I am from Romania and after reading many good reviews about hostgator I finally decided to buy a Baby account to host my rpg browser based game and all my domains.
Purchased the plan and in about 20min while setting up the game my hosting account got suspended. They told me they need id/credit card scans and that I need to call them in order to "setup my account" even if the setup was auto and instant. I can't make intl. calls from my mobile and I dont have a land line so I told them to call me if they care about their customers. I've sent the info requested and everything still no news from them even if im using their ticket system.

What made me nervous is their offensive ways of doing business, why suspend my account before even trying to make contact with me and verify my details?(i understand Romania has a fraud flag).
I was in the middle of something and I didnt pay 100 bucks to have my time wasted by their staff. They are still not answering and gave them an ultimatum, if they dont restore my account in 1h I want my money back.
Its unacceptable to get an account suspended within 20 mins from registration without trying to contact the buyer first.
Sorry for my bad english..still no replies from them..which is exactly the reason i choosed hostgator, good reviews about their customer support :(

I am from Romania and after reading many good reviews about hostgator I finally decided to buy a Baby account to host my rpg browser based game and all my domains.

From HG's TOS:


Examples of unacceptable material on all Shared and Reseller servers include:

IRC Bots, Proxy Scripts / Anonymizers, Pirated Software / Warez, image, filedump, mirror, or banner-ad services (similar to rapidshare, photobucket, or commercial banner ad rotation), topsites, commercial audio streaming (more than one or two streams), Escrow, High-Yield Interest Programs (HYIP) or related sites, Investment sites (FOREX, egold exchange), sale of any controlled substance without prior proof of appropriate permit(s), AutoSurf sites, Bank Debentures, Bank Debenture Trading Programs, Prime Banks Programs, lottery sites, muds / rpg's, hate sites, hacker focused sites/archives/programs, or sites promoting illegal activities, IP Scanners, Brute Force Programs, Mail Bombers and Spam Scripts. Forums and or websites that distribute or link to warez content are prohibited.

From HG's TOS:

Sent 2 tickets before buying from them and explained how is my php script workking and even gave them an online example and they said there are no problems and if I dont reach the cpu limit speed they will not suspend my account.
This answer came from 2 different persons working at hostgator.

I'm not sure why they would activate your account and then suspend you, seems a bit unethical to me.

Is the credit card issued to you using the same name and address that you used to sign up for the hosting account? Romania is flagged as high risk for fraud, but if everything matched up correctly with billing, account, and ip/location details, i'm not sure why they'd suspend you.

Yes everything is matching and as I said I even talked to their staff 1-2 days before buying the hosting to be sure I wont have any surprises.
Again, I understand Romania has a very bad rep. and its their right to ask for scans of id/card etc, whats bother me is they have suspended me before even attempting to find out if im legit or not. And lying that they need the info and phone callsfrom me to setup my account bothers me too, my account was already setup :)

noroc ;) It's better to get your money back as soon as possible. There are plenty of offers on this forum and I'm sure you will find something suitable for you and your script ;)

Salut ;) Yes few minutes and my ultimatum expires, I will get my money back and move to another shared account.
Which companies would you recommend guys? I need it with unlimited addon domains and I will have a browser based game installed thats it. $10/month max i'd give :)
Regards!

Browser base game? Which one?

Mafia type game.
I have completed a cancellation form.
Another funny fact, ive been online with their live support 1min ago and told the staff I want to terminate the account because ive been disappointed.
The customer support guy didnt want to know what are my reasons or any feedback from me, he just said "ok" and gave me the link :) Made me laugh.Ussually they insist on finding out what happened and they give discounts, this was the best and fast account cancellation ive had so far!

why suspend my account before even trying to make contact with me and verify my details?


Yes, I agree if there is no real threat of illegal activities that it would be more polite and customer-centric to contact you and let you know what the problem is rather than hit the "suspend" button. Of course, we're only hearing one side of the story so it is hard to be unbiased. I hope HG will respond to this thread.

well what im saying is the truth and if im laying they can prove that if they really watch this forum(if i understood well). I have all the emails from them where they say my rpg based game is ok for their servers and, anyways, they suspended my account very fast before the game was even functional so the game cant be their excuse.If i knew more english i could give more details :(
So guys, which hosting do you recommend please? I really want to have my game up today.
Thanks.

Do you already have a user base for this game? It's going to be tough to find a reliable host to give you a ton of resources for $10/month as browser based games can really take up a lot of CPU usage.

If your just starting out, just do some research around these forums and i'm sure you'll find a host that catches your eye. If you already do have a steady userbase, I might suggest looking into getting a VPS.

Well I think your best bet is to look around WHT and try a host out, worse case scenario they say its not suitable for shared hosting and you get your money back and either try another one or get a vps or better yet a dedicated.

HostGator does watch this forum; Brent Oxley himself posts as the user hostgator.com. If you PM him, he may be able to help you faster than a thread like this could.

As for another host, are you looking for something with about the same specs as HostGator?

What are your needs in space and bandwidth, and what's your budget?

1st of all this forum is awsome, so many replies in a short time..wish hostgator staff was so responsive :) still no news from them.
I dont have a user base for this game yet so a shared account is more than enough, i was thinking to upgrade to dedicated if i was lucky enough. The game is made of html and php files(no flashy templates etc) so i dont think it will require alot of resources in terms of cpu usage, at least until i hit 1k members playing online at the same time.
Thank you for your imputs i really love this forum now and im sure ill check it often from now on.
I will try to contact Brent Oxley but don't know what for anymore, I've already cancelled my account and requested my money back..
What made me choose hostgator over bluehost was bluehosts footer not being updated " 2003-2007 " :) i was wrong.

Oh, if you don't mind my saying, that is a very silly reason for not choosing a host. :) That is just a copyright notice, so if the design of the site, or the text on it, has not been changed recently, that is why it still says 2007. :)

Yes i know :) but thats the only reason i could find to eliminate one of them and i was afraid that customer support will be slow too if they are slow to update their home page.
I have sent a pm to hostgator.com user here on the forum im curious to find out what are their reasons for my suspension, if any.

I'm sorry we don't allow rpg games as this is against our tos. The reason we don't allow them is that they almost 100% of the time cause high server loads and other problems.

If you wish to get a dedicated server we would be happy to host this for you, but in a shared environment I'm afraid we cannot.

I'm sorry we don't allow rpg games as this is against our tos. The reason we don't allow them is that they almost 100% of the time cause high server loads and other problems.

If you wish to get a dedicated server we would be happy to host this for you, but in a shared environment I'm afraid we cannot.

Thanks for your promptitude. Here one of the emails from HG support:

Add tickets@hostgator.com to Contacts list
Delete this message
Report phishing
Show original
Message text garbled?
"tickets@hostgator.com" to me
show details Apr 1 (1 day ago)


Hello,


As long as this does not cause a problem with our servers we can host the content. If we begin to see excessive requests or CPU usage based on this server being hosted on our servers we may be forced to disable or suspend it. Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns. Thanks.




Sincerely,
Ford Merrill
Systems Administrator Supervisor
HostGator.com LLC


Your rating will determine what I get paid. Please rate this response at the url below:

https://tickets.hostgator.com/rateticket/6705656/171


Also, I got suspended like 10 minutes after the php script I am talking about was uploaded on your servers and I dont think there was humanly possible to check it out by one of HG employee to determine it was a game or filtred by some device you have.
Nobody visited the page except me and the game didnt used any cpu not even %0,01.
I dont know how you determined so fast its not allowed when your staff checked it before and told me its ok to use it.
I now believe that I simply got suspended because Im from Romania and you wanted further verification.Suspending me was a bad ideea tho.. now i have to point back all my domains to my romanian hosting and I have to pay a $50 fee to have a new game license for another domain name.
At least, I hope you'll refund the money in fashion time so I can move on from this bad experience.
Still no news from ticket support.
Thank you.

The problem rid90210 is that nothing any Hostgator employee says is going to override the Terms of Service. When it comes down to it the Terms of Service is what rules.

Ok, and is my fault their customer support staff is not trained and misslead me ?
Made me waste time/money and even more time now to get the money back? Who's responsible? ofcourse nobody. ;)
All I wanted was a logical explanation why my account got suspended without apparent reasons and they have failed at this so far.
Also wanted to inform users about this and persuade HG to give better cs in the future.

If your rpg didn't cause a problem it would be fine but like I said in almost 100% cases they cause issues so I would not recommend our hosting for this type of site.

Ok, thanks for evading my questions. I know theres nothing you can do, no worries.
Just tell me when I will get refunded and if you can speed up the process for me (as a consolation), I dont want to wait weeks.
Thanks
(again, this game was not even working and is not the reason for the suspension. I know you can afford to suspend users without real reasons, you're a big c.)
A browser based game is a free text-based online browser game btw.

We required verification before activated account which is why you were refunded and disabled 30 minutes after signing up. What's your ticket number with us? I could look it up to verify this.

We required verification before activated account which is why you were refunded and disabled 30 minutes after signing up. What's your ticket number with us? I could look it up to verify this.


Looks like im the only one in this populated forum that required verification followed by a suspension without notice :(
Next time, if someone requires verification just dont activate his account for 20min just to suspend it afterwards.
And man, that 'verification' was indeed a detailed and long one, I have sent scanned id/card etc and hours after still no news. Its funny ive got to talk to a representative thru a forum where rep must be defended and not thru a ticket.
Here is my ticket QJL-2549336 and PLEASE in your next reply tell me how long a refund takes.

For who wanted to know, Ive found hostmonster.com and they looked at the game like hg did and said a text based game is more than ok.
Thanks.

Apparently two things happened at the same time rid90210, your payment was flagged and your script also consumed more resources than allowed. at first your account was automatically created but then got suspended by billing, for fraud flagging, not because of the script. When you spoke you customer care they may have given you general answers since most of the time the problems(or their reasons, rather) are same. They may not have specifically looked at your account/case and provided information, that too because there were two problems. I hope am able to describe my view. Just an observation though :)

Meanwhile, I am surprised at the admins of hostmonster.com - i wanted to take a look at their domains whois but it seems messed up. A look at whois for their nameservers yields more than 50 records (our script aborts more than that). It seems a misconfiguration (wrong ending '.') to me but Can someone tell me something I don't know about nameserver/whois records etc?

Regds
IJ

and your script also consumed more resources than allowed.
Again, all I did was uploading the script. Dont tell me uploading 6MB of .php and .html files will exceed the cpu usage limits :)
No point talking about this anymore, they didnt even bother to email me. I will update as soon as i have news from them and they have returned my money.
Thanks!

Your account was suspended until you could verify the order. The reason we needed you to verify was because the distance to billing was high, your domain was registered by proxy, and you paid for a year in advance. We had no idea your site was a rpg when you placed your order.

Your order was voided and you were never an official customer since the account wasn't verified. This means the cc charge was voided before we collected the funds.


RPG games are against our TOS because they almost always crash the server they are on. This is why I was saying we aren't the right host for you. I didn't want you to waste your time verifying the account to only be suspended later on if and when you overload the server. There's a very good chance hostmonster will suspend your site as soon as your rpg gets some traffic to it.

Your account was suspended until you could verify the order.
What do you mean by verifying my order? I did what you have asked and nobody emailed me anymore.

Your distance to billing was high,
My distance to billing is the same between you and your computer. My ISP is from another city that is like 200 miles away, is that high in your opinion? (anyways, i dont think you'd suspend accounts because of a 200 miles distance, could be someone that is ordering from his work place ..just to give an example).
Guess you want me to live in a box and live my life there so everything can be "close" to me in order to be approved at HG.

your domain was registered by proxy, and you paid for a year in advance.
My domain is registered with godaddy and paid for it to be private, if you take a look into my HG suspended account you will see I have stored several domains name registered under my name, including .ro tlds.
Whats your point if a paid a year in advance? is that a reason to suspend accounts?

This is why your account was suspended we had no idea you were a rpg when you placed your order.
Nobody answered my emails whole day yet your staff was able to jump into my account and verify that I have uploaded a game there? in 20min since acc creation? Guess you have the resources to verify each newly created accounts and what its uploaded on them in the first hours until the customer gets "verified"? I dont buy it.
You had no ideea I was a rpg when I ordered yet 2 different staff from HG told me its ok what I want to host and even took a look over the script.

Since you never verified your order was voided and you were never an official customers.
This means the cc charge was voided before we collected the funds as well.
What do you mean by "never verified your order" ? As Ive said I have sent the scanned info and emailed HG to call me so they can 'verify' the order since I cant call.
I was never an official customer and will never be, thanks God.
If the cc charge was voided why there are $95 missing from my online bank account? (maybe im wrong and this is normal until banks clarify things, dunno).
Maybe you want access to my online bank acc. to verify me?

RPG games are against our TOS because they almost always crash the server they are on.
I dont want to get into details about RPG because you clearly think rpgs are cpu eaters by default which is not the case, this is a text based game and probably the staff that checked the game understood that and thats why he said its allowed.

This is why I was saying we aren't the right host for you. I didn't want you to waste your time verifying the account to only be suspended later on if and when you overload the server.
You didn't want to waste my time by alowing me to use your hosting just to get suspended later? Gosh thanks because you care about my money, thats why right now as we are speaking another staff is telling me to resend the scanned id/credit card again. Guess you should tell them too to stop wasting their time.

My conclusion? You wrote a nice reply while topic was drawning to an end so other people could think " another frustrated customer that got server and he was complaining for nothing in his stupidity".

Do yourself a good and stop replying, let this topic die.
The facts are there, Ive got suspended after 20min from creation (someone was doing his job in manually veryfing orders) and nobody bothered to help me or even answer to my tickets whole day.I was left with the eyes in the sun, as we are saying here.

Im bored to death and I dont want to talk about this anymore, close the topic please. useless.

In today's market, $10 buys quite a bit, but you still have to be a good citizen when it comes to CPU/RAM with any host, so don't fall for any deal that sounds too good to be true. An honest host will work with you, but will also be upfront about resource usage.

well thats a good advice, quality over quantity :)
Anyways, more lies from hostgator.
A am talking with someone that actually has a shared account with them and is running the same game and it has been doing it for a while now. Guess my lil game is not so dangerous now anymore. If anyone interested or if you think i might lie I can provide the link.
Lies and more lies when you dig deeper. :D
and then you think all they wanted to do is protect me from wasting money on something it would get suspended later on..

well thats a good advice, quality over quantity :)
Anyways, more lies from hostgator.
A am talking with someone that actually has a shared account with them and is running the same game and it has been doing it for a while now. Guess my lil game is not so dangerous now anymore. If anyone interested or if you think i might lie I can provide the link.
Lies and more lies when you dig deeper. :D
and then you think all they wanted to do is protect me from wasting money on something it would get suspended later on..


Well from what I read you were not suspended due to the game but was suspended due to needing to verify account information. You could probably run such a game on shared hosting but once you got more than a few users you would be likely to get suspended. And that's great if your friend is able to run the game and violate the ToS and not get caught... It's only a matter of time.

All in all I would say you should probably just drop this thread and move on, you're not going to accomplish anything more than you already have.

Yes you are right about moving on but if you read hostgator.com's previous posts might make sense my comment.
That person is not my friend just someone from that games forum.
And I was not suspended because I have failed their verification (since I have complied with all their terms) but because I am from Romania and they were afraid of fraud or something and prefered to click the suspend instead of contacting and verifying me.
They just saw country:romania and pushed the suspend buton, "shoot now and ask questions later". even so they failed to reply to my emails after sending out what they have requested.
now thats customer service!
This is how I've got suspended not because i didnt provide ids and copies but because someone overzealous prefered to suspend me after 20mins and not reply to me emails anymore after seeing im from thieves' country.

Yes you are right about moving on but if you read hostgator.com's previous posts might make sense my comment.
That person is not my friend just someone from that games forum.
And I was not suspended because I have failed their verification (since I have complied with all their terms) but because I am from Romania and they were afraid of fraud or something and prefered to click the suspend instead of contacting and verifying me.
They just saw country:romania and pushed the suspend buton, "shoot now and ask questions later". even so they failed to reply to my emails after sending out what they have requested.
now thats customer service!
This is how I've got suspended not because i didnt provide ids and copies but because someone overzealous prefered to suspend me after 20mins and not reply to me emails anymore after seeing im from thieves' country.

There are many things I think you do not understand here. Lets take this from a webhosts perspective. I understand you're frustrated and you have every right to be.

1. You registered from a fraud flagged country.
2. Hundreds of spammers register from fraud flagged countries.
3. As soon as these spammer's accounts get activated, they send out mass amounts of spam either
a) crashing the server
and/or
b) causing the server's IP address to be blacklisted
4. Hostgator and many many other hosts want to avoid fraud
5. Hostgator decided it would be easier to verify people by requesting them to call or scan in information which may take some time for any host to process
~Fine~
Part 2.
1. RPG take up lots of resources
2. Hostgator's TOS over rides what any employee may say because TOS are legal binding contracts
3. A employee misspoke
4. RPG games can take down a server and the 100-250 people on that server, that's bad
5. Shared servers usually can't handle much of any gaming, neither can most any other shared host, good luck with hostmonster, I think you'll be suspended sooner that you think.


Therefore, hosts need to take measures to protect themselves and their servers against fraud, you did nothing wrong, make sure you actually read the TOS before signing up (I know, it can be hard). And finally, it's not fair to ask a mod to close a thread when the company you are bashing hasn't had a chance to counter your claims or try to resolve the issue.

Thanks for reading.

I just told what happened based on my experience and this might help people from little countries.
I am sure hg provides great services to people that have written US on their IDs. Considered posting here because Ive read many good reviews about them here and helped me with my decision.
But nothing will change the fact that they treated me very bad from the start.
Ive got suspended in 20min, I have provided the info they requested and they've ignored me the whole day even if there are so many people working nonstop.
This was my experience and they've failed to give an explication.
I have read the tos before buying that is why I have contacted them 2 times and made sure my game is accepted.
Topic should be closed because they cant defend, this is the 3rd page they already. They should just say go away, our tos allows us to do anything we want and i would appreciate the honesty. Telling me more bs about how they care about my money and how they didnt want to verify my info because my game would have made my account get suspended in the end made me mad but its all gone now.
Cheers and let the topic die, good job posting on this forum it is a great webspace :agree:

Blame the customer seems to be the motto of hostgator and its fans.
The customer should have done their homework. The customer should be the expert on webhosting. The customer should have read the TOS with all its legalese verbage. Hostgator's customer service is impeccable.
While I agree with the fraud guard in their TOS, Hostgator's systems should have detected it up from the start and informed him right away.
It is as if the customer's time and effort is useless, and all that matters is that hostgator do their work whenever they feel like it after their employees read their TOS and then blame the customer afterwards.

Blame the customer seems to be the motto of hostgator and its fans.
The customer should have done their homework. The customer should be the expert on webhosting. The customer should have read the TOS with all its legalese verbage. Hostgator's customer service is impeccable.
While I agree with the fraud guard in their TOS, Hostgator's systems should have detected it up from the start and informed him right away.
It is as if the customer's time and effort is useless, and all that matters is that hostgator do their work whenever they feel like it after their employees read their TOS and then blame the customer afterwards.

That pretty much sums it up from my viewpoint. Everyone keeps harping about the high fraud rate from his country but they must not have thoroughly read his posts. His complains appear legitimate to me but like you say, you can't disagree with HG, they are always right.;)

Does anyone hear have a fraud system that is 100% full proof without human eyes looking at an order?

We let all orders go through and then human eyes take a look at them shortly after the order goes through. If the order looks suspicious they give a call. If they can't reach the owner the order is voided until verification takes place via phone or an id is submitted. About 20% of our orders endup being fraud AFTER wrongly tagged accounts are verified.

That means we process between 100 and 150 fraud accounts every single day. We will require some high risk orders to verify their account with us. Sure we lose some sales from people not wanting take a minute or two to verify, but it beats losing the ability to take visa / master card.

If you have a way to block only fraud orders without any false positives why don't you sell your system? You would become a billionaire overnight from this type of program.

Billions are lost every year due to online fraud. The bigger the company you are the more fraud you're going to deal with.

If they can't reach the owner the order is voided until verification takes place via phone or an id is submitted. About 20% of our orders endup being fraud AFTER wrongly tagged accounts are verified.


Yet you fail again, I am not interested in how your system works and dont need to hear the usual yada yada about big companies.
Dont you understand HG DIDNT contact me and didnt try to verify me? They didnt call me they didnt answer my emails, they did nothing to reach me. Is that hard to understand? Im not bashing your hosting services, i bet they are super ok, like many hosting providers out there. Im just bashing the customer support who totally ignored me and made me feel like a bug. And you can do nothing to change this, ive been put on the ignore list, probably because of my country.

You said yourself "Purchased the plan and in about 20min while setting up the game my hosting account got suspended. They told me they need id/credit card scans and that I need to call them in order to "setup my account""

It sounds like we contacted you? I'm sorry for your account being flagged and us asking for verification. As a consumer it is your choice to choose where you wish to go. If verification isn't something you want to do that is our loss as a company.

I do hope you understand and wish you the best of luck with hostmonster. Please send me a pm if you have any questions or if there is anything else I can do for you.

You said yourself "Purchased the plan and in about 20min while setting up the game my hosting account got suspended. They told me they need id/credit card scans and that I need to call them in order to "setup my account"..If verification isn't something you want to do that is our loss as a company.


I think Ive said more than enough times I HAVE COMPLIED with everything HG requested from me. Yet you keep saying 'verification is not something i want to do'?
Are you just playing stupid here or? or you are not reading my posts ? Because this is getting more and more offensive for my inteligence..in 3 pages all you did was talking to me like that, i was asking questions and stating facts and you evaded them all and came with bs like this last post.
Dont insult my inteligence anymore im tired.
...calm down....
As you might know since you are working for HG that was an automated email that came after they hit the Suspend buton. You really want to have the last word instead of admiting it was probably a mistake made by the support team or whatever, i dont care.

STOP writing replies for the readers of this forum and START reading what I am saying here. Or stop replying because this is a last cause.
I wont let you have the last words here so people would think this was my fault, or i didnt read the tos, or i uploaded something illegal or whatever. It wont work and I will keep repeating myself till you get bored to death.

Are you just playing stupid here or?


Though I'm sure you are frustrated, I don't think that excuses rudeness in the forums. HG asked for you to call them, and you were not able to do comply with that, so even though you sent the identification that they requested, it isn't full compliance.

They told me they need id/credit card scans and that I need to call them in order to "setup my account" even if the setup was auto and instant. I can't make intl. calls from my mobile and I dont have a land line so I told them to call me if they care about their customers.

The automated email asked me to call them OR send them the scanned copies. I wanted to speed up the transaction but couldnt call and told them they should call me if they need additional info.

It doesnt excuse rudeness in the forum but probably thats where he wanted me to get so he can have his fans, like you, defend HG.

The automated email asked me to call them OR send them the scanned copies.

I see. Well, I guess it was a matter of playing the waiting game or moving on, and you decided to move on, which is totally your choice and maybe for the best all around.

It doesnt excuse rudeness in the forum but probably thats where he wanted me to get so he can have his fans, like you, defend HG.

I wouldn't call myself a fan, as we compete for the same business (though HG does this on a much bigger scale, lol). My only dealings with HG have been on behalf of clients for whom we have webmaster contracts, and I can say that my personal dealings with HG have been pleasant. I would like to make it clear that we are in no way associated with HG, and that my comments were aimed at fairness based on reading the thread. :)

I didnt believe you are a fan just wanted to be meanie because almost everyone here is defending HG in some way or another and telling me that i should have done this and that :)

The automated email asked me to call them OR send them the scanned copies. I wanted to speed up the transaction but couldnt call and told them they should call me if they need additional info.

It doesnt excuse rudeness in the forum but probably thats where he wanted me to get so he can have his fans, like you, defend HG.

I was in your shoes when I seined an account with HG, but instead of play a game - "Me or They" I gave a call to HG, verified my card, and here we go, my account was ON in couple of minutes.
So.., it is not a big deal for somebody and it is A really huge one for some.

It is like to make an elephant from a fly.
Sure from my point of view.

It is only one week am with HG, but I can say their support team and ticket system work PERFEKT so far.

PERFEKT. LOL

1. You know, skype has very low-cost calls and your first one is free, you could use that to verify.
2. Stop asking for this thread to be closed, I like this discussion. It's up to the mods whether or not to close this thread.
3. You could always scan the stuff in and send it too them?
4. Yes, they contacted you. Whether or not it was a personal method, don't know, but they let you know.
5. The payment didn't ever go through so technically You were never even hosting with them
6. The owner has been nice enough to try to work through these problems and yet, you can't understand that companies need customers, companies hate fraud and that things like this happen. Yes, there was some wrong on hostgator's side, but you blew this all out of proportion.
7. You know, every time you respond to a ticket, the ticket gets bumped up in the system, so it won't be answered. I learned that the hard way at dreamhost.

You signed up, you were suspended by a person who flagged your account as fraud. You decided not to call them because of your location, you didn't send in the verification (from what I read), and you declined to accept any sort of compromise form hostgator.

Yes, I'm defending hostgator here (mostly). But I run a small hosting business and like others in this thread, compete for some of the same business on a smaller scale.

@catfished & como1

Do you guys not understand that the customer's account was suspended because he did not verify his order?

HostGator is a huge company, I'm pretty sure they get a lot of Fraud orders, & its in their BEST interest to do check each sign up for flags.

Dont you understand HG DIDNT contact me and didnt try to verify me? They didnt call me they didnt answer my emails, they did nothing to reach me.

Purchased the plan and in about 20min while setting up the game my hosting account got suspended. They told me they need id/credit card scans and that I need to call them in order to "setup my account""

just lock the thread.
the OP just proved him self wrong.
lol

40sixty: of course that is what they claim. but the issue here is that hostgator is reckless regarding their customer's time. if you read my earlier post in the thread, I agree 100% with their TOS and they have to protect themselves from fraud. But they wasted the OPs time and he had to do the legwork to find out what happened.
That's all. Blaming the customer is hostgator's motto.

40sixty: of course that is what they claim. but the issue here is that hostgator is reckless regarding their customer's time. if you read my earlier post in the thread, I agree 100% with their TOS and they have to protect themselves from fraud. But they wasted the OPs time and he had to do the legwork to find out what happened.
That's all. Blaming the customer is hostgator's motto.

Thats the issue, he was technically not even a customer.
Since, he DID not verify the account.

From what i read, it seems like the OP was suspended for NOT verifying his account.

1.
3. You could always scan the stuff in and send it too them?
4. Yes, they contacted you. Whether or not it was a personal method, don't know, but they let you know.
5. The payment didn't ever go through so technically You were never even hosting with them
You signed up, you were suspended by a person who flagged your account as fraud. You decided not to call them because of your location, you didn't send in the verification (from what I read), and you declined to accept any sort of compromise form hostgator.
Yes, I'm defending hostgator here (mostly). But I run a small hosting business and like others in this thread, compete for some of the same business on a smaller scale.

Looks like you didn't read my comments altho you say you did.
They didnt contact me, they didnt assist me, they just failed me at customer support not something else. I did sent what they requested. This is what I was blaming them for. Im not saying their services are bad even this has happened to me, looks like the majority are very happy with them and I wish i was their customer because they looked like a good company to me.
They've made contact with me hours after i came on this forum and their representative posted here. A lady contacted me today still asking for my ID to activate the hosting and wants to call me even If I requested refund and cancelled everything (altho from what they say i was never a client and they didnt charge my card, i have yet to see the funds in my bank acc, dont know how long it will take). Guess their data is not centralised?
You would believe that a ticket about fraud followed by suspension and in pending verification (ive sent the scanned docs 2 times) would be at the top waiting for a resolution. Guess its just ordered by countries importance and mine was at the bottom.

I am requesting this to be closed because it went too far and its like talking to deafs, best example is you who obviously didnt read my commends before making that post.

just lock the thread.
the OP just proved him self wrong.
lol

Another one that didnt read my comments, if you believe an automated email with default content resulted from a suspension is called "made contact with the customer" you are wrong.

I am an American living in St Petersburg Russia and have accounts with US based hosts and have had to verify my card for every purchase. What I am surprised by was your having access to the server and account before it was verified, not that it was put on hold awaiting verification documents.
A fax or scan of the documents is usually all it takes, but there is a quite a difference in time zones so a human verifying the documents might spread over to the next business day. Business offices normally have shorter work hours than the tech support ticket system.

This is simply a case of misunderstanding on both side's part, I do not suspect the OP nor the HG policies are unreasonable, just not a good match for each other. No one is trying to defraud anyone based on this exchange, just not speaking from the same perspective.

A fax or scan of the documents is usually all it takes, but there is a quite a difference in time zones .

It was 5pm my time when I have received the account info and probably around 10am on the other side.

Btw Ive seen Putin and Bush live today at the summit, man that Putin looks like a beast ready to kill you just with a look :D

Surely a few more hours patience would have solved all the problems. They need to reconfigure their signup system so account information is not delivered until the account is approved however.

I've met Putin and, although he does not smile much he is impressive in many ways, much more impressive than Bush who is outclassed by all current leaders. Putin is loved here, many women think he is the perfect man and would love to marry him; he is quiet, calm, does what he says and offers security, plus fit and trim and physically strong. He is also much more intellegent and honest than our current leaders. During his presidency there has been a great advance in quality of life here, something like the period from 50s to 1970 in the US when we were in the same position of being sure that things would be better next week and next year. It is very interesting so see a society change so fast. I've visited 86 countries and this is by far the most interesting place for me.
The new president is well liked also, particularly here in St Petersburg where he grew up, as did Putin.
All this is off topic and probably not appreciated on the forum.

I do see faults at both sides. Hostgator advertises instant setup. They got around that claim by instantly setting up the account, then suspending it until the OP could spend 30 minutes of his time and 24 hours of waiting until his account was verified. Patience, my friend. I waited 3 days for a paypal payment to clear, and another 24 hours for my account to be setup with 1&1 and IX.
Luckily Brent was nice to setup my account after I told him my situation with the paypal echeck several hours after registering.

Yes, hostgator did contact you. Yes, it was automated. Yes, that still counts as contacting you. NO, we are not deaf.

I am sorry for rid90210's trouble, but at the same time I think that it is really nice that a leading member of hostgator should come here and reply.

This thread intrigues me because I am right now comparing Hostgator with a certain host with a tech support center based in Rumania. It is not a Rumanian company but I shall call it "Rumanian Host X." It offers a very similar package of features to Hostgator, loads of space and bandwidth at a below $10 price, and like Hostgator it has freely accessable user forums. The Rumanian tech support is supposed to reply very quickly. I find that they are not too fast at typing, perhaps because their English is not that of a native speaker, but that would not be a problem for you. Please PM me if you want the name of the host. They were very highly recommended on a open source community of which I am a member (hostgator too).

For my part however comparing Hostgator with "Rumanian Host X"

1) The Rumanian Host says that you can upload 100's of GB but they limit multimedia files, sql, pdf, jpg, mpeg, zip and many more file types to only 5GB. I guess that one can upload 750GB of plain text. This kind of makes a mockery of the massive limit, but then this is not news here.

Hostgator on the other hand says that while the site should not be used for backup (so the files should get a few hits) and the CPU restrictions should not be broken (so the files should ONLY get a few hits). I think that I can do that.

2) Both Hostgator and the "Rumanian Host X" have open forums for users. However, while the former are a little sycophantic (or perhaps hostgator really is that good) the Rumanian Forums are censored. I know because my posts are not getting to the forums.

Anyway, this thread make me like Hostgator yet more.

But I repeat I feel sorry for rid90210. If you want to know the name of the Rumanian host please email me from the link on my site at nihonbunka.com

If hosting with US companies is so difficult for people in foreign countries, why host with US companies? Why not host with companies in their own country? I bet I can guess.

It seems to me that most of the complaints I've seen against the reputable companies here have been by people in other countries, especially the 'fraud alert' countries, and the hurdles they have to go through to verify payment. There must be some great attraction to US companies that make it worth all the hassles you have to go through to get hosting here. What could that possibly be?

I worked for a major TV retailer once... one of the ones who put a product up on the TV screen, and people would call and order them. Fraudulent sales, especially with electronics and computers, became so prevalent they stopped selling electronics to certain zip codes in the US. They cut their fraudulent sales by more than half.

Fraud can devastate a company's bottom line. It raises prices, and causes a lower level of service for everyone who's with that company. Frankly, I'm surprised companies like HG even bother to do business in countries where fraud is so prevalent. The fact that they do speaks highly of the company. Yes, it's not fair to the honest people in those countries, but business is business.

If hosting with US companies is so difficult for people in foreign countries, why host with US companies? Why not host with companies in their own country? I bet I can guess.

It seems to me that most of the complaints I've seen against the reputable companies here have been by people in other countries, especially the 'fraud alert' countries, and the hurdles they have to go through to verify payment. There must be some great attraction to US companies that make it worth all the hassles you have to go through to get hosting here. What could that possibly be?

I worked for a major TV retailer once... one of the ones who put a product up on the TV screen, and people would call and order them. Fraudulent sales, especially with electronics and computers, became so prevalent they stopped selling electronics to certain zip codes in the US. They cut their fraudulent sales by more than half.

Fraud can devastate a company's bottom line. It raises prices, and causes a lower level of service for everyone who's with that company. Frankly, I'm surprised companies like HG even bother to do business in countries where fraud is so prevalent. The fact that they do speaks highly of the company. Yes, it's not fair to the honest people in those countries, but business is business.

Well said.
And spam, you know, is a big problem. Not only will the fraudulent orders put through mass amounts of spam and get the IP address of the server blocked, but the server will most likely crash or server loads will go through the roof! Plus, you don't even get money from the fraud orders as most use stolen credit cards or fakes.

What made me nervous is their offensive ways of doing business, why suspend my account before even trying to make contact with me and verify my details?(i understand Romania has a fraud flag) :(

Unfortunately you are in a region where you as an individual now has to suffer because of the wrong-doing of people in the same area as you :(

Hostgator are protecting their business by applying this fraud-protection system, but I am very sorry to hear that you were inflicted by this.

You'll probably either have to go through the hoops of verifying your account, or try another hosting provider.

A last resort could be to pay either by check or use a provider that accepts payment in e-gold (or similar).

Salut ;) Yes few minutes and my ultimatum expires, I will get my money back and move to another shared account.
Which companies would you recommend guys? I need it with unlimited addon domains and I will have a browser based game installed thats it. $10/month max i'd give :)
Regards!

I think that's whats wrong now-a-days people think they can get whatever and do whatever they want for $10 a month.

C'mon

Blame the customer seems to be the motto of hostgator and its fans.
The customer should have done their homework. The customer should be the expert on webhosting. The customer should have read the TOS with all its legalese verbage. Hostgator's customer service is impeccable.
While I agree with the fraud guard in their TOS, Hostgator's systems should have detected it up from the start and informed him right away.
It is as if the customer's time and effort is useless, and all that matters is that hostgator do their work whenever they feel like it after their employees read their TOS and then blame the customer afterwards.


Have you read HostGator's TOS:
http://www.hostgator.com/tos.shtml

Its pretty straight forward and the 'legalese verbage' as you put it, is really not there.

Things like
7a.) Resource Usage
User may not:
a) Use 25% or more of system resources for longer then 90 seconds. There are numerous activities that could cause such problems; these include: CGI scripts, FTP, PHP, HTTP, etc.
b) Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.
c) Run any type of web spider or indexer (including Google Cash / AdSpy) on shared servers.
d) Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.
e) Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client. Please note that you may link to torrents off server, but may not host or store them.
f) Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities
g) Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life, battlefield1942, etc
h) Run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 minutes

When using PHP include functions for including a local file, include the local file rather than the URL. Instead of include("http://yourdomain.com/include.php") use include("include.php

Are pretty straight forward I would have to say.

If hosting with US companies is so difficult for people in foreign countries, why host with US companies? Why not host with companies in their own country? I bet I can guess.


When your website target are US citizens and your site is in english, its recommended that you host with an US hosting.. SEO reasons, friendly google etc.

I think that's whats wrong now-a-days people think they can get whatever and do whatever they want for $10 a month.

C'mon


C'mon, main reason why choosing hostgator was their good reviews about customer support which I needed the most being a noob. And this was my complaint on this forum.
They have dissapointed me to not being able to make contact with me in fashion time and i was really sad because of that. I have no problems with them verifyng me.
But if they fail to contact me in a day thats not the customer service I thought Id get.
I have used my credit card, romanian credit card, I didnt use a stolen US card (as some on the forum said) to raise questions.
I didnt even need to be solved in 24h, could have taken more but the main and main reason you still dont understand is that they DIDNT contact me at all except an auto message, they simple ignored me and this is all about. They didnt contact me in an important problem regarding verification or fraud or whatever and this made me post here to share opinions. And if you say I should wait 24h just to get a personal letter from them its wrong and I dont want to have business with a company that replies to my tickets regarding FRAUD-SUSPENSION in 24h.
And I believe my tickets were ignored and I was marked as FRAUD for good because I see they have huge potential in customer service and they dont even need an hour to answer my ticket being that it was an important issue not a ticket with "please install ioncube on my server".

You can try out 2wdhost.com .. the guy is very responsive and sincere

Ehsan

I know it's sad and unfair, but mosts hosts don't take the time to call people they suspend for fraud orders because:
1. it costs lots of money to make phone calls to suspected fraud orders who probably won't return the call
2. an automated message saves their time

C'mon, main reason why choosing hostgator was their good reviews about customer support which I needed the most being a noob. And this was my complaint on this forum.
They have dissapointed me to not being able to make contact with me in fashion time and i was really sad because of that. I have no problems with them verifyng me.
But if they fail to contact me in a day thats not the customer service I thought Id get.
I have used my credit card, romanian credit card, I didnt use a stolen US card (as some on the forum said) to raise questions.
I didnt even need to be solved in 24h, could have taken more but the main and main reason you still dont understand is that they DIDNT contact me at all except an auto message, they simple ignored me and this is all about. They didnt contact me in an important problem regarding verification or fraud or whatever and this made me post here to share opinions. And if you say I should wait 24h just to get a personal letter from them its wrong and I dont want to have business with a company that replies to my tickets regarding FRAUD-SUSPENSION in 24h.
And I believe my tickets were ignored and I was marked as FRAUD for good because I see they have huge potential in customer service and they dont even need an hour to answer my ticket being that it was an important issue not a ticket with "please install ioncube on my server".

I think in the long run you will find the type of hosting you wish to do does not mesh well with the vanilla hosting the big guy offer, and they even said so. So while you've lost a bit of time, they did not fully process your card, and after a few days, those funds will be back in your bank account.

There are many of us who host the niche the big guys create, high resource sites. You will not get a $10 account with alot of bandwidth with someone who specializes in high resource hosting, but you will get service you can count on for your site being up.

If it wasn't for HostGator and BlueHost tossing aside my bread and butter, I'd be really struggling. And I know of a few others that host mainly high resource sites would be as well. We all love their TOS

Many from those fraud alert countries will tend to use e-gold so their is no verification nightmares to contend with. I am fairly certain if you are in a major city in Romania you have a few choices to pick from to exchange national currency to e-gold.

You might want to try a low-end VPS instead of shared hosting. I've come across many that are $15 or less per month.

I think you should try some 30-Day Money Back Guarantee hosting account . so in case you are not satisfied with their service get your money back. One of the site which I recently stumble upon is call >>>> vorlehost.com
and customer support is excellent I think you should try them or try finding other host the gives 30-Day Money Back Guarantee.

You might want to try a low-end VPS instead of shared hosting. I've come across many that are $15 or less per month.

What does switching to a VPS have to do with a billing problem? Did you read the thread mate? :eek:

I think you should try some 30-Day Money Back Guarantee hosting account . so in case you are not satisfied with their service get your money back. One of the site which I recently stumble upon is call >>>> vorlehost.com
and customer support is excellent I think you should try them or try finding other host the gives 30-Day Money Back Guarantee.

What domain do you have hosted with them?

What does switching to a VPS have to do with a billing problem? Did you read the thread mate? :eek:

Think he was referring to a VPS as most of shared hosts will suspend him due to excessive resource usage sooner or later (which will probably happen later in this case, since the OP stated it is a new website so no members are playing it yet etc). I understand and agree with your point Henrik, though - we are not talking about it here.

Mitgib also has a good point, you should move on and call this off as a bad experience. Hope you found appropriate hoster in the meantime.

I think you should try some 30-Day Money Back Guarantee hosting account . so in case you are not satisfied with their service get your money back. One of the site which I recently stumble upon is call >>>> vorlehost.com
and customer support is excellent I think you should try them or try finding other host the gives 30-Day Money Back Guarantee.

You do realize that Hostgator has a 45 day money back guarantee? :confused:

Think he was referring to a VPS as most of shared hosts will suspend him due to excessive resource usage sooner or later (which will probably happen later in this case, since the OP stated it is a new website so no members are playing it yet etc). I understand and agree with your point Henrik, though - we are not talking about it here.


Still the issue was purely billing related, thus starting to drag in other terms / buzzwords in the mix just isn't necessary :stickout:

rid90210,

<< snipped >>

I said that in my day job....I see this problem all the time with Romanians. It's difficult for them....but most providers don't really have a choice but to protect themselves from fraud. It's a very large problem in Romania, although they are making great progress on the front.

Find another provider and move on....

I am from Romania and after reading many good reviews about hostgator I finally decided to buy a Baby account to host my rpg browser based game and all my domains.
Purchased the plan and in about 20min while setting up the game my hosting account got suspended. They told me they need id/credit card scans and that I need to call them in order to "setup my account" even if the setup was auto and instant. I can't make intl. calls from my mobile and I dont have a land line so I told them to call me if they care about their customers. I've sent the info requested and everything still no news from them even if im using their ticket system.

What made me nervous is their offensive ways of doing business, why suspend my account before even trying to make contact with me and verify my details?(i understand Romania has a fraud flag).
I was in the middle of something and I didnt pay 100 bucks to have my time wasted by their staff. They are still not answering and gave them an ultimatum, if they dont restore my account in 1h I want my money back.
Its unacceptable to get an account suspended within 20 mins from registration without trying to contact the buyer first.
Sorry for my bad english..still no replies from them..which is exactly the reason i choosed hostgator, good reviews about their customer support :(

You must have missed the reviews:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=685674&highlight=hostgator
http://www.google.com/search?q=hostgator+review&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=685707&highlight=hostgator
http://www.clickfire.com/hostgator-review/

And other searches... :)

I've always found very good reviews with hostgator. I have had a great experience with them

Maybe you must read the TOS of the host that you're going to signup, they do not allow RPG games on their server. Is not their fault.

Maybe you must read the TOS of the host that you're going to signup, they do not allow RPG games on their server. Is not their fault.
Yep thats exactly why I stopped using them. For me it was either get rid of the army game or switch hosts.
Thats what lead to me getting everity.

We required verification before activated account which is why you were refunded and disabled 30 minutes after signing up. What's your ticket number with us? I could look it up to verify this.

is verification needed for NOT US citizens??

You do realize that Hostgator has a 45 day money back guarantee? :confused:


you do work for HG right??

It depends on many factors that determine if we need to verify or not. If anyone has any verification problems they are welcome to pm me on this forum and I'll get it taken care of.


Yes I'm the owner of hostgator. I care a lot about the business and am personally involved with practically everything.

Yep I talked to you a few times and I still think hostgator is a good host as you can see by my siggy.

It depends on many factors that determine if we need to verify or not. If anyone has any verification problems they are welcome to pm me on this forum and I'll get it taken care of.


Yes I'm the owner of hostgator. I care a lot about the business and am personally involved with practically everything.

I meant that dave-dave worked for HG.. you are Brent right???

Again, I like Hostgator.

Very few problems in my stay with them.

HostGator is always getting bad reports from their hostees. It doesn't supprise me that such a big company would find it difficult to train their staff appropriately.

I would purchase a hosting plan with a host that is smaller and wants your custom.

Actually, they are not getting bad reports from "hostees" they have a very good reputation on this forum.

HostGator is always getting bad reports from their hostees. It doesn't supprise me that such a big company would find it difficult to train their staff appropriately.

I would purchase a hosting plan with a host that is smaller and wants your custom.

I meant that dave-dave worked for HG.. you are Brent right???

hostgator.com on WHT is Brent.

HostGator is always getting bad reports from their hostees. It doesn't supprise me that such a big company would find it difficult to train their staff appropriately.

I would purchase a hosting plan with a host that is smaller and wants your custom.

I guess I should say something considering I have a little experience dealing with Hostgator support.

First off, I'm not sure how many different people from Hostgator I have spoken with on the Live Chat... but I'm thinking atleast 3-4.
Each one was highly professional, and seemed to know what they were talking about.
There has yet to be an issue that they were not able to resolve.

This goes without saying that sometimes there are things which you shouldn't expect tech support to fix for you.
If you are the type that hassles support with each and every little thing, maybe you should invest some time into researching these things on your own. It's not tech supports job to assist in the design and development or marketing and ect... They help you with issues related to your WEB HOSTING account.
(just saying... :))

my account was suspended too, now they want me to verify my data?
however ,i do not have a unverified paypal account nor do i live in a highrisk country.i began to really feel a little disappointed at this company.

I have been hosting with hostgator for more than a year now. And everything seems great ..hardly any downtime .. good customer support ... and if you have weird request Brent himself takes care of that. For example my shared ip was blocked in a mid east country on asking Brent about it he SIMPLY gave my account a dedicated new ip free of charge. Just wanted to share this because I feel hostgator is one of the few companies that is ready to go the extra mile for customers.

Yes, I agree if there is no real threat of illegal activities that it would be more polite and customer-centric to contact you and let you know what the problem is rather than hit the "suspend" button. Of course, we're only hearing one side of the story so it is hard to be unbiased. I hope HG will respond to this thread.

I also agree. Not fair, and IMHO quite offensive.

Thats surprising, I've had amazing experience with them, mostly their customer service, although I am from USA.

I have been hosting with hostgator for more than a year now. And everything seems great ..hardly any downtime .. good customer support ... and if you have weird request Brent himself takes care of that. For example my shared ip was blocked in a mid east country on asking Brent about it he SIMPLY gave my account a dedicated new ip free of charge. Just wanted to share this because I feel hostgator is one of the few companies that is ready to go the extra mile for customers.

That just made my day :) GO Brent!

my account was suspended too, now they want me to verify my data?
however ,i do not have a unverified paypal account nor do i live in a highrisk country.i began to really feel a little disappointed at this company.

:eek: .. I do not know what is a high risk country ( i do not live in the US)...i dont have a paypal.. just cc ( visa international)... what should I send them to verify its me?? Can send them a sample of my blood as I study medicine ( it is not blue :P ).

Yes, I agree if there is no real threat of illegal activities that it would be more polite and customer-centric to contact you and let you know what the problem is rather than hit the "suspend" button. Of course, we're only hearing one side of the story so it is hard to be unbiased. I hope HG will respond to this thread.

meeeeee tooooooooo
i have to email them to let me login to cpanel and back up my db

If your having a problem getting activated and aren't fraud please send me a pm with your domain and I'll see what I can do. We deal with about a 100 fraud orders a day so in that good orders sometimes get caught up.

There will always be fraud and criminals. But I think the problem is that your company has bad processes in this case, and or staff who does not think before they act. This is the problem, which is worse than fraud, because it will ruin your business in the long run.

it will ruin your business in the long run.

Doubtful to say the least... a relatively small handful of innocents caught up in false flags compared to many, many, many, MANY successful and happy signups that generally result in long term happy customers...

Overall, Hostgator is a company that is run well enough that it is going to last a long, long time. Perhaps one day there will be Hostgator protests in the streets of Romania, but even if that whole country was anti-them they would still be purring right along.

Doubtful to say the least... a relatively small handful of innocents caught up in false flags compared to many, many, many, MANY successful and happy signups that generally result in long term happy customers...

Overall, Hostgator is a company that is run well enough that it is going to last a long, long time. Perhaps one day there will be Hostgator protests in the streets of Romania, but even if that whole country was anti-them they would still be purring right along.

Nice.. You put quite a bit of effort into this post! I like it!

I got suspended 1hour or so after I setup before also, didn't edit the server etc, but they activated after I phoned them up. Was several hours after the phone conversation, though.