but they're fairly big. Anyways, their problem was a billing issue. They weren't billing me. I sent them emails, called them, etc. It never got fixed. About a 6 months after I had cancelled my accounts with them I got a bill, I threw it away.

[ozgression]

I've been moved from host to host (server to server) every 6 months or so as hosts close up and sell their clients.

That's pretty annoying, but it has never effected me with downtime or losing any files etc...
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[chrispian]

MCHost. The McDonalds of hosting. Stay way. I've never been more unhappy with a company in my life. Double billings on a regular basis, servers shut down because *they* didn't pay their bills (allegedly), moved from one server to another without even a seconds notice, upgrades to software without notice (which broke my sites several times) and the comedy of errors goes on and on. You can research any host at www.webhostingtalk.net and get the good and bad about an host. MCHost will come up alot in the context of "bad hosts". They were once a very good company. I'm not sure what happened. I'm almost done moving all my sites off their servers. Thank the maker!

[AndyH]

First dedicated server I got the company had daily outages, then after a month they closed up shop and were gone. No access to my data, no refund for the $300 credit I had on my account -- and at that early stage of my business $300 was a killer, set me back tremendously.

Since then everything has been fine except for a DDoS attack a month or so ago.

[MarkB]

Neutelligent - ugh. Their salesman was a bit of a cowboy, telling me how they had 24/7 support, but neglecting to tell me that the techs who actually KNEW ANYTHING only worked mon-fri, 9-5.

Support tickets would go for up to two days before I even received a *confirmation*! :)

I'm with Managed.com now - have heard good AND bad things, but haven't had any problems myself. In fact, they've always answered all emails promptly.

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

I would highly recommend both ServerMatrix and EV1Servers (RackShack) if you need dedicated server.

[abelony]

If you want a really reliable reseller account I would strongly recommend you look up Kualo. I got a reseller account when they were having 1/2 price sale but I wouldn't hesitate paying the full price.
Oh, yeah, stay away from thehostingspecialist :mad:.
I lost patience when their server went down for four days and I didn’t get any emails as to what was happening. Very frustrating.

[James]

I couldn't find the old thread >_<

My current host (http://www.dr2.net)merged with another host and didn't tell their customers, or even ask them if they thought it would be a good idea. In fact, I liked the idea of it so much that I'm going to quit using them as a host.

[moonshield]

when such events happen... how does the site transfer and content transfer work... is everything down for a week?

[ozgression]

No, they usually transfer it across and get you to change your DNS info (or atleast thats what happended in my case).
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[LuckyShima]

MCHost. The McDonalds of hosting. Stay way. Double billings on a regular basis
The thing with MCHost is that maybe the first case of double billing was a mistake, but they made so much money from it with people not knowing or not bothering to demand a refund, or mchost just refusing to refund the double payment until the customer wrote it off, and only refunding the most persistant and threatening customers, that they seem to have made deliberate double billing a part of their business plan.

[chrispian]

The thing with MCHost is that maybe the first case of double billing was a mistake, but they made so much money from it with people not knowing or not bothering to demand a refund, or mchost just refusing to refund the double payment until the customer wrote it off, and only refunding the most persistant and threatening customers, that they seem to have made deliberate double billing a part of their business plan.

Indeed! I'm beginning to think they've come up with a method of putting a little extra money in the bank to keep afloat. It takes around 30 days to get the money back. That's a lot of interest one could build up. I'm not saying this is what they are doing, but maybe, eh?

[James]

With my transfer they didn't make me change the DNS things. I think that they'll probably just keep the servers from the old DR2 hosting under their DNS and have all the new people go with the new host or something.

All I know is that I wasn't told they were even merging--a nice thing to know.