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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Posts
    379

    Company's To Avoid List **Please Read, It Will Save You Quite A Few Headaches!**

    Whatever you guys do... PLEASE I mean PLEASEEEE do not sign up with any of these companies, I mean normally i'm not one to complain unless I am COMPLETELY SCREWED OVER and these compaines have done it:

    OnlineDataCorp (http://www.onlinedatacorp.com): First problem I had with them was small, it took about 2 weeks for money from the account to my bank account (not a big deal). Well two months later they canceled my account because I had 2 chargebacks (from people that used fraudlent cards, there's nothing I can do about that really). Canceling my account after two months would have been fair enough BUT three months later there still charging me for the account they closed even after they said they closed the account (they told me they did SERVERAL TIMES). And if that's not bad enough I got an email saying he would be refunding the yearly fee since they closed that account.... Well big surpise that was never done (they are sure good at taking money but not deposting any).

    DonHost (http://www.donhost.com/): When I first started selling hosting about 1 1/2 years ago it was through these guys. Damn what a mistake, they randomly delete sites / files with no warning and no email and when my clients would email asking me what happed to there files / site I would have to make up some BS which I hate doing... Then after my company started taking off (I had about 300 sites) they decide to kick me off (even though i wasn't even near any of the quotas all the sites I was hosting were quite small. Well 300 angry customers later and weeks moving them all manually to a new server I thought I was finally done with DonHost's BS. Well guess what? They charged me the monthly fee for the server after they kicked me off. I submited a charge back but it was rejected by my credit card company hell if I know why...

    PayPal (http://www.paypal.com/): PayPal is good if you have no problems but as soon as they lock your account it is hell trying to get it back I don't have as much remorse towards paypal as I do towards the other two but they are still far from an honest company. View http://www.paypalsucks.com http://www.paypalwarning.com.

    So anyone that reads this PLEASE AVOID THESE COMPANIES AT ALL COSTS!!!!!!!!!!!

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2002
    Posts
    453
    just move all money from paypal to your bank account daily. even if its only 50 cents.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Posts
    379
    Yeah trust me I do, paypal isn't as bad as the other two but just there whole "suspended account / locked account" thing is shady as hell.

  4. #4
    I think we need to add PowWeb and CI Ho$t up there.

    PayPal is the mafia organized under the guise of a legitamte corporation.

  5. #5
    Onlinedatcorp.com ---> Avoid at all costs

    Paypal ---> Too much freezing of accounts (without justification)

    Donhost ---> Never used them, so no comment.

  6. #6
    HostPacket

    after a major disaster - ignored a "spammer on your machine" alert so their hardware supplier - rackshack apparently formatted the disks. Turns out that along with ignoring alerts these guys had not backed anything up - as the promised in their TOS.

    Mad panic to rebuild our sites

    A month later they are not responding to support requests, still haven't got php installed correctly, don't take new customers and look like they are not long for this world. In fact I don't think they have touched the machines in weeks.

    Refunds that were promised have not been sent out. Although a couple of people have received them.

    So if they do start siging people up again - be warned
    Cryptonomicon
    --------------------

  7. #7
    The companies above are just a drop in the ocean. While, on one hand it's a shame that there are so many companies mistreating their customers, on the other hand, it means more business for the hard-working honest companies. Evolution and survival of the fittest doesn't only apply to living things... it works in business too

    As for PayPal, I agree. Unless they suspend you, they are a great company.

    Best Regards,
    Boris

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Aug 2002
    Posts
    645
    I'm afraid that we are stuck with PayPal as they will have a certain control of the market for some time to come. Although I think they are not as properly managed as they could be, I do feel that they have a lot of potential if they can continue to get their act together. From what i hear, from a certain company aquiring PayPal *cough*ebay*cough*, things are subject to change (for better or for worse? time will tell).

  9. #9

    Is there a way to keep a running list?

    There really should be a running thread or a section for posting things like this?
    Last edited by sphere2; 10-07-2002 at 09:48 PM.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Posts
    379
    Yeah it would be nice if we could get some kind of list of companies to avoid so no one else gets ripped off.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Indiana
    Posts
    421
    I hope noone gets the wrong impression of me for saying this but.....I almost feel like a customer needs to get ripped off so that they can become more knowledgable about what they're looking for (I'm speaking from a customer's standpoint). I think it makes you a smarter consumer by having that happen to you because now you know what to look out for (for example, big 'unlimited' campaigns that have a 5GB limit or something....you know to be weary of unlimited bandwidth companies in the future, etc.).

    Theres always going to be those companies that do that and have those kinds of business ethics (such as PayPal, C!Host, etc.) and theres not much you can do about those kinds of companies, but you know who and what to watch out for next time. And like mentioned earlier, there are a lot more ethical people and business than non-ethical ones....you've just gotta find 'em.

    When searching for any kind of company to do business with, I don't really think you should be looking for the BAD comments and staying away from those but rather find the ones with good comments. Theres usually going to be a lot more happy customers than non-happy ones (with the exception of Compaq, AOL, Microsoft, Ameritech, etc.)

    Good luck out there.
    "Last year, some resourceful software enthusiasts cracked Sony Music's proprietary technology simply by scribbling around the edges of the disc with a Magic Marker pen, thus enabling playback on any device." - news.com

  12. #12
    More compnaies to avoid:

    At&T (and their downstreams)
    Sprint (and their downstreams)
    Verio (who hasn't blocked all of Verio yet is beyond me)
    XO (same as verio)

  13. #13
    Paypal: Never had any problems yet..

    Donhost: O yes, don't get me started lol.

    They start slagging off us resellers saying that we don't take action against customers that misuse the servers for MP3's etc, and yet donhost themselves don't even supply you with a filemanager to check your own customers accounts. The response I received when I asked about how to check, was "Send me a list of the usernames you want to check, and I'll send you a list of passwords by return of email" - Yes, I'll bet a hacker would have had fun monitoring my pop3 connection if I had any customers..

    Donhosts Control panel is really crap too. You can literally create accounts give them space and trasnfer, and add domains. Thats it. You cannot do anything else! - No multiple FTP or anything - even subdomains are manual. They don't support .htaccess files, (which my very 1st customer wasn't very happy about [Donhost if you read this, thanks for telling me that BEFORE I signed up with you]). With regards to account setup, thats all manual too. No automatic scripts or anything. I did ask if them if it would be possible to use an automatic setup script on their servers, and if so what would I need to do? - answer "I suppose in theory it's possible, but it's best to stick to the manual way".

    Phone calls wern't exactly answered with enthusiasm either. I think his name was Daniel if I remember correctly - he wasn't very helpful. Once again, I can only repeat that their Control panel is utter rubbish. I know some people say CPanel is buggy, but at least it has the features you need!

    The final straw was when Donhost in all their wisdom decided to give us resellers a big slagging off (see above) despite the fact that they probably made more money from us, than we made from them. They also announced that we'd be loosing 30GB of data transfer (thats over 50% they took from us), and that they were introducing some new idea for resellers to gain "Trust points" where you gain browny points if your a good reseller and deal with your own troublesome customers [IF DONHOST GAVE US A DECENT C/P AND FILEMANAGER THAT WOULD NEVER BE A PROBLEM].
    Quite honestly, the new "Trust" thing was a waste of a resellers time. You can find another host which has far less agro than this for your reselling needs.

    I'd also like to point out Donhosts very expensive data transfer - £16 per extra GB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, £16 when I was a reseller for each EXTRA GB you used (if they hadn't deleted your reseller account before you got to that limit).
    Last edited by Turboz; 10-07-2002 at 06:35 PM.

  14. #14
    lol when i saw this i was expecting a list of *'s
    --
    Rich

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Indiana
    Posts
    421
    Originally posted by richy
    lol when i saw this i was expecting a list of *'s
    "Last year, some resourceful software enthusiasts cracked Sony Music's proprietary technology simply by scribbling around the edges of the disc with a Magic Marker pen, thus enabling playback on any device." - news.com

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    Colorado
    Posts
    129
    i'm sorry, WM troy, but i think it behooves people to research ALL comments, bad and good.

    yes, people have bad experiences and become very vocal. but i'd rather know the potential of a service provider (my host is becoming one of them) to cause me more harm than good by reading the experiences of others.

    ignoring the bad is not only letting some providers (on here it's mostly hosts) slip by with some fairly justified negative feedback, and/or burying your head in the sand.

    if someone is slamming your company, the best you can do is respond to them, state your case. most people on here are adults and can ferret out unfair/unwarranted criticism.

    better yet, never let your customers get to that point in the first place.

    ciao

    p.s. fyi: paypal's purchase by ebay has become official... so they are no longer an independent company. now whether or not ebay (a company you can't even talk to on the phone) is a good place or not is another discussion entirely!

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