Results 1 to 13 of 13
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    St. Louis, MO
    Posts
    103
    WHT Members,
    For the past 6 years, I have sat around WHT and watched companies come and go and kept my mouth shut when I had wound up with a bad host. Now, the style in which I have gotten mishandled by this company is rather pathetic and as much as I wish I can just let it go - I can't. So today, you will learn about the horrible business practices of XeHost.net. If you still continue to do business with them, or choose to in the future - you are complete fool.
    I am a creative writer. I write anything and everything that can be written. Business isn't as consistent for me as it is for a web host - my customers normally don't come back regularly - only when something else needs written.
    So comes the time when I FIRST could not access my email. I tried for a few hours before it really bothered me. I had no open projects, nothing to (in theory) lose from not being able to access it. I let it go - didn't submit a ticket, didn't complain, didn't check to see if anyone else noticed it was down - I let it go.
    The SECOND time it was down - I checked my server as well to make sure it wasn't my fault. Sure enough, their server was down - along with my website, other member's websites, and even their own. Yet again, nothing to really lose so I again let it go without word.
    Then came the THIRD time it went down. This was aggrivating because I did have projects going and only used email to talk to my clients. I was powerless and out of communication - which is key when running a business. Not only that, they were down for days which meants instead of replying on a daily basis to my clients - they were stuck wondering why I ran off with their money and haven't delivered their product yet. That is when someone else posted here about their downtime and I jumped into conversation but was still very humble about it.
    Being a forgiving person, I conversed about it - but let it go in due time. However, let me explain something about that third downtime I had. I always set deadlines on my projects - if I don't deliver; they don't pay. It increases my productivity and gives clients incentive to use my services. In the span of days that their server was down - I ended up refunding 4 customers when their projects were completed. Here is a breakdown of the income I lost:
    20 articles - $200
    3 sales letters - $50
    1 press release - $20
    5 articles - $50
    Total Lost: $320
    That is a descent monthly income for my online venture. I don't try to get rich but merely pull a slight income in my spare time. Instead of making money, I lost time and effort - and most importantly, money. I was very upset about it but I understand that downtime is never perfect and things sometimes happen. So... I let it go.
    Then again, a week or so later - another downtime. Yet again, I was in the middle of a project. I finished it on time but was unable to deliver it due to no email access. Yet again, I lost another $100 in articles. While I still lose the money, I always deliver the project after completion in hopes that they will like the quality and come back in the future. Worst case, they get their money back, right? While true, that is EXACTLY how it played out. The 20 articles from the first downtime - same buyer. He loved my work and got it for free; therefore, he figured he would either get good quality for his money or I'd miss the deadline again and he'd get it for free.
    I spoke with XeHost's support and asked for a refund due to the loss I had taken and the horrible excuse for the hosting provider they are and this is what I was told on the latest outage:
    In short, the domain on the main nameservers expired and we were not notified about it. As the box was still online, none of our alerts went off and we did not even notice the issue.
    Oh yes, that's correct - your reading skills are still there. THEY FORGOT TO RENEW THEIR DOMAIN! I've dealt with 3 different registrars and never once have I not received a notice (15 domains later) Yet, they ALWAYS add "we were still online but our alerts never went off so... who knew?"
    First and foremost, their support helpdesk is ran through their website - shouldn't someone notice that? I'd assume you get an email with a notice that you have a ticket that needs answered - shouldn't you be checking that often? 24/7 support that doesn't realize they can't help customers?
    And the owner is "out of town" and thinks that is a good excuse for not being at fault.
    My entire experience with this company has been a nightmare and the worst I've ever had online. I lost money, lost clients, and time, effort, and energy aren't free either. I'm not trying to keep you from using them by any means - just letting you know you are a imbicile if you do. With all due respect, of course.
    By the way, timestamps of their responses - quality 15-minute response time:
    Me: 3:27PM
    Them: 3:47PM
    Me: 7:03PM
    Them: 7:48PM
    Me: 3:25PM
    Them: 3:47PM
    Not once have they been able to meet that standard they claim they have. However, one more point before I leave it at this:
    They stated a portion of their Service Level Agreement and claimed I'm not entitled to a refund. However, upon sign-up I never agreed to their SLA - I agreed to their AUP and TOS. I have yet to find a link to their SLA (http://www.xehost.net/sla.php) which I think is an issue, don't you?
    I am seeking legal cousel over this matter for the use of an agreement that I never agreed to and also the fact that it is inaccessible through their website.
    Anyway, have a great day and remember - stay away from XeHost's services.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Location
    Florida, U.S
    Posts
    1,738
    Sorry that you lost all that money After losing that much, a refund seems like nothing even if you get it.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    United Kingdom
    Posts
    505
    Sorry to hear that you had a tough time there. Forgetting to renew their domain is a lame excuse and something that should not happen at all. I personally, remember when my domains need renewing by memory.
    I think you should be entitled to a refund of that month as all the downtime was their fault, and you were such a good customer who didn't complain when their services were down. Even then, if they had the proper monitoring equipment that monitored their domain, they must of been notified of atleast a little downtime.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    /home/Boston
    Posts
    174
    I too, am sorry to hear about your losses.
    I get about 10 emails and the other day, a call(!), from godaddy about a domain I am letting expire.
    I don't even know how you could have a domain expire and not know about it.
    Best of luck in your search for a better hosting solution in the future. You sound like a very reasonable client.
    Kind Regards,
    Jesse

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jun 2001
    Location
    Gotham City
    Posts
    1,852
    THEY FORGOT TO RENEW THEIR DOMAIN
    That is just plain ridiculous...

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    St. Louis, MO
    Posts
    103
    Oh yea - let me add something. I prepaid for an entire year. I am only about 5 months into it. I didn't ask for a full refund - but merely the months remaining and (bluntly stated this next word) possibly an extra month for my horrible experience.
    I didn't ask for a refund for the time I didn't have any problems, but merely what I haven't used and the month I took the loss.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    St. Louis, MO
    Posts
    103
    Oh yea, my domain (myewriters.com) expires 8/5/09 - from memory. I can even tell you when the other 3 domains I own expire; all the same day but still - it's the principal.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    New York, US
    Posts
    490
    Wow. What a terrible experience.
    I take it, by your signature, you're now being hosted with LiquidBlueX Hosting?
    I hope that works out better than XeHost :|

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Location
    Croatia
    Posts
    142
    This is a rather unfortunate experience you've had. Why not set up a free gmail address and use that as a backup if / when your main e-mail is not available.
    You may also consider signing up with 2 hosts, and have 1 as your main host and the second a really cheap backup host where you could just point your e-mail in case the first one goes down.
    Good luck in your future projects.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    St. Louis, MO
    Posts
    103
    I am partnered with Jordan from LiquidBlueX and am helping him start it up and some other aspects of the business but plan to move my own websites to our servers really soon.
    I have a few email addresses but most of my projects take merely a few days so I don't log them offline nor did I think it was necessary to redirect them "in case" - although the idea was starting to sound good lol.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    New York
    Posts
    2,883
    Hello,
    Once again, I am very sorry that you were not happy with your service with us. I would, however, like to point out a few things in your post.
    So comes the time when I FIRST could not access my email. I tried for a few hours before it really bothered me. I had no open projects, nothing to (in theory) lose from not being able to access it. I let it go - didn't submit a ticket, didn't complain, didn't check to see if anyone else noticed it was down - I let it go.
    We have never had any problems reported with our e-mail servers, so your problem here is most likely unique. Had you submit a support ticket to us, we could have assisted you. If you don't let us know about problems you are having, there is no way we can help. You've been with us for 5+ months now and I only see 2 tickets in your entire account, so I'm sure that you couldn't have been having that bad of a stay with us with the exception of these two incidents.
    In regards to downtime, again, we sincerely apologize for the downtime that you faced. However, as I'm sure you can verify (or if not, our uptime reports can, these two outages were the only ones you've experienced in the 5+ months that you have been with us. While we still do not find it acceptable on our end and have since taken measures to prevent them from happening in the future, it's not like we are as unreliable of a provider as you make us out to be.
    And the owner is "out of town" and thinks that is a good excuse for not being at fault.
    Never once did I state that we were not at fault because I was out of town. As you could probably confirm (or any of our other clients for that matter), we are by no means a 1-man operation. In fact, I rarely am the first to respond to support tickets anyways.
    They stated a portion of their Service Level Agreement and claimed I'm not entitled to a refund. However, upon sign-up I never agreed to their SLA - I agreed to their AUP and TOS. I have yet to find a link to their SLA (http://www.xehost.net/sla.php) which I think is an issue, don't you?
    The same is stated in our TOS. Our policy for downtime is to credit the customers for the downtime, not issue refunds for it. It is our right as a business our TOS, the same one that customers are forced to agree to upon first ordering. Please note though, as per our TOS, you were only eligible for a 20% credit for the downtime. We issued you a 100% credit. Sorry if that was not acceptable to you.
    I wish you best of luck with your next hosting provider, hopefully you are able to have a better experience with them.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Sacramento, CA
    Posts
    3,657
    I don't know anything about this particular situation, but how can you tote good uptime when your own main site has been down for days and the link you reference has stopped monitoring your own site because it's been down so much?

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    St. Louis, MO
    Posts
    103
    We have never had any problems reported with our e-mail servers, so your problem here is most likely unique. Had you submit a support ticket to us, we could have assisted you. If you don't let us know about problems you are having, there is no way we can help. You've been with us for 5+ months now and I only see 2 tickets in your entire account, so I'm sure that you couldn't have been having that bad of a stay with us with the exception of these two incidents.
    2008 December 95.02 % Average 2 2222 mins
    2008 November 99.42 % Excellent 1 250 mins
    Directly from your signature link. I've had two outages? As I said, the first one I never checked my domain, your domain, etc. It could have been my fault but I went to Google right after it so I figured it was a server problem.
    However, the other three instances were the dramatic ones that lost me business. Regardless of anything - I did have too long of downtime and - yes - you acknowledge it but are treating me like a child. I can read, I know what your terms state. However, if never once states that I am not entitled to a refund for time that hasn't been used yet - which is what me and my lawyer are going to discuss on Thursday. It is very sad that I had to get a lawyer over this - really the $35 isn't the issue in the matter. I could walk down my street and make up most of it. I have more change in a Gatorade bottle than that - it's the principal that you are refusing to refund me for services that I haven't used.
    I am really shocked that you chimed in on this thread. You can claim anything and everything but my post stands for itself in saying I am more than entitled to my refund. Or wait... I'll make you a deal - we can go with the $15-$20 refund or you can compensate me for the income I lost due to your downtime. Doesn't a simple refund of $20 (less than that) sound much better than $400 for the loss you've caused me?
    If I manipulated your services and caused your billing software to send me the money instead of to you - would you be mad? Of course you would. Get out of your business suit, into my stylish K-Swiss and think about where I'm coming from - stop being so narrow-minded.
    It is principal that I'm after, not the money. The investment to keep my website up isn't my point - it's the money I lost because of the horrible hosting. Your other customers agree with me. Well, of the 4 that I knew of - I am the only one that I know of with an account with you still and only because you are complicating the matter.
    Read the replies to the thread - it is well overdue for my refund. You caused my business a major blow. Did I ever once (before this post) ask for reimbursement for the lost income? No. Simply for the REMAINING time on my package.
    Farewell to XeHost and you can look forward to me never stopping my ranting and raving about this until I either forget or die - whichever comes first.

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