Hello,

Last year in October 2000, I subscribed to one of the webghosting company in Florida, USA. Then, 3 months later, the company went bancrupt, I was transfered to wizardhosting which actually I did all by myself all the setting and etc.

I have paid him for full 12 months, and I request him to refund my money for the rest of 9 months.

It's been more than 6 months he has not refunded with all the excuses. (waiting for fund, return mail due to wrong address etc.)

How can we (customers) knows whether one company is a realible and credible in webhosting industry?

What should I do? Btw, I live overseas.

I will post his complete address and name later on.

Best regards

Well the thing you did wrong was prepaying a year in advance..... I have gave refunds to my clients because my company is still standing. If a webhost goes bankrupt.... Where would the money for a refund come from? I doubt you will get a refund from that host.

Originally posted by Synergy
Well the thing you did wrong was prepaying a year in advance..... I have gave refunds to my clients because my company is still standing. If a webhost goes bankrupt.... Where would the money for a refund come from? I doubt you will get a refund from that host.

Thanks for the quick respond.
Yeap, you are right, he doesn't have any money.

So, what kind of webhosting company should be trusted? Because many of them always say the nice things before the customers buy their plan.

Well, it is good to have this kind of forum though, so we can all learn from someone's experiences.

Any suggestion will be very appreciated.

My advice would be to pay monthly or quarterly but NEVER pay a full year until you are really sure that the Host will not have finamcial problems or default in their payments to their server provider and affects you indirectly as a client with them since your are using their service.

If the above company filed for Bankruptcy, correct me anyone if I'm wrong, depending on the type, they may not have to pay you back at all. Same with paying rent for their office space, etc.

So read around on here and pay monthly!!

Or find a good host (that we all recommend) and pay them yearly for the discount :)

The best thing is to go by reputation. If you can factor in a really low cost for the same level service and facilities then you have found your perfect home..

Another good idea is to chat to the host about their future plans. If it sounds bleak then obvisouly they are struggling to grow and thus more likely to doom. If they have definitive plans (i.e. not "we are hoping to get a datacentre in the future") with definitive dates (even better) then you are on a winner. It will show their enthusiasm, commitment and a strong projection of their road map.

Originally posted by Dogma
If the above company filed for Bankruptcy, correct me anyone if I'm wrong, depending on the type, they may not have to pay you back at all. Same with paying rent for their office space, etc.

True, but even if it wasn't a "company" ie he was not incorporated... reality is that the customer lives overseas and the only way to get the money would be to go to small claims court which would be unrealistic considering the small amount involved.

Santana, move on to your next host. Just be a bit more careful and ask around before prepaying for a year in advance.

Santana,

As we've had a couple hosted clients of our go "bankrupt", we learned a little about the actual claims process. (but in a reverse fashion)

Upon trying to collect for hosting from a particular client of ours, we learned they went bankrupt. This means that all company assets were liquidated in order to payoff liabilities, and in this case with us....their hosting bill. We had to submit an entire account history and list of services rendered to a law firm associated with the bkrupt filing and .....then get in line for payment based on "priority".

I would assume that if they were setup as a legal entity (c-corp., s-corp., LLC., etc) they have such a process in place.....ask them to put you in touch with the lawfirm in charge of the filing.

Good Luck!

The filing process would mean that you will most probably end up at the bottom of the list.

You'll be very lucky to receive anything back.

The priorities will be services they had to pay. (server rentals, lease lines etc.)

I do sympathise a lot. A web host going bankrupt is not nice for it's clients. It causes problems, hassles and it's them that really lose out at the end of the day.