Hi

I would just like to say what a crock od sh*t Don Hosts are.

We have recently opened a reseller account with these rogues and one particular account they just deleted without warning. We eventually found out they cited high bandwidth as the reason.

I have never known of such practises before (I'm sure I am wrong) Can they do this legally?

I just wish I had found this forum earlier.

Now we have to inform the client his site has been wiped.

Does anyone know of any good Win2k/NT resellers?

Sorry but its well documented in every nook and cranny on the internet.....did you read any of the posts on this forum before signing up? This is common Donhost policy.....ask even the ex employees hanging around!

Cheers,

Hi

I checked there terms and condition and can't seea anything about exsessive bandwidth.

But I very much doubt that the particular site was any more than 750mb month.

Is there anything legal I can do on this? I have been in touch with trading standards.

No...they have a similar T&C to Fasthosts...mainly along the lines of 'Acceptable server load' and all that....

Trading Standards need 1,000's of complaints before they even get interested in a company....

Sorry to hear about your experience but its one of those 'live and learn' ones I'm afraid :(

Cheers,

Yeah, the only thing you can do is pack your bags and move on. Live and learn. Experience is the best teacher.

Push with Trading Standards if you can show that their actions were unreasonable in light of their TOS. To offer "Unlimited" and pull the plug on 750Mb could be shown to be unreasonable when comparing "Unlimited" with the average bandwidth of most hosting companies.

Don't take this lying down - the more people that complain to Trading Standards - the more they will be compelled to take action to everyone's benefit.

Move on my all means but don't take it lying down - do something!

I certainly will.

The thing that peeves me is that they did not give any notice!! I mean if they had their heads screwed on business wise they could have made more money by stating that they are using excessive bandwidth on that particicular site. I would then in turn have contacted my client and explain the situation.

That said I would have a cow if they tried that on for 750mb though :)

Thats it Jonny just cite me.....

The reason Donhost delete accounts with highbandwidth without any consideration is that the one leased line they have running into where the dedicated servers and Windows boxes are gets maxed out quite a lot of the time, I know Daniel was on about having Telewest put one in for belt and braces reasons, so when that happens he might become a bit more lenient.

The clause that covers it in the AUP in Excessive system resources and you would be extremely hard pushed to beat him in court with that behind him. To be fair he hides behind that on every account deletion apart from illegal content which deserves to be deleted anyway. There is a cry for shareware etc but I would personally prefer to see the site linked to so the author gets the recognition anyway. If he had the proper infrastructure behind him for the customer base he has then I am sure that wouldnt be an issue but he hasn't and that is that.

He advertises 50GB on UNIX for that read 20 and windoze 20GB for that read 10 as long as you have no good fee paying accounts at which time he would try to move you to a dedicated box.

Oh well another happy customer eh!!

Donhost should not claim to offer 50GB of bandwidth if he can not follow through with the goods. Yes if a site is crashing a server because of a CGI script, it may sometimes be necessary to actually suspend the site/disable the script without prior notification, but I do not see this being the case here.

I'm surprised there isn't more consumer protection in place to stop companies like Donhost. :angry:

Originally posted by avara
I'm surprised there isn't more consumer protection in place to stop companies like Donhost. :angry:

Well, web hosting is an unregulated industry. It's their servers. Technically, they can do whatever they want.

Originally posted by ToastyX


Well, web hosting is an unregulated industry. It's their servers. Technically, they can do whatever they want.

not exactly...
They say they give you with 50GB/month, they should give it to you...
If not then that's false advertising

Yes it is false advertising. This is what ircks me about a lot of "shared" hosting services. They can claim you have 10-50 Gigs of transfer....But don't take into account that if 25 of the 300+ sites they cram on a server are actually using the transfer (and expected CPU usage that goes along with it) then it is going to slow the machine down to a crawl. These people are all banking on the fact that they can throw 300 sites on a box --- and that all of these paying customers will only serve up a few megs of static content throughout the month -- and the host collects the pay. I have stopped looking for hosts that entice by the amount of bandwidth --- and pay more creed to the hosts that keep the number of users on a machine to a sane number....and can prove it --- or I can see for myself. I see more and more scams that start out with hosts that have good intentions -- and then just get greedy (or realistic) when they realize they can't provide the product as advertised --- and start to throw the 10% of "heavy usage" sites overboard --- and continue to collect money from the 90% of sites that are not popular....and then the greeder buggers keep signing new customers up to the same machines.

Yes they do say things about excessive bandwidth but technically under UK law they are breaking the sales of goods and services Act..........i suspect it wont be too long before they end up in court for this (I am an Alevel law student doing contract law LOL) I have also checked this out with my law teacher who agrees that they are actually breaking UK law

Originally posted by tazd9t9
they are actually breaking UK law

Can you post a URL to this reference please.

Cheers

Gary

its a standard UK law Gary....for all the complaints you see here and all the standing up for DH you do...surely you must see its only time before you're due a shafting?? Or maybe not......

Are we going to get compensation for that? :)
I would love to! :liplick:

I have a screenshot of my receipt and still waiting for the government to see.

Originally posted by HostAddict
[B]Yes it is false advertising. This is what ircks me about a lot of "shared" hosting services. They can claim you have 10-50 Gigs of transfer....But don't take into account that if 25 of the 300+ sites they cram on a server are actually using the transfer (and expected CPU usage that goes along with it) then it is going to slow the machine down to a crawl.

I'm having difficulty determining whether you are referring to the provider or the reseller mate. The provider makes "the claim you have 10-50 Gigs of transfer", whereas the reseller is the one cramming the sites onto the server.

But I get your overall point. It's becoming a problem all over. Reseller services are being torn apart by terrible feedback as servers are falling over, because of a lack of tight control over the resellers themselves.

We've been reselling on many different networks for 4 years. We've never had a problem with any provider, but more inportantly no provider has ever had a problem *with* us. Central Info, Fasthosts, Donhost, ADEHost...just to name a few. But we don't go crazy and try and turn any single reseller account into a booming business on its own.

I agree with you Hostaddict...that unless a reseller service provider is going to restrict the number of domains each reseller can maintain, then they are just asking for trouble.

Another problem that is becoming more evident lately is diskspace. Newish reseller providers appear to be trying to divide the definite space on a drive up to their resellers. Not taking into account the dynamic overflow for log files, etc. One can't just take a 40GB hard drive on a $100/mth server, and plan to stick 10 $50/mth resellers on that box with 4GB each. What happens if, heaven forbid, they all try to use that much? There's been quite a few issues around the traps lately where drives are filling up.

How many of these newish reseller providers do you think are actually trying to effectively monitor things? Putting processes in place to kill rogue scripts? Putting in early detection of high loads. Putting in early detection of drive space issues? My guess is that in the almighty chase for the $$$, very little consideration and forward planning is being put into the overall picture. Let's just get that $100 server up, and cram as many resellers on as we can. Once they actually start to use it, then we'll tend to the problems we hadn't thought of in advance with a series of excuses for why servers are falling over and harddrives are filling up.

Interesting times, that's for sure. Watching providers fall over themselves trying to manage things.

Cheers

Gary

Originally posted by jonny b
its a standard UK law Gary....for all the complaints you see here and all the standing up for DH you do...surely you must see its only time before you're due a shafting?? Or maybe not......

Why would we expect to get a shafting? From Donhost, or any other provider. We've never had any problems with anyone.

I asked for the reference because I'd be interested in reading how UK law determines what they are doing as "illegal".

Gary