Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : don't walk, RUN away from Powweb!

[jimnyc]

Ok, I posted in here last week looking for a new provider. I'm happy to say I found a new host and am very pleased so far.

I decided to leave Powweb after they started treating paying customers like 2nd class citizens.

I had opened approximately 45 support calls in the short 3 months I've been there. I would have to say honestly that maybe 1/3 of them were resolved. I might also add that only 1/3 of the tickets were even responded to! Calls sat in the database - viewable through member operations, and would then just disappear after several days. I guess that's the easy way to solve problems you can't fix, delete them!

I had the same crontab file there for 3 months. It ran maybe 1 out of every ten times. In 3 months time they couldn't resolve this issue, and there was ZERO communication. I was forced to run my jobs manually. I started receiving 500 internal server errors suddenly last week (as did MANY people, all posted on their forums). After the call getting deleted twice I opened a 3rd call. Even though I wrote 3 very long paragraphs explaining everything I got a canned response from "Eddie" stating "check your permissions". What he didn't know, was that the 3rd call was updated by another tech stating "do the update, we had this same problem on another server a little while ago" When brought to their attention it was met with denial, and a short time later my call cannot be found in the database.

Running a message board, I get an auto generated email anytime the board has errors. In the 3 months at Powweb I received 3,129 emails, all problems with the SQL server. Read their boards, their SQL servers are horrendous!

They have a "guaranteed 24 hour response time" for support calls. Sure, they send you a canned response and then take weeks (if you're lucky" to fix your problem. Go ahead, call their 800 number for support! It has a queue large enough for 1 person - literally! So if they don't answer on first ring you get disconnected!

So now I moved my site. But, I sill pre-paid yearly for my site and still have files on their servers. I made one post on their forums about the fact that I moved my site - it was promptly deleted. Then I noticed I was being followed around by "Alphadesk" and he was deleting every post I made! A moderator suggested to a user to email "qa@powweb.com" (quality assurance) with his gripes. I replied respectfully explaining that I had emailed QA at least 7 times over a 45 day period and never received so much as a reply. Good heavens, we can't have that on the board! It was promptly deleted by Alphadesk.

SQL servers stink, www servers are the slowest I've ever seen, cron doesn't run, email has nonstop issues, support is non-existent.

People say "you get what you pay for". Hell, I didn't even get the $7.77 monthly from Powweb.

Stay as far away from them as possible.

[NexDog]

Let's just say you aren't the first to come here with such a story. There are a few who swear by their service though. So maybe you were just unlucky enough to be on a bad server. But then again, even faulty servers can be fixed. Did you find a new host? Don't forget to update us in a few months to see how you're making out.

[dcmginc]

I once had one of their accounts and they were great for the first year. When it was time to renew for another year the credit card they had on file was no longer valid and instead of asking for a new card and waiting a day for us to get it to them.. they shut the account down and then deleted the content. To this day I find it strange that they were so quick to just delete everything.

I called them and after finally getting someone on the phone I gave them the card number and they turned the account back on. As you can guess there was nothing to do about the missing content.

I closed the account in the same phone call and then called the credit card company to do a chargeback.

Don't waste your time or take a chance with your money on these guys. They're the worst for customer support and someone should have taught them how to be polite with people.

[Gaim Mastr]

Like jimnyc and dcmginc, I've had my fill of PowWeb's horrific service.

I've already found a new host for my four websites and will not be renewing with PowWeb.

For any interested, you can see my last post on PowWeb's forums for yourself (as additional testimonial)...

forum.powweb.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29785

To see my experiences with PowWeb in the 1.5 years I'd paid for their hosting, simply do a search for my screen name on their forums.

PowWeb started out good and quickly fell into the gutter.


BTW jimnyc, I sent alphadesk a PM telling him to remove his cranium from his rectal cavity, in not so pleasant terms.

I mean, the guy is an unpaid volunteer who also suffers from PowWeb's problems. Yet he lets his status as a forum Moderator flood his head with delusions of grandeur.


~~~ Gaim Mastr ~~~

[Kimmikat]

I was on PW til earlier this year, but moved due to mySQL issues. When I closed the hosting account, I did get a email saying cancellations were handled once a week and it would be processed the following Sunday. I still had some time left and expected a refund, an to my surprize it was credited back to my card within a billing period. Until the mySQL issue, my site did have decent uptime.

One of my clients is still there and until recently she didn't have much issues, but recently her site has been down 3 times within a month. I already suggested a few hosts to her, and awaiting her response. I think they're growing too fast and their boxes are getting overburdened.

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by Gaim Mastr
BTW jimnyc, I sent alphadesk a PM telling him to remove his cranium from his rectal cavity, in not so pleasant terms.

I mean, the guy is an unpaid volunteer who also suffers from PowWeb's problems. Yet he lets his status as a forum Moderator flood his head with delusions of grandeur.


~~~ Gaim Mastr ~~~

The thread you reference is the exact one I was speaking of. Tbone had advised you to forward that along to qa@powweb.com and I just added my 2 cents. Emailing ANYONE there is a complete waste of time. Not one single response to any of my complaints. Hell, look at their forums, it's FULL of users complaining about cgi and sql issues and they are ALL saying the same thing - Powweb is not responding nor acknowledging that there is an issue.

I had sent Alphadesk a PM as well, being that he locked your thread, and mine was polite. He couldn't even be bothered to reply. I had sent PM's to "Nickswf" who is the supervisor and "Eddie" who is an admin - neither could be bothered to reply. All 3 showed they were read under message tracking.

Best of luck to you with your new host, Gaim Mastr. Just be happy as I am that you no longer need to rely on Powweb's services any longer.

[Kimmikat]

Some of the mods on the PW mboard do visit here. Maybe one of them can get an PW Admin over here to explain why all the issues over there.

Originally posted by Gaim Mastr


BTW jimnyc, I sent alphadesk a PM telling him....

[Gaim Mastr]

KimmiKat wrote...

Some of the mods on the PW mboard do visit here. Maybe one of them can get an PW Admin over here to explain why all the issues over there.

Yes, I've seen the screen names here as well. However, the Admins very rarily respond to such posts on their own PowWeb forums. Pretty much no chance at all getting a legitimate/valid response on this or any other forum.


For the record though, I have noticed that when alphadesk does genuinely want to help a PowWeb customer, that he can be very helpful indeed.

At the same time, he has a well known history of summarily deleting legitimate posts without any notice to the paying customer as to the reason(s) behind his decisions.

Like I'd mentioned to alphadesk, it's people like him which serve to enforce the desires of myself and others to leave PowWeb for much greener pastures elsewhere.

I've run bulletin boards/message boards/forums for nearly two decades now. And the unreasonable treatment of registered members is the number one bane of any bulletin board's/website's existence. If alphadesk were a staff member on any one of my forums, he'd have been removed with a stern warning a long time ago.


But I'm NOT her to "talk trash" about alphadesk or any other person. I'm only using the situation as an example of just one of the problems myself and others have experienced with our PowWeb services (or lack thereof).

[jhan]

alot of people are leaving powweb

[twist]

I wouldn't even know where to begin...

1. There liars, cheats, and theifs.
2. I don't believe a god **** word they say
3. All the BS about mods not working for powweb, wake up

To anybody out there that even has a thought about signing up with powweb. If you don't do these simple things be ready for some hurt.

1. Take a look at these so-called powweb forum moderators. Many have website links. If you actually go and look at there websites there 10 minute front page projects. NO mysql, NO php, NO real content. Most are text, a few pictures and links. Tell yourself, why would a person with a 3-page website write 2,000 posts and be a moderator on a website hosting forum?!? I could duplicate any website a powweb forum moderator has in the time it takes me to write this post.

2. So our these self-titled happy customers who moderate powweb forums for free because of their sole love for the company or actually just normal joes or powweb employees? If your too blind to notice this you deserve powweb.

3. Why would a person choose to write 2,000 posts? What benefit would it have for them? Promote thier own fabulous website, get a free crappy account at powweb?

Pay close attention to this
alphadesk - powweb forum moderator - 4,976 Posts

Look at alphadipsh*t's website. I've seen 10 year olds make better websites. Look real close... 90% of the content is just links to real websites. The rest is just garbage, probably lifted from real websites.

Don't believe me? You see that annoying javascript clock at the bottom of every page? Wow, if you look at the sourcecode it looks like he must really know his programming to write such a complicated script. He must have wrote it since there are no credits, right?

Try http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamici...analog_dev.htm

You know what the only difference between the original and alphad!cks? These three lines,

//Analog clock script- By Kurt (kurt.grigg@virgin.net)
//Script featured on Dynamic Drive
//Visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com for this script and more

You think i'm done, LOL

Now look at this page http://www.alphadesk.net/html_forms.htm

WOW, Alphaloser must REALLY understand websites to write such a awesome tutorial on forms.

Now look at this page http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/forms.html

Copied and pasted, no credit to source either. So he's a thief.

Back to the point...

These moderators come out of the woodwork, I see new ones every week and they all mysteriously have thousands of posts and 1-page websites.

These are just the few employees that work at this company making up endless new names, half of the posts you see from satisfied customers are also these powweb employees. I saw a user with over 2,000 posts, always defending and praising powweb. His website was 1 F***ING page. Give me a break.

My point, there forums are completely useless, don't believe anything you read on there unless it is negative. Their email, I don't want to even go into that, besides I think others in this thread have already covered that.

And watch out. The powweb crew does cruise this forum. They will post defensive posts about there crap service. Be very leary of anyone who just happens to wonder by this thread and post that powweb is ok or they have never experienced any problems. Just ask them for their website. I guarantee you'll never hear from them again.

Good luck, if you want more, I got a load of it. This post is just a small taste of what your a$$ has coming to you if you even think about siging up for powweb.

P.S.
AlphaInbred added a script so I couldn't copy and paste from his forms webpage (god forbid I steal his stolen code). So I opened it up in Opera to copy the text and guess what it, no surprise, the whole page fell apart. O yeah, why am I picking on this loser so much, because I am a programmer and I hate code theifs.

[twist]

Originally posted by Gaim Mastr
But I'm NOT her to "talk trash" about alphadesk

You should be

[Reptilian Feline]

twist - there is only one flaw in your reasoning. You say that many mods have simple one-pagish websites that they link to in the powweb forum. They might have more websites elsewhere, but choose to link to a simple one in the forum.

Namecalling isn't a good way to go either, even if you're upset. You might go easy on that in the future. It brings down the validity of your other points.

Good catch with the copyright and code theft. I went to alphadesk's site and checked out his tutorials on tables to see if he had taken some of my work. It didn't look that way, though.

[darkpunk99]

Wow. If the load time on their forums is any sign of the state of their servers, it should send potential clients running in the opposite direction. It took over 3 minutes for a single forums page to load for me!

[Kimmikat]

I also visited Alphadesk's website earlier today and noticed the same thing regarding the tutorials, although his "version" loaded faster. It's possible he could used the "Reprints and Permissions" feature on the HTML Goodies site. I went back to check if he gave credit to HTML Goodies anywhere on the site, but the server was dead as a duck at the moment.

Originally posted by Reptilian Feline
Good catch with the copyright and code theft. I went to alphadesk's site and checked out his tutorials on tables to see if he had taken some of my work. It didn't look that way, though.

[jimnyc]

3:30am where their forums are located and it takes about 2-3 minutes for each page to load. Server needs a reboot, and this typically takes Powweb 4-6 hours to do during non-business hours. They state 24x7 support - yeah, sure!

And Alphadesk does not give any references to HTML goodies on his site, at least not as of late last night. Of course his site won't load this morning, but maybe he took it offline for updates now that he has been nabbed stealing code.