Hello,

I see some people have had trouble with HostOnce.. anyway.. APC MAG (http://apcmag.com/) (Australian Personal Computer Magazine..) have investigated a report by a reader.....

I have uploaded (scanned) a copy of the article (APC mag website does not have it listed yet - if ever).

Page 1:
http://www.atrickmail.com/APCMAG-1.jpg
Page 2:
http://www.atrickmail.com/APCMAG-2.jpg

Thanks for sharing.

"He insisted their customer support procedures were working smoothly for everyone else." :rolleyes: :eek: :angry:

I'm gonna go to the shop an buy a copy of APC mag, my latest copy is July 2001:P

Originally posted by roly
I'm gonna go to the shop an buy a copy of APC mag, my latest copy is July 2001:P
I think mine is mid 1998 :stickout

I started buying those magazines when they came with games that you had to manually code into your PCs. I had a TI 99 4a at the time [18yrs ago] and even helped code a game that a magazine published. :cartman:

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
I started buying those magazines when they came with games that you had to manually code into your PCs. I had a TI 99 4a at the time [18yrs ago] and even helped code a game that a magazine published. :cartman:
OT: Yes and you then saved it onto cassette tape (the raw speeeeeed of those bay-bay!!!).

Originally posted by avara
Thanks for sharing.

"He insisted their customer support procedures were working smoothly for everyone else." :rolleyes: :eek: :angry:

There is also an article about resellermatrix (no, not the one owned by Vortech) in the new issue of Hostingtech. They got fined $300,000 for numerous issues, including bad customer service.

Funny thing is that the magazine then goes on to quote Chris F. from ***** as an example of successful custoemr service retooling! :eek:

Ah yes, i remember the pain/pleasure of waiting for a game to load from cassette tape.

Originally posted by Chicken

OT: Yes and you then saved it onto cassette tape (the raw speeeeeed of those bay-bay!!!).
hehe. I used to get so excited when they had some code for the TI 99 4a in those mags. We then used to spend all weekend typing in the code for these games. It was a good way to learn how to program though. Such a geek was I, but then I discovered girls. Goodbye computers for 10 years. :D :laugh:

C'mon guys - if this mag had floods of complaints how come there is the opinions of just one! Bad journalism and bad reflection - biased as hell.....jeez give them a break!

work for them or something.

HostOnce is well known for how bad they are on customer service. Do a search on Google go to any of the hosting review sites the horror stories alone posted by their customers and former customers can keep you reading for hours.

Give me a break, it is host like them that give hosting a bad name.

Originally posted by wolvesfanuk
C'mon guys - if this mag had floods of complaints how come there is the opinions of just one! Bad journalism and bad reflection - biased as hell.....jeez give them a break!

Do you own them or something? They would have to be one of the worst webhosts around. Face it mate, you are being ripped off, or your ripping clients off, now which one is it :rolleyes:

No I don't work for them - they couldn't afford me...lol
But seriously...they are fine...what more do you want for such little money...and er....a little bird told me that there are 1 or 2 surprises to come with them in the next week ;-)

Originally posted by wolvesfanuk
er....a little bird told me that there are 1 or 2 surprises to come with them in the next week ;-)

At last - full refunds for every customer and closing down operations - great surprise! :D

Originally posted by grandad


At last - full refunds for every customer and closing down operations - great surprise! :D

I was going to guess they are going bankrupt :D

This might me something the help everybody with host once. I was in a yahoo chatroom and asked if anybody knew any good hosting companies. Supposly the owner micheal himself pmed me and gave me his url to his hosting company. After checking out his site and I told him there is no way he can offer unlimited transfers and space. He said I know. After he said that he stated that he is just doing it for the money. He seems to be running this company out of his house. This happened awhile ago and I don't have his s/n on yahoo.

Also my friends that were w/ hostonce experinced the same thing; the article is true from magazine. This is just another tacidblue case.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord


There is also an article about resellermatrix (no, not the one owned by Vortech) in the new issue of Hostingtech. They got fined $300,000 for numerous issues, including bad customer service.


Who did fine them for doing what?

Hey I told y'all there was surprises to come from HostOnce - they're giving everyone webmail now and have dropped the UK price....seems their not so bad?

Was it Winston Churchill who once said ..... "you can fool some of the people all of the time".....

Originally posted by grandad
Was it Winston Churchill who once said ..... "you can fool some of the people all of the time".....

Nope, Abraham Lincoln.

No no no! you yanks can't hijack that one! :D

We'll leave you the "blood, sweat, and tears" one, though.

those are the positive suprises that are supposed to change our minds?

Originally posted by wolvesfanuk
Hey I told y'all there was surprises to come from HostOnce - they're giving everyone webmail now and have dropped the UK price....seems their not so bad?

Originally posted by TheFish


Who did fine them for doing what?

pulls out copy of magazine.

the Washington State Attorney General fined them $2,000 per violation per customer, based on the following issues:

-Failure to set up websites within 24 hours as promised (at times they failed to set them up at all.

-Refusal to refund money to dissatisfied customers

-Unprofessional customer service. Example: "Here is your apology. We are sorry that you are an impatient sarcastic little worm. Let us know if there is anything else we can do to respond to your many character flaws".

-Retaliation against complaing customers by disconnecting their websites

-cashing checks, billing credit cards and collecting money months after customers had cancelled their service

-Describing 'their' data center, which was actually Alabanza's (the sites were hosted there, but the data center doesn't belong to them)

Seems a little odd that a magazine would go to all that trouble for one unhappy customer
i presume there was only one person as they mention no other.
i don`t know how many customers hostonce have but if they had 1000 accounts and 50 unhappy customers that would mean 95% are happy with them
i think unless you have had an account with a company you can`t judge them fairly
some people say xxxx hosting company sucks others are happy with the same company
when i first came to this forum lots of companies where highly thought of now those same companies are getting bad posts
it seems to take very little to get a bad name

Originally posted by easily
Seems a little odd that a magazine would go to all that trouble for one unhappy customer
i presume there was only one person as they mention no other.
i don`t know how many customers hostonce have but if they had 1000 accounts and 50 unhappy customers that would mean 95% are happy with them
i think unless you have had an account with a company you can`t judge them fairly
some people say xxxx hosting company sucks others are happy with the same company
when i first came to this forum lots of companies where highly thought of now those same companies are getting bad posts
it seems to take very little to get a bad name I think 95% are unhappy with them.

I was 100% unhappy with them :D

Um... Looks like there Australian operations has gone AWOL.

http://www.hostonce.com.au/ Redirects to hostonce.com now.....

Originally posted by easily
Seems a little odd that a magazine would go to all that trouble for one unhappy customer
i presume there was only one person as they mention no other.
i don`t know how many customers hostonce have but if they had 1000 accounts and 50 unhappy customers that would mean 95% are happy with them
i think unless you have had an account with a company you can`t judge them fairly
some people say xxxx hosting company sucks others are happy with the same company
when i first came to this forum lots of companies where highly thought of now those same companies are getting bad posts
it seems to take very little to get a bad name

The section of the APC Magazine this was reported in also reports other"readers" problems that are not webhost related - other companies this section has dealt with include companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Estore etc. If you have bothered to read the article you would see that Michael of HostOnce wasnt that easy to deal with....

Originally posted by Monte
work for them or something.

HostOnce is well known for how bad they are on customer service. Do a search on Google go to any of the hosting review sites the horror stories alone posted by their customers and former customers can keep you reading for hours.

Give me a break, it is host like them that give hosting a bad name.

Sounds a lot like Strato.de. hehe. 1 mysql server for ca. 2 million clients. More horror stories are available upon request.

have fun,

Well i dont really want to comment on this topic because im an Australian host also!

But some way or other i know abit about hostonce operation down here besides customers telling me bad stories but also the truth why there service is bad.

This might cost me a few headaches in the future with web masters i know and that are some what realted to hostonce.com.au.

The truth remains that there servers are filled with many many forms of mp3s. Greek Albums, English albums etc.

There servers are slow because of these massive download sites a friend of mine that is a DJ has released his own single down here and he was shocked to find it on one of these sites!

So we upload some fake mp3 files to one of our servers which was not in production yet and posted the link to there forum.

the files were all up around 34 megs and in the very short time of 12 hours 17 gigs of these were download. Could you imagine the other albums on that site what kind of bandwidth goes through them???

Most if not all were running around hostonce.com Ips or name servers i even emailed a web master of one and they sent me a referal link to them.

How do they expect to keep up a good service with this going down!

And this i know are some Australian web masters not overseas!

Anyway i hope this should be considered before using hostonce for anything!

Ok I wasn't going to do this but I will...

I do work for HostOnce. It is completely normal that Hosts scan these boards to see the feedback - even to get ideas for further developments. The irony is that many of the assumptions are ill-informed and incorrect. So some facts for you:

1) HostOnce has over 14,000 customers - host 17,000 domains

2) We receive around 250 support requests per day - that's made up of DNS changes, customer services, sub domain requests for Unix customers and technical problems. Actual technical issues account for about 100 calls a day - that's less than 1% - the rest of people have no problems.

3) At the time of writing this there are 4 new call and about 40 reports awaiting customer response. The oldest call is 34 minutes old - we have worked really hard to get our support under control - now it is.

4) We never refuse a refund EXCEPT when someone breaks our terms and conditions

5) Our terms and conditions are enforced on a daily basis - our servers are not crammed with MP3 files as claimed - it is simply not permitted.

6) We DO NOT hold domains to ransom. Domains are registed in bulk in our name and we will ALWAYS change them to the registrant details either on request or if someone leaves our services.

HostOnce takes it's customers seriously and is not the monster people think. We care, we want to do our best. I know for a fact that all this will meet with fierce criticism and be viewed as nothing more than a PR exercise - that's not what it's about. It's about dispelling the myths and putting you in the real picture from our side.
We accept that we cannot make everyone happy - it's the business we're in - but we do try and that's all anyone can ask.

Listen im not sure what the deal is with the company you work for overseas or whatever i know is directly about the Australian branch!

I have no need to put you down there are enough unhappy customers on this board that has hosted with hostonce.

I wanted to shatter your point number 5 with links but i need not do that because first of the webmaster is a customer of SurrenderOnline ( Nothing to do with Illegal content though ) and i respect his privacy!

From what i have been told he actually informed the person in australia that he would be hosting mp3 files and he was told no problem because the person that represented hostonce here was also using the download site.

Anyway good on you for your big customer base! But its not the quantity of customers you have its the quality!

Kind regards

HostOnce takes it's customers seriously and is not the monster people think. We care, we want to do our best. I know for a fact that all this will meet with fierce criticism and be viewed as nothing more than a PR exercise - that's not what it's about. It's about dispelling the myths and putting you in the real picture from our side.

Find me one host with a worse customer review.

http://hostsearch.com/showcomment.asp?Companycode=3503

43 reviews, a 0.81/5 average.

Also, you are liers. Unlimited space and bandwidth for $4.95/mo. Total BS! :cartman:

wolvesfanuk, you are just what I would expect from Hostonce. A lying weasel.

No I don't work for them - they couldn't afford me...lol
But seriously...they are fine...what more do you want for such little money...and er....a little bird told me that there are 1 or 2 surprises to come with them in the next week ;-)

later ....

Ok I wasn't going to do this but I will...

I do work for HostOnce.

I know how you operate. Especially from first hand experience with this -

6) We DO NOT hold domains to ransom. Domains are registed in bulk in our name and we will ALWAYS change them to the registrant details either on request or if someone leaves our services.

You do not help worth a s*** in changing registrar info.

OK - 2 things - firstly I did not want to say who I was as I knew the response that I would get...not lying at all but you're entitled to your opinion :)
If you want to tell me what the domain name that you claim we are holding of yours I will happily look into it and get it sorted...as I say - we are not in the business of deliberately getting a bad name for ourselves and are striving to do our best.

"we are not in the business of deliberately getting a bad name for ourselves but are striving to do our best."
:D he he