While I understand the concept of how a company with a bigger client base will have more complaints and angry customers, I hardly think that is a valid excuse for many web hosting companies to ward of the angry posts on this and other boards. Granted, this has some effect on the amount of complaints on the boards but does anyone notice that some major companies (i.e. Exodus) do no have complaint threads here? While it is understandable how a small company will ony have one or two angry customers that post here and a huge one will have tens and hundreds, if the company provides adequate service, these threads should not show up at all.
These boards are also a location where really pissed off clients/customers go to voice their opinions. Most companies don't have problems that create such huge mistakes and almost all try to rectify their problems.
These boards have become a place for people who have had bad experiences to voice them out and for companies to constantly scour to find these comments and stage a defense. Since this is the internet, it ultimately comes down to one person's word against another's (or a company's). This is a good use of it but that shocks and disgusts me is that some compaines use these boards to find disgruntled customers who are posting negative comments and then freeze their accounts!!! This is a completely enethical action and should not be condoned.
I was wondering what everyone else here thinks of using the board to tell experiences and the hosting companies' constant monitoring of the boards.

Never mind.

does anyone notice that some major companies (i.e. Exodus) do no have complaint threads here? With few exceptions, complaints here are from WHT-member users (obviously) who know that the host they have a problem with also has a presence here. That there are no complaints here about a particular company doesn't mean there are none elsewhere.

The complaints here generally come after a user feels that he hasn't been able to get a satisfactory response from the host through the host's own channels. So the user feels that putting public pressure on the host might pay off, and it often does -- but only if someone from the hosting company is here to read the thread. A complaint here about Exodus wouldn't reach anyone who could respond.

For the most part, the companies represented here are at the small end of the hosting spectrum, so most complaints are about small companies.

Further, users here tend to check out and sign up with hosts that are recommended here and that have a presence here... this is a fairly insulated group of hosting providers and users; nothing you see here is necessarily representative of the worldwide hosting environment.that shocks and disgusts me is that some compaines use these boards to find disgruntled customers who are posting negative comments and then freeze their accounts!!! Hmm... care to tell us specifically what incident(s) you're talking about?