Web hosts that suck!

Well it has been a long week and I am glad it is finally over.

It started off with my former web hosting company screwing me over. After a year and the some of being a customer of theirs as well as steering several companies and friends to them for business they showed their appreciation by trying to double bill me for services.

Now normally this would be something you could easily fix, you know show them a bank draft or a credit card slip showing the charge. This company though refused to listen to anything I told them and then when I tried to call the person who I had been emailing about the problem I was told that they only handled email and I would have to speak to someone else. It took me about 3 days to get someone who knew what I was talking about and could help me of course that was when I found out that the domain names I had asked them to cancel and had done the proper process and paperwork to do so, had not been cancelled and they were trying to bill me for them. All in all they tried to bilk me out of about $200 between the services and domains.

When I told them I was not going to pay for something that I already had or something I had properly cancelled they shut down my server, which is why I had to move and get a new domain.

Now the good thing is that the domains that I had renewed or were not up for renewal are rightfully mine and I should be able to push them to my new host but I suspect that my old company is going to give me some problems doing that or will try to charge me and arm and a leg to do so.

The funny thing is that I went with this host even after reading on several web hosting forums about the problems they had given others. Interestingly enough I went back to read those comments and with only a few exceptions they were all very similar issues. I was more interested in the amount of services the company provided for the money they were charging. This is a prominent company and they advertise in a lot of computer and web oriented magazines so you if you read those types of mags, you will know who I am talking about and if you are not using them I will say that what appears to be a good deal is in the end not.

In the end I am not bitter as it is their loss. I would have been perfectly happy to remain their customer but now I will be happy to give another company my money.