Robbing Your Customers
October 10, 2007 on 2:24 pm | In Business, Musings, Promotions, Rants, Tech News by Josh Jones |
It’s something we like to do every day!
Yep, the secret to our crazy low prices and amazing ferraris, finally revealed:
We take your billing address and go to your homes at night to steal your jewelry, plasma TVs, and all valuable toiletries!
Not to mention all the credit card numbers we get fund our wild vegas benders (roulette is a great way to launder money) and illicit basketball leagues!
(Damn PayPal and Google Checkout, not sharing the credit card info with us!)
Yeah, overall it’s a pretty sweet scheme we’ve had these past 10 years; and now that we’ve gone into hiding you’ll never catch us, coppers!
Okay Okay Okay
Although I admit what we’ve been doing has been pretty bad, it pales in comparison to what I just found out one of our favorite competitors Lunarpages just did to rob their customers.
According to this thread at Web Hosting Talk, Lunarpages a few days ago turned the default 404 pages for all sites they host (who haven’t specifically customized them already) to one of those ultra-sleazy “domain parking”-style setups. It still happening right now… and here’s an example of a 404 page on a site some poor shmoe has hosted by them, aeroeco.net!
I’m impressed! So roundabout, so complex, so sneaky! We only ever do the simple stuff like read our customers email for blackmail material, or kidnap their pets and their kids.
Maybe Lunarpages doesn’t agree, and maybe it doesn’t seem sooo bad to you, but what they’re doing is outright theft. It’s the Internet equivalent of shoplifting.
For websites, traffic is everything. Stealing a site’s traffic is nothing less than web homicide!
You see, anybody who got a default 404 error before this change, probably just backed up to the site they were on and continued. But now, it seems probable they’ll end up clicking one of the links they see there, or possibly use the “search this site” form, which does nothing of the sort! It searches “http://searchportal.information.com/” instead and Lunarpages gets a kickback!
Of course, Go Daddy has been doing stuff like this for ages.. if you register a domain with them and don’t set anything up on it you’re going to get a lame page filled with lame affiliate links. But at least with parked domains, it’s not like there’s an actual site up that you’re injecting content into! Not to mention, they’re Go Daddy. We’d expect nothing less from them!
And, remember the time four years ago where VeriSign tried exactly this with every non-registered domain? ICANN made them stop less than a week later, after a huge (by Internet nerd standards) public outcry.
These sorts of scams (and the entire domain parking industry) are just a server variant to good old desktop spyware that changes your default search engine or dns error pages on your browser. But just because they’re not surreptitiously installing anything on end users computers doesn’t mean it’s not crooked.
(Oh, speaking of crooked.. yesterday our cool anti-spam site spam.la stopped working, as though the domain had expired. Looking it up, it was paid through July 2008 though! Upon contacting the registry, it turns out that although we had paid Domain Discover to renew the domain in July, they had never paid the registry! Yet another creative way to rob your customers that we should try sometime!)
Why, Lunarpages, Why?
I’m guessing it’s the money?
But come on guys, is it really worth it? How much money are we talking about?
I remember one time when this skeezy SEO guy was asking me “How many domains do you guys host?” I told him “zillions”. He said, “How many are parked?” I said, “I dunno, some fraction of a zillion?” He said: “Do you like to make money?” And I said, “I dunno, it depends…” To which he said, “Do you like to make money?” To which I said, “It depends, is the money one dollar and how much **** do I have to suck to get it?”
Okay, I didn’t really say that, but it was what I was thinking. And in a real tough, bad-ass voice too.
It’s obviously a stupid question, “Do you like to make money?” The question is, “Would you do X if I paid you $Y?“
Lunarpages must be hurting pretty bad right now to sink this low. I also noticed they dropped their 1-800 number and only have a 1-714 now! Shoulda been like us, and not offered phone support in the first place, eh?!
But, I gotta give them a break. It’s easy to be all high and mighty and to “Don’t be evil” when you’re rolling in the dough like Google. But the ethics get a lot murkier when the choice is between stealing a tiny bit of traffic from your customers and selling your first born.
(Take Yahoo! for example. Back in 2000 (stock price $100) we tried to advertise with them, and they were all high and mighty about “no animation, no hard sell, no general trashiness.” Now (stock price $28), their site is covered in expanding flash ads, including some for… gasp… Lunarpages!)
Who are your customers?
It’s a good question!
And I don’t mean, are they small businesses, web designers, women, dwarfs, fifth graders, deaf, or asian? I mean, are your customers “People who need a website host” or are your customers “People who pay for traffic”? It seems Lunarpages is trying to get both.
But, you can’t have both. You really have to choose just one and stick with it!
It’s pretty simple in the beginning… your customers are the people (or businesses) who pay for your product (or service). But then later, as you grow, you start to realize that entire “customer base”… that “audience”… is a potential “product” in and of itself. And there are plenty of other types of “customers” who will pay handsomly for it.
Don’t fall for it!
Because your customers don’t like being a product! And, when they finally catch on that they’re PAYING to be SOLD, they’ll vamoose! And you’ll be done… stuck without customers or product!
Just yesteday there was some talk of eBay pissing off its sellers by putting targeted Google ads on their listings… effectively trying to steal their customers’ customers.
This is actually an interesting case.. because who are eBay’s customers, really? Is it the sellers, who directly pay Ebay? Or is it the shoppers, who are the originators of that money the sellers then use to pay eBay?
I’d say, it’s the shoppers. Because even though auction sites are sort of a weird “chicken and the egg” problem, in actuality, it’s just an “egg” problem, and the egg is shoppers.
Because, one thing I’ve learned in this world, is that if you’ve got people trying to spend money, you’ll have no problem finding people trying to take it!
So actually, I’d say eBay is probably fine putting those ads in. If they can help the shoppers find what they’re looking for, even if it’s not through an auction on eBay itself, they’ll be satisfied and come back. The “power sellers” can go suck an egg.. if they leave there’ll be plenty of other sellers who aren’t quite as proud to fill the void.
What to do?
Well, being completely unbiased in the matter, I say vote with your feet!
Any Lunarpages customers who want to switch to DreamHost, we’ll be happy to have you… and we promise to never, never, ever, ever, do anything of this sort, ever! You’re already paying us for hosting.. that should really be enough! (And Lunarpages, if you’re hurting so bad.. just raise prices!)
P.S. Use the promo code LOONEYPAGES when you sign up and get your first year completely free.. it works for current Lunarpages customers only!
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I am sure COMMUNISTS soon will come here say that it isn’t fair and that you are STEALING customers from Lunarpages.
Comment by Anonymous Capitalist — October 10, 2007 #
Now THAT is a smiting that would even make The Lord envious… awesome usage of the power of post!
Comment by VOO — October 10, 2007 #
It’s even dirtier than as outlined here…
They made the change with NO ANNOUNCEMENT to their customers… some discovered it and began to raise hell in their forum. People were questioning the legality of the change (since the ad pages hijack their domain name and make it look as if it is THEIR OWN domain that is endorsing these “search results”) and LunarPages then snuck a change into their TOS… which, BTW, actually has THE BALLS to say that customers may use these wonderful SQUATTERLY error pages AT NO EXTRA COST!!! How SUPER FUCKIN NICE OF THEM!!!!!
So VERY QUICKLY after the outcry on the Lunar Pages Support Forum, the SPINELESS mods moved the discussion to the HIDDEN Reviews and Feedback section that one must have 10 posts in order to view… which does a LOT OF GOOD for those who are looking into the service and want to read some REVIEWS!
They commanded that the thread only be used to give instructions on creating custom error pages and NOT TO VOICE DISCONTENT, but it didn’t matter, because very soon it would be DELETED ALTOGETHER with no further mention of the DOMAIN SQUATTER error pages allowed… with mods around the clock ready to delete anything that tried to slip through.
There are many, many customers… and common sense would say MOST who will never even know that this has happened because they don’t spend HOURS a day hanging out on theirs or any other hosting forum… it is these customers that LUNAR PAGES is PREYING ON, and PRAYING FOR!
Lunar Pages Is Of The DEVIL! (and THAT’s what I think you should change the title of this blog post too!)
Comment by dwr — October 10, 2007 #
While we’re on the topic of Lunarpages, we never did hear back from them about this…
http://blog.dreamhost.com/2007/05/21/the-gloves-are-off/
One can only assume that on top of everything else, they’re also lousy basketball players.
- Jeff @ DreamHost
Comment by Jeff @ DreamHost — October 10, 2007 #
Yeah, if their forum mods (which also seem to be tech reps) are any indication, they are definitely a bunch of weenies.
Comment by dwr — October 10, 2007 #
This is one of my favorite blog posts of the year - anywhere! I became aware of the “custom error pages fiasco” while doing some development work on behalf of a Lunarpages customer.
I’ll admit that I was pretty shocked when I saw what they had done (after borking a url), and I went to the read the whole Lunarpages TOS. Wow. Frankly, it’s a TOS I could to which I could never agree, and not solely because of the error page issue (though that *is* a huge problem with me).
Sections 6.1 and 6.2 (under section 6 “6 OWNERSHIP OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY; CONFIDENTIALITY”) are also absurd.
Read literally, 6.1 precludes you from allowing access to the services to a developer you hire to help you (”You further agree not to provide access to the Lunarpages services to any third party.”)
6.1 also could be construed to prevent you from sharing “workaround”, ‘methodolgoes for using the service, and “fixes” with others (” Any and all right or title to any engineering, coding, programming or customer service work around or other modification of the Lunarpages service shall also remain the sole property or Lunarpages.”)
6.2 is just as onerous, in my opinion:
“…you may have access to certain information and materials relating to the Lunarpages business, customers, software technology and marketing which Lunarpages treats as confidential (hereinafter “Confidential Information”). You agree to at all times during the term of this agreement and otherwise as set forth herein: (i) hold in confidence, and not disclose or reveal to any person or entity, any “Confidential Information” without the express prior written consent of Lunarpages; and (ii) not use or disclose any of the “Confidential Information” for any purpose at any time, other than pursuant to your rights under this agreement for the purpose intended.”
This puts the burden on *you* to determine what information “Lunarpages treats as confidential (hereinafter “Confidential Information).”, as it is not specified what, precisely that information is. To my way of thinking, any information they allow a customer to have is, by its very nature, *not* “confidential”.
And get this part: those “restrictions” (whatever they may be, outlive your association with the service - “These obligations shall continue indefinitely for so long as the Confidential Information is a trade secret under applicable law and shall continue for three (3) years following termination of this Agreement with respect to Confidential Information, which does not rise to the level of a trade secret.”
Really! Trying to suppress free discussion of an ex-customer’s experiences with the service here, are we?
It also looks to me as though “voting with your feet” might not even save a Lunarpages refugee from the tentacles of their lawyers, given section 11 of their TOS:
“11 SURVIVAL
Sections 1, 3 through 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, and 15 through 21, inclusive, of this agreement shall survive the termination of this agreement and shall remain in full force and effect after any such termination. ”
I’m wondering if they used the same legal counsel to prepare their TOS as they use for certain other legal work? I see what looks to me to be a lot of the same thinking evidenced in their TOS as was evidenced by another recent “brilliant” legal tactic (see blog.dreamhost.com - “The Gloves Are Off”).
Comment by rlparker — October 10, 2007 #
Regarding the “I stole from WalMart” sign, is it still cruel and unusual punishment if you don’t believe there’s any social stigma involved in stealing from WalMart?
Comment by Sabrejack — October 10, 2007 #
Lunarpages must be in trouble.
First they removed the toll free number, then they take down live chat, even for the dedicated customers, started charging for the formerly free managed hosting for dedicated, they fired a ton of staff with no warning, they closed phone support on the weekends, and cut back the hours they offered phone support during the week, raised domain registration prices, and now this.
Lunarpages suck.
Comment by Ex-Customer — October 10, 2007 #
Er that should have read Lunarpages sucks.
Comment by Ex-Customer — October 10, 2007 #
I’d love to hear how many time the “LOONEYPAGES” promo code gets used. Sucks to be lunarpages! :D
Comment by Mike — October 10, 2007 #
Darn, I missed the promotion by a day! Even then, I am so anxious to leave Lunarpages, missing out on the discount doesn’t bother me that much. I’m already going to lose some money since my contract doesn’t end until next year.
I’ve been through a lot with them but this last incident was the last straw. I already implemented custom error pages so my site wouldn’t display these sketchy pages any way. What bothered me was the sneaky way they did this and their exploitation of customers who were unaware of the change and had no custom error pages.
Before this oh-so-popular change, they implemented a policy where affiliates would get paid after three sales. If someone signs up one person a year, that’s a three year wait to get paid.
Seeing how they shafted their biggest cheerleaders (affiliates) and their sneaky exploitation of customers, I didn’t want to stick around to see what other money-grubbing tactics this desperate company was going to unleash upon us.
I’m looking forward to completing my move to DreamHost. :)
Comment by Former Looney — October 10, 2007 #
Hey Former Looney,
I’d be surprised if the code has expired…they just posted it today! If that doesn’t work you can use my referral discount: MPDISCOUNT
That gives you $90 OF. I think a 1 Year plan is a little over $100 so you get a year for like twenty bucks plus a free domain, and then you get to join me in happy customer land. I’ve been with Dreamhost for over 8 years. As a web developer I’m really annoyed anytime I have to help people using a different host.
Comment by mahalie — October 10, 2007 #
I tried to use the promotional code, but it said it was for “refugees only”.
I’m definitely a refugee, but I’m not sure how I prove that on the sign up page. ^_^;
Comment by NK — October 10, 2007 #
Erp, that’s $90 OFF, as in ninety free dollars off of any plan over 1 year (doesn’t work for month-to-month accounts). Thanks.
Comment by mahalie — October 10, 2007 #
http://img.la/1/3e3d12bb4944e2001019646232d10f6f/noodle.gif
Comment by azn — October 10, 2007 #
Thanks for the offer, mahalie. :) What I had meant about missing out on the promotion was that I already put in my order yesterday. I got a discount from a Lunarpages connection that saved me a lot of money so I didn’t lose out *too* much.
I wish moving hosts wasn’t so hard.
Comment by Former Looney — October 10, 2007 #
Mahali, this isn’t the place to spam codes — especially a crappy $90 one. Dreamhost offers a free year, and your idea of helping is making a $7 profit.
If the code doesn’t work, just contact Dreamhost and they’ll get it worked out for you. I wouldn’t use any others posted here as they are pure spam.
Comment by 1 — October 10, 2007 #
[...] Read this Dreamhost blog entry for more info. [...]
Pingback by A Web Hosting Guide » Blog Archive » Dreamhost Eats Lunarpages for Lunch — October 10, 2007 #
I tried the LOONEYPAGES promo code to try to sign up but it says Promo code only valid for refugees. I am a Lunapage client as of now. just look up the whois for vernsdidj.com and you will see it.
Comment by Vern — October 10, 2007 #
1,
Dreamhost is unable to override the coupon system so if the Lunarpages refugee code doesn’t work you’re out of luck.
Comment by LP Refugee — October 10, 2007 #
Ah, you actually have to choose “transfer domain and registration” for the looneypages code to work.. you can enter a fake auth code if you don’t REALLY want to transfer your registration to us.
Comment by Josh Jones — October 10, 2007 #
Many thanks, Josh!
Comment by NK — October 10, 2007 #
Josh, you should edit that information (how to make the coupon code work) into the article!
Comment by dwr — October 10, 2007 #
you guys are ingenious
Comment by Delmore — October 10, 2007 #
[...] a move to lure away customers from their competitor, DreamHost is now offering one year of free hosting for Lunarpages refugees who want to escape this sleazy [...]
Pingback by Unofficial DreamHost Blog » Blog Archive » Free Hosting to Lunarpages Refugees — October 10, 2007 #
[...] WHT and possibly other web hosting forums, and even other hosting companies have taken noticed and acted cleverly (btw, good one [...]
Pingback by Lunarpages 404 Fiasco - How NOT to put off the fire | HostingFu — October 10, 2007 #
[...] Robbing Your Customers. Explicación de las técnicas sucias empleadas por el hoster anterior (Lunarpages) y otras para robar clientes. [...]
Pingback by Dreamhost’s blog II at Zurco.org — October 11, 2007 #
Thanks Josh, Now signed up as a DreamHost memeber. *S* forum name Darth AkSarBen elsewhere. I got an email from DreamHost, probably auto generated, saying to click on a link to effect the transfer, and to not transfer (which I don’t want) do nothing ie don’t reply.
So just ignore that particular email right? Later on I can transfer if I want, it is just that this one domain was less than 60 days from being re-registered.
Vern
vernon at vernsdidj.com
Comment by Vern — October 11, 2007 #
[...] have said it better myself” file, check out Josh Jone’s post, “Robbing Your Customers” on the DreamHost Blog (and find out how to get a FREE year of web hosting if you are a [...]
Pingback by Lunarpages to Customers: “All your 404 pages are belong to to us” — LPRefugees.com — October 11, 2007 #
dreamhost, i hope you outlive me. thanks josh, this is one of your finest posts.
i have a client now (i’m a coding robot) who is set on signing up with lunarpages. it’s sad though because it’s very hard to make people realize that there are better hosts when they are blindsighted by ads proclaiming “#1 HOST” and believing that nonsense?! have you all seen that on the lunarpages front page at the bottom? #1 in everything. how about that? oh i’m sure it’s on the up and up. no site would ever PAY (or provide, use your imagination… favors) to have tiny image awards. but hey, they make me feel relaxed and well, gee, awful nice to know that lunarpages is the #1 host on the web. now how do i transfer my dreamhost account since 2002 with 10+ domains? stop, stop, stop… don’t tell me how, you want me to get all hari-kari on my noggin?
all this does not surprise me. recently a client insisted on hosting with GoFatty (yes, that’s a pun) because they had seen commercials on television. I mentioned to the client alternatives in hosting providers but no sell and no go, the horse blinders were on and I think racing in the clients’ mind was something to the effect, “what? well, they can’t be very good if they don’t have a commercial on tv and a racing car, don’t you think, huh, huh??”
it’s just like trying to convince someone to try the coffee roaster next door to the starbucks. brands get tattooed on the brain and they, ooohhhhh, make us feel so comfortable and… safe.
i like brands and i look pretty damn good these levis jeans and they fit well, like dreamhost.
thanks again for being a straight up hosting company and not dicking us around. it’s folks like you that can go home at night and live with yourself.
OF
Comment by O F — October 11, 2007 #
P.S. - LUNARPAGES SUCKS
Comment by O F — October 11, 2007 #
Amen.
Comment by DhammaSeeker — October 11, 2007 #
Challange To DreamHost………
haha, let me get this straight.
Lunarpages has been offering FREE webhosting (no strings attached) for ALL schools k-12 in the US for the past 3 years. We now allow our customers to participate in that program by not altering their 404 error pages and leaving them as “default” (they can change them anytime they wish to not participate) whereby any proceeds are used to assist in supporting this program.
If that is robbery, meybe you should move to afganistan or Iran.
I challange Dreamhost to develope a program that gives back to the community (they could start with trying to give back to their customers with some support?)
oh ya, and this is the best post ever josh….keep comming up with more delusional BS to try to gimmik ppl into using DH, have another beer, play another game of pool…seems like you been up all night this time.
Comment by Lunarpages — October 11, 2007 #
Challange To DreamHost………
http://www.lunarpages.com/education/
Comment by Lunarpages — October 11, 2007 #
Am I the only one who finds it totally ironic that the forum link (http://www.lunarforums.com/forum) gives me a 404 page?
Comment by Dylan Bennett — October 11, 2007 #
DreamHost already offers completely free web hosting to all charitable 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations.
DreamHost also collects and fully matches donations from its customers on behalf of two charitable organizations each quarter and has done so for the past several years.
DreamHost does all of this without altering the content of their customers’ domains.
Comment by DreamHost — October 11, 2007 #
Lunarpages Says:
“I challange Dreamhost to develope a program that gives back to the community”
Dreamhost offeres free webhosting to ANY non-profit.
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Non-profit_Discount
And when Dreamhost had multiple packages, it was the largest (Strictly Business) package that was offered.
“(they could start with trying to give back to their customers with some support?)”
Dreamhost gives me AWESOME support. I have had all of my support requests dealt with very promptly and very much to my satisfaction.
“We now allow our customers to participate in that program by not altering their 404 error pages and leaving them as “default””
And do you CLEARLY and VISIBLY let them know this up front? You “allow” them to participate, “at no additional charge” (per Lunarpages TOS)? How sweet of you. Dreamhost, as I have shown, offers ALL non-profits free hosting, but they don’t try to sneak a way for me to pay for it through SCUMMY DOMAIN SQUATTER sites, they just pay for it out of their own profits, straight up.
You Lunarpages people obviously occupy a different moral plane, one that I am very grateful not to share. You’re like The Bush administration, trying to justify bullshit deeds with weak moral platitudes, and people like your mod, Mitch The Bitch are like Shawn Hannity, cheering them on and helping them to cover their tracks when needed.
You lost your challenge before you even made it.
Comment by VOO — October 11, 2007 #
Well this just goes to show what a bunch of uninformed desperate “pool playing, beer drinking” sort of outfit Dreamhost actually are.
Did you get bored of trashing your office and boasting of your eviction already? I suspect rather than being evicted you chose to move and put out the same style of garbage on your blog as this. “oh look at us fooling around in the midst of disaster, what a cool bunch of guys we are.” insert cute gnome on a truck here
Hostgator did this kind of thing months ago and I remember the same outcry at the time, and many others will doubtless follow suit.
Stop trying to fool people into thinking you are the coolest and most honest when in fact the old “double bluff” routine is being presented here.
IMHO Lunarpages did nothing wrong, on the contrary it looks to me like a pure business decision any informed and well advised company would implement.
These pages are not “stolen” and anyone who understands the most basic properties of the .htaccess file can remove them in a second.
Any monitery gain is being directed into educational funding. (pity is wasn’t around when you guys were in the 6th grade huh? You may have learned a little.)
Looks like they even have FAQ’s on the subject, so your “techs” can maybe read that for some pointers.
I’m staying with Lunarpages and personally feel that my site is safe in the hands of a company that actually know how to manage a large business.
As far as I know they have not been “evicted” at any time, and rather than fool around trying to trash the reputation of competitors, they are too busy looking after customers and opening new datcenters, installing new servers daily.
Stop playing at being a host and get yourselves into gear and one day you may be fit to call yourselves competition.
Who is the loser here? I hope you don’t have too many mirrors in your new office. :)
Comment by gnome — October 11, 2007 #
Sure you do . . .
and you also try to turn, an evolving customer based program from LP (a way for our customers to get involved in giving back to the cummunity) into a twisted spin that sounds evil and will ultimately ONLY benefit DH.
wow, thats very creative and noble of you….you guys are so awesome.
Comment by Lunarpages — October 11, 2007 #
“oh look at us fooling around in the midst of disaster, what a cool bunch of guys we are.”
What disaster? Having to move offices? That’s no “disaster”, that’s just some shit that’s got to be done. Disaster is having the entire webhosting community think you are of The Devil for hijacking domain names, giving said domain names the appearance of endorsing SCUMMY DOMAIN SQUATTER AD PAGES.
“a pure business decision any informed and well advised company would implement.”
Sure, in this day and age when almost all businesses sell their souls AND their customers, it’s par for the course. Thank The Lord that there are some truly moral holdouts like Dreamhost though, who actually have something strange to modern society called integrity.
“a way for our customers to get involved in giving back to the cummunity”
How bout doing it straight up and ASK if they want to be involved, not try to fool them into involvement and then offer them a way out when you get caught?
Here in my Dreamhost panel is the button for giving to charity, with a revolving CHOICE of charities to give to, but it is not siphoned off of any DOMAIN SQUATTER ADS… it is WILLING in the truest sense.
Comment by VOO — October 11, 2007 #
the fact of the matter is…..
ANYONE who would complain about a program that GIVES 100% proceeds to our public education system in America,
A) is probably not an American.
B) wishes they were not an American.
C) or has something to personally gain from it.
(oh ya…move to DH cause if you host with LP they may try to get you to participate in education)
keep rambling, . . you make DH look really outstanding.
have you run out of promotional gimmicks?
seriously…..
Comment by Lunarpages — October 11, 2007 #
Haha!! LP coming here trying to offer up any kind of challenge is a real joke.
I challenge LP to post here without making grammatical and spelling errors. Not very professional. Is it actually LP doing the posting? Surely LP would know of their competition well enough to already know about their contribution to charity and such?
I’d rather not have LP come here and try telling me, as a CUSTOMER, that I shouldn’t be upset that they’d try and use my domain name in the way that they have. Sorry, I’m not willing to have my site name associated with “Christian Singles”, “Dating” and such, nor do I want to have to change my error page to make sure I’m not a part of it. Staying with LP means I support the practice, which I do NOT.
I also refuse to support a company that sent me a warning on their forums for merely stating my distaste over the situation, and then removing just about every post I made afterwards, even if it had nothing to do with the 404 pages. To top it off, they even changed it where you can send no more than one PM per hour. (oh wait, they did change that to two per hour when I complained that I couldn’t reply to the mod’s request that I send them a PM because of their silly limit.)
All in all, LP has shown a complete lack of respect for their paying customers. If they’d do this behind our backs, how could we trust them not to do worst? No thanks.
Comment by NK — October 11, 2007 #
“What disaster? Having to move offices? That’s no “disaster”, that’s just some shit that’s got to be done.”
If I were so without wherewithal that I lost my business premises, I would consider it a disaster.
“that’s just some shit that’s got to be done”
Yes I seem to remember that profanity was another reason for your alleged demise.
“SCUMMY” I checked that one as as it does no appear in the dictionary, but I’m sure you mean is as some sort of derogatory remark.
“truly moral holdouts like Dreamhost”
It reads more like an attempt to launch an ill thought out, ill educated smear campaign on a long upstanding member of the webhosting community. Get real.
This whole blog smells of a poor and may I say not surprisingly pathetic attempt to besmirch a competitor.
Grow up guys, your reputation of being a bunch of children just went up a notch or two.
Comment by gnome — October 11, 2007 #
This entire topic would have more credibility if a recently terminated employee (laziness) and that same employee’s friend’s were not behind it.
note to x-employee: ask DH for a job, they seem like a perfect fit. remember when they we’re trying to lure LP employee’s to come to work for them citing “we get to drink and play pool all day”.
note to DH: nice try fella’s, but have you really ran out of promotional gimmick’s?
anyone that would bash a company for creating a program that give’s 100% free webhosting to public school system’s……and anyone that would try to take up that banner and run with it….
well, that needs no comment
have a nice day, and better luck next time.
Comment by Lunarpages — October 11, 2007 #
I figured Josh’s eviction joke would create ammo for some people. It was exactly that, a joke. He makes a lot of them. We were not evicted, our lease was up. I’m told the building elected not to renew the lease (I guess they didn’t like drums and bass?) At any rate, it was not due to failure to pay or any of the usual things people think about when they hear “eviction.”
Comment by Pete — October 11, 2007 #
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, Gnome.
You’ve honestly never heard of the word “Scummy”. You should at least check to make sure it isn’t in the dictionary before saying it isn’t.
“scummy
adjective
1. of the most contemptible kind; “abject cowardice”; “a low stunt to pull”; “a low-down sneak”; “his miserable treatment of his family”; “You miserable skunk!”; “a scummy rabble”; “a scurvy trick” [syn: abject]
2. covered with scum; “the scummy surface of the polluted pond”
WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.”
As far as a “pathetic attempt to besmirch a competitor”, I’d say it isn’t so pathetic considering it is actually working. ;)
Comment by NK — October 11, 2007 #
//anyone that would bash a company for creating a program that give’s 100% free webhosting to public school system’s……//
You guys used to do that already without having to rely on placing ADFARMS on your customer pages. Why should I have to support Christian Singles in order to provide webhosting for public school systems? It doesn’t add up.
If I want to support a charity, give me the option to do it myself. An opt IN. I already donate to charitable causes, so why do I need LP to decide what those charitable causes should be?
These silly posts are only hurting you guys more. Are you so blind that you wouldn’t realize that?
Comment by NK — October 11, 2007 #
This whole discussion is so funny it hurts!
The folks at Lunarpages have grievously miscalculated with their 404 scam (now masquerading as altruism). Assuming the comments made by “Lunarpages” above are legitimate, they have turned a public relations disaster into a public relations clusterfu*k. Lunarpages is now a laughing stock in the web hosting community.
Sometimes schadenfreude feels better than sex.
Comment by Simon Jessey — October 11, 2007 #
“It was exactly that, a joke. He makes a lot of them”
So does Joan Rivers, but she makes more sense and is actually funny.
Yes, he is a bit of a joke huh?
Of course! Yes I forgot to research “scummy” in the world famous WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.”
How negligent of me, I’m sure I can find it in the odd Sam Spade novel too ;)
“As far as a “pathetic attempt to besmirch a competitor”, I’d say it isn’t so pathetic considering it is actually working. ;)”
I’m sorry I missed it in this morning news, it’s working where exactly? Dreamhost’s blog? “Pathetic” still stands :)
I’m sure people reading this blog will reach their own conclusions, anyone with any intelligence will surely see the transparency of it’s purpose and the object behind it.
As someone mentioned earlier, nice try guys, but please try and get it right next time, maybe your illustrious blogger can stay off the beer long enough to put a decent assault together.
I had better stop here or I may be accused of turning your own tactics against you, that would be a shame as you are doing a pretty good job of that on your own.
Comment by Anonymous — October 11, 2007 #
In my defense, I didn’t claim the joke was funny or made a lot of sense!
Comment by Pete — October 11, 2007 #