I was a victim of 99centhost.com (http://www.99centhost.com) . I initially thought it was a great idea to host some really low traffic sites there but little did I know that a couple days after I signed up with them, I found unauthorized charges made on my credit card which were later traced to them.

First, they claim to be US based but found out to be a business operating out of Karachi, Pakistan. I have nothing against foreign Web hosters. But one which breach my confidence and used my card to charge for web promotion for their site is a little too much for me. This amounted to slightly over $300. It could be more but I managed to freeze my card in time.

Secondly, having written to them about it, they stopped responding to my email.

And they do not honor their 30 days money back guarantee.

Avoid them at all cost.

Call VISA (or whoever your card is under) and issue a charge back, it'll be well worth your time, and help put them out of business (too many chargebacks = bye bye merchant account),
unless you signed some dumb contract/TOS/AUP that authorized them to make those charges in some form or another).

Yup, I did put a freeze to my card and got one merchant to do a chargeback and the other is currently handled by my issuing bank.

My post is to serve as warning to others who might want to consider using them to avoid going through the problems I have gone through.

Well, it was a good thing that I did not sign up with any dumb terms or conditions.

Originally posted by eddy2099
I was a victim of 99centhost.com (http://www.99centhost.com) . I initially thought it was a great idea to host some really low traffic sites there but little did I know that a couple days after I signed up with them, I found unauthorized charges made on my credit card which were later traced to them.

First, they claim to be US based but found out to be a business operating out of Karachi, Pakistan. I have nothing against foreign Web hosters. But one which breach my confidence and used my card to charge for web promotion for their site is a little too much for me. This amounted to slightly over $300. It could be more but I managed to freeze my card in time.

Secondly, having written to them about it, they stopped responding to my email.

And they do not honor their 30 days money back guarantee.

Avoid them at all cost.

Two words: due dilligence

G man, I feel bad for you... :rolleyes:
Ask for a chargeback asap. It'll work out fine. ;)

:) Good luck :)

I'm sorry this happened to you, but, the old saying of caveat emptor and you get what you pay for really applies here.

I really wish people/companies like this would f$&# off...
sorry... couldn't help myself there.

Originally posted by TheException
I really wish people/companies like this would f$&# off...
sorry... couldn't help myself there.

This saddens me too. :(
I find it strange that you even call this a company!! :o

Considering they are using Formmail.pl as their "secure order processing system," your credit card could have been ripped by anyone, not just them.

It also looks like they're going by the names of cheaperhost.com and midashosting.com.

Just the name should have pop a big STAY AWAY!!! into your head. Anything with .99cents and host in the same word should be steered away from..

About to say the same thing. I thought $4.95 was cheap & possibly even sketchy myself when I first saw it around but I would never trust my website to anything lower than that. The way I think about it is that the cost of hosting should be about what it costs to eat out at a decent restaurant but not what it costs for a pack of gum. :dunce:

lol clemz.

i guess the range should go from kfc to about olive garden'ish.

as for eddy, man that is horrible. it's amazing how little morals some people can have. unfortunately this is one of those things that you have to learn from the hard way and do your best to avoid it ever happening again. although i think everyone here, in some way, has been ripped off at some point of their lives.

Weird as it may seems, I do take the necessary precautions but I think there is really nothing really foolproof here. :bawling:

I did the usual scan the web for feedback and so on. Of course, I did not go for the 99cents/month deal but per week so that added up to close to $4/mth. Well, I see that the cost of hosting has fallen quite substantially in the reason year, who am I to question them. Of course for $4/mth I did not expect miracles. They were extremely low impact websites, perhaps 10 to 20 visitors a day or so as much of which were still vastly under-construction. My other sites which are definitely more active are hosted on alot costlier hosters. But it is true, cost isn't everything. Being more expensive in itself does not guarantee superior service. Everything looks good on paper but it is only when you tried it that you know what their service level is.

I had a dedicated Raq prior to this but had to let it go since business has been real bad lately and I was just trying to cut corners to survive. But you know I never expect web hosters to cheat as I have seen in 99centhost.com .
They are actually pretty dumb themselves. I mean they should know that using the card to purchase URL promotion is just stupid. They were using it to promote the 99centhost.com pages. How stupid can that be ? I mean if they have some personal web pages or some other unrelated one or waited months and use it, probably I cannot make the connection. Probably all I can say is gee, someone breached their system. But this is dumb.

I talked to my bank about it. I say that you get SSL here and there but that probably protect you from theft to and from transfer but nothing will prevent the merchant from using your number. I doubt there is any protection against that. You work on trust. But the good thing is that most hosters are honest in that respect. I definitely hope that I am not doing wrong by trusting.

Of course, I will avoid this hoster, but I am not sure how it would be possible to fully avoid such thing from happening in the future. I guess it is all a matter of luck.

Thanks guys for your support, comments or anything. I just needed a place to voice out my frustration and probably hopefully warn anyone else who might want to make that step to sign up with them. I know my posting helped someone avoid them so probably there is a silver lining somewhere.
:)

Edwin

Did anyone notice they have a self issued SSL certificate?

And they are running Apache 1.3.6 which is extremely old

Roly,

I did not notice that. I did not know that was possible without causing my web browser to go crazy or warn me about it.

I could not check the validity of the certificate, for some strange reason the IE on the Mac does not allow me to do that or I do not know how.

Edwin

I was considering these people a couple of months ago. I moved them way down the list because a) their site crashed me, and b) one of their pages was like 200k long, which is just unprofessional and stupid... and not to mention how long it took to load (on dialup). Meh.

what's their connection to visuallink?

hmm karachi is where daniel pearl (wall street journalist) was kidnapped and killed.

hmm. i don't know if there is a connection there.

Originally posted by roly
Did anyone notice they have a self issued SSL certificate?

Whats with the self issued SSL cert.?.. That is very unprofessional and infact dowright scary that I was even on a website that would attempt to do such a thing.

I hope everything works out for you eddy2099. Goodluck!

Edit: I also noticed it was vaild from ... 11/23/2001 to 11/23/2003, I did not know that certs were issued for more than a year?

What is strange, is that you posted this at the beganning of the month, and still they are still running their server/website the same way.

Skylab
=====

99centhosting.com has nothing to do with Visuallink.com . I had an account with VisualLink and they are definitely professional at what they do.

littlest
=====

Well, after the incident, I have not heard from anyone at 99centhosting.com. Why am I not surprised ? As for the two charges they made, one of them refunded the money and the other was refunded by the bank. The only thing was the money that was legally paid to 99centhost.com is in limbo, I will just have to take it as lesson learnt.

I have since shifted to a more professional host, cost a bundle more but definitely worth it.

As for my credit card, my bank has issued me with a new card and would monitor all charges made through it, especially from Pakistan, Karachi.

I have seen then shifted over to a PC based computer to browse the web, at least now I am able to find out the details of the secure certificates. On the Mac IE, there is no such option.

Thanks again for your concern. No matter how many times I get cheated, I still get sick to my bones when it does happen.

Edwin

Originally posted by eddy2099
I was a victim of 99centhost.com (http://www.99centhost.com) . I initially thought it was a great idea to host some really low traffic sites there but little did I know that a couple days after I signed up with them, I found unauthorized charges made on my credit card which were later traced to them.

First, they claim to be US based but found out to be a business operating out of Karachi, Pakistan. I have nothing against foreign Web hosters. But one which breach my confidence and used my card to charge for web promotion for their site is a little too much for me. This amounted to slightly over $300. It could be more but I managed to freeze my card in time.

Secondly, having written to them about it, they stopped responding to my email.

And they do not honor their 30 days money back guarantee.

Avoid them at all cost.
THAT IS SO LAME :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:

99centhost, I think their business is worth $0.99 also!:angry:

look at the next to last hop of my traceroute, that's why i thought they were either a customer of visuallink or something like that...

and you say 99centhosting.com, while the original post says 99centhost.com, now i'm confused.

sorry.


15 108 ms 107 ms 108 ms so-7-0-0.edge1.Washington1.Level3.net [209.244.1
1.14]

16 107 ms 107 ms 107 ms unknown.Level3.net [209.0.227.118]

17 107 ms 108 ms 135 ms 0.so-1-3-0.XR2.IAD8.ALTER.NET [152.63.32.118]

18 108 ms 108 ms 108 ms 0.so-0-0-0.XR2.IAD5.ALTER.NET [152.63.38.142]

19 111 ms 112 ms 111 ms 201.at-7-1-0.XL2.DCA8.ALTER.NET [152.63.35.93]

20 115 ms 111 ms 111 ms POS7-0.GW1.DCA8.ALTER.NET [146.188.162.181]

21 116 ms 121 ms 114 ms visuallink-gw.customer.alter.net [65.195.226.66]

22 131 ms 114 ms 115 ms 99centhost.com [208.155.79.118]