What is a product with NON-EXISTENT customer service? Isn't there somewhere reasonably central for encouraging at least basic standards that we as resellers or end consumers can go to report our experiences with people like this? It is dreadfully scary thinking that just ANYONE could say just ANYTHING and deliver just NOTHING at jusr ANYTIME without any deterrants. Any word on what is being done to raise standards of Hosting companies or to subscribe to at least some sort of guideline? This would prevent people like DPN from giving good Hosts a bad rap...or at least leave more room for dedicated Hosts to propogate.

And according to this thread:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17863&highlight=dpn

they are still ACTIVELY soliciting business even after all that we KNOW is happening there. All it says is that even discerning consumers' "luck" is only as good as their judgement which (especially for newbies) can only be based on a few criteria at the sign-up stage:

1. How professional the site looks and sounds
2. How enticing their graphics are
3. The product - what they are offering
4. How well & quickly they respond to their presales questions

And as can be seen here, those are simply not enough. Of course we could always come here and check the threads. Unfortunately when I signed up, there was nothing much I could find at that time. So if the company is relatively new, that doesn't apply. Plus if there are only a few threads then we have to give or take a little for customers who simply complain about anything. So my newbie conclusion is......becoming a reseller or purchasing hosting is basically " A SHOT IN THE DARK" Am I right?

There should be guide lines.
But you can't force someone to do that he doesn't want.

Originally posted by Palm
..But you can't force someone to do that he doesn't want. [/B]

I wasn't sure exactly what you were saying? Is it that you mean because we have the freedom to choose as customers, that because no one has forced us to sign up with any given host, means we have no real say......or do you mean that even with guidelines we can't force Hosts to actually follow them?

I understand how you feel. I started as a reseller, and slowly moved into purchasing my own dedicated servers. Until that time I had many experiences with other hosting companies, some lost me clients.
Pre-sales questions are limited but somewhat helpful. The problem, of course, is that once you are a customer hosts often change thier level of service.
I highly recommend to any starting reseller:
Register your own nameservers!
That way you can quickly move your clients to another company if you suddenly realize they are not providing quality service and support.

Good luck,
David Kiley