I DID NOT SPAM! I HATE SPAM AT LEAST AS MUCH AS EVERYBODY ELSE!

Recently, I had a horrible experience with HOSTROCKET. They canceled my account for an invented SPAM-ing reason.
They are soooo WRONG: I’ve been using their services for more than one year and they had only one reason to complain against me: in the past because I bough some visits from an external source and I unintentionally overloaded the server. I lowered the traffic amount right away and they restored my website after a very long and painful negotiation: they just simply didn’t listen and didn’t care about their customers. It took some 4 days (!) to get my site back on line! It was like pulling teeth! Not mine, theirs! Thanks for nothing!
Otherwise, I’ve obeyed all their Terms and Conditions and I had a NO SPAM (!) policy of my own as well. More than that, I barely sent e-mails once a month and only to my own subscribers (a little bit over 1000 – is this overloading HOSTROCKET?)!
How about my numerous tickets complaining about my site being down? Or how about your security leak, where you “shared” my credit card with the world, so I had to replace it? You have the right to be wrong, but us?
I believe that maybe somebody broke into my account and did some malicious work there …. I once asked the HOSTROCKET community for help to find out why I can see some strangers in the records, signing-up in my databases, because I didn’t give permission to anybody to my databases. Days after, HOSTROCKET kicked me out of their servers without giving me a warning or without showing me any proof that I did anything wrong.
After a long and very unproductive waiting I got some “attention” from their "customer service":

"Your account was suspended because you were sending mass
amounts of e-mail from your account. You were causing the
load on the server to rise above 20.

Graham McMillan
HostRocket Support "

Or how about this:

"Your account has been suspended multiple times for having
scripts over loading the server. In this case, you were
spamming from your account. We do not tolerate spamming
in any way. Please find a new web host.

Chad Diamantopoulos
HostRocket Support"

“Multiple times”??????????
In your dreams, graham and chad! You just wanted a pretext to grab my money and run! You bandits! :angry:

What I can tell in my defense is that I spent $143.40 for one year in advance for hosting fees (fool me!) and I “used” the first month of the second year only. They terminated the services (after some 13 months of so-so hosting), wrongly accusing me of SPAM-ing. I am wondering what person in the right mind will spend almost $200 in fees (including domain registration) and then send SPAM right away, loosing all the money? Maybe this is how you do business yourselves, HOSTROCKET?
I didn’t SPAM, but they wouldn’t listen to me.
I lost all of my files - they finally gave me only my databases back, making sure AGAIN, that the entire world can get them via ... browser, not secured FTP! - Special thanks for this proof of “smart” customer service - in this way everybody could just simply download names, e-mails, addresses, phone numbers - but this is HOSTROCKET the worst web host in the world!. I lost all my investment (around $1000) and over one year of work is gone.
I believe that I better not even try to reopen my website because I lost all the trust that my subscribers gave me and it will be very hard if not impossible to recover all that I had!
Sorry for this long introduction. My question to you is: Where should I look for help to recuperate my losses? I would really like to have hostrocket pay for my losses!
Thank you to everybody that can point me to the right direction.

Once again showing the importance of Customer Backups.

BTW, maybe one of those 1000 suscribers forgot they suscribed to your email list and reported you for spamming. Also if it was indeed causing the load on the server to raise up to 20 they do have the right to kick you off.

inogenius, I do have a month old backup, but I might not have all the changes as I was doing my backups on a monthly basis.
As for one of my customers reporting me for spam, I did not send my “monthly” e-mails for more than 30 days ... So, I kind of exclude this option.
What is surprising me then, is how could I raise the load to 20 then?
Sorry for repeating myself, I am innocent so I want my money back!
Thank you for your reply, though.

like yourself i have also had horrible experiences with hostrocket, including going through my credit card being stolen, and being charged 120 dollars for resellers fees which i didnt sign up for on my new card. find a better host

Hello,

We do not in any way shape or form tolerate spamming from any shared or dedicated server on our network. We have had issues in the past with customers that almost cost us one of our upstream providers, and it is something we can not have happen again therefore we are very strict on it now. If you have requested a refund of your hosting fees and are having any trouble with it at all or have any other issues, please contact our customer service manager: csm at hostrocket.com or myself directly: bbrader at hostrocket.com and I will be of assistance to you. If you prefer a direct means of communication feel free to call our office between 8am and 12am m-f at 518-371-3421.

-Brendan

We once had a spammer hijack our formmail.cgi script, which is why we now use a different filename for our script. We actually caught it pretty quickly because the spam was sent to bogus e-mails and bounced to us. Eventually I suppose they will dig deepr for the file names, but for now they just look for formmail.cgi.

Originally posted by KG
We once had a spammer hijack our formmail.cgi script, which is why we now use a different filename for our script. We actually caught it pretty quickly because the spam was sent to bogus e-mails and bounced to us. Eventually I suppose they will dig deepr for the file names, but for now they just look for formmail.cgi.

There is a secure version of Matt Wrights formail.

Simon

theres also a version that will automatically notify the spammers isp if they are attempting to expolit the old formmail

Hello Brendan - bellow is a copy of my last ticket sent to you. I hope that this time I will get a better treatment!

Ticket Submission Details Billing Questions :: Other

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your ticket has been submitted. The details of your request are shown below. We will respond as quickly as possible. Thank you.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Billing Questions :: Other

One more try! I was told to contact you for my refund because you wrongly canceled my account accusing me of SPAM-ing. I will say this ONE MORE TIME: I did not SPAM! I lost my website, time and all the money that I invested in it. The only thing that I can do now is to get my money back because I paid hosting for one year in advance and you CANCELED MY ACCOUNT in an ABUSIVE WAY after only a few weeks of service! Today is Wednesday, January 29, 2003 and I am expecting to get an answer from you before the end of the week! Waiting for your reply!

Intersting poll, guess the ones that like them just don't vote:D

That's why I always provide proof that a client has done wrong , but I understand Brendan's postition too 1 spammer can cost you your bussiness depending on your provider.

Guys, I perfectly understand you.
But try to stay in my shoes for a sec: pay for one year in advance hosting fees, pay for domain name, pay a few hundreds for some scripts and design and then, with all the money invested you are wrongly accused of spamming? My website is shut down and nobody listen ... Should I just walk away? :angry:

gmcroman , I understand what your saying , what I was saying is ask for proof that it came from your account :rolleyes:

It's sad that so many people report having problems with HostRocket. Even if only a 1/4 of them are true, that's still too many in my book no matter how many clients they have.

There are some serious support issues and questionable account suspensions from what I have seen. This is nothing new.

I can't believe this: I got an answer from hostrocket. It was fairly quick this time. Another proof of a veeeeery deep thinking:


"Hi,

We do not offer refunds in cases such as these. We could
charge you a $250 network cleanup fee.

\"Anyone using our services for spamming will be immediatly
subject to a $250 cleanup/network abuse fee.\"

You may read our TOS by going to http://tos.hostrocket.com.

Graham McMillan
HostRocket Support "



Is there a WAKE UP button that I can push? I believe that I just practiced talking with a wall ....:angry:


And this is my answer to Graham's aberation from above:

Look, you produced 0 (zero) proof that I SPAM-ed. Let me reformulate this a little bit: it's impossible to show me an honest piece of evidence that I SPAM-ed because I didn't.
You just claim that I acted against your TOS, grabbed my money and run!
I just feel a huge disappointment that you guys refuse to listen!
And you want to charge me $250? For what? Because you shut my website down and refuse to work with me to find out what happened? Because I was so stupid and I paid one year in advance? Or just because this is how hostrocket is doing business?
You just don’t want to stop!
Now, let me make one thing clear: is either I get MY MONEY back, or then WAR it is!

Originally posted by gmcroman
Guys, I perfectly understand you.
But try to stay in my shoes for a sec: pay for one year in advance hosting fees, pay for domain name, pay a few hundreds for some scripts and design and then, with all the money invested you are wrongly accused of spamming? My website is shut down and nobody listen ... Should I just walk away? :angry:

Maybe its becuase we're a decent size host and know what Brendain is referring. Its no fun to get that call from a provider warning you about spam or whats being interpreted as spam from your network. Other than an refund issue Im not seeing a problem.

As with anyone that values their data you should have a backup of everything. Inside of one day you could update your name servers and have your site back online with a new host. I wish you well with your refund request and hope you did have a backup of your data.

Originally posted by gmcroman
We could charge you a $250 network cleanup fee.
Now there is a term I have not seen before. :eek:

I'm glad I'm not in your position this would be so frustrating, don't give up thats a lot of money

Hi,

I will look into this for you, however we have a fairly detailed setup as far as tracking spam goes so our tech staff usually is not wrong on this kind of thing. I can't tell you without looking at the details that a mistake was not made on our part for sure. In either case I will make sure that you get your full refund.

-Brendan

Please keep us informed as to whether this happens or not gmcroman.

Hostrocket, what a joke, they where my first fiasco before my latest at Mchost.

There's a choice missing in the poll. It should also include "I thought everyone knew this.":eek:

I know some hosts will charge spam fees i have seen people charge as much as $50 a spam e-mail if a client got reported

HR is really getting unbearable! They suspended my account accusing me of "denial and lie" and ignored my remaining questions to backups and refunds!

They claimed I was hosting downloadable ringtones, and trust me, it was all html contents, not consisting of more than I would say... 100-200kb (about 6 pages, which less than an A4 pg). I do have one or two audio files in my site but they are NOT ringtones which is very obvious when downloaded.

Put aside the misunderstandings in accusations of my violation of their TOS, their attitude and service is far from satisfactory. When HR was small in scale, and yes, they valued their customers alot more... now that they grew, well, it seems like small customers like myself is no longer valuable to them!

I am happy to change a new host. Not being sore, but please return justice.

Wow, I must say I'm glad I stumbled upon this site before I wasted my money on HostRocket.

Originally posted by phantasywork
That's why I always provide proof that a client has done wrong , but I understand Brendan's postition too 1 spammer can cost you your bussiness depending on your provider.

However, the customer should always be innocent until proven guilty. I'm thinking that this provider is 1) one that has a lot to lose, 2) one that is close to loosing it, and 3) one that has legal/financial pressure on them to track down any problems, whether it means having hard evidence or not.

Interestingly enough, I had HostRocket on my top 5 lists of providers that I was looking to sign up with. Needless to say, the list is down to 4. :rolleyes:

May I ask what your other 4 are?

are they really that bad? hmmm, that'd be a shame, as I am about to sign up for them, but now I'm worried, and also I'm not sure how much longer there deal will last.

Originally posted by wits
HR is really getting unbearable! They suspended my account accusing me of "denial and lie" and ignored my remaining questions to backups and refunds!

They claimed I was hosting downloadable ringtones, and trust me, it was all html contents, not consisting of more than I would say... 100-200kb (about 6 pages, which less than an A4 pg). I do have one or two audio files in my site but they are NOT ringtones which is very obvious when downloaded.

Put aside the misunderstandings in accusations of my violation of their TOS, their attitude and service is far from satisfactory. When HR was small in scale, and yes, they valued their customers alot more... now that they grew, well, it seems like small customers like myself is no longer valuable to them!

I am happy to change a new host. Not being sore, but please return justice.


Wits-

I don't want to start a fight here but you were suspended for a reason and that was for violation of our TOS. You had been suspended once and were told to remove the content which you agreed to yet you did not remove it. You were suspended on 2003-01-21 and had until 2003-01-29 to remove the content which you still refused to remove.

We do know that people are not fully aware of some of the rules in the TOS so if you are suspended for a first time offense we tell you what you did wrong so you can correct it. In your ticket you told us you were hosting no such thing even though you were. I have provided a screenshot from your page which clearly shows you were.

-Graham

Dear Mr Graham,
you accused me of hosting "downloadable ringtone contents" which is wrong. Try clicking on the links and it's text, which is no more than 6-7k a page. I mean, how in the world is text downloadable? Okay, putting aside the misunderstandings of the TOS of both parties, I am also very disappointed with the service level of HR.

If you like, I will also be glad to post our conversation of the support tickets here. But I doubt you wish to see that happen.
Thus, I will simply like to end my collaboration with HR, all I am asking for now, is a successful transfer of my domain, which has been dragging on for almost a week (I wonder if it was bulkregister.com's delay or HR's delay), and the refund of money.

Well, if I susspend someone i have a SS of the reason. Sorry for all your problems wits, If I can help, please PM me.
-MH

Curtis H., as Brendan from HostRocket promissed, I got my refund.
Thank you Brendan, I guess.
The only thing that I regret is that I invested some money in my business and I was forced to step out without being at fault. But the life is not always fair, right?
Good luck everybody! Thank you for all your support and advices.

Thanks for the update gmcroman. Hopefully you'll have better luck with your next host.