Greets,

Last month I was searching for a new web host, not because there was anything wrong with my hosting at AletiaHosting, I just couldn't get any support from them (they wouldn't answer my support tickets, return my e-mails, etc. - and from the traffic on their customer forums, I wasn't the only one) so I was looking for a new host.

One of the hosts who post here, HostMonster.org, seemed like a good host, until I started to research them a little. The first thing that struck me as odd was that the person (or people) who were answering my questions wouldn't give me their names - not even their *first* names - even when I asked them directly.

Then I checked out their WHOIS info, and found that they had registered using false information (1234 Fake St. Springfield USA). I e-mailed them about it. No response. I checked back again. They had changed their info, but they changed it to simply *different* false information. What gives?

Admittedly, I'm fairly hard to please when it comes to web hosting, having suffered some horrible hosts, from the unavailable (like Aletia) to the incompetent (like early Site5, although I hear they're under new ownership) to the downright criminal (Intretec, who were bought out by Cavendo, and then someone else again within two months of my signing up for a year in advance...).

Anyway, HostMonster.org's false records cost them at least one customer. I went with GetMeHosted.com, who also posts on here, and have been EXTREMELY happy with their service and services so far.

But GetMeHosted.com's been wonderful. Helpful, courteous, and so far NO DOWNTIME! If they can keep it up I'll be posting their praises here regularly.

Has anyone else had problems with hosts not giving you contact information, or posting false info in their registry listing?

-- Jough

I was searching for a new web host, not because there was anything wrong with my hosting at AletiaHosting, I just couldn't get any support from them (they wouldn't answer my support tickets, return my e-mails, etc.

There wasn't anything wrong?

Well, there wasn't anything terribly wrong with the actual *hosting*. Support is a different issue...

Although of course part of that support involved needing a newer (newer than the year and a half old version that they were running) version of PHP and either not receiving a response or getting a response like "We'll have to get back to you on that." and then they never got back to me.

So yes, obviously, if I was wanting to switch hosts (never a pleasant experience) there would have to have been *something* wrong, but I'm used to having to switch because downtime is excessive, or because they do something stupid like forget to install PHP when they upgrade Apache and then it stays like that for three weeks...

I'll save you from my all-but-recent hosting horror stories...

-- Jough

Jough, I believe you left out the fact that you were never a paying customer, and we never even began to host you. We were promised advertising on over 3 sites of yours, when you decided to tell us ONLY AFTER the fact that you required separate IP addresses for each site.

At that point, our communications stopped, as we told you that we could not provide that.

Im not giving excuses for them, i wouldnt know and i always give my name to customers, its in my email sig.
Maybe they are based in a private house and dont want people to have their home address, and thats why they dont give it on domain info.
Someone warned me about having it on my domains once

won't some registrars cancel your domain if you falsify the information in the domain?

I think they probably do if they know, they usually have terms and conditions to say you agree that its your real information

How would you stand legally by providing fake info on domain registrations?

depends on country registered in i guess and in the US what state

I believe that in most registrar's TOS it states that providing false information can result in your domain name being suspended.

I do web hosting out of a friends house and all my domains have his hme address on them.

Aaron

After posting in this forum, I was contacted by an agent of their registrar (I guess people *do* read these forums after all. ;) ) who assured me that it's their company practice to ensure that their host's records are accurate. Anyway, that's between HostMonster and Tucows.

I just found it suspicious that HostMonster.org (not to be confused with the .com company) refused to offer any contact information - not even a *first* name of any of their support staff (assuming that more than one person works for the company).

Their WHOIS information is still false as of this writing. They posted here to try and "correct" my initial post (for the record, everything was upfront - they replied to a post I made in the Request forum here and I specified a static IP address - which really is not-a-big-deal - and they actually did set up my accounts and everything seemed to be going along fine until I asked them about contact info) and despite whether I was a paying customer, a potential customer, or just someone interested in their company, they didn't answer my e-mail when I pressed them about contact info (and I was only mildly curious - they could've told me a first name, it wouldn't even have to be a real one, and I wouldn't have known...) and they still won't acknowledge the point of my post:

HostMonster.org - who are you? Why did you falsify your registration information? Why do you continue not to update it?

I've had my fair share of bad hosts over the years and wish I'd read this forum long before I finally found it last summer - the advice from customers who have experience with these companies is a godsend. I'm just trying to warn off those who are considering hosting with HostMonster.org. They post here a lot but that doesn't mean they're reputible.

But don't take my word for it. Ask them about their contact info. Or better yet, why doesn't HMonster post it here in this thread... and then explain why your WHOIS info is fake.

-- Jough

Firstly, you'll realize that "HMonster" has posted in this forum. The domain was purchased and transferred over to us. At the time you looked at the WHOIS, we (yes, there are more than two people you may have communicated with) had incorrect registry information.

We have never shyed away from giving you a first name, why would we. However, we feel that there is no reason is disclosing our telephone number and address.

There are plenty of hosts out there that don't disclose such information, and we are one of them.

Please don't try to take a stab at our reputation. We have plenty of customers who are 100% satisfied with our services.

I asked "someone" there for a first name, and they replied "Superwomen ;)" (yes, plural - some schizophrenia issues, maybe?) so no, you, or one of your employees, never gave me even a first name.

I know that HMonster has posted in this forum - I made specific reference to that in my previous post. Sheesh.

I don't know if I agree that there are "plenty of hosts out there that don't disclose [their telephone number and address] that information".

Any reputable company can provide at least a mailing address. It's your choice, of course, but as I said, that's between you and your registrar - if they don't mind your putting in false info, hey, who am I to complain? But I'm not going to be recommending you or sending you business, and it's only right to let folks here know of your shady practice.

-- Jough

Once again, you really have no basis for attempting to stab our reputation. We never defrauded you or took any of your money. Just because we don't have our address or phone number disclosed does NOT make us a shady practice.

Lets look at dot5hosting.com A very nice guy, hundreds of happy customers, no contact info on site other than e-mail and IM.

You have the right to voice your opinion, but it's not fair to dammage our reputation based soley on our registry.

Originally posted by HMonster
Please don't try to take a stab at our reputation. We have plenty of customers who are 100% satisfied with our services.

Then why have none of them posted any positive reviews for you here?

To be fair, there aren't any negative reviews, either. I don't really care about your reputation either way - I'm not being flip, it just really doesn't matter to me. I was a bit put-off by your clandestine choices in not wanting to reveal yourself, even a little bit, to a potential customer.

As I said, I've benefited from reading people's experiences on this forum and thought I'd share my own. As always, your mileage may vary. I still don't understand the reason for Host monster's secrecy - but people will have to determine for themselves whether that's the kind of behaviour that's acceptable to them in a webhost. Obviously, it wasn't acceptable to me.

I'd venture forth that you *shouldn't* accept anything but honest and upfront information about the company, servers, service, etc. with which you're going to be spending your money. It's not like there aren't quite a number of web hosts around. Some hosts seem to act as if they don't have any competition.

-- Jough

My 2 cents. No address no working phone number no business.

I dont give address and phone number on site but most of our clients have our address and can have phone number if they request it.

Also just because someone doesnt have clients who post how wonderful they are here, doesn't mean they have no happy customers, most of our clients found us through search engines and word of mouth and they don't even know about this board

I can understand why some companies might not want to give out personal info. I mean we are in 2002, and a first and last name given out to the public is enough info to have someone knocking on your door. A couple years ago, I had a small hosting company, never had any problems, I had a real reputable service, at the time I was really busy with other things and had to sell it. Trust me, I know from experience, that giving out your name or/and a phone # is enough info for someone to show up on your doorstep, FOR NO REASON.

Of course, you say "There had to be a reason", but there wasnt, so I moved, and that was that.

Originally posted by HMonster
You have the right to voice your opinion, but it's not fair to dammage our reputation based soley on our registry.

Your registry information is fraudulent. There is a big difference between fraud and non-disclosure. Look it up.

"Jough" simply pointed out the fact that your company has provided grossly inaccurate information about itsself in a public record. Any damage that causes your reputation is nobody's fault but your own.

-Bob

Whois now reports:
Registrant:
Host Monster
118 s magon dr
st john, Usa 46313
us

Domain Name: HOSTMONSTER.ORG

Administrative Contact:
C, Andrew liquify@att.net
118 s magon dr
st john, Usa 46313
us
365-4552

Technical Contact:
C, Andrew liquify@att.net
118 s magon dr
st john, Usa 46313
us
365-4552

Registration Service Provider:
HomepageUniverse, support@homepageuniverse.com
+44.1257794911
+44.1257794911 (fax)
http://HomepageUniverse.com


Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 25-Jul-2002.
Record expires on 17-Jun-2003.
Record Created on 17-Jun-2002.

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.HOSTMONSTER.ORG 64.246.40.4
NS2.HOSTMONSTER.ORG 64.246.40.172



"St John USA" ???

From USPS, there is a St John IN with a pretty similar zip:
Saint John Main Office, 219-365-4254, 9200 Thiel St, Saint John, IN 46373 [Approx]

46313 is also in Indiana BTW...


Website Shows "Hostmaster, Inc." but no contact infomation past a couple of IM links.
But From Indiana Secreatry 0f State:

Name Availability Search Results

Final Name availablity searches are performed by Secretary of State personnel as part of the reservation/registration processing procedure.

There were no Entity Names returned for your search criteria : HOSTMONSTER

See it for yourself:https://www.ai.org/sos/bus_service/online_corps/nameavail.asp


If they are incorporated, they are required by law to have a Registered Agent. This is a contact name and address for legal process service and is public knowlege (some even require posting it in the newspaper).

If these people hide there identities this much, I wouldn't touch them...


Update:
There is a "118 s magon dr, St John, IN 46373"
It exists see Yahoo Maps:
http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?BFCat=&Pyt=Tmap&newFL=Use+Address+Below&addr=118+s+magon+dr&csz=46373&Country=us&Get%A0Map=Get+Map

Originally posted by JaysonH
I can understand why some companies might not want to give out personal info.

His Sig:
Host Monster Inc.
» sales@HostMonster.org
» http://www.hostmonster.org
» AIM: MonsterSupport ICQ: 162769942


It's SUPPOSED to be incorporated. There is no PERSONAL information. This would be public knowlege and MUST be filed with the state where they are incorporated.

BTW, I also search IN SoS for "Host Monster" (with the space) also not found.

Originally posted by jough
...having suffered some horrible hosts, from the unavailable (like Aletia) to the incompetent (like early Site5, although I hear they're under new ownership) to the downright criminal (Intretec, who were bought out by Cavendo, and then someone else again within two months of my signing up for a year in advance...).Hi again Jough,

I can certainly understand your situation. Before becoming involved with Site5 I had a nightmarish experience with a web hosting company myself. Your candid comments about early Site5, while unflattering, do give everyone a chance to see how companies can grow and change over the course of a few years. Site5 is not necessarily under new ownership, but we do have some new faces around. Over the years, we have all been doing everything possible to make sure that our customers are always our first priority--and it has paid off. While there may have been some rough spots along the way (as there will be with any new company), we always seem to come out of them with new knowledge and experience that can be applied to future situations.

Unfortunately no company that you choose is going to be entirely problem-free, but you can rest assured that at Site5, we will do our best to deal with problems in a professional and timely manner. Therefore, I would like to invite you to come back and give Site5 another chance. What I am offering you is a month of free service, and as always, free setup on a new account (any plan you like). You can come back and see the changes that we have made. If you're not impressed, you can simply cancel the account for any reason and you will not have even been charged.

If you want to take advantage of this offer, just go to our website and place a new order. After ordering, be sure to send an email to sales@site5.com with your new account's domain name and mention of this offer (providing a link to this thread would be helpful as well). That way if I'm not the one who sets up the order (which I probably won't be), they can verify and apply the discount to your account.

In the past, I have explained the issues you experienced in some detail, however as it stands now, you have no way of knowing whether or not I'm telling the truth. Beyond this offer, there's not much else I can do to prove to you that we're not nearly as bad as you make us out to be (in fact, I don't think we're bad at all). All I'm asking is that you give us a second chance--100% risk-free.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Originally posted by AceWeb
My Opinion:

As for them stoping comunication with you:
They did they right thing, assuming you did not pay or did not provide the deal that was asked for.

IF I have a customer who does not pay me, why should I provide support to them? I am not tlaing about a late check, i am tlaking about customers that did not pay me at all.

Well, AceWeb, we never got as far as even setting up my accounts or payment or anything else because they wouldn't give me contact info.

Think about this: a potential customer e-mails a web host asking about their services. They answer his questions (albeit briefly, vaguely, and never answer all of his questions). He replies back, asking the unanswered questions again and asking for info about their servers, their location, a contact name, if they have a phone number, etc. They do not reply.

This potential customer contacts them on an IM service (AIM, MSN Messenger, etc.) and asks the questions, which are answered to some degree. Then again this POTENTIAL customer asks what the tech's name is - the representative of this company replies "Superwomen" - he presses the point and the representative of the company simply says "Goodbye." and that's it.

Would you have *any* customers responding like this? I seriously doubt it.

So that was my experience with HostMonster.org. Then when I checked their WHOIS info they had false information listed. They STILL have false/incomplete information listed.

I expect that they'll have their domain cancelled if they don't fix it soon. Just a hunch.

-- Jough

Stop defending this practice of putting false info on your domain under the guise of "Personal Info" Besides the fact that domain names with false info, can be yanked at anytime, and "down goes your site" if you are using that domain as nameservers, businesses are not entitled to the privacy that indivuals are.
If you are in business, and you use that domain for business, that information is NOT personal. You expect a customer to give you their personal information, (name, email, address, and CC numbers) but you won't even provide them with any assurance of accountablity? Thats just crazy!
It only costs about $20 to register a name to use for a business. It looks to me like either you can't spare the $20 or have something to hide.

Reminds me of my teenager. He couldn't understand why he had to spell out the entire name of the High School he went to on an application for employment, and insisted on abriviating it.
Maybe HostMonster needs to take a class or get a book on simple business practices and begin following the basic rules of business instead of immaturely defending their privacy.

How can they use www.hostmonster.org? I am probably mistaking, but I thought .org's were reserved for organizations like non-profit, and information sites.:eek: :confused:

You're absolutely right, smidwap, but I think HostMonster.com was already taken. ;)

As I said before, that's between HostMonster.org and their registrar. If you'd like, you could always dash off an e-mail to their registrar:

compliance@opensrs.org

I'm sure they'd love to hear from you. ;)

-- Jough

Yep, :agree: getmehosted.com, i have two accounts there for backup, Dennis has provided excellent support!

Originally posted by jough
Greets,

Last month I was searching for a new web host, not because there was anything wrong with my hosting at AletiaHosting, I just couldn't get any support from them (they wouldn't answer my support tickets, return my e-mails, etc. - and from the traffic on their customer forums, I wasn't the only one) so I was looking for a new host.

One of the hosts who post here, HostMonster.org, seemed like a good host, until I started to research them a little. The first thing that struck me as odd was that the person (or people) who were answering my questions wouldn't give me their names - not even their *first* names - even when I asked them directly.

Then I checked out their WHOIS info, and found that they had registered using false information (1234 Fake St. Springfield USA). I e-mailed them about it. No response. I checked back again. They had changed their info, but they changed it to simply *different* false information. What gives?

Admittedly, I'm fairly hard to please when it comes to web hosting, having suffered some horrible hosts, from the unavailable (like Aletia) to the incompetent (like early Site5, although I hear they're under new ownership) to the downright criminal (Intretec, who were bought out by Cavendo, and then someone else again within two months of my signing up for a year in advance...).

Anyway, HostMonster.org's false records cost them at least one customer. I went with GetMeHosted.com, who also posts on here, and have been EXTREMELY happy with their service and services so far.

But GetMeHosted.com's been wonderful. Helpful, courteous, and so far NO DOWNTIME! If they can keep it up I'll be posting their praises here regularly.

Has anyone else had problems with hosts not giving you contact information, or posting false info in their registry listing?

-- Jough

I thought one main idea of business was to make "contact" and recieve "contact" and following that succeding make business and money.

Therefore you would want to provide your potential customers as many forms of contact as possible, otherwise obviously if they can not find their desired form of contacting you, you do not make business nor money!

The main issue with hosting services, is that, once you have paid for your service, the service does not change hands unlike other everyday transactions for products etc. Therefore you have no control over the service and rely and entrust on the service provider to carry out the promissed. How can you rely and trust on someone you don't know, may live thousands of miles from, and will not even provide their name or contact details?

Quite obviously, providing contact details, even if just names, phone numbers and email for further physical address info, is a step in right direction to gaining trust and making that sale.

All users looking to purchase web hosting should be very careful, cautious and take time as you would with any purchase you will rely on. eg. buying a car, can take weeks sometimes. Use the same methods - just because the internet is fast, does not mean you have to spend faster!

~ Dave Scrimshaw
~ Director
~ Web-Advance.com