I've been using them for a year now without much trouble until the last few months. Now they have been down for over a week without any notice and no way to get a hold of them.
Anyone know what's going on?

Hmm...did you try 24hrhost.com? They seem to be related:


Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

Domain Name: HOSTINGPLANS.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS0.HOSTINGPLANS.COM
Name Server: NS0.24HRHOST.COM
Updated Date: 14-jan-2001


You can also try calling Andre Skeete:

Registrant:
Helping Hand Services (24HRHOST-DOM)
16042 S. 44th Place
Phoenix, AZ 85044
US

Domain Name: 24HRHOST.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Billing Contact:
Skeete, Andre (AS10815) administrator@HOSTINGPLANS.COM
Helping Hand Services
P.O Box 11048
Tempe, AZ 85284
877-508-3337 (FAX) na

Record last updated on 18-Aug-1999.
Record expires on 22-Apr-2001.
Record created on 22-Apr-1999.
Database last updated on 5-Mar-2001 08:56:42 EST.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS0.24HRHOST.COM 207.254.63.11
NS0.HOSTINGPLANS.COM 208.239.240.148

Good luck :)

Here's a quote from a review at findwebspace.com left from an Anonymous Poster:

"I have received noticed from Hostingplans.com that they are experiencing technical problems that led to the down time being experienced. They stated the issue is beyond their control and deals with their upline provider and the issue will be resolved as soon as possible. It seems that their upline provider was bought out by another company which has led to the confusion with the lines being fed to their servers. Their service has been reliable up to this point, and with all services there will be problems no matter where you go. I would still recommend them once they get all issues with their upline provider resolved."

I personally haven't received any of this information. The phone number listed does not work. 24hrhost.com leads right back to hostingplans.com. None of the e-mail addresses listed for Skeete get any responses.

I'm hoping that posting here will get response from someone that has heard something directly from Skeete.
I don't plan on moving my site to a different host if this issue is resolved because I haven't had any trouble up to this point. But if it's dried up and disappeared...well, that's means going thru the hassle of finding another host.

OK. I have been calling them for two weeks now (1-877-508-3337) and have been leaving messages on their "machine." Get this, I called about two minutes ago and the number is now ... disconnected. A nice person from a different hosting company gave me a number for someone who "runs" Hosting Plans ... this number is: 246-435-1926. It is the same person's voice as that on the answering machine for the other disconnected number.

Now, what are you waiting for? Let's get our refund!

246-435-1926 | 246-435-1926 | 246-435-1926

I paid them $200 for 200MB- looks like I'm out of luck too. My site has been unavailable since February 28th. Andre Skeete seems to run things there, and he actually replied to me when my CGI stopped working a few weeks ago. His email at the time was andre@bajanz.com. When my site went down, I emailed him there once, didn't get a response, and then tried again. The second email bounced back to me two days later- looks like he shut the email address down as well. Heck, I knew I was in trouble at the beginning of February when they went down for a week, didn't respond to email, and when they came back up, the 'online help-ticket' system was gone. They had also stopped responding to my requests to get my site stats working again, and also to create subdirectories. Check this out:

http://www.sillyone.com/help4u/webhosts.htm

Wish I'd found this page before I'd dropped my $200!

If you, too, have been left high and dry by HostingPlans.com, come to this page:

http://www.digitalrice.com/playmafia/hostingplans.html

Scott Broughton
sabrough@cord.edu

Andre and hostingplans are famous- check out page 42 of the May 2001 issue of Yahoo! Internet Life Magazine. Someone submitted a complaint to them about hostingplans. The magazine says that they found complaints filed against Skeete, hostingplans, and Helping Hand Services with the BBB, and that they emailed him and tried calling the business as well as home phone numbers for him, but couldn't get a response. Stuff we knew, but it was good to see it in a major, national magazine.

Here's the BBB report (http://www.phoenix.bbb.org/report.html?compid=85000710).

I just wanted to reiterate what others here have posted. I, too made the huge mistake early 2000 in buying a "lifetime" hosting plan from hostingplans.com and the Skeete family. Even though my site was taken off line more than 8 months ago with never a single communication from them, it still irks me whenever the thought of these crooks crosses my mind. I won't bother you w/ the hassles I had to deal with because of my site being in limbo for weeks before I finally had to bite the bullet and move elsewhere, but I will say that I have deep hopes of bad karma coming back on these guys bigtime! They are complete and utter moronic web-sluts and have no regard for anything else but their bank accounts. Someday there may be a class action suit against them and I will happily fly to Arizona to testify against them.
Enuff said!
WC

PS I contacted the No. Arizona Better Biz Bureau early 2001 and got a letter back from them stating that they could not reach the Skeetes by telephone, fax, email or post and that I should consider a small claims suit against them if I wanted to pursue this any further. In other words, "we can't help you". Great! Thought they could do a little better than THAT! lol:confused:

UPDATE

The problems dealing with the servers with our UPLINE provider have been resolved, and your site can now be restored active. The site name Hostingplans.com is no longer going to be active from this point on, but it will be here for those who had their site hosted with us to still send their requests to be handled, or for any refund requests for the down-time that was experienced. Here are the official email addresses to send for various requests.

Restoration of Service: renew@hostingplans.com

Refund Requests: refunds@hostingplans.com

So for those of you who wanted their site restored and active email renew@hostingplans.com, and those who wanted refunds for the down-time experienced send your FULL MAILING ADDRESS to refunds@hostingplans.com ALONG with your domain name and it will be sent as soon as possible.

Thank you very much, and we appreciate your business and patience in this matter.

Hostingplans.com


:wavey:

I too made the mistake of going with hostingplans. some friends of mine were hosting their business' site with them and I signed up on their recommendation. I was leary about "lifetime" service, but I figured that even if I was there for only a year the $200 I paid would have been a good deal for the level of "service" I was getting.

At first, everything was great. My account was set up in a matter of hours and every time I sent an email for support it was taken care of in less than a day. They were even willing to install special software for me without any problem. Then, a few months later, all of that suddenly stopped. My support requests would never be acknowledged, my site would be down for days at a time, and email messages would take days be received (even when sending between addresses in my domain or from my friend's domain which was on the same server). Of course, even with all of the down time, I never heard a single word from hostingplans.

My friends decided to pull out after they waited 30 days for several new sites to be set up. They would put in the request as soon as they started a new job, but they were finishing jobs before they had the sites to put them on!

When hostingplans registered my domain name, they listed me as a contact, but they used tehir email address, so I can't make any updates. My domain is up for renewal in a couple months, and the address on file is incorrect now, so I am in the process of dealing with NetSol to get it chnaged...fun, fun, fun! :) I have since set up a new site with JaguarPC and I am very happy with them. Not only do they answer support questions, but they also send out emails alerting their clients to possible downtime or appologising for unexpected downtime (which doesn't ahppen very often).

I plan to put in for a refund from hostingplans really soon, but from the sounds of things here, I'll be lucky to see any of that money again. They obviously don't care about their customers; all they are is crooks. I've sent them letters, even threatening to report them to the AG if I didn't get a reply, and guess what--no reply!...