I would like to make everyone aware of the "Terms of Service" that Vortech Hosting ie. MatrixReseller hosting has.

I have been a reseller with them since 3/2001. Their service is adequate, although I have had numerous problems with the service they provide as well as their billing practices.

I have finally had enough and have moved on to another provider.

The "Terms of Service" problem. When you cancel there service you will incur a charge for an additional 30 days, but not get the service.

I would not recommend there service to anyone unless they with to pay for service that you do not receive.

Well I think the problem concerning the billing stems from the fact that they cannot differentiate between "actual paying customers" and accounts you build for yourself.

I setup one of my largest packages for one of my own domains and I received a notice from Vortech saying they could not process my credit card for $300.00 + and my account would be suspended.

Needless to say I almost had a heart attack!!!..The problem with this stems from the fact that they dont monitor actual hard drive space..so if you have a package of 500 mb and sell it..they take that 500mb right off your cap even if not one mb has been utilized.

They really should check with us (the resellers) first, prior to charging our credit cards out of the blue...That was pretty reactionary and could have critically injured my financial situation had they been able to charge my credit card 300.00...

With all of that said, they've been an absolutely wonderful company to work with and are very communicative in their forums...

I wasnt aware of the additional 30 days, but that's more my fault for not reading entirely than anything else

The "Terms of Service" problem. When you cancel there service you will incur a charge for an additional 30 days, but not get the service.

I have never heard of this. I am not even sure this is legal. You can not charge a fee for services not rendered. As long as you meet your requirement to notify about cancelation, they have no right to charge a complete month of service for no service rendered.

I have never heard of this. I am not even sure this is legal. You can not charge a fee for services not rendered. As long as you meet your requirement to notify about cancelation, they have no right to charge a complete month of service for no service rendered. Just visiting their site and looking at their contract, it appears their contracts are all for one year. So, in fact, just charging a 30 day cancellation fee may be doing a favor for the customer.

I don't by any means condone such a contract or charge, but, if in fact that is the type contract agreed to by the customer, then this would start making more sense.

Once again, to all, read the TOS, AUP's and any contracts before you buy. They are not all the same.

Originally posted by Incognito
Just visiting their site and looking at their contract, it appears their contracts are all for one year. So, in fact, just charging a 30 day cancellation fee may be doing a favor for the customer.




I would agree if that was what I read. I saw this:

1. Vortech, Inc. will host an account for you, the purchaser (hereafter referred to as the Account Holder), for the Account Holder's chosen domain name, for the period of time (the Term) corresponding with the payment plan chosen by the Account Holder. This contract will be automatically renewed at the end of the Term and each successive renewal term, unless terminated. We require notification of non-renewal with at least 30 days notice but not more than 60 days prior to the renewal date.

Also, reading it carefully, I do not see any thing where it says after you cancel, you get hit with a 30 day charge with no service. Looks to me like you must cancel 30 days out. That does not mean they are not providing service.

As I stated before, *if* they require a 30 day notice, then close the account when you get it, thereby closing service, yet billing for it, that I am pretty sure is illegal.

Hard to find all terms at once. I was reading from the dedicated contract. But, the next section from where you were:

First, you quoted:

We require notification of non-renewal with at least 30 days notice but not more than 60 days prior to the renewal date. Then, next section states:If you do not provide this notice, you will be charged for the next terms rate. So, it appears they are saying, if you don't give 30 days notice, then you will be charged for the next 30 days.

Examples as I read it: Your term expires on the 15th. You notify them on Oct 15th you intend to terminate as of Nov 15th, you will only have to pay through Nov 15th. On the other hand, you notify them on Oct 20th you intend to terminate as of Nov 15th, you will be obligated to pay through Dec 15th. Not saying I like it, just the way I read it.

I guess I've become confused...

Are we talking Vortech Hosting or Matrix Reseller?

I know theyre one and the same, however, I didnt realize that their "virtual hosting" arm had a one year minimum signup...

however, if you did signup for a year plan and expect a refund for the balance, then i wouldnt hold my breath

Maybe you guys should read the TOS before jumping on us.

Gerald was already refunded but he didn't bother to tell you guys that. As per our TOS, which he had to manually check an "I Agree" button before he signed up, clearly states the following:

"We require notification of non-renewal with at least 30 days notice but not more than 60 days prior to the renewal date. You must have all account information to cancel and fill out the form completely that is located at here ( https://billing.vortechhosting.com/vortech/cancellation.html ) If you do not provide this notice, you will be charged for the next terms rate."

Gerald cancelled the day before his renewal date and was sent an email from the verification department stating that his cancellation request had been received and his account was being cancelled. However, we did not receive a reply from him until today once he realized we had billed him. It's easy to see he thought he was going to cancel the day before he was due and not have to pay. How would he feel if his customers did that to him??

The reason we require 30 days notification is because we pay for bandwidth 30 days in advance, therefore we allocate bandwidth for the customers we have at that time. If we allow customers to cancel with no notice, then we are spending unnecessary funds. And honestly, I don't think anyone likes to put out money they do not need to.

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essene

All reseller plans are based on allocation and we do not have the time to contact every reseller and ask can we bill them when they have agreed that they will pay usage fees, when they sign up.

Also, if a reseller does contact us about a billing discrepancy, we will walk them through how to correct the problem and refund them the amount they were charged for a mistake. We do this for every reseller because 99% of them screw up their account the first time they rebill.

Incognito, You are reading this right. Its the same thing RackShack and many other hosts do but we also do not hold every one to this unless they wait till the day before their rebill like jvinson did..

essene all of our Reseller plans or Shared Plans are month to month unless the user picks 3, 6, or 12 month billing. All colo and ded. servers are 1 year contracts and renew for the same term when there time runs out..

Its all very simple if you think about it.. If we did not auto renew account you would see a lot worse thing about us.. :) Hey my web site came up for renewal and they just deleted.. Now that would not work to well now would it?

Sounds like jvinson is misinformed about the Terms then. If he canceled one day out, I am sure he still 'receives' service for that 30 days if he chose. From the sounds of it, there is no stage in which services would not be rendered.

Vortech..

It's not that..

I fully expect to pay overage fees...However, I'm usually billed at around the same time every month..

The amount charged happened very shortly after I made error of assiging one of my own domains to the account. (i beleive we screwed up the billing on that particular plan)

The thing I was alluding to was the fact that I could have used a buffer to see that an error was made and correct that...

My suggestion is that if you billed the overage at the same time as you normally do, there would have been enough time to let me know..

Or better yet...much like hsphere lets us know when one of the plans is nearing it's peak..letting us know that we are close to our max would be very helpful.

Again, as indicated above..you and your teammates at Vortech have been great..keep up the good work!

I do agree that H-Sphere should let reseller know when they have gotten close to there max on something better then it does.. :(

But this is more of an H-Sphere flaw then us.. I will send an email over to Psoft to see if they could add something like this.. To better help all our resellers.. But we have no idea that you have been over billed or that you know what your doing till you let us know.. :) Other wise we would just think hey he is growing and doing very well. We have a lot of large resellers that don't mind paying the overage so it just kind of gets mixed in..

Thanks for looking into that!!!

I am just starting out, but I'm hoping in the near future, that I too can handle the overages