I would like to warn anyone thinking of signing up with webhosting.com to stay away. They are very expensive, but have a lot of downtime even though they guarantee 99.9 percent uptime. Also, email is very poor and hardly ever works. Technical supports tickets tend to be ignored. Sites load very slowly, and servers are overloaded. When I first signed up, it took 10 support calls for getting DNS to even work.

This is on their dedicated as well as virtual hosting accounts. I'm moving away as soon as my 1-year contract runs out.

You don't have to wait until your 1-year contract runs out if they did not keep up with their promises. Was 99.9 percent uptime guarantee mentioned in the contract (or in SLA)?

If it was and if they were down for more than 9 hours (roughly 0.1 percent of 1 year) you should have the right to terminate the contract.

It was, yes. Whenever I call them, they promise things will improve. But they don't. Checking my email there only works 1/2 of the time as well. I made the mistake of paying one year in advance, so I doubt they would give me my money back. And because I live in Ireland, I can't sue them either.

I would say uptime has been below 97% for web, with the server often taking 5-10 seconds to even respond to a request for a page or image.

Hi avara,

If you paid by credit card, you can file an dispute and tell the cc company you didn't get what you were promised to get. Usually cc company will solve the dispute on behalf of you.

Good luck.

ebird

Do you charge back and you will get all your money back.

My story just continues. In July 2000 I suffered through a 36 hour out on my website. During the downtime I was unable to reach network support at webhosting.com and the online chat feature they were offering at the time did not work either. After repeatedly leaving voice mails I finally got a live person almost 24 hours after the outage started. They did not even know the server was down until I told them! (So much for 24x7 monitoring.) I cancelled service at that time and moved my website (http://pointme.to) over to FutureQuest.net

Now, a year later I get a letter from Dun and Bradstreet telling me that webhosting.com has a claim against me for non-payment! I called the idiots at webhosting.com and was told they couldn't do anything about it. I'll get it straightened out (hopefully) with Dun and Bradstreet. So, if you are someone who has cancelled service in the past year with webhosting.com I strongly suggest you get something in writing that acknowledges they turned off service and print it. (I'm glad I did.)

I also received a collection notice from Dun & Bradstreet today for an account that was cancelled over 2 years ago. They're trying to get payment for the 2 years+ since I've cancelled (the account was in good standing at the time I cancelled). What does it take, short of a tactical nuke, to get these people off your back?:angry:

Absolutely amazing. Wonder how many other folks there are like this? Wonder if someone should start consulting an attorney regarding a class action suit.

Originally posted by STheroux
I also received a collection notice from Dun & Bradstreet today for an account that was cancelled over 2 years ago. They're trying to get payment for the 2 years+ since I've cancelled (the account was in good standing at the time I cancelled). What does it take, short of a tactical nuke, to get these people off your back?:angry:

Originally posted by dabystru
You don't have to wait until your 1-year contract runs out if they did not keep up with their promises. Was 99.9 percent uptime guarantee mentioned in the contract (or in SLA)?

If it was and if they were down for more than 9 hours (roughly 0.1 percent of 1 year) you should have the right to terminate the contract.


I could be wrong but I don't know of any hosting company that offers their uptime guarantee on a yearly basis. When they say they guarantee 99.9% uptime they are talking about for each month. So, if you are down each month only 0.1% then you are within the guarantee, even if this happens 12 months out of the year.

As for the reason for this post, if you have paid by credit card, definitely get a chargeback. You will get your money back that way.

Sometimes the problem with a dedicated server ain't with the host.. try traceroute to your dedicated server IP. see if there're some delays in the hops. i've a server which at certain time is slow on response. could be your ISP links are slow or something.

as for email-receiving part.. alot of times is our OWN DNS setting. I would recommend a Cobalt server which takes all the damn problems out of hand-edited DNS files.

DNS may take time to proporgate throughout the net, if you make the 10 phone calls to your ISP within a day, might not solve the problem.. wait for like 24-48 hours before you start shooting your ISP 'cause your DNS ain't up.

Just some of my experience i had with my ISP. I think i've written to them like less than 10 times throughout my 5-6 months hosting with them. The time when the li0n worm attacked.. i won't blame my ISP 'cause they're not responsible if you don't patch your dedicated-host..
if you want all the "umbrella-cover", go for a virtual-hosting thing.. don't get into dedicated-hosting.. dedicated hosting means you need to learn how to run a box... not just FTP or Dreamweaver thing.

l8er.



:rolleyes:

Just following up with the issue of webhosting.com sending out collection letters via Dun & Bradstreet. It seems webhosting.com has submitted over 70,000 accounts for collection by Dun & Bradstreet. D & B's phones have been ringing off the hook with people, like myself, outraged at their actions.

Some of the people they're trying to collect from were clients of resellers who owe webhosting.com nothing under any circumstances.

Could it be that webhosting.com is in financial troubles and is using these bullying (and fraudulent) practices as a desperate attempt at survival?

Stephane

Interesting. Apparently the company is now somehow affiliated with a company called InQuent Technologies. At least that the is the name that appears as part of the reference in the letter from D&B. I've sent a letter to Ken Wilson, President and CEO of InQuent, about this situtation.


Originally posted by STheroux
Just following up with the issue of webhosting.com sending out collection letters via Dun & Bradstreet. It seems webhosting.com has submitted over 70,000 accounts for collection by Dun & Bradstreet. D & B's phones have been ringing off the hook with people, like myself, outraged at their actions.

Some of the people they're trying to collect from were clients of resellers who owe webhosting.com nothing under any circumstances.

Could it be that webhosting.com is in financial troubles and is using these bullying (and fraudulent) practices as a desperate attempt at survival?

Stephane

Hi Folks:

Interesting to hear the comments about Webhosting.Com.

Webhosting.Com seem to have taken it to the next level -- I've *never* had anything
to do with them and I'm getting nasty collection notes from "Dunn and Bradstreet."

Glenn Call
Bergkristall Web Design
www.BergkristallWebDesign.Com

Did you ever have a hosting account with a reseller of webhosting.com? It seems they are also sending collection letters to the clients of resellers (even though those clients never had a business relationship with webhosting.com).

Stephane

Originally posted by MrSteveG
Wonder if someone should start consulting an attorney regarding a class action suit.


Take a look in Usenet alt.www.webmaster
and you may find that someone is conidering a class action lawsuit.

Originally posted by MrSteveG
Interesting. Apparently the company is now somehow affiliated with a company called InQuent Technologies.

From my recent much regretted experience :bawling:
Inquent and webhosting.com are effectively the same company, there is also SBC Webhosting.com which is an alliance with Southern Bell. As a naieve person when looking at all the "quality" companies involved I thought there had to people there who had a clue so my client bought a shared / virtual package from them.

In two months we have failed to find anyone who has a clue and the site is still down.. that by the way folks is a 99% downtime (not uptime).

There is something deeply concerning when even the tech support people cannot speak directly to the administrators and when emails to unixadmin about setting up the MySQL dbase included in the package results in reply emails about ASP and Nt Server setup.

In about 8 weeks they have suceeded in getting our domain name to resolve to the website on about two occasions for no more than a couple of hours before someone there messes it up again. I have no confidence in them, if the site was not up somewhere else under its main domain name I am pretty sure we would be working on taking legal action for damages.

See my comments on the state of webhosting at
http://www.88honeylane.freeserve.co.uk/mag/edition0106.htm

I am new to webhosting, still doing some searching... but i knew to not even consider webhosting.com (aquent or whatever)... go to this link and read the horror stories...

http://users.dwx.com/%7Edhill/webhosting.htm

beware...

Webhosting.com and *****.com are both awful

I started w/webhosting.com and they are slow, password protected subs didnt work etc... I canceled and they still sent me a d&b letter. They get a "D-"

***** is a bit worse, because their dedicated server prices look great til you trust them with your business and see a multi-hour outage like today. ***** is arrogant, unreliable and unresponsive. Shouldn't have used them. Tons of tech problems. They get a "D+"

Have used Interland for one of my hosted sites, they're ok .. a "C" provider, havent used their dedicated servers though.

Burst'net rep's attitude on the boards ensures I will never use them.


Where o where is a good dedicated host service, 50 gigs bandwidth, under 250/mo? That has 24/7 tech support and excellent response times?

C'mon folks... pls let me know who's good. Still looking...

Hi Folks:

Following the report about Webhosting.Com, I got a spate of folks asking
who I actually "host" with.

Seems it'ld be easier just to post to the list:

For the record, I've had a *great* experience with <TheHostPros.Com> for two+ years now.

They do five (soon to be six) web sites for me for a total of close to 300 pages
of various sorts:

<www.GoetheNet.net>
<www.BergkristallWebDesign.com>
<www.HausofBavaria.com>
<www.ParksBand.org>
<www.Bul-weon.net>

coming soon: <www.Massenvernichtung.net>

Great folks to work with - can't beat 'em for price or service.


So sez

Glenn Call
Bergkristall Web Design