DreamHost Blog » The Aftermath

The Aftermath

January 16, 2008 on 4:35 pm | In Foobars, Updates by Josh Jones |

It seems like it’s about time for a follow-up on things from yesterday.

First, I just want to apologize for the regular-style blog post about it yesterday. Hopefully this will be the (picture, bold, and italics-free) blog post many of you would have liked to have seen yesterday.

The current status: we believe to have refunded everybody who was incorrectly billed at this point. This was pretty much finished yesterday at 3pm, but there were a few stragglers who we got today. If you were charged and haven’t seen the refund show up on your credit card / bank statement yet, try calling your bank. Lots of places take a day or two or three or even four to update their statements even if the money’s already back in, but they should see it (by tomorrow for sure) if you call them.

If this/these erroneous charge(s) by us resulted in you having any sort of overdraft/bounced check/nsf fee from your financial institution, please contact our support team from the web panel. We’d just like to request that you include a copy of your statement with the necessary info showing the fees. It can be either a paper statement or a print out of your online statement, or even a screenshot of your online statement and it can be scanned and attached to your support message via our support form or faxed to us at 714-990-2600. If you fax it, please be sure to write your domain name or DreamHost account number on the fax. When we get this, we will put money on your credit card equal to the amount your bank charged you, as well as give you a DreamHost account credit for the same amount on top of that.

Another thing… if you’ve decided because of this fiasco you’d like to cancel hosting with us, we will allow you to get a full credit card refund of any unused portion of your pre-paid contract, even if you’re past our standard 97 day money-back guarantee. To do so, just close your account as normal from our web panel (”Billing > Manage Account” area). Then, after it’s done, write into support and let them know you’d like to get your remaining account credit refunded to your credit card due to the billing snafu of January 15th and we’ll be happy to comply.

Checks to Protect Your Balances

Finally, here are the precautions we’ve now added to our billing system to make sure nothing like this happen ever again:

1. Our biller service will no longer accept a date in the future.
2. This whole time, we did have an option to specify “never automatically bill me more than $X in a day” on our web panel. Of course, not too many people had this set, and why would they have to? Nevertheless, we’ve made a change now that even if you don’t have a specific daily limit set our system will not allow billing you in one day more than 50% more than the most you’ve ever authorized in the past.
3. Our rebiller does an automatic filling-in of old charges when it finds some missing. This should never actually happen anyway, but we’ve added a new check that if it ever finds itself filling in more than 3 missing charges on any account it stops immediately and notifies our financial team.
4. We’ve also added an overall check where if the total number of payments in a day are more than double the average number of payments we’ve gotten on that calendar day for the last seven months it fails and notifies our financial team.

And that’s it.. I hope this puts things more or less behind us. And remember, if you have any specific issues, our support team is always there!

And of course, my sincere apologies for all of this.

Thanks,
Josh Jones

P.S. I apologize for that joke about the triple billing in the newsletter thing too, but you have to admit, it was kind of ironic that I actually did screw up billing less than a week later.

P.P.S. Some of you have attempted to email us directly with information about unresolved issues stemming from this billing fiasco and have received autoresponders telling you you can’t email us directly. That restriction was unintentional has now been removed so please re-send us your email if you have not already contacted us through other means.

343 Responses to “The Aftermath”

Chris Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
That’s more like it. Thanks for the update.
pace Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Those new safeguards sound very good, but have you purchased a keyboard with larger keys?
Free-VO Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
To be honest, i appreciated the style of apology. I’m sick of all this BS that get put out from big companies. Dreamhost’s approach was done the way i expect them to do things. Professionally without getting their heads caught up their A$$es.
Thanks guys for telling it like it is and keeping it real.

One point though, for this kind of kafuffle i would expect compensation from Dreamhost. Luckily my card bounced the overpayments back (A plus Debit Credit cards!), but for others it did cause major issues.
Kris Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
hahaha… josh is awesome, i want to buy him a beer…
nessa Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
*begin sarcasm*

THERE’S BOLD TEXT IN YOUR POST! ARGH! I’M OUTTA HERE, MISTER!

*end sarcasm*

Seriously, you’re doing well. I’m very happy to be with Dreamhost.
spiral Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Two words Josh…

Change Management

1. What are you doing
2. Who will it affect
3. What could go wrong?
4. Mandatory backout plan
5. Sanity check from qualified second person to catch stupid mistakes.

I would have been crucified on the front lawn of my company had I done this.
just saying Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Thanks for the update Josh.

For the love of pete, though, please call/FAX/e-mail/whatever MW/MWisbanned and get the information to wire him some money so he can stop being fixated with this blog and buy his groceries!

-Peace
Yet Another Disgruntled DH Customer Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Sorry guys. I’ve been here for what, almost 7 years now I think. And that’s about enough for me. Yesterday was the icing on the cake, and your handling of it doubly so. I stuck around through the last 2-3 years because I remembered how awesome your service was back when I first signed up. I stuck it out through the periodic datacenter outages, random panel problems, stuff occasionally just not working, and after being told that adding 40gb to my dedicated server’s hard disk would cost me a hundred bucks a month. I even stuck around after the colossal farkup you called An Ongoing Disaster (http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/08/01/anatomy-of-an-ongoing-disaster/).

At this point though, I’m not really interested in helping you guys learn from your mistakes. I’m more interested in learning from mine. And I believe my mistake at this point was sticking it out.
Andy Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I appreciated the style of apology as well. Most companies would just say they had an issue and it would get fixed. I thought it was great how you kept a level of transparency in explaining exactly what happened.

Of course, there are always going to be people who complain, whether they got overdrawn past the $5.06 they had in their bank account or whatever.

While I hope there are no more big problems in the future, I appreciate the way you handled it.

Oh, and LOL @ Pace for the bigger keyboard comment.
Andrew Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
You guys are great and I appreciated the humour. The people who are upset because they’d get fired for being honest about making mistakes at their jobs need better jobs.
rlparker Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
One third of the first 15 comments are from the same “nick” - sigh. I’m really trying to feel some empathy for him, but sorry … I wish the system actually *could* block his blather at this point. ;-)
Kris Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
haha… dude you need to tell your wife to sit down and shutup and give her a good ole fashioned smackin…. hahahahaha…. sorry dude but youre whipped, tell the lady to calm down and if youre in need of food break into your neighbors house and raid the fridge (then do it in their bed…thats always a good touch)
Noir Dame Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Josh, thank you for stepping forward again. I for one am very glad you did not commit ritual suicide… as someone on the main blog stated, it is not just the error because mistakes do happen, it is how it is handled that makes a difference.

I don’t blame anyone who was upset, but you guys did acknowledge and begin fixing the problem right away — and that is still unusual for many businesses. I frankly have had more trouble dealing with my business bank, my merchant account, and my health insurance company, waiting sometimes weeks and months for things to get fixed, with nowhere near as much updating as I’ve gotten from DH. Still, the tone of the first blog post came off pretty light.

Thank you for immediately beginning to refund people. Thank you for the solid, clear apology — and very specific information about what folks need to do to get their money back. Because of the scope of this, giving people more than just a refund of the overdraft, but also a credit, is the right thing to do. I do hope that quality control/redundancy becomes a larger priority for the company, because I’d like to be with DH for another five+ years.
rlparker Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
@ MW is spam banned again - old, tired, repetitive, whining, bitching, and kvetching rants only make you appear to be a basket case not worthy of attention.

An if you really, honestly, can’t find a more productive way to spend your time or to deal with your frustrations over this, I hope you get hit by a bus. Seriously!
guest Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Ummm, what about the accounts that were wrongly suspended based on the billing error? Mine is still down! To me this is WAY more annoying than a billing error….
Christoph Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
“I don’t blame anyone who was upset, but you guys did acknowledge and begin fixing the problem right away — and that is still unusual for many businesses.”

Ditto to both of your sentiments. Anyone who was upset or angered over this, or chooses to cancel their account, is not to be blamed — and certainly Josh shows no sign of blaming them.

Equally, thanks, Josh, for fixing this quickly.

When we get this, we will put money on your credit card equal to the amount your bank charged you, as well as give you a DreamHost account credit for the same amount on top of that.

Another thing… if you’ve decided because of this fiasco you’d like to cancel hosting with us, we will allow you to get a full credit card refund of any unused portion of your pre-paid contract, even if you’re past our standard 97 day money-back guarantee.

I don’t see what anyone can ask more than this. This is fair.

I mean people… even if you think this is the worst screw-up since I don’t know when, is DreamHost not at least treating you fairly today?
spiral Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
You guys are great and I appreciated the humour. The people who are upset because they’d get fired for being honest about making mistakes at their jobs need better jobs.

You’re missing the point… like most people do. You and your team establish a process where changes that will affect lots of people have to be documented and have a sane backout plan *and* be checked over before they are put into action.

Fired for making mistakes, no - that’s just stupid, people make mistakes, that’s life.
Fired for not following established procedures? Heck yes - the procedure is put there to help catch mistakes.
Jeremy Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Thank you Josh. I give your professional response a nod. We’ve been with DH for something like 6 years and believe you all are absolutely professional in how you handle so many things in this business. This was the approach I needed to hear to substantiate staying with DH to my coworkers, bosses and clients.

(just an aside: I know many comments have said “I love the goofiness” but how many of those people are in charge of multi-million-dollar companies? How many of them WILL EVER be in charge of one?)

Oh, and would someone please take up a collection for MWisSpamBannedAgain? I have to say I’m starting to doubt the story (maybe he/she is from another hosting company trying to make DH look bad?)
paul Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
its coincidental, not ironic
Yet Another Disgruntled DH Customer Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
“I mean people… even if you think this is the worst screw-up since I don’t know when, is DreamHost not at least treating you fairly today?”

No.

In 7 years, never have I been offered or granted any compensation from lost revenue or lost confidence due to downtimes caused by problems on their end due to mistakes that Dreamhost has made, or poor judgment calls on the part of Dreamhost staff. My support history is full of responses to error and downtime reports that say, in essence, “It looks like we messed this thing up.” Even my support ticket from yesterday regarding an important discussion list that suddenly vanished was answered with “Well, it works now. I don’t know why it didn’t before.”

That’s simply no longer acceptable.

Given the choice between someone who has caused me major headaches in the past and tried to respond as best they could, and finding someone who doesn’t cause these kind of headaches to their customers, I’ll take the latter. Contrary to what everyone else seems to believe, getting a valid explanation when a business screws up like this isn’t the exception. It’s the norm. It’s just that dreamhost staff save some time by doing it in a blog post, rather than explaining to each customer why things broke on an as needed basis.
rlparker Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
@MW is spam banned again - Wow. You misread my post pretty significantly.

I don’t have a problem with you being “outraged”, and the banking system can suck. I even understand your frustration.

My point was that you have shared all that with us ad nauseum for two days now; we “get it” that you are pissed and frustrated.

I don’t wish you dead … I do wish you would shut up about your misery already. Now, if you can’t do that, then I hope that bus runs over you and at least mangles you enough so you can’t type for a day or two ;-)

Kisses to you too!
hogarth Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Major pat on the back to Josh for this blog post.

There is a middle road between corporate-speak and inappropriate silliness, and Josh’s new post shows how it ought to be done.

I’m crossing my fingers that the fallout isn’t as bad as I fear it may be. Dreamhost has been berry berry good to me, and I want them to succeed.
scotty Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
This is the blog post you should have made yesterday, you incompetent cockbags.
JustinU Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Dreamhost still has some of the worst uptime. So duplicate billing is kind of ironic considering “refunds for downtime” are more in order. Bad technology all around.
rlparker Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
@Yet Another Disgruntled DH Customer Says, on Hanuary 16th, 2008 at 5:39:- “In 7 years, never have I been offered or granted any compensation from lost revenue or lost confidence due to downtimes caused by problems on their end due to mistakes that Dreamhost has made, or poor judgment calls on the part of Dreamhost staff.”

Was there something in the TOS you read when you signed up that made you believe you would be?

It sounds to me you have come to the conclusion that DH is not for you, and that’s fair enough. Good luck; hopefully you will find a webhost that meets *your* needs as well as DreamHost has met mine since 1998, :-)
Tim Covington Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
I understand and appreciate the attempt to communicate what was happening. However, humor should never be used when you have erroneously taken large amounts of money from people. For most of the people who this incident put in a tight financial situation, the humor was received as more of a condescending attitude that states we don’t really care how much we hurt you. Financial hardship is rarely humorous.
BTW, I’m another person who has called their bank this evening and the refund has not shown up on the bank systems at all. This incident might not just lead to overdraft fees for me. It might result in the electricity and phone service at my home being turned off if my bill payments bounce due to the overdrafts caused by Dreamhosts actions.
Yet Another Disgruntled DH Customer Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
“Was there something in the TOS you read when you signed up that made you believe you would be?”

Nope. But I didn’t see anything in there really about “sometimes we’ll make mistakes that will cause your server to go down, and even if it’s out fault it’s your problem.”

I don’t think that expecting my web host to stay up is too much to ask. When that doesn’t happen, I don’t think it’s at all out of line to expect some kind of compensation, at the very least to the tune of “Here’s a pro-rated credit to your account based on how long we were not providing you the service for which you are paying.” I’ve never asked them to pay me for whay I lost when stuff blew up.

But by way of example, one month my dedicated server was up and down periodically due to a memory issue caused by an upgrade they performed. They then asked me to pay for the memory upgrade on the machine, to compensate. I refused, saying it was their problem, and that if my machine could not handle the upgrade, that should have been identified before the upgrade. Eventually they replaced the memory themselves. But even though my box was up and down all month, I still paid full price for the month.

That, I do not think is fair. And I never will. I was willing to put up with it because I remember when it wasn’t that way. And because I believed things would smooth out.

I no longer believe that to be the case.
MWneedstoSTFU Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
@MW I’ve totally forgotten about this entire fiasco. I have refocused my attention on hating you. STFU x infinity.

Your time would be better spent writing a thoughtful email to DH about your issue. Too late for that now. I’d drop you faster than you’re dropping your feces on this thread.

2c
Adam Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Amusing commentary as always

What i’d love to see is how much the ‘reality’ differs from the hype in the next month or so.

I’ll be willing to bet that in the cold, hard light most people will bitch and moan and most will *stay exactly where they are* …

I won’t go into the reasons why, however mistakes happen, the alternatives and the effort required to make the change are too great and with a little bit of hindsight the overwhelming majority of people will go ‘oh well, people f-up, that’s just life… at least they were honest about it and I got my money back’.

If it doesn’t *materially* impact on their life, most won’t change, ie they will accept that the amount of time/money/effot to change would far far *FAR* outweigh the lost time/revenue/sanity than just staying put and seeing that this is a mistake that won’t happen again.

Adam
psychomelody Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
All I have to say is this: The reason I came to Dreamhost is that my previous provider (atlantic.net) was charging me $200 at the same time every year when I was on monthly payments. It sometimes took a month to get that money back and I was the only person I knew of with this glitch. A month. Big fucking priority, eh?

If my money is back soon and my fee from my car payment bouncing is paid is see no reason to leave dreamhost.

Everybody messes up several times in their life. No company is prefect. All the people leaving are just upping the chance for their new company to fuck up. Dreamhost has already had theirs and will learn from it.

I mean… it obviously can’t happen again, right?

Right?
Doctor K Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
I liked yesterday’s post better.

Ha ha, but thanks for the update, I think you’re handling it well. We all make flubs… it’s just pretty damned scary when it impacts so many people’s lives (hell, I’d be shell shocked too!).

By the way, has anyone else figured out that this could have all been a non-issue if everyone put a DAILY LIMIT ON THEIR CARD in the DH cpanel! That was the very FIRST thing I did, I don’t know why so many of you skipped this step! If you had, you would’ve only been charged maybe a hundred or so (that’s not gonna break the bank), then have it refunded about an hour later. No tears!
rlparker Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
@Yet Another Disgruntled DH Customer Says, on January 16th, 2008 at 5:58 pm: - “… I didn’t see anything in there really about “sometimes we’ll make mistakes that will cause your server to go down, and even if it’s out fault it’s your problem.”

That’s unfortunate, because that clause is there, though not in the exact words you used. It is a very common clause in most TOSs for webhosting services, ISPs, etc.

I understand your frustration over paying for a month of dedicated server hosting you didn’t get because of the RAM issue; I would not have been “willing to put up with it” if I didn’t think it was fair.

That said, if I *had* been willing to put up with it, for whatever reason, I would have considered it a closed issue. ;-)

You are doing the right thing. If your trust and confidence in any company you are dealing with erodes to a point beneath your comfort level, it is time to move on.

I was sincere in my wishes of “good luck”!
Adam Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
@Doctor K

Stop it, stop it now! ..

Your logic, reasoning and balanced commentary has no place in forum comments like this!

I expect overly irrational behaviour, abuse and slander at every possible corner!

I want exclamation marks goshdarnit!

:)

Adam
rlparker Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
@MW is spam banned again Says, on January 16th, 2008 at 6:02 pm: -
“Why is he pretending that nobody received duplicate charges? Why is he ignoring it? It’s WEIRD. It’s SUSPECT.”

I call shenanigans on that one!

Maybe if you spent more time reading and less time ranting you would realize that Josh has not pretended that at all. He clearly acknowledges that some where charged multiple times.

You are the “only one blowing this note” because everybody else can *read*.

I was charged multiple times, and refunded, multiple times. I see no reason why the same will not happen for you. Mine likely “cleared” faster than yours because mine was a charge card, not a debit card or a link to a bank direct payment.
smyl Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
this blog post didn’t make me laugh
=(

yesterdays was a LOT better
chadvavra Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
how about you pay me interest on the money you’ve denied [still! you idiots] me access to.

30% compounded hourly sound fair to me. (I’ll do the math. I’m pretty sure you’d mess it up)

[read: you are really bad at your job. Is your mother even proud of you?]
Doctor K Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
@ Adam

Heh heh, whoops, my bad, what I meant was DAMN YOU DH!!!! YOUR INFANTILE HUMOUR HAS NO PLACE IN MY SERIOUS MONOTONOUS BORING EXISTENCE!!! EXPECT LESS TOMFOOLERY AND BETTER CHECKS AN D BALANCES ON YOUR SYSTEM, AND THERE”D BETTER BE A ROBUST CHANGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM GODDAMMIT, AND I DON”T MEAN ROBUST LIKE YOUR BILLING SYSTEM!!!!!! I WANT COMPENSATION!!! Oh, and DREAMHOST, YOU KICKED MY DOG AND NOW MY DOG IS SICK!!!!

How was that, too much? LOL :)
Nin Harris Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
I am glad for today’s post - I’ve been with Dreamhost for nearly 6 years too - I don’t intend to leave _yet_ but the mess up couldn’t have happened at a worst time for me - grad student on a scholarship (with monthly allowances which are _LATE_) and my credit card is my last minute stopgap for food right now. (oh well, grad students _are_ supposed to live on cheap ramen)

Still, I can’t help but empathize for the problem, I mean, it is a colossal thing to realize when you wake up. So yes. I appreciate this post, the other one really did make me see red because I was contemplating not being able to make rent or buy groceries. Just, make sure it won’t happen again, mmkay? Thanks. I’ll probably change my credit card settings as well to make doubly sure.
phoenix Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Wow. Someone call the wahhmbulance.

Anyway, two good posts, both on the up and up. Great job, terrible mistake, kinda chafed by it but glad I got my money back. Moving on. Life’s too short. :)
Doctor K Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Hey, I’m not saying DH didn’t screw up, coz they did and they need to apologise and fix the damage… which is what they’re doing.

Did DH charge over your set daily limit? If so, then consider my whole argument void.
Chris Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Thank you.

The one thing I don’t think you’ve addressed is that we only received an email _after_ the problem was fixed. I’ve heard arguments back and forth about the feasibility of sending all your customers an email, but it would have made me feel a lot less upset to see something in my inbox that morning that said “Don’t panic, we know something is wrong here and we’ll have an update shortly.”
smyl Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
@doctor k

not enough emoness

and you still have a roof…
phoenix Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
One more thing that I think might be valuable for everyone:

http://lifehacker.com/software/emergency/how-to-set-up-and-use-an-emergency-fund-197050.php
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/top/do-you-have-an-emergency-fund-185378.php

Good tips for everyone. As they say, shit happens! :D
rlparker Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
@MW is spam banned again Says, on January 16th, 2008 at 6:27 pm: - “rlparker, you’re wrong. He didn’t say that people had duplicate charges.”

Actually, you are absolutely correct about that, and I *was* wrong. It wasn’t Josh that said that at all - I read it in the email(s) I received. Shenanigans on me!

DreamHost clearly knows, and has acknowledged in their email, that some customers were billed multiple times. Given that, I don’t care whether Josh goes into the particulars of that or not ; it stands on it’s own as a fact and is self-evident to those effected. ;-)
Kris Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I feel like i’m reading the same comments over and over again… so i’m going to say something that nobody has said yet:

WHEN I SEE A SHAVED CAT IT GETS ME ALL TINGLY IN THE PANTS….
smyl Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
@Kris
what about the hairless cats?
do they make you tingly too?
Zee Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
I remember once I had a plumber over to fix my dishwasher. The charge was 98 bucks, unfortunately when he brought in the card machine to do the transaction, he added 3 zeros.

Imagine my suprise when the bank called me to verify a 98 thousand dollar charge.

Even more so that the bank would PROCESS this charge when my credit limit was something like 10k.

no harm no foul, the guy did fix my dishwasher and the mistake was corrected.

Just a story, nothing more.
CustomerNoMore Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Your incompetence has lost you our business.
daniel Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
‘MW is spam banned again’ jesus shut the fuck up already. They get the god damned point.

go back to your bitching wife before she gets more pissed off.
Kris Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
@MW is spam banned
whats your address and telephone number? I’ll have the nearest pizza place send you a large pepperoni so you don’t go hungry tonight…
thinking Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
oh, i wonder if during this fiasco, if people went in and changed their CC #s then you can’t refund them???
Jeremy Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
@zee - Did it work as well as a $98k dishwasher?
@kris - i laughed so hard I accidentally clicked on the wrong thing and crashed my website. Its all your fault.

@MW is spam banned
apologies - you are hosted here… and as to why multiple billings, I’d GUESS the rule for not doing multiple billings probably doesn’t work when you are billing into the future. Simply put - the script he was running was never meant to work in the way he ran it.
John Doe Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
While this was definitely a colossal screwup, I appreciate the candor that DH has exhibited so far. I was lucky, apparently, because I did not see any charges whatsoever on my credit card. Maybe I just checked it after they had already reversed it? I have no idea.

I feel for Josh, because while this kind of thing is inexcusable, I work in IT (at a credit card company, actually) and I know that these things happen. It’s not acceptable, it’s not right, but sometimes no matter how much time or effort you sink into a particular piece of software you end up making a bone-headed mistake. Case in point, some people I work very closely with for some reason tried to force a piece of software to run on the 30th of every month. It ran fine for the first few months after install. Imagine what happened at the end of last February? Yeah, something like 100,000 CC accounts ended up being erroneously closed due to complications with the run-date. I mean, you do everything else right and you make that kind of incredibly stupid mistake? No excuse, again, but it happens. I don’t remember the dollar amount attached to that mistake, but it happens. (I have no idea if I’m even allowed to talk about it, so even though I didn’t mention the company or anything I didn’t use my name).

MW, I feel for you man, and I feel for everyone in situations like yours. Honestly, my first inclination is to say ‘why are you spending money on DH if 400 bucks being charged means you can’t buy food?’, but then I remembered that DH is, what, 9.95 a month? That is peanuts. Canceling your web hosting to save that 10 bucks a month isn’t going to make a dent, even if you are living paycheck to paycheck. Sorry, I don’t have time to read back through the 1100+ post threads from the past few days, so maybe you’ve already talked this through (I’m sure someone else blamed you entirely for it, though. That kind of thing always happens).

I think that MW has every right to complain as loudly as he wants for as long as it takes to get his money back. DH screwed him over big time with this issue, he has the right to complain about it.
Corruptor Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Thank you. I think this is the perfect response and I appreciate you going the extra mile for your customers.

You all can continue to bitch all you want, but this is a *more* than generous response.

Thanks for going above and beyond, Josh.
carl Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
My site has been down for two days. What is the email to contact tech support?
Sarahluna Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
I love how DH handles things. Thankfully it didn’t affect me that much, but I’m glad things are refunded (although, I should check to see if things were tomorrow). Thank you, DH!
John Doe Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Oh, also wanted to reiterate that the responses (both the original blog post and today’s post) are big reasons why I stay with this company through the problems. I don’t really expect 100% uptime from my 9.95/month shared webhosting company, and while I don’t expect huge billing errors either I am glad the response to the problem has been pretty good. Not perfect, but pretty good.

All things considered I’m satisfied. Thanks again for the candor.
John Doe Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
@carl: As far as I know you should use your admin panel to contact them. It’s the last link in the list.
Dan Bruno Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Regarding the “never automatically bill me more than $X in a day” panel feature: I had that set to $100, but was billed $218.90 yesterday.
carl Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
John Doe Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
@carl: As far as I know you should use your admin panel to contact them. It’s the last link in the list.

This might work except my site is on a family member’s account who is out of the country right now. Is there an email address or phone number?
sasha Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I’ll fix the typo for you Mark.
http://whispersinthedark.com
Apparently you censor yourself (192) as well. Is it no wonder some here feel the same way about you that you do yourself?
And please, please give Shiba to someone with a positive outlook before that adorable thing smears makeup over her furry little eyes, finds a razor, and starts slashing up in the bathroom.
http://www.madebymonkeys.net/stuff/photos/shiba/

You’re everywhere!
http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2008/01/16/new-php4-packages/comment-page-1/#comment-112240
John Doe Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
@carl: It’s support@dreamhost.com for general support and I believe billing@dreamhost.com for billing-specific problems. Good luck!
theMez Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
jeeeezzzz… you people act like it’s the end of the world. They screwed up, admitted it, apologized, fixed it and reimbursed us and you still whine and cry and complain. Get over it and go about your business. GOOD JOB ON DAMAGE CONTROL AND REPAIR DREAMHOST.
Unable to connect Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
This is the post that should have been posted yesterday. Today should have been the funny one. :)

My money’s back.

Also, loling at the DH fanboys attacking MW who has every right to bitch as long and loud as he likes if this is really screwing him up. Way to attack some poor screwed over slob to defend your favorite corporation.

“But…but Dreamhost makes the funny blog posts!”
person Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Well unfortunately i am leaving also. Sorry dreamhost.
SeanF Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
@Unable:
MW whining on the blog about how his life has fallen apart, how his wife is leaving him, how his dog is dying, how his daughter and now cats are starving all due to this foul up where heart wrenching… to a point. And then he kept repeating himself to the point that most of us began to wonder what he thought was going to be accomplished by it.

Does he have a right to vent? Absolutely. All day? Sure. Do we have a right to make fun of him for doing it? Yep, that applies as well.
person Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
@theMez - It could be the end of the world for a lot of people.
People like that guy who could even go to the grocery store. Come on think about it, this kind of thing thank god it wasn’t much more extreme could of messed up a lot of peoples lives big time.
Kris Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
MW, you should have just setup a paypal account and attached the following to the end of every comment you made:

Please donate any spare change to the “Save MW’s Cats And Get His Wife Off His Sack” charity… The paypal email is xxx@xxx.com

I bet by now you would have made back your money…
shifuimam Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
“People like that guy who could [sic] even go to the grocery store. Come on think about it, this kind of thing thank god it wasn’t much more extreme could of messed up a lot of peoples lives big time.”

If your finances are so tight than an extra $200 charge means you can’t afford to buy food for your family, YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS RUNNING A WEBSITE. Hosting costs money. Unless you are hosting a business site with Dreamhost that is bringing your family extra substantial income each month, you are not entitled to have a personal website. Stop wasting your money on frivolous things and start a freaking savings account so that your family can eat and live beyond a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle.
gerg Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
bunch of bullshit. you people who want to keep drinking the DH koolaid have fun, but don’t knock the people who are wise enough to know when they’re getting fucked. some “funny” b.s. isn’t enough to make up for a serious fuck-up.

i thought this sentence was telling:

Hopefully this will be the (picture, bold, and italics-free) blog post many of you would have liked to have seen yesterday.

what you should have said was “the blog post that should have been posted yesterday.” but no, you’re making subtle jabs at people who aren’t har-har-harring their way to their overdrawn checking accounts.

you guys really need to hire someone who knows how to communicate with customers. because you just lost another one.
Robin Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
In the process of moving my sites now. It’s going to be a headache, as I have a lot of databases and programs, but it will be worth it once I’m done with Dreamhost.
fskfkldjg Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Wonderful how their spam filter only catches people who are even slightly critical.
John Doe Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
@shifuimam: But DH is 9.95 a month. It’s not like these people are buying new cell phones or buying fancy cars. It’s 10 bucks a month.

Granted, I think that MW or anyone else *could* have been more careful. Giving anything that isn’t absolutely necessary access to your core bank account is risky. But honestly, your argument doesn’t hold water. A ‘personal website’ costs 10 bucks. That’s nothing. I think what is happening is you see ‘tight budget’ + ‘unnecessary expense (no matter how small)’ = totally irresponsible with money. That’s not an entirely valid conclusion.

It is entirely possible to have a tight budget and spend 10 bucks a month on something that brings you a little happiness and still be responsible with money. They are not mutually exclusive.
randall Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
So I still have not received my $352 refund. Once I get that, whenever it happens, I will still have to fax you a copy of my bank statement, and wait for you to refund the 3 or 4 overdraft fees ($37 apiece).
Not Me Again Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Yay it actually worked that time. Okay…

“Did DH charge over your set daily limit? If so, then consider my whole argument void.”

No, they didn’t, I think I already mentioned that I didn’t have any automatic payments set at all, but that’s beside the point. Some people are not as familiar with the web as others and when an established company says they are going to bill them $10/month they have never in their entire life had any reason to believe that they’ll get a $240 charge out of absolutely nowhere. I don’t know what any individual’s motives are for saying any particular thing, but I get the general impression some people who already know why they need to be cautious on the web are having a field day trying to make people feel like idiots over something that, no matter what they did, should never have happened.
Martin Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Called bank, no refund pending. What the fuck is up Josh? Enough screwing around. You can bet your moronic ass I’ll take you up on your offer to close my account as soon as I can afford to open a new hosting account at a superior company.
Credit License Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
So… did anyone who showed the common sense to configure their account to NOT allow automatic payments get caught with unnecessary charges to their bank balance?

No?

Didn’t think so!

This stuff happens all the time. Educate yourselves about credit.
shifuimam Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
“But DH is 9.95 a month. It’s not like these people are buying new cell phones or buying fancy cars. It’s 10 bucks a month.”

Yes, it’s only $10 a month. But apparently $200 over budget in a month kills this guy’s ability to even buy food for his cats - which at $3 for an offbrand bag of dry food, and around 27 cents for a can of 9Lives, that’s pretty pathetic.

The point is, if your finances are so tight that a minor overage like $200 means that your budget is shot for the month, you have far more serious problems than how Dreamhost handled this error. Quit paying for crap you don’t need and start saving money.
MI Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
thank you for the more professional and sincere sounding post with list of resolutions. i wish you posted something like this yesterday, but ass backwards works as well.
The Corey Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 9:04 pm

I still don’t have my refund. I’m going nuts. My wife is pissed. I couldn’t go to the grocery store tonight because my account is overdrawn $200. I can’t even feed my cats.

Then you were a week away from starving to death anyway. And it sounds like you can’t afford cats, so what else are you wasting your money on that you were financially destroyed over $200?? What a failure.

Personally, I feel bad for others, but I’m glad this happened to you. You’ve been such a jackass on here that it makes it funny.

Now, why don’t you log off and go get a real job so you can get at least a $250 cushion between you and the homeless shelter.
Here We Go Again... Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
@shifuimam - I tell you what, go upstairs and give your parents a check for the cushion in your bank account, then go for a year or two without spending ten dollars in a month on anything or things that you don’t absolutely need to survive.
John Doe Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
@shifuimam: First, I think it was 400+ bucks for MW, but that’s nit-picking.

I think we largely agree on this. Personally, I keep enough money for around 6 months of living expenses. If I were laid off tomorrow I would be able continue my current lifestyle without even a part-time job. I’m almost 2 years out of college and I got to this point by generally being frugal.

The more I think about this situation the more I agree with you. I still think that 10 bucks a month is nothing and not a big expense, but I do agree that if he is scraping by like this then he should be saving every penny possible to try and get himself into a more stable financial situation. I retract my earlier statement about this and apologize.
Kris Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
@shifuimam
I already tried going this route to explain that to these people who are pissing and moaning. They don’t listen and just respond with stuff like, “Well not everybody is so lucky to be rich” and stuff, it’s those kind of people who think success and fortunes are built on being lucky, so they sit around waiting to get lucky. I wouldn’t waste your breath trying to tell them that they should work harder and make more money cause they think it’s all luck and chance that we can afford a $200 hit and not FREAK OUT. I’m not teasing MW because he can’t get a refund, I’m teasing him because exactly as you said if a $200 hit kills all his money then he should really re-think his priorities and stop building websites with pictures of animals.
Francis Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
All is forgiven if you allow me to run LiteSpeed as the primary webserver on my DreamhostPS account.
Ryan Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
What I enjoy about this is all the pissed off people leaving DreamHost. I could care less for them. More bandwidth and CPU power for me!
Here We Go Again... Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
@shifuimam - Sorry for losing my temper and being a troll a few moments ago, but yes even though I’m not so bad off I have been at times and that sort of still gets under my skin a bit. MW tossed a bit of jargon about that probably doesn’t catch anyone’s attention at the moment, but here’s the gist of it. It’s easy to look at your good circumstances and believe it’s because you’re smart, responsible, and hard working, and certainly all those things do help. Therefore anyone in worse circumstances must be stupid, irresponsible, and lazy. However, any number of misfortunes might have come along that, even being all those things you are right now, would have changed your outlook drastically, and I find it hard to believe that all these people saying anyone without a few grand to spare don’t deserve to have a ten dollar per month hobby would stick to their guns in the same situation.
HKR Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
This is absolutely ridiculous. I have an almost $500 debit pending on my account, right at the time all of my automatic bills start charging me (For the correct amount I might add). There is no pending refund at all. I can’t do jack shit with my money right now because you made a mistake? And you expect me to take a tongue in cheek apology?

Go to hell Josh.
Steve Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Josh,

Thanks for this response. As a suggestion for what you could be doing, stick a person at the end of this process. Run the script through, generate the list of payments, display them in a table to a person with two buttons saying “Bill” and “Don’t Bill”, sprinkle in some statistics (total amount being billed, total number of customers being billed, etc.), and have someone check that once a day before the bills go out. If the goal is to prevent a $7 million fiasco, you shouldn’t have total automation through the billing process.

You can add all the checks to the system you want, but there’s always going to be a more shrewd case that could inevitably happen out of circumstance. Yesterday was just one of them. If you had a person checking this stuff right before it went out, this would’ve never happened.

I do appreciate the more appropriate response. This is the post you should’ve given us yesterday. I’m waiting on the refund, but if everything goes swimmingly I doubt I’ll be leaving.

I hate to say it, because you guys are doing a tough job and you’ve had a lot of bad circumstance happen to you, but this is your last chance with me.
electrickrypt Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Wow. I just can’t believe the people who smile at this, thank DreamHost, and tell the people who are mad to calm down. This is a freakin joke.

People are suffering because of this. I got my email a few days ago stating that my refund had been issued. Still nothing. Bank says no refund was issued and no refund is pending. First DH says it may take two days max. Then DH says it can take up to 5-7 business days. Now DH says it’l show up as a processing refund tomorrow for sure!? What the hell? Get the facts straight before publishing them.

My family and I are suffering because of this. My bank card was overcharged and now I am stuck with nothing. I was supposed to pay some of my bills on Tuesday and guess what.. I couldn’t. Nor can I go to the store and get my food. I have a KID for god sakes and can’t even feed him. Now my cable, phone, AND internet is getting turned off because I couldn’t pay the bill. These things cost more just to get turned back on! Next my cell phone bill is coming up and if I can’t pay that.. im stuck without a phone. Not good. Good thing I paid my rent a week before this horrible incident. This is like a freaking terrorist attack. I am almost forced to file a fraudulent case report, get this disputed, and get a whole new credit card if I don’t receive my money within the next day.

And you know how hard this is explaining this to the family? hah! There is no explaining this to the woman and she is PISSED!!! And you know that is not a pretty situation.

There is no excuse for this… nothing will make me happy until I see my money back into my account. I trusted DH and thought it was good service. I guess I was wrong. Award winning service? HAH! This is horrible., a joke, worst possible scenario with any company in my book. A freakin nightmare. DreamHost will be losing a lot of customers because of this including me. And I totally can understand why.
amacinarizona Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Why are people talking about how people shouldn’t be spending money on websites of they are not rich?! I am ashamed that it had to come to this level. It shouldn’t matter if people are low on money and still pay for websites or not. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT GETTING $200+ OR MORE WITHDRAWN FROM THEIR ACCOUNT IF THEY ARE RICH OR NOT. It’s about feeling safe at DH and not having to worry about ANY NON AUTHORIZED CHARGES AT ALL if the are $1 or $900. This is a case of poor service and a very poor one.

Customers’ lifestyle’s should have never came up in this topic because their life styles have nothing to do with this! This is DH we are talking about and their HORRIBLE service.
It’s pretty sad when the only way people can stick up for DH is to blame it on the customers’ lifestyles. Very sad.
Martin Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Still no refund, still nothing pending. Called the bank, they can’t do anything because this is an international charge (I’m in New Zealand). There is no way to get the refund, I have to wait until the pending charge expires (at least a week). This is a nightmare. Get it sort Josh you irresponsible twat.
JBagley Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Respect.

Josh, you are a legend. Sh*t happens, and in a couple of years time, you will laugh at the biggest stuff up that you managed to create in Dreamhost’s history!

I do feel sorry for those folk who now cannot go shopping because their credit card or bank account is overdrawn. Oh well, eat plain bread and jam for the next day, cause the money will be back in your account soon.

Anyway, Josh and Dreamhost, keep up the great work guys. I love you okes.
Matt Van Dusen Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
As I said before, I was not affected, because the way things stand right now, even with credits and debits to be made on my account, as of 2008-12-31 I still have a credit balance of over $50 on my account. Even though my plan is prepaid for 2 years, I still have my bank send them a $7.95 check each month. That’s my way of preventing disaster. After all, when my hosting bill came up last year (before I started sending checks each month and before I got a better job), I didn’t know how I was going to pay my bill. I was living paycheck to paycheck. Yes, I’ve had issues with the billing department before. Yes, I never did really get them resolved (didn’t get my “check received” email one month, was lied to, was told not in pending stack and advised to cancel payment, yet when cashed, was stamped by DreamHost). However, even after this fiasco, I will stand by DH.

My one suggestion, as I mentioned in the previous blog (some 600 posts before the current thread was started, quite a few of which were from MW - not jabbing at you, just a fact), is I want to see Josh keep his hands off ANY billing process. Josh also needs to keep his hands off of the production servers and out of the datacenters - it seems quite a few of the blunders made by DH in the past year or two have been caused by him, else were something completely outside of anyone’s control.

I fully intend to keep my accounts here - but I’ll be doing a bit more religious backup of my data as well, as I really *don’t* want to see it all flash away if DH does happen to go under. I keep family tree research on this server.
the starving artist Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
“‘When we get this, we will put money on your credit card equal to the amount your bank charged you, as well as give you a DreamHost account credit for the same amount on top of that.
Another thing… if you’ve decided because of this fiasco you’d like to cancel hosting with us, we will allow you to get a full credit card refund of any unused portion of your pre-paid contract, even if you’re past our standard 97 day money-back guarantee.’”

Eye for an Eye, Fair?, It’s biblical and a very upright thing to do, I’m shocked at the amount of common sense used in that statement, and frankly it’s the only statement issued that had any. Give a + amount == to what was taken, that’s compensation for the loss of the orignal moneys and hairloss/frustration of transfering, I have other work to be doing. I don’t want to go, but something like this means DH will be like those with empty bank accounts right now.

Either way, 1) loss of clients, 2) loss of funds, 3) loss of good faith with insurance companys/ credit card companys / and most banks from California to Zuric.

It’s not a decision. It’s a foregone conclusion.
DH put me in debt Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
If DH is smart.. they would get rid of this so called.. Josh.

I had to file a fraudulent case report on my credit card, so did my brother.
DH is now on the creditors’ fraud list.

DH clearly is screwed and now their reputation has had enough.
This is the end of DH.
Judy Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:18 am
I’ve gone to my bank twice and no credit has been given yet. It’s very unfortunate and has put me in a horrible financial position. I’m really upset right now and can’t sleep knowing that I still don’t have that money posted into my account. My bank said if the credit didn’t show up by 12 midnight tonight it wasn’t posted. Guess what? It’s not there. So now I’m even more upset knowing I won’t have money again tomorrow.
James Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:19 am
If your bank account is so low that it can’t handle a one year payment of web hosting and you have to cry here and can’t wait a week, then stop webmastering, it’s not for you!
anal assaulter Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:20 am
I feel for the DH customers who are genuinely affected by this mishap, not the pansies acting like the world is gonna crumble tomorrow and screaming class action law suit. If this colossal screwup took money away from you. then rightfully DH should at minimum compensate the loss, but give something extra for the trouble.

Josh, I may be in the minority here, but I appreciated the first blog. I dunno, though I’ve left tech support land for a career in a different field, perhaps I am still a “tech support geek” at heart. What I am trying to say is, as a former techie, I understood where you were coming from. Us techies are a different breed and sometimes don’t think on the same wavelength as “normal” people. Was it smart to post it on the company blog in the midst of “all hell breaking loose”. Um prolly not. In spite of all the “mishaps”, I’ve been a loyal supporter of DH on these forums. But come on guys, you f’d with people’s money and that in my book is a below the belt, kick in the nuts whether intended or not. My point is, should you need to put out communications in the future about massive events (hopefully not), know your audience and choose your words carefully because they do affect others. While the light, sarcastic tone is appreciated, this event clearly called for a more serious response.

I agree that this issue is very serious, I have to shake my head to people that blame DH for their financial irresponsibility. Let’s get real here! You claim that DH’s $200 charge, pushed you over the edge on your CC and now you got all these charges and your credit score is f’d up! Well I got news for you. Your FICO score probably dropped some points well before the DH fiasco. It’s called “DEBT to CREDIT ratio”. Let’s say you have 2 CC’s, one with a 2K limit and one with a 3K limit. You have $500 debt on the 3K, but $1850 charged on the 2K limit card. Guess what? You’re using 92.5% of your available credit on that one card and 47% of your total available credit. FICO scores drop all the time because consumer’s debt to credit ratio is too high. This tells banks you are too far stretched and therefore a credit risk. So before you go blaming DH for you not getting your dream home because one transaction fucked your FICO, I have one suggestion. GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR A$$. One transaction is not gonna screw you. And if it does, well chances are, you were in financial trouble well before this event.
marvin the martian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:23 am
holy cripes, batman.

i really want to know what phone, cable, and cell services people are running that get shut off within a week of missing a bill deadline. even more so electricity!

there are certain people and places in the world that I trust with my family’s well-being. the police. hospitals and doctors. FDIC-insured savings banks.

Dreamhost? Not on that list. I’d be quite foolhardy if I exposed myself to a situation where I gave someone like DH the power to financially ruin me. If it came down to having to pay for Web hosting to run a business that helped me barely make ends meet, you’d better believe that I’d put every safeguard into play to protect my exposure. (Starting, perhaps, with attaching the account to a disputable credit card, specifically to a virtual card number for which the authorized charge amount can be time-limited!)

And THEN, when something like this happened - and the wife is running around pissed and the cat and my kid are wasting away… you can bet I wouldn’t be posting on a BLOG. I’d be using proper support channels to get the situation resolved as soon as possible both with DH and my bank.

In other words, I call either shenanigans or foolishness (or both) on the sob stories we’re reading here.

–marvin

(PS for the record, I preferred yesterday’s apology. I like DH because I understand them and find them predictable, both in their routine operations and their royal screw ups. That sort of predictability is pretty unusual in this business.)
Its been emotional Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Dear Dreamhost,

Thanks for this latest blog post. I’ll be sticking around and my reason is likely to be the same as most others who decide to do the same. At the same time, I sympathize with and understand why others may split.

When I was looking for a host, I pored over feature lists, looked at TOS’s and googled for comments and reviews. I searched for the best promo codes, etc. My brain started to hurt.

Then I came to Dreamhost and found this blog. My search ended here.

Your humor and openness - at your own incompetence and lessons learned - put a face on what had been a faceless pack of corporate fluff. Very quickly, I felt like I knew who you were.

When I did have problems with my account (rampaging DNS robots), I felt I knew you enough to put some humor in my support request. The person responding caught the humor, fixed the issue and threw some of their own humor back in the reply. That only served to endear me further. I printed the exchange and showed it around the office. It was appreciated.

For those who came here for the pricing or particular features and not the humor or personality of the company, you’re less likely to understand this sentiment and less likely to forgive.

I understand and respect that.

Two other things I wanted to speak to after following these replies over the last two days:

1) I think calling for buses to be used in a violent fashion against a vocal poster who feels particularly put out by this fiasco is going way over the line. Simply smashing his keyboard would suffice.

2) Thank you, Scotty, for “incompetent cockbags”. I had to wipe off my screen and I can’t wait to use this, in context, at work.

k,thx
Judy Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Many people were charged a lot more than $200.00 as many of my friends are with DH and make their living through the website. Each case is different. I will not be posting on here anymore since people are so quick to judge the clients who are at a huge financial loss. Good luck to everyone.
ITtecheeeee1978 Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:36 am
Wholy shit.

Why is it that the only excuse people have for DH is..

“If your bank account is so low that it can’t handle a one year payment of web hosting and you have to cry here and can’t wait a week, then stop webmastering, it’s not for you!”

That’s sad and embarrassing. Like someone else stated above.. It isn’t about the lifestyles of the customers.. its about DH fucking up, big time.

You people don’t realize that DH charged anywheres from $200 to $6000 on peoples cards. Not everyone has thousands in their bank accounts. Nor should you have to have thousands in your account in order to be safe as a DH customer!

If this only happened to a few people.. then it could be forgivable.. but this is a MASS effect of thousands of customers. Ranging from $200 to $6000 from each customer. Do the math people.. That is a lot of zeros and is a result of foolish precautions by the DH team. This easily and should have been avoided.
blastmath Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:43 am
ITtecheeeee1978 is right.

Dreamhost literally made millions of dollars, maybe even a billion, in one day. It should have been Dreamhost’s main priority to make sure something like this wouldn’t happen.
Dreamhost may very well could lose their business because of this “billion dollar mistake“.
blastmath Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:46 am
…….
“million dollar mistake“
Goodnight Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:47 am
To all those who are so proud of yourselves for setting the limit in your web panel, you’re forgetting that this also depends on the software functioning ideally, otherwise it can be as oblivious to that as it was to the fact that it’s not December 2008 yet. A slightly different mistake and that “safeguard” that you’re so clever for setting wouldn’t have done anything at all, and I think the anecdotes about exactly that happening are fairly credible given that it did bill many people twice, and still in my panel it is showing this all as having happened three months ago. Obviously the system isn’t quite as robust as is advertised, not surprising seeing as how the interface would have never passed muster out of house.

As for the money management experts, with the exception of the small handful who haven’t come off as arrogant and completely out of touch with the real world…

If you’re in your mid-forties or better…
- If you were born fairly well-off please stop acting like you’re a genius for staying that way, it’s really not so shocking.
- If you did start off like most people but have either stayed clear of hard times, or chosen the trash can over plastic when you they did come, and have been successful with it, okay, fine you are awesome and everyone should bow down and worship you or whatever it is you are after, give yourself a pat on the back.

If you’re in your early to mid twenties and figure that since you’ve managed to do alright so far, surely you must have great skill, wisdom, and knowledge which others do not possess…
- Just do everyone else one tiny favor, really, please, if you’re truly that confident. Screencap and print out the sage advice you are giving, laminate it or something and keep it taped or tied to some very sentimental trinket you hope to have a couple decades from now, and just wait. That’s all I ask - one day, you will find out why.

In conclusion, the obvious -

This was DreamHost’s error. I don’t hate them for it, then again I’m not among those who got hurt by it. No matter what you think other customers should have done, what banks should have done, what Brian Boitano should have done, it was DreamHost who dropped the ball here.
If you think people who don’t have enough money in their checking accounts to cover their bills for two years or more, less than a month after the holidays at that, have no right to spend ten dollars a month on something they may not absolutely need to survive, I wish you all luck staying on that high horse when you hit a few bumps in the road yourselves.
anal assaulter Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Let’s wake up and smell the coffee. 2008 hasn’t got off to a great start. Energy and mortgage fallout carried over from 2007 in addition to new concerns of a recession has caused the Dow to see more red days than green.

I have to agree with “John Doe” who mentioned he stashed away 6 months of emergency living expenses. Awesome man, experts recommend 9 months for a family of four. 6 months is better than nothing and if you are single, well then that should be OK. My point is people, nobody thinks to save for a “rainy day”. I could go on about the things people could do to save, even when they think they can’t. But I won’t. Go buy a book or watch Suze Orman to figure that out.

Start saving people because things are gonna be alot rainier in the coming months ahead. The writing is on the wall when three of the largest financial institutions today when begging on their hands and knees to other countries and a prince for emergency cash infusions to help stay afloat. What does that tell ya? It sucks and it is only a matter of time before all this shit starts to roll downhill. Translation= weaker economy, job cuts, slower growth (companies not hiring as quick) etc. Do you want to be left in the cold?
Censored By DreamHost So Many Times Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:57 am
To all those who are so proud of yourselves for setting the limit in your web panel, you’re forgetting that this also depends on the software functioning ideally, otherwise it can be as oblivious to that as it was to the fact that it’s not December 2008 yet. A slightly different mistake and that “safeguard” that you’re so clever for setting wouldn’t have done anything at all, and I think the anecdotes about exactly that happening are fairly credible given that it did bill many people twice, and still in my panel it is showing this all as having happened three months ago. Obviously the system isn’t quite as robust as is advertised, not surprising seeing as how the interface would have never passed muster out of house.

As for the money management experts, with the exception of the small handful who haven’t come off as arrogant and completely out of touch with the real world…

If you’re in your mid-forties or better…
- If you were born fairly well-off please stop acting like you’re a genius for staying that way, it’s really not so shocking.
- If you did start off like most people but have either stayed clear of hard times, or chosen the trash can over plastic when you they did come, and have been successful with it, okay, fine you are awesome and everyone should bow down and worship you or whatever it is you are after, give yourself a pat on the back.

If you’re in your early to mid twenties and figure that since you’ve managed to do alright so far, surely you must have great skill, wisdom, and knowledge which others do not possess…
- Just do everyone else one tiny favor, really, please, if you’re truly that confident. Screencap and print out the sage advice you are giving, laminate it or something and keep it taped or tied to some very sentimental trinket you hope to have a couple decades from now, and just wait. That’s all I ask - one day, you will find out why.

In conclusion, the obvious -

This was DreamHost’s error. I don’t hate them for it, then again I’m not among those who got hurt by it. No matter what you think other customers should have done, what banks should have done, what Brian Boitano should have done, it was DreamHost who dropped the ball here.
If you think people who don’t have enough money in their checking accounts to cover their bills for two years or more, less than a month after the holidays at that, have no right to spend ten dollars a month on something they may not absolutely need to survive, I wish you all luck staying on that high horse when you hit a few bumps in the road yourselves.

… Hmmm, I may not be so angry about the fact they made a huge blunder, but the fact that I am systematically getting spam filtered for not blaming everyone but them for it is really starting to aggravate me.
… … Third time is a charm maybe?
lol Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:20 am
What is this? Financial Management Tips now?
DreamHost is a PIECE OF SHIT! Worst thing since ENRON!
spider Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:09 am
I totally agree with James. If 200USD makes you screw up your bank account, credit card fees, and also wife’s happyness and cat’s health, well, you should at least learn how to budget.
James R Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:10 am
I’m going to have to say, this has been handled very well IMO,

“we will put money on your credit card equal to the amount your bank charged you, as well as give you a DreamHost account credit for the same amount on top of that.”

Everybody makes mistakes, this just happened to be quite a big one, and i do believe that dreamhost have done their best to compensate people whom were affected by this human error.

I can think of MANY places that would not be anywhere near as upfront and forward about this issue to customers.
lalalalala Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:33 am
Hmmm, a spider plus financial expert, does that make one a spider expert?
Jeremy Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:03 am
I would fall into the category of users who signed up for DH on a friend’s recommendation and it seeming fine in terms of prices/features. I didn’t sign up because of proprietor charm or their “keepin’ it real” or as a countercultural statement or whatever.

I find the magnitude of the mistake and the lack of safeguards that preceded it as suggestive of a carelessness that is egregious even given the allowance that “everyone makes mistakes.” On top of that, I regarded the e-mail they sent me as deploying a cutesy schtick at a time when they should have appreciated that, as far as they knew, the financial implications could have been serious for me (they weren’t). It completely flipped my general perspective of the company from “they like to have fun but are ultimately competent professionals” to “a bit more juvenile and sloppy than a company I feel comfortable trusting.”

So now I’m looking for alternatives.
Antonio D. Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:21 am
Shit happens…, in this company and in all others, what it matters is how is dealt with it.

Although even if my own problems are not yet fixed (I keep been billed twice per december PS service), I continue thinking this big mistake is being handled quite excellent. I’m confident, everything will be fixed.

Each day, I love more Dreamhost’s people, not for the services they offer, but for the way they try to run this company.

All companies have problems that impact more or less to their customers, saying a different thing it’s a fallacy.

I enjoy a lot “Josh posts style”, and I think both posts were necessary, the first one “Um, Whoops.” to provide initial information and to try to loosen the already serious situation. And the second one “The Aftermath” in a correct and professional apology tone, offering an alternative and compensation to the affected ones.

Just my 2cc.

Best regards.
Goodbye! Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:42 am
You just lost another customer, Dreamhost. The way you handled this, and even allowing something like this to happen in the first place, is ridiculous.
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 4:24 am
Firstly, it’s not a $200 hit.

Secondly, I’m hardly sitting on my ass. If you had my schedule, you’d cry. You’d sit down and cry.

I make great money. I also have monumental debt. And it’s not from buying yachts, sadly.

Josh, still no refund today. Just, you know, checking in. When do you think you might address the duplicate billing error/bug in your super robust billing code? It’d be nice if your wonderful, earnest seeming, “totally transparent” explanation for all of this actually matched the facts, but it doesn’t. Why Josh, why?
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 4:37 am
And of course, the ‘crisis’ caused by this error is temporary for me, I don’t know about others, but I assume they also get a weekly paycheck. I don’t know about people who were billed $9000, though.

I got paid today. The wife got paid today. So now I can go to the grocery store. Now I can buy gas. Now I can feed the cats. But yesterday I couldn’t, or the day before that either, and those two days were Dreamhost’s fault.

I’m not going to die. I won’t lose my house (though my mortgage check DID almost bounce, it came out on the 15th). I won’t starve and neither will my wife, kid, cats, or dogs. But I was still seriously screwed for two days, and I STILL haven’t gotten my refund back from Dreamhost.

But yeah, in the long run, we’re fine. At least, so long as Dreamhost doesn’t take MORE of my money without asking. You’d HOPE that wouldn’t happen again, but they still have my CC # on file (I can’t remove it, blanking the fields and submitting doesn’t work), and for all I know they could do this again tomorrow, and apparently the banks would presume the charge is correct, just like they did to me Yesterday.
Anonymous Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 4:45 am
Josh,

Thanks for the message. Now that’s more like it.

Please don’t think we do not have a sense of humor just because many of us were angry. I can truly appreciate your trying to lighten the mood by joking. It’s natural for us as humans to joke when things are really uncomfortable. Unfortunately I think the timing of the jokes was off balance and you caught us all when we were looking for that direction in the storm. Like the captain of the ship that is sinking; can you imagine what would happen to confidence in his leadership if he were telling jokes over the loud speaker as the ship slips deeper and deeper into the water.

In moments of crisis and panic … People just want to hear the facts and they want to have a reason to follow and believe. That’s exactly what leaders do … They give their followers a good reason to follow. I know this will sound silly but just remember these quotes … and take my advice at the end about the book I mention.

—

QUOTES:

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

“To lead yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart.

“If a leader repeatedly shows poor judgment, even in little things, people start to think that having him as the leader is the real mistake.”

“Just as in sports a coach needs a team of good players to win, an organization needs a team of good leaders to succeed.”

—

Josh leadership is a little like earning and spending pocket change. Each time you make a good leadership decision, it puts change into your pocket. Each time you make a poor one, you have to pay out some of your change to the people.

Every leader has a certain amount of change in his pocket. From then on he either builds up his change or pays it out. If he makes one bad decision after another, he keeps paying out change. Then one day after making one last bad decision, he is going to reach into his pocket and realize he is out of change. It doesn’t even matter if the blunder was big or small. When you’re out of change, you’re out as a leader.

A leader who keeps making good decisions and keeps recording wins for the organization builds up his change. Then even if he makes a huge blunder, he can still have plenty of change left over.

I know you have a full plate with DreamHost but go to Amazon.com or your local bookstore and pick up the book every leader of companies, employees, and customers should have. It’s a book called “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” by John C. Maxwell. It’s a very easy read and will change you as a leader in your company. Most importantly it will change you as a leader of the customers who put their faith in you.

Good luck to you
Nin Harris Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 4:50 am
I did set a USD10/- limit on my rebill, not sure what really happened, but I’m waiting to see my CC statement. Fortunately for me, I am nowhere near my CC limit (I am way more responsible than that), but no one wants extra CC debt when they’re trying to make sure they have a “buffer” for rainy days, especially when they’re about to use more of it.

I want to second the statements that this issue shouldn’t reach a point where affected customers are _attacked_ for their lifestyle choices, for crying out loud. You can defend Dreamhost, fine. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But attacking others, is totally uncool - pack mentality much? Heh.
Lance (Former Customer) Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:04 am
Im sorry, but your fingers are to fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash your hand against the keypad now.
Adam Skinner Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Hey Josh, I think it’s great that you guys handled it the way you did, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your previous blog post regarding this. I noticed this billing error when the automated email was sent, and I forwarded it to my work account. I have you guys on Google Reader and your blog post was simple, honest, and showed that you guys are real people running a real company and not some corporate facade.

It’s understandable that people are pissed because their accounts were debited to excess by surprise. I keep a “buffer” to protect against just that kind of thing, so the immediate effects of this weren’t quite as dire for me.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I think you guys are doing a stand up job there, and don’t listen to the people (Digg?) who are railing against you not taking a corporate monotone on this incident. I do business with you, in part, because I like your company the way it is. I like how you guys were just open and honest about how this occurred. Most companies would have chalked it up to “technical difficulties” or something, but they do that because they are scared of taking real responsibility and being transparent with their customers. Your policy of truth and openness shows that you are not scared, not trying to dissemble, not afraid people will think less of you (because perhaps you’d rather have people know the real “Dreamhost” than try and live in false expectations).

I’ll leave you with a quote from my sig file:

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
DH USER Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:25 am
I LOVE YOU DREAMHOST!
toast Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:42 am
It would seem to me that the people who have been on here complaining about all the problems they have put up with over the years, and the problems this incident has caused them now have the perfect moment to leave.
They can now get a credit on unused hosting, will have any expenses they have incurred refunded to them, and can then move to a host who they feel will treat them better, and provide a better service.
If they chose not to take that offer up then I don’t think they can reallty complain about how badly they are treated going forward.
I personaly will not be canceling as yes I could go to a hosting company with a better up time record etc, but I would have to pay a heck of a lot more than I am currently paying, so for me I will stay here.
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:08 am
Oh I’ll be going.

But I still want the money that was taken without authorization back, which at the time of this writing, I still haven’t got.
John Doe Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Lots of people make incorrect assumptions about the financial situations of others.

My situation? Yeah, I’m in my twenties, not married, no kids. I have money saved. I’m sure some people are going to say “You are lucky!”, but I come from a military family. After retiring from the army my dad is now a high school teacher in a low-income district and my mom is a librarian. They could barely afford to send me to college, and now that I am out and on my own I help them whenever I can. I make more than the two of them combined.

It is NOT always luck. I chose not to get married, even after being with the same woman for years. I chose not to have kids, even though I potentially could. I work full-time in at an IT job that requires 24/7 support. I’ve had to work very very hard to get to what level of financial security I have. It is not always ‘luck’ or being born into the right circumstance that causes it.

Honestly? Having a family isn’t an excuse. You had the kids, it was your choice, deal with it. So please don’t assume that everyone you talk to that is not 40+ doesn’t have any idea on how to manage their money.

@MW: Honestly, dude, of course banks will assume a charge from a company is valid, what reason do they have not to?! It’s the way things work, man. How in the world is your bank supposed to know that this 400+ charge is invalid when your 300 dollar cell phone is charged to the same account (for an example, I have no idea if you spend that much on a cell phone)? Fraud detection can only go so far. If you were charged 400+ out of the blue from some random company then maybe I could see the issue, but DH is on your record. What if you decided to pay for 2 years now instead of by month? How is the bank supposed to know that THIS case is fraudulent? As I’ve said before, I work at a CC company. I work on the fraud stuff. We aren’t mind readers.

Whatever, this whole situation sucks, no question there. I’m just sick of all of the ‘THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END’ stuff now. I was understanding before, losing money sucks, but now I’m just sick of it. Good luck to everyone that was hit hard by this, for whatever reason.
Stu Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:12 am
This kind of thing can happen, and they resolved it very quickly. My opinion of Dreamhost hasn’t wavered in the slightest bit… if anything its moved even more positive. It’s unfortunate that some people were placed in financial binds on account of the double billing, but seriously people… open up a little more of a savings buffer because Dreamhost won’t be the last organization you give money to that accidentally takes too much.

Dreamhost kicks A$$.
SteveG Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:14 am
MW - I hear that you can still get free hosting at GeoCities, perhaps that would be more your speed??
Mendietta Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:18 am
I was quite alarmed to recieve such a warning letting me know that my service had expired, but the buisiness like tone of the email made me think it to be serious.
Then to recieve a “whoops! we made a mistake! so sorry!” informal type of letter went against the grain for me especially after recieving such a serious reprimand for not paying up.
Its one thing to have your support and interface be user friendly but if you are going to send out serious warning letters about miss billing etc, then your apology emails should be equally serious.
You cant have an easy going/serious attitude to business only when it pleases you.
Mike Thompson Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:19 am
I think folks should stop whining about this trifle.

Josh handled it excellently.

Get a grip, people!
SeanF Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:28 am
I wouldn’t go so far as to say this was handled ‘excellently’ but I do know that when I was overbilled for my heating gas last winter, I didn’t get a refund of the money, I got a credit on the next month’s bill.

Companies have all sorts of ways to screw you. It appears DH is not doing that at all.

I’m still waiting for the guy to say that the extra money pulled from his account meant he couldn’t pay Jethro for the meth and Jethro took a sledgehammer to his car so DH now has to buy him a new car.
alex howell Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Thanks for the details.

You’ve just earned that ‘best blog’ award.
Michał M Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Thanks for info. About those checks - better late than never. I hope you keep your job, because all that mess that happened probably keep you sleepless and I think you resolved it quite quickly.

PS. Don’t worry - VISA International did similair screwup - http://gospodarka.gazeta.pl/gospodarka/1,33181,4841501.html (Polish site).
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:42 am
>Fraud detection can only go so far.

Sure. How about when I pick up the phone and tell them its bogus, they believe me just like they believed Dreamhost?

It’s broken, dude. You’re a prole. Go grovel at the feet of your betters. I’m not into that. :-)
Nate Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Here’s what DreamHost SHOULD do. Contact every single person who posts on this blog and find out what what their individual issue is. Obviously they’re being impacted enough to complain.

Customer Service 101.
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Seriously you guys don’t think there’s something wrong with the banking industry (and maybe society) at large when a corporation can take your money in a heartbeat, but getting it back takes a week?

There’s no reason that wonderful financial conduit that Josh made his “oopsie” with a few days ago couldn’t be thrown into reverse except for the fact that IT’S DESIGNED NOT TO BE. Why don’t you think about why that might be?

Hint: it’s not to protect the private citizens who don’t hold executive offices in large corporations.
Henrik Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Josh, this is something that should have been done yesterday, aka; re-assuring your customers that they will be credited for eventual losses from their overage fees etc.

I can understand that even these events can be used to create buzz, however it is playing with fire…
Nate Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Commie!!!! Commie!!!! Commie!!!!

:)
Brian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:07 am
I have been charged and I don’t even know why. I have never heard of DreamHost before and don’t have any accounts with them. I was charged for no reason. How did this happen? I can’t seem to find a way to contact them, other than the Email, and that has done no good so far. Hopefully this might help????
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Seriously, Josh, your super robust billing process doesn’t allow duplicates, right? So what are these, figments?

****

This is an electronic receipt to let you know we just
rebilled your web hosting account with DreamHost.
Your account is now current and completely paid up.

Remember, we automatically rebill your account on the 8th
of the month (when there is an amount due).

We have the last payment on this account to be $29.90 on 2008-01-08 07:23:15.
Since then the following charges have been made to the account, which you have just paid for:

2008-01-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-02-16.

2008-02-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-03-16.

2008-02-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-03-16.

2008-03-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-04-16.

2008-03-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-04-16.

2008-04-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-05-16.

2008-05-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-06-16.

2008-05-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-06-16.

2008-06-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-07-16.

2008-06-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-07-16.

2008-07-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-08-16.

2008-07-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-08-16.

2008-08-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-09-16.

2008-09-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-10-16.

2008-09-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-10-16.

2008-10-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-11-16.

2008-10-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-11-16.

2008-11-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2008-12-16.

2008-12-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2009-01-16.

2008-12-17 - $19.95 for “Code Warrior Yay!” through 2009-01-16.
No Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:19 am
Okay, giving it till Tuesday for my $119 to be back into my account. Either way I’m out. Slit your wrists Josh.
Dee Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Okay, so Dreamhost mistakenly authorized the deduction of a couple thousand dollars from my business bank account. Yes, it impacted my small company’s financial liquidity. Although it is going to make tax time a nightmare next year, I put personal money into the company bank account so that I can continue to pay vendors, receive supplies and resell goods. I am not happy about it but I will live.

As of this morning, I still have not seen a release of the original charges. And I can live with that because it is easier for bank and credit card companies to take your money than it is to give it back. However! Y’all managed to squeak another charge for a single month through onto my debit card. Why would you charge cards again before this was totally resolved? You just cost yourself more money! For people who were already overdrawn, another charge for a single month of hosting will incur more bank charges. Initially, I stayed out of the fray and sucked it up. But, the decision to make additional charges is really questionable.
Dal Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:29 am
As a Reserve Deputy Investigator for the Sheriff Dept. I was immediately suspicious at the way this issue was handled.
I discovered the overbilling by checking my bank account. I then went to the Dreamhost site and found a preemptive notice was sent to me, not to my regular email address, but to the support page (where I happened upon it) telling me of the billing snafu and that my account had been refunded and not to contact my bank. After rechecking with my bank and determining this refund not to be true, I submitted a support request for a call back yesterday morning and have yet to hear from anyone. I tried calling the Dreamhost number 714-451-8814. voicemail full.
A common practice for less scrupulous businesses is to overcharge clients and try to build in a buffer time in order to better cover their tracks before the overbilling is discovered and the funds have been tranferred to a third party, usually offshore. They then close up shop and disappear or file bankruptcy. Another practice is to use the additional funds for a “float” hoping to get the overbilled amount returned in time.

I am not saying this is, in fact, the case here, but I still have had no direct contact with anyone at Dreamhost, nor have I seen a credible explanation of how this could have accidentally happened.
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:33 am
The handling of this issue and the spotty, unreliable, *misleading* (as in the case of duplicate charges) communication ARE very suspicious. It’s definitely making me nervous. These people still have my credit card number. My bank has historically proven to me that even cancelled numbers can still be charged, which I find INSANE but it’s true.
John Doe Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:50 am
@MW:

>> It’s broken, dude. You’re a prole. Go grovel at the feet of your betters. I’m not into that. :-)

Ha, yeah, nice, using a smiley face there. That’s like saying ‘no offense’. Stand by the insult or don’t make it. Be a man.

I’m not a prole, I’m a goddamn realist. Take your tinfoil hat off. There is no conspiracy to ruin your life and steal your money. The simple fact is there is no way for your bank or credit card to know that this particular charge is fraudulent, and honestly if your bank refuses to take away the charge or remove the overdraft fees then you need to find a new bank. I use Chase, I’ve had issues and when I took in all of the relevant info they completely refunded me and removed all charges, even when the offending company hadn’t reversed their charges yet. That was because I’m a good customer. I used to use TCF, until they accidently charged me $250 for absolutely no reason and then didn’t warn me that I owed them anything until I received a letter from a collection agency. Once I got the letter I went it and TCF automatically removed the charges from my name until it got fixed. I eventually had to pay part of the bill because I wasn’t smart enough to keep all of the relevant papers (lesson learned), and so guess what? I don’t use TCF anymore.

Mistakes on my Discover card have been fixed quickly. If your bank/CC won’t help you then stop complaining and find a new bank. There isn’t some global banking conspiracy to screw you over going on. They are corporations that want to make money, and if they are dragging their feet then find someone who won’t.

Honestly it might be DH. If it is then leave them and vote with your wallet. If your bank is won’t refund the money then A) you aren’t a good customer with them and they don’t trust you or B) they are a shitty bank and you should find a new one.

Or you could go on thinking that everyone is out to screw you over and steal from you. Either way, really. Jesus, I was on your side about getting screwed by DH but now I am just tired of your ranting.
John Doe Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:54 am
>> I am not saying this is, in fact, the case here, but I still have had no direct contact with anyone at Dreamhost, nor have I seen a credible explanation of how this could have accidentally happened.

Except they did explain how it happened. Please read the blog posts. It was a huge error and they are at fault. If they are trying to steal money they why refund part of the money to some customers but keep other customer’s money? Lots of people have posted that they have received refunds, lots have not. If this was some scheme then they would have kept it all.
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:55 am
I keep ranting because DH keeps tap dancing, and while I’m at it, I may as well complain about the banking industry, too. :-)

I, too, have gotten excellent service from banks. As long as I had wads of money deposited in them. See what happens when you don’t.

Josh still hasn’t explained why people were billed in duplicate even though his super biller *CAN’T* do that according to him. Some people even claim to have been billed in triplicate.

Why is Dreamhost continuing to bill customers even today when they still haven’t straightened this out? That’s tacky at BEST.

The fact that Josh’s explanation doesn’t jibe with what actually happened is a MAJOR RED FLAG that he still has chosen not to address. I’ll keep playing that note for as long as necessary.
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:57 am
>Except they did explain how it happened. Please read the blog posts. It was a huge error and they are at fault. If they are trying to steal money they why refund part of the money to some customers but keep other customer’s money? Lots of people have posted that they have received refunds, lots have not. If this was some scheme then they would have kept it all.

They didn’t. Not in any satisfactory way. Why did he say duplicate charges are impossible when MANY PEOPLE HAD DUPLICATE CHARGES? There are a few other weak spots in his story, too. Why doesn’t he address them? He can’t have missed the question, it’s been asked a thousand times now (half of those times by me.)
Greg Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Just a quick question here, but why would you use a debit card that’s linked to your main checking account for payments over the internet?

The billing fiasco at Dreamhost is a taste of what can happen. In this case it’s only a few hundred bucks and you’ll get them back. But what if your debit card number was stolen and they probably cleaned out your account… I hope your bank has a decent fraud department.

I always use a separate credit card for internet purchases, something that is disconnected from the rest of my money.
If something bad happens like this, then it’s confined to that one account, and I don’t have to worry about not being able to buy groceries or something.
In this case my special credit card flagged the charge as suspicious, and declined it. Even better.
Thomas Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:05 am
2 Cents ahead-

I was not directly affected, had I been I would have likely been fine. However 2-3 years ago I would not have been, and I use my website to get my next job as it provides my portfolio, is linked to on the top of every resume and CV I hand out, and gets looked at by anyone that might want to hire me pretty much. For those that might think I was lazy or whatever, I am currently working to support both my wife and myself, and put both of us through college. Earlier this year I had 6 jobs I was working on at once, I am currently getting 3-5 hours of sleep a night between my work, my school, and getting my wife where she needs to be while we are trying to buy her a car now that we have cash for one. Financial situations vary greatly, and just because you live paycheck to paycheck does not mean that you are stupid financially, sometimes that is all you can afford to do.

This entire event should have been handled much better. As I mentioned I was not affected, however the first blog post, and the completely non-serious tone of communications until this post were inappropriate.

I don’t know the status of DH’s management or what experience they have other than working here. I do know how this was handled was a mistake that should not have been made.

I am still considering leaving because of how this was handled, but at the moment I won’t. I tell people everyone gets one chance to screw up (In a major way). This was DH’s chance for me. Fool me once, shame on you…

This does not mean this was number 2 for many people. Many people have every right to leave. I will say spamming multiple messages a day to a blog is pointless, as it does little but annoy people. I can understand wanting to get your money back, but there are other ways to go about it if needed.

Things from an outside perspective I feel Dreamhost can learn from this:

Dreamhost does need to provide a more direct contact line, and honest feedback for dealing with situations like this however, I think that much is clear.

Dreamhost needs to check their procedures for billing. This includes not only putting in basic bounds checking in the scripts, but also making sure that it is more closely monitored, and that system wide rebillings are not happening when they don’t necessarily need to, and rather individual rebillings might be better suited. This can also include having a forced audit on billing cycles, especially for when numbers seem VERY off, BEFORE the billing goes through.

Dreamhost/Josh need to learn when joking is ok, and when the job needs to get done. When you have 7.5 Million dollars of other people’s money that you are not supposed to, that is not a time to joke. This is a requirement for any public relations position, which like it or not posting to this blog really puts you in. This is also a requirement for any management position IMO.

All that being said, I will say when they finally got around to it, this post was well put together and a decent way of handling things. IMO it is an above average, though not excellent customer service response. It is above average due to the candidness of it, and the willingness to describe what exactly screwed up, I for one appreciate it and is why I have decided to stay for the time being.

I will wait and see with wary eyes what happens in this line of events.

Thomas
Jeff Carr Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:06 am
I’ve worked fairly extensively in the banking industry, and for those of you who aren’t showing a refund yet, that is likely more due to your bank than anything else. Many banks will sit on deposits and refunds as long as they possibly can, in order to hold a larger reserve and collect more (or pay less) interest.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if your bank is simply sitting on it. It’s happened to me, and was the reason I stopped both working and banking at Wells Fargo.
toolittletoolate Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Too little, too late.

I don’t care if you’re the CEO, the owner, the manager, or the janitor. Having people like you in charge, or even with access high enough to make a $7.5M mistake illustrates the ineptitude and incompetence of your entire company, starting at the top.

Good bye, Dreamhost.
Nate Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:11 am
“IMO it is an above average, though not excellent customer service response.”

It is a response to the customer base, but as of yet there has been NO customer service response. No posts on here from the team, and I’ve yet to receive a personal call or email to address this situation.
Thomas Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:12 am
>Josh still hasn’t explained why people were billed in duplicate even though his super biller *CAN’T* do that according to him. Some people even claim to have been billed in triplicate.

>The fact that Josh’s explanation doesn’t jibe with what actually happened is a MAJOR RED FLAG that he still has chosen not to address. I’ll keep playing that note for as long as necessary.

You have played it, now you are beyond that point where you are doing it just to annoy people, and it isn’t going to do much for the people that you want it to.

The reason he hasn’t responded yet can be simple, it hasn’t been enough time and they are concentrating on fixing a priority list. At the top of the list is refunded the 7.5 million dollars. Lower on that list would be finding out why the mistakes happened.

You have expressed you opinion on it, now look for an answer AFTER the money is refunded to all customers that was taken because you probably won’t get it until then unles you get lucky. As you already stated losing that money can be a disaster for people and it should be the top of the priority list to get fixed.

>Why is Dreamhost continuing to bill customers even today when they still haven’t straightened this out? That’s tacky at BEST.

That is actually a good point, surprisingly. It is to bad it took you 20 posts of saying the exact same thing over and over again to come up with a new one.

I do agree however they need to hold their billing till everything is straightened out. Before billing an account it needs to be verified that it is in order manually at this point. Yes it is a crudload of extra labor hours, but it needs to be done, it is the cost on a business level of a mistake of this magnitude.

Thomas
andanotherting Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:16 am
all this “well we DID have an option to limit automatic billing” and people making excuses about “why would you have debit card or a bank transfer connected to your host account” is ridiculous.

It’s people of similar incompetence making excuses in a “bro’s before ho’s” society of IT slackers. Saying it’s the customers fault they were overbilled, incurred overdraft fees, lost good APR’s, or harmed their credit scores.

The willingness to make and ACCEPT such excuses is EXACTLY why this kind of stuff happens. And is EXACTLY why companies go out of business.

Top-down incompetence, with a non-chalant, insultingly un-serious coating of “dude whatever”.
Dal Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:17 am
John Doe wrote: “if they are trying to steal money then why refund part of the money to some customers but keep other customer’s money? If this was some scheme then they would have kept it all.”

That is how it is done to extend the time for traqnsfers, etc.
Refunding some of the money calms the rest into inactivity.

That is how Ponzi schemes work.

Everyone should have a refund by now. Why was I erroneously told I had one on Jan 15?
Nate Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:18 am
They need to hire temps to help out with this. And in response to any possible security questions, I think many of us would be happier with a complete stranger from an outside agengy having access to our information, than with dreamhost having it.
sjc Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:29 am
This is the response that Josh should have provided earlier. I think there needs to be a serious assessment of the role of humor in DH’s communications. It’s hard to consider spending my hard-earned money with a company that treats so many things with so much flippancy. I need to feel confident that things are going to *work correctly* for my customers. I *don’t* need a service that has the potential to undermine my credibility with my customers.

Now,don’t peg me as some humorless wench. Humor is great–marvelous, stupendous, essential–and so is discretion. Sometimes humor is better kept among internal staff (if they have any humor capacity left when they’re dealing with serious doo doo cleanup).

What I really want to know is why the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company is personally handling the billing (and all of the communications, to boot). I want to know where checks and balances are. Perhaps this is a case of micromanagement hitting a wall?

I’m going to need a lot more reassurance to have confidence in DH’s credibility. While I’m waiting for that, I’m shopping for another host.
Brian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:37 am
All of the talk I have seen is from people who are customers.

Can anyone tell me how it is they hit my bank account when I don’t even do any business with them???

I don’t have any connection at all other than they took my money.

I don’t understand.
Geoff Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Well… I was billed twice for the same period… a $240 auth was made against my credit card but doesn’t look like it was claimed… the auth disappeared this morning. I didn’t look to the blog first when I noticed the billing and shot a quick email to support. I got an answer very quickly that explained the situation and what was happening, rather than a curt ‘check the blog’. While it’s not good that this could and did happen, I’m a programmer and if I should expect people to be patient and understanding if I screw something up, I would expect that I should extend that to DH also. Stuff happens, and it seems to me that they are being dilligent about refunding, offering compensation, and fixing the problem.

Thanks DH… good job.
dan Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:44 am
ahahahahahhaha. Whatever billing screwup happened at Dreamhost is still happening.

I just got popped with a charge of $129.35 this morning at least five months before anything is due. That’s today, 1/17 listed as a pending charge, which my bank notifies me of within 30 minutes of it happening.

I’m not worried, though. If I don’t see a refund as equally fast, I’m flipping it into an ACH debit dispute. Either way I get my money back.
ryptide Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:54 am
I wasn’t charged 4 days ago when this first happened, but I was charged today, for 15 months of service.

I assumed I was safe, since I had not been charged and a call to my bank confirmed no pending debits from Dreamhost.com. Now today I get charged.

This is AFTER I set my account up to only allow Dreamhost to debit a month’s worth of payment on any one day.

Needless to say, I’m a little confused about what is going on now.
c Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Last night I was contacted by DH via phone to be reassured the credit to my bank had been sent. This morning, I contacted the bank again, and there are no pending debits, no electronic transmissions from DH, no communications from DH, NADA.

Now the State AG has been contacted and documentation forwarded to them. Here’s hoping that sends the message we’ve been trying to get across.
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:07 am
>I’m a programmer and if I should expect people to be patient and understanding if I screw something up, I would expect that I should extend that to DH also.

I bet if you were gonna run a process against your entire customer base with new parameters, you’d test it first, as a programmer.

Still no refund, Josh. Did you lie, or are you just this incompetent? I’ve called my bank, they assure me that no refund is pending. “Tomorrow for sure”, remember?

I’m starting to think the people talking about Ponzi schemes might not be totally out of bounds. Not that we actually KNOW anything, because your communication is sparse and half-assed.
Tim Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Tip: Don’t use the same checking account you use for groceries, rent, etc online!
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:12 am
That’s irrelevant to the accident/scam/theft that’s going on with Dreamhost, whatever it is, Tim. Totally irrelevant.
Tim Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Not really.. Accidents, scams, and theft DO happen so you should be planning for when it happens, so your life isn’t messed up over it.

It’s like not locking your doors when you leave the house and knowing someone could come in and steal but just trusting that it wont.
MW is spam banned again Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Door locks are to keep honest people honest, Tim. Unless you live in a military-grade installation, your door lock will be LAUGHED at by any skilled thief.

Anyway so yeah your analogy is broken.

And yes, it IS irrelevant because it doesn’t justify what Dreamhost has done. My personal finances have nothing to do with Dreamhost taking my money without my authorization.

And I still haven’t got my refund, Josh. When do you figure you’re going to straighten this out? Tomorrow, for sure? Again?
Tim Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:19 am
I’m not justifying what happened, I’m saying if you use your debit card on transactions online you can get in very tough situations because of it. Like what’s happened with so many over this. If you use a credit card, yes it can mess things up still, but at least you won’t have no cash to buy food.
Matt Algren Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:21 am
dan, that might be due to timing from the bank. I know my card can take several days to show charges that I made in person.

Anyway, thanks for your candid responses on this, Josh (et al). It sucks that this happened, but we learn from our mistakes. Lots of people are over-reacting right now. I wouldn’t worry too much about them, or about this silly notion of a class action suit. It’s just angry internerd posturing.

Note to those angry internerds: You’re paying less than $15 per month for a ridiculous amount of space and bandwidth. You get, as they say, what you pay for. That isn’t a knock on Dreamhost or to people (like me) who use their services. It’s just the truth.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:23 am
You’re right and that’s been covered by about 111 people since yesterday. :-) People aren’t mad that Dreamhost took food out of their mouths (at least, I’m not, even though I WAS overdrawn), but people ARE pissed that their money was taken in a heartbeat, still hasn’t been put back in a lot of (most?) cases, and there have been consequences for that. People are free to voice their upset since DH has given them this forum for that.

Your advice is a bit like driving past a bloody accident scene and yelling out your window about seat belts and speed limits.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:24 am
>Note to those angry internerds: You’re paying less than $15 per month for a ridiculous amount of space and bandwidth. You get, as they say, what you pay for. That isn’t a knock on Dreamhost or to people (like me) who use their services. It’s just the truth.

Really? If the service were FREE, would that mean it’d be justified if they’d emptied my SAVINGS account, too?
Tim Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Ah I didn’t get to that part then, I read about a bazillion angry comments and then couldn’t read any more and wanted to post the tip.

I actually wasn’t affected because I used Google Checkout when buying, so they couldn’t auto bill me. Even though I still got an email saying I was refunded? Maybe I got yours? (and then if I did get a refund, where did it go with my CC not on file with them?)
Simon Jessey Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:28 am
@ MW is spam banned again: I just wanted to thank you for providing so much entertainment over the last few hours. I’ve had a lot of fun reading all your comments, and I was hoping you could put up a link to a picture of your wife. She sounds so scary and dominating that I wouldn’t mind going a few rounds with her if she’s a looker as well.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Simon -

Some of us simply respect our wives, I guess. It’s not a fear thing or even a domination thing. Wouldn’t you be a little fearful and at least ashamed at having to explain how a decision you’ve made (hosting with Dreamhost) has cost the family hundreds of dollars and that the promised refund has yet to materialize, and for all you know may not?

I’m pretty embarrassed to have to go to my wife, whom I love and respect, with that. Dunno about you.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Tim I got an email saying I was refunded 44 hours ago. Still no refund in my bank account. Bank says nothing’s pending despite Josh’s assurances in his blog post.
Happy Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:39 am
I’ve HAD this happen to me before, by large companies. Double bill me one month. ALL they would do is say, “Oh, well, now you have a credit, you won’t be billed next month.” They would NOT refund it, and they would NOT reimburse for overdraft/over limit fees.

So A: Big companies (like phone companies) DO do this.

B: NO other company would let you send them a SCREEN SHOT of a “fee” and pay it for you!

Dreamhost rocks because they care and they respond! Even if they do a bad job of it sometimes, at least they TRY, AND the president/owner of the company gets involved FREQUENTLY. Try getting the president/CEO of CitiBank to help you! :)
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:42 am
>Happy

Did the phone company ever double bill you for a YEAR, into the FUTURE, that you didn’t even owe them yet?

No?

I don’t think your anecdote is relevant, then.

Also, so far Josh has PROMISED to repay bounce fees. So far as we know, he hasn’t actually PAID any of them yet. He’s also promised refunds. From what I hear, lots of people (who KNOWS what portion) still haven’t got THOSE, either.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:44 am
>Dreamhost rocks because they care and they respond!

They haven’t responded to most of the questions posed to this blog, and they also haven’t responded to 3 support/billing requests I’ve sent since Tuesday.

The only peep I’ve heard from them addressed to me aside from the initial bill (which they had NO trouble processing IMMEDIATELY) was an email promising that a refund had been issued. That was almost 48 hours ago. I still have no refund. Just a paragraph long email telling me that i do. That’s a heck of a response.
Nate Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:45 am
I contacted dreamhost sales, claiming to want to set up hosting with them Patrick M contacted me back in less than 1 minute:

>> I wanted to get a hosting plan with you guys for a bunch of my sites.
>> Is there a number I can call to talk to a salesman so I know this is a legit
>> business?

> Unfortunately, we do not have a call-in number and we do not provide
> pre-sales phone support. As for determining whether we are a legit
> business, all I can say is that we are and we have been in business for
> over 10 years now.

If that’s not a slap in the face, I don’t know what is. The have time for new customers, but not their present ones.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Yeah, so much for the “All hands on deck” theories. How about having the sales guys answer some billing/support emails? Not their role, sure, but this is a bit of an extraneous circumstance, wouldn’t you say?

@Nate - Maybe the thing is, they need more credit card numbers to overcharge. Who knows?
Dal Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Promised refunds. Assurances that reversals have been made when they haven’t been. “Don’t worry, be happy” posts on here from possible DH shills.

This all sounds like a company with financial difficulties getting ready to abscond with funds.
ktpupp Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I had the pending transaction show up and then go away on my bank account, then I rec’d the email from DH stating they had processed the refund so I thought I was all set.

WRONG! Today I check my bank account and there is a completed charge (not a pending authorization) for the amount of the erroneous billing.

DH may be saying things are fixed up, but they are not. I am working on setting up hosting with another provider and will be leaving DH as soon as I am refunded.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:57 am
IF you are refunded.

The charge is still pending, for me, and it’s been pending longer than a charge normally pends for, so I have some small hope, but hearing the stories on here is not making that hope any larger.

This is seriously messed up. I’m calling my state’s Attorney General tomorrow if the charge isn’t gone, and I recommend that others do the same.
Lisa Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:01 am
It’s interesting how this discussion has degenerated into sniping at each other. And MW, while I feel your pain as far as how the overbilling affected you, don’t you think you stated your side and can move on?

Overbilling to this extent with consequences of this magnitude isn’t an “oops” - it’s a huge f*cking mistake that’s needs to be addressed in a manner that shows respect for those affected by it. Offer people a free month or something - show that your customers matter beyond an just issuing a mass apology. Arguing with each other about it is fairly ridiculous.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:18 am
I just heard from my bank again. Not only is there no reversal in the system for the charge, but the charge has been CONFIRMED by Dreamhost and will posted against my account tonight.

No refund/reversal in sight.

WHAT’S GOING ON DREAMHOST?!

I’m calling my state’s Attorney General as soon as I’m done posting this.
Lorenzo Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Some lessons learned, long ago.

Never, ever, under any circumstances, allow anyone or institution present a demand payment (debit card) on your account. Period. No exceptions.

Never, ever, under any circumstnces, allow your credit balance (credi card) exceed 50% of your credit limit. Period. No exceptions.

There’s more, but these are the ones applicable to this incident.

Josh, DH, thanks for the quick response to the problem.

Now, let’s talk about some change management at DH. Eh?
Brian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:23 am
I was just contacted by phone.

They have assured me that my refund will be coming and they apparently had my info from a site my son had set up for me. I thought it was through another provider.

Needless to say, I am relieved that it all looks to be getting fixed.

Oh, good luck MW they might just be putting you off till last??
Dal Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:25 am
With the number of clients exiting and DH saying they “understand” and not trying harder to retain them, it sounds like DH isn’t planning on being around much longer!

The law enforcement motto is “follow the money.” and it sure doesn’t seem to be coming back to the clients!

Josh, if he is the president, needs to contact me.
Cheryl Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Day 3 now. Called my bank twice, once last evening. No record of any $400+ refund from Dreamhost. Monry still inaccessible.

Every support message I get back just lays it on the bank, and doesn’t acknowledge the Status post that says some refunds didn’t go through properly.

And frankly, it kind of pisses me off that they’re offering restitution (buying out contracts) to people who decide to leave Dreamhost, but nothing (verbally or financially) to thank the customers that stick with them through this. If that’s the way they want to treat the loyal ones, then I guess I’ll be on my way out too after 4 years.
TCX Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:28 am
It might be interesting to see who has gotten refunds, who has not, and what banks they are at to see if there’s a pattern. Anyone else care to share?

My DH account gets billed to a Citibank credit card and it has been taken care of that same day. Also it was not set over its limit by DH’s mistake.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:29 am
I just called Attorney Blumenthal’s office. From the sound of the receptionist/paralegal/?? who answered and took my info and asked for written docs, I’m not their first caller today.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Brian,

For all I know you work for DH. No offense, but I’ll believe it when I see it at this point.
Lisa Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:32 am
On second thought, MW - spam away. Clearly there are some people in serious denial here - trying to make this a lesson in money management instead of holding DH accountable for a major fiasco and thanking them for the privilege of having their accounts screwed. “Oh yes it was a mistake, but since you addressed it, no harm done…thank you so much”

Gag.
Sam Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:32 am
You guys are a bunch of noobs. Seriously. THanks for the apology but wifey aint interested in your granola sob story or your blog. Neither am I.

After this mistake and the overdraft charges, you are STILL BSing me. I sent you a response and an attachment since you not only seem to forget that you charged me more than once, you are questioning my integrity in telling you how much the overdraft fees are.

See, what you did caused a DOMINO effect. Not only did I get overdrafted by YOU, but this in turn overdrafted other stuff that I did have the money for before you F**CKED UP.

I am leaving DH. Your service and email is SH*T and after one year, not only am I leaving, so are all my friends that signed up last year as well.

One more thing, was this a real mistake or were you jack-offs in a cash crunch that you need a short reprieve? Sounds very fishy to me.

Not impressed, just pissed.
Nate Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:33 am
I was just personally contacted myself.

Though it should have happened way earlier, at least it seems like things are moving a bit better on their end finally. I have confidence all pending issues will be resolved sometime today (unfortunately they’re on Pacific time :)).

If all customer issues including MW’s are solved today, I’ll stick with DreamHost for my non-mission-critical hosting needs. But I don’t think I’ll trust them for any enterprise needs from here on out…
j.a. Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:40 am
hi,
we are with dreamhost since 2005, and all it’s ok for our own cheap services for our low profile customers. Price, speed, panel, support, all that’s ok, until now, incidents included. But this incident is serious, basically because it’s about money, and with the money no more jokes please.

Ok, your words are fine, no problem, the problem is we doubt you learn about this (and the others) problems created by yourself…and the last question: what’s next? bankruptcy. We are waiting for the josh post in the blog for that day. Maybe will be funny!
Dal Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:45 am
This will not fly in Bankruptcy Court. There will be criminal charges, state and Federal.
Kris Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I just want them to sell me a shirt that says “I Survived Dreamhost 2008″ … Apparently these charges are like 9/11 all over again to some people… just to let you guys know this isn’t really dreamhosts fault, this IS poor money management, it just happens to be dreamhost THIS time…

heres why you wont see me bitching… it could have been a WHOLE lot worse… Were any of you members of RegisterFly when their little fiasco happened? Well I was and I had my card numbers stolen… not charged on accident, but STOLEN by an employee… they racked up $900 worth of shit on my debit card and I have YET to see the money. What did I learn? I learned to ALWAYS be prepared for the worst thing possible to happen and manage your money well … youre lucky it wasn’t more and youre actually lucky that it was dreamhost and not somebody else…and youre VERY lucky to have anyone even TRYING to give you a refund…
Dal Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:54 am
DH is HQ in Brea, CA. If this is fraud, the funds are offshore already. This won’t save the perpetrators, though.

Josh? Where are you?

To those who say they were contacted….
please let me know the name of the person who contacted you and how to reach them.

Right! My expectation is, I won’t be getting any contact info!
Sam Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Bitching and moaning,

You obviously have nothing to complain about so why did you post anything?

People have a right to be pissed.

I guess when you are getting butt surfed by some company, you say “Thank you sir, may I have another.”

Now STFU and let people vent since that is about all the satisfaction they may get over this crap.

DH did put up this up so everyone would stop emailing them directly. I say enjoy writing and/or reading.

Jerk.
BANNED BY DREAMHOST Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:02 am
@John Doe - I’m not sure how much of what you were saying earlier was directed at me and how much at MW, but in any case, personally I happen to have chosen not to get married or have children either, because quite frankly I don’t think I can or ever will be able to cover the expense of children nor a divorce. Still, I’ve both seen and had plenty of other things happen that made me realize this before I made those particular mistakes, and yes I’ve added to it through some unwise decisions as well just like most people. My only point is that none of this makes anyone so subhuman that they don’t deserve to treat themselves a bit for a whopping ten dollars a month, and there’s a huge difference between being able to afford that versus $240 or $400 in one day out of nowhere, though you don’t strike me as being among those who don’t realize that. Whether or not people chose to buy a house or start a family when they could easily afford it but their circumstances changed, or whether they have a few million in the bank but are too miserly to buy a bigger cardboard box, there wouldn’t be any such discussion right now if not for something that should never have happened. Just bear in mind that you do indeed have many years left to screw up or be screwed royally somewhere along the line, and the odds favor that sooner or later you will. Also, yes you may not have been born into extreme wealth, but you weren’t born into abject poverty in a country with few economic opportunities either, which would have sent you down a much different path, and that part at the very least had nothing to do with anything you did right.
Nate Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:02 am
I was contacted by “Patrick M” less then 1 minute after putting in my fake hosting request. Then after mentioning it here and on another blog:

http://blog.dreamhosters.com/2008/01/16/worst-typing-error-in-history/#comments

they finally got back to me. Supposedly they are looking into it for real this time, so I’ll give them a couple of hours.

My advice is to go through https://dreamhost.com/contact.cgi , and post to their sales team. Seems to be a better way of being heard.
Brian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Andrea was her name.

She asked for my card info first and last four digits. She looked up my info, told me about my account,that my son had set up, and then told me how to access my info. She emailed me links to cancel before my next billing period if I want to and assured me my reversal was already set up and would go through soon. She was very nice and commented she didn’t have much hair left… I believe it is a big mess and they are trying to make it all right. I think it will take quite a while for several humans to fix what a machine can screw up in a short time!

Oh, MW I don’t work for them, I’m a carpenter with a small business in Illinois , you DUMB ASS
Dany Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I am officially on Day Two of the seven days I am giving Dreamhost to resolve my situation.

As of this time, the charge has not yet posted to my account, but it is still there, and it will become an active charge to my account that I can see as of tonight, and will count against my available balance. My credit card company is aware of the situation however, and they have informed me that they will be happy to assist me with a dispute if it is necessary.

This is simply my experience only, not that of others..some who have been only minimally affected, others, severely so.

There is only one thing I can say about this situation that I feel really matters: learn from it, and protect yourself going forward. It goes to both customers and Dreamhost itself. You all know what you need to do to keep you from experiencing this again.

Don’t sit here and waste your time on this blog complaining every half hour. Instead change your auto-billing options to something safer that can endure a potentially big screw-up that isn’t your fault, or change to a credit card with good dispute processes. Go to another hosting provider if it means that much to you, but don’t expect it to be an absolute fail-free solution, because they could have an “oops” just like this. ANY company can mis-bill you, and mis-bill you drastically.

Be proactive going forward. Yes, it’s the job of the companies that we are customers of to protect us from major failure, but when that doesn’t work, it’s up to you to make sure you are properly protected from their errors.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:25 am
B&M -

Your argument requires there to have been a resolution. Aside from a sparse handful of unverifiable claims, there’s been no indication of one. I certainly don’t have my money back. In fact, my “pending” charge becomes official tonight, according to my bank. No reversal or refund in sight.

That’s not a resolution.
Cory Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:28 am
MW - I know who you are! (And you know who I am too).

Why do we keep running into each other?

At least now your comments make sense. ;) First JoS, now this. *sigh*. ;)

FWIW - I just switched over to DH from TextDrive, and I’m very happy. Yes, we got hit with the charges. Yes, I’m sorry for the people it pushed over. Part of me thought, “Well, you should have more of a buffer”, but then I remembered that we pay our bills out of an account we put just enough money in to cover the bills, and had the timing been different, we would have likely gone overdraft.

Thanks Josh for putting a more serious one out. I enjoyed the email from support and your first post, but always good to have something like this as well.
Jim Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:30 am
This issues with some people having charges pending and other not is based on if you used a credit card or a debit card for your account. At least that’s the way my bank is explaining it to me. The amount charged to my account is still pending, and will expire tonight after waiting 3 days for Dreamhost to finalize it. I would imagine that they are not going to.

My sympathys to those who have been personally impacted by this. I’ll be able to live without $400 for a week, but it still sucks. The lesson learned for me in this is put my dreamhost account onto a credit card, that has good fraud prevention protection, and leave my personal funds out of this.

Frankly, I appreciate DH working on the issue and trying to fix it even before I was aware of it and before my bank contacted me about it. Yeah, they screwed the pooch on this one. But their service has been good, and certainly better than what else is available on the market that I can see. So I’ll stick with them and hope they continue to grow as a company.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:30 am
>The amount charged to my account is still pending, and will expire tonight after waiting 3 days for Dreamhost to finalize it. I would imagine that they are not going to.

That’s what I was told by my bank, too.

Then Dreamhost finalized the charge today.
Matt Algren Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Really? If the service were FREE, would that mean it’d be justified if they’d emptied my SAVINGS account, too?

Obviously not. But if someone offered me a service for free when others were charging in excess of $50/month for it, I wouldn’t be surprised when something went flooey. Put out, yes. Annoyed, yes. Having a conniption fit for two days after the flooey, no.

Also, wear your seat belt and drive under the speed limit. And wait an hour after lunch before getting back in the pool.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Great. So I should also not be put out when the smug, smiling all-powerful Josh tells us that refunds have been sent out, we’ll see them “Tomorrow for sure!”, and then no refund materializes, and the pending charges comes out of my account after all, and Dreamhost remains ABSOLUTELY SILENT on the issue, not returning emails, not answering the phone… I should just grit my teeth and smile?
Lisa Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:38 am
B&M

You think posts berating people that are venting genuine anger & frustration(and are free to be a redundant as like while doing it) provides a better read on this blog than the original post themselves? You’re saying volumes about yourself and you don’t even realize it.
Jim Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:41 am
@MW…

ouch man, sorry you got finalized with that charge. Have you contacted your fraud prevention service from your bank. If you’re using a debit card, you can dispute the claim, get the charge taken off your account in 24 hours or less, and be refunded permantly in a week by most banks.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:44 am
>If you’re using a debit card, you can dispute the claim, get the charge taken off your account in 24 hours or less, and be refunded permantly in a week by most banks.

I have contacted my bank’s fraud unit. I’ve been told that I can’t be credited, even provisionally, for ten days. I’ve never received such poor service from any other bank I’ve ever done business with, and I’m SHOCKED by this, and will be changing banks (as well as hosts).
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Also, I’ve been banned from dreamhoststatus.com again.
Simon Jessey Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:45 am
MW is a dirty spammer said:

Wouldn’t you be a little fearful and at least ashamed at having to explain how a decision you’ve made (hosting with Dreamhost) has cost the family hundreds of dollars and that the promised refund has yet to materialize, and for all you know may not?

To be brutally honest, no I wouldn’t. My wife respects the decisions I make about things such as this. Anyone with a few brain cells would have read the blog posts and understood that DreamHost intends to do everything it possibly can to resolve the problem. You have to expect there to be literally thousands of people in the same position as you, and each must be dealt with in turn.

If I were DreamHost, I’d be tempted to put you to the bottom of the “to do” list each time you make an ass of yourself on this (or the other) blog. I imagine DreamHost are above such petty reprisals though.

So I guess you’re not going to link to a picture of your wife then? Shame. I’ve been thinking about her all day.
Matt Algren Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Plus, your last name apparently starts with a W. You should be used to being last!
David Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:47 am
I was mad before, but all my concerns seem addressed in this blog post. I guess there’s nothing left to say. Thanks for making good on the overdraft fees and giving us the option to leave our contract if we choose. I’ll be staying.
Jim Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:49 am
MW… sorry to hear your bank has such poor customer service. Check out Washington Mutual. They are giving me a provisional credit immediately upon my filing of a dispute if the pending charge goes on my account instead of expiring. I’ve always found their customer service to be fair, as long as you talk nice. If you ramp up with them they can be a bit pissy.
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:52 am
>I was mad before, but all my concerns seem addressed in this blog post. I guess there’s nothing left to say. Thanks for making good on the overdraft fees and giving us the option to leave our contract if we choose. I’ll be staying.

If they make good. So far a lot of us haven’t even seen a refund even though Josh promised they’d be here by today.

In fact, my pending charge was FINALIZED by Dreamhost and will post against my account tonight. It was never reversed.
Shawn Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Josh and Dreamhost,

Thank you for the quick response. I have got the refund. To boost security, I have made it where large sums of money may not be withdrawn from my account without my permission, that I should have done long ago since we are in the age of ID Theft and etc. I have 7 domains hosted with you all since 2005 and I plan to continue hosting with yall all. Once again, you have proved to me that you are a reliable web hosting company on my behalf. Thanks again and I’d buy you a beer as well.

-Shawn-the-very-happy-dreamhost-lurch-looking-thingy!
Kriss Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Hey MW,

You keep saying “Josh promised they would be here today” and “The duplicate billing issue has not been answered”, and “The charge was finalized by dreamhost” … Okay, point taken, message well received by everyone here…. is there anything NEW you would like to say or are you just going to keep saying this over and over? If youre gonna do that just type up a template and copy and paste it every 5 minutes (you’ll save yourself a lot of effort)…

I find it funny that you have sat here for the past 3 days and complained about the money when you could have easily found a few odd jobs around and made the money back in that amount of time… Go cut someones grass or something, the bitching is never going to bring back your money no matter how loud you scream and how many comments you make… (to me though you’ve really only said 1 thing, just in about 600 different ways)
CL Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I’m just curious. Those of you that said the charge came through your bank today, after not even showing up as pending until now…. did you originally get an e-mail saying you’d been charged? You have some of us on pins and needles that called our banks religiously & were told there was nothing there….

I got an e-mail saying I OWED, not one saying that I was billed…. so I’m naturally curious if now *I* have something to worry about.
Annie Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I got two emails, one said it couldn’t process my payment (this was Monday) I went on and paid directly and all was good. I wake up on Tuesday and got the “you have been charged 207 from DH” I spazzed and emailed them, then came onto the Wiki and saw I wasn’t alone. I keep plenty of space on my credit card so I wasn’t worried, but neither the original 207 or the credit has shown up on my statement yet. But the bank takes about three days to post stuff anyway.
Dal Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Two things have to happen for the funds to be deducted from your account on a debit card. First the charge amount is sent by the vendor. This is shown as a pending transaction. Then the vendor must sent a sales draft to verify (finalize) the amount. My account was charged on Jan 15. I was told that it was reversed on the same day (never happened). Today, Jan 17,
DH sent a sales draft finalizing the transaction.

Let MW rant. He has been lied to. The problem is not fixed and the cause not explained.

I am in LE. Anyone who has been actually reimbursed, please contact me at dallas@dalvision.com with confirmation.
Tangley Vuster Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Must be nice, those of you with disposable money who are able to say “stop whining.” You got extra money and don’t have to care when someone pulls money out of your account when they aren’t supposed to? Fine. Pay my electric bill for me. And buy me a couple bottles of Pepto-Bismol while you’re at it.

I live check-to-check, gotta plan out months or even years in advance whether or not there will be luxury purchases like a year’s worth of Web site hosting (and that only in hopes of getting my Web site to start bringing in money someday) and it doesn’t, and cannot, enter into the plan that someone will hit me with a huge unauthorized charge. Am I responsible for my own fraud protection? “No, honey, we can’t pay the bills this month, we have to keep that money in case our Web host has an accident with their billing software again.” And if so, how much is reasonable? Five times, ten times as much as we pay Dreamhost per year just in case the next glitch is even larger?

I had the month planned out. This charge hit at precisely the wrong moment, when I was about thirty bucks shy of being able to handle it. Right now I’m at -$291 because of all the overdrafts. I get to do the rain dance at the bank today to try to get them to help me out, but none of that matters until the money actually shows up from Dreamhost, and at the rate we’re going now, I’m starting to wonder if that will ever happen. Multiply this by however many people thought this was resolved until the charges reappeared this morning and you tell me if you still think this is whining.

Dreamhost says they refunded the charge Tuesday afternoon. Bank says otherwise. Who’s right? Where is my money?
Word Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Let’s look at this logically:

Their main site says:

* 500 GB Disk Storage
* 5 TB Monthly Bandwidth
* Plus many more features!
* Sign up now for $5.95/mo*

Anyone that doesn’t see that as a scummy trick to get clients by blatantly LYING about what you can offer by doing MASSIVE overselling to the point where clients site’s only suffer anyway, are the people that are clueless or are fooling themselves. The LAST thing anyone should worry about is a billing error that they surely didn’t do on purpose.

Then, I see people saying “I’m leaving DH and going to hostgator”. Seriously? You want to go from one lying scummy host to another? Why not look around for a real web host that offers realistic, but generous limits? Someone that has an idea what they are doing and doesn’t lie to get clients.

Even DH can’t get a dedicated server with 5 TB of bandwidth for under $400/mo. for the entire server they put the clients on, and that’s primarily for the costs of bandwidth. Wonder WHY you get a 5 TB (TERABTYES) bandwidth plan for only a few dollars a month, yet the overage for even PER 1 gig is $1 more? That’s because it costs roughly 50 cents to $1 PER GIG for them that they pay. Why do you suppose they are promising you $2,500-$5,000 worth of bandwidth (their costs!) to their clients for $5/mo. Does that sound like a GOOD and HONEST or sane business plan to you?

So, you people complain about this billing mistake, but are seemingly okay with being flat out scammed and lied to. Sure, what’s the difference? Well, quality for one. Another is that the overhead and overselling and resources are to the point where the owners and staff are essentially clueless, because they can’t afford real, knowledgeable staff. Oh, and slow servers and downtime. So, even if YOU won’t use all of the bandwidth or disk space, enough other people do where your site is affected. This doesn’t seem to be things people are aware of. That’s scary for your site and business online. This is why they aren’t good “like they USED TO BE”.

I’d be completely up in arms about that nonsense if I was any of you. Honestly, not even the bandwidth, but the 500 Gigs of disk space for a few dollars a month. The largest disks sold that will run properly in a server (not including heat issues with the chassis), are 1 TB disks. So, they can actually only host $10 worth of clients per month and pay out $5-10K on bandwidth. So, why is this mistake so troubling, but no one’s up in arms about being lied to, to the point where the service sucks?

See, I’m not here to sell you on anything, but don’t complain about one thing and put up with something worse, especially don’t go running from one shitty host to another. Use google and use common sense and look around and stop suffering problems, downtime and mistakes by under qualified staff because of yet another web host ran by yet another clueless, unskilled owner and management team. Who suffers when you do that? YOU. If you’re not troubled by it, then stay and don’t worry about a billing issue as your primary concern. If this doesn’t make absolute sense to you or you get defensive, then you’re welcome to keep your heads buried in the sand.
smyl Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
@C L

if you paid w/ something other then a card (googlepay/paypal)
then they probably just sent you the bill
marvin the martian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
@MW: you’re quite pleased to talk about “unverifiable claims”. I’d like to say for the record–again–that I don’t believe a word you’ve said, especially the words that have been said many multiple times here.

In fact, I think you may be an agent for another hosting company!

What makes you above the suspicion that you so freely cast at others?

@Krissy: Very good point. @MW, there are far more proactive ways you could be respecting your loving wife than by posting endlessly on this blog.
CL Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I have a debit card on file, and have paid the same way since 2004, but I turned auto-bill off and received a bill from them, different than the normal “we have billed you for xx amount” e-mails that others got, and from what I usually get every month. Instead I got “this is just a notice that your DreamHost Account has a balance of yada yada” and later got the e-mail about Accidental Multiple Billings, with a note that told me to disregard the previous e-mail and the bum charges had been removed from my account. I called my bank consistently on the 15th and 16th just to be sure, as with my bank, charges from DH have always cleared the next business day (again, I double checked)–I paid bills yesterday THINKING I was in the clear of this, and they were due. Now if this come through, when I thought everything was fine, the word screwed will be a poor understatement for what I actually am. I hope this is paranoia after seeing how poorly they’ve dealt with this situation…. I’m just concerned.
Dee Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
My situation:

I have a strictly business account - set up to autopay on a Chase debit account that I use to pay all vendors.

I was one of those double-billed for twelve months, so the charges were in the thousands of dollars.

On the morning of 1/15 I noticed that Dreamhost posted a huge dollar amount against my account. A few hours later I got billing email that detailed the charges.

Later that same afternoon, I got the “fat finger” email.

This morning I got a credit issued email.

A few hours later I received another billing email saying I was charged for one month of service - for January.

The original charge is still showing as “pending” on my account. I am hoping it goes away tonight. I guess we’ll see.
Ian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
MW, you said:

“You’d HOPE that wouldn’t happen again, but they still have my CC # on file”

So you used your credit card to pay, yet somehow the funds were magically taken from your bank account causing you undue sorry and pain?

My credit card company gives me a month to pay, after which any charges will be reversed for sure. What kind of fucked-up bank do you have that automatically takes the money from your account when you use your credit card?
CL Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
He’s probably speaking of a debit card, which works much in the same as a CC, only the money is taken from your bank account when you use it.
Word Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Ian, I assume MW uses a debit/credit card, where it works as a CC for purchases, but actually takes the money right out of the bank account like cash. The problem with that sort of card, is that while you sometimes have the protection of a CC against fraud (it’s less secure in that manner for protection), you still have the money taken out of the account. Perhaps that’s the issue, but I’m just guessing.
Word Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
CL and I were typing the same answer. Oops.
Friendly Neighborhood Spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
“So, they can actually only host $10 worth of clients per month and pay out $5-10K on bandwidth.”

Wow, you really assume they only have one server, with one hard drive? Of course they’ll have some other reason to disable you on shared hosting before you even get close to 5 terabytes, an off the wall figure like that is just an easy way of saying that unless you’re google or myspace you’re not likely to ever need to worry about the bandwidth itself, you’ll crash the server for everyone long before you get charged for going over.

Anyhow, as far as setting a limit in the web panel, don’t get too comfortable. That’s part of the software too and is just as prone to going haywire, so if possible make arrangements with your bank or credit card company to limit such things on their end, and if not start shopping around for another one.
Sam Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I just went to my bank and they refunded one of the overdrafts…. $35.

The other $70 they said is up to Dreamhost to refund me.

I sure hope they don’t try and recharge me again.

I am feeling a little better that my bank is aware but they advised me to close my account and open a new one to prevent this from happening again.

That is a pain but what can you do?

Still hoping that DH helps us all out.

Good luck to all.
Angie McKaig Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I was one of the very PO’ed and upset about the lack of professional response commenters the day all this happened.

HOWEVER. This post was much more the kind of response I hoped for from Dreamhost. Yes, it was a big goddamned mess. But the kind of response this post gives is exactly what was/is needed. Thank you for listening - I know when the world is screaming at you it might just be easier to clap your hands over your ears (figureatively) and just forge ahead. The fact that you listened here and responded in kind… makes me feel better about not just your company but the fate of my own, which rests (to some degree in the short term at least) in your hands every day.
Dal Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
So far no one from this blog has emailed me with any refund confirmation, although some have claimed to have been refunded.
Word Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Friendly Neighborhood Spammer, who assumed they only had one server? Of course not. The point was all of the other problems DH has and WHY those problems exist. A company needs to make so much profit, to be able to hire so many (knowledgeable) staff to support so-many clients in their client base. Failure to do that because of scummy scamming plans, is why the problems exist.

If a company has 20K+ clients and they have a few hundred servers and only profit $500/mo. per server, if they are lucky, due to their plans, then they stand to maybe make just about enough to hire an outsourced support team for cheap, and their servers are never configured properly or ran well.

If the company can’t “figure out” that the plan structure is not only a pathetic lie, but it’s affecting not just their pocket book, but the quality of service, then there’s a problem. There’s no reason or advantage to play tricks on people with the plans you offer. It’s like selling someone a car for $5K (a good price), but let’s say a good car is $20K, but promising them that they cane drive 50 million miles on one tank of gas (a 20 gallon tank).

The good car can actually go 50 miles per gallon, while the scam car only actually gets about 12 miles per gallon. It sounds better because it’s cheaper and you were promised impossible mileage, but what difference does that make? Now, the bad car also runs a lot worse, and their “in house” mechanics are not qualified to fix anything, so things only get worse. It’s breaking in the first few months, while the good car will go 300K miles before it shows a sign of any problems.

Like I said, it’s not about “I’ll never drive that far anyway and I know it won’t get that gas mileage”, but more like “I wasn’t aware that they had their own special roads that we’d have to travel on — we’re not allowed on the normal roads like the good cars, and this pile of junk constantly breaks down”. Why would you WANT to be scammed and lied to, just because you don’t plan to use so much? Why TRICK clients with terms of service that should “theoretically” mean that anyone using too much will be suspended or moved?

After all, there’s no reason why someone can’t store 500 gigs of data on a single server, if they don’t have downloads that will use the CPU usage. There’s no way they could legally kick them off the service. But, you can bet they’ll find a way. Who wants to do business with a company that uses those sort of tactics? Is there something so wrong with just being honest? Does their quality of service and features lack so much, that the only way they can get and keep clients, is to try and undersell everyone else, by actually lying about what you can get?

My point about “only 2 clients per server” was valid. Not to say they only have one server, but that per server, they could only make $10, which means it’s a loss of $380 per server, minimum. Who actually believes a company will be around, even if you don’t care, when that’s their idea of a strategy to make a profit? Yeah, so what if they are liars and it’s flat out stupid, until it affects you and your site’s uptime. Personally, I’d prefer to host with a company that is honest and has realistic plans — they can still be generous in size (more than you’ll use), but not attract and be the cause of problems.

If slowness, poor performance, downtime, poor staffing and non caring ownership and management, being clueless and unskilled to where they won’t be in business in 5 more years if they keep this up, doesn’t bother you, then I can’t imagine what the original reason was why you selected DH over anyone else, because apparently nothing matters to you — except maybe the biggest numbers (even if they aren’t real). Pardon me if that doesn’t make sense, but I find it a pretty compelling reason for people to NOT use DH, Hostgator, Site5, and all of these other idiots that are clueless about what they are doing and just causing grief for their client base because they don’t give a damn. All it takes is for the clients to tolerate the shoddy service and not give a damn either, and I guess everyone’s happy. If so, fine, but I’m gone from this rat’s nest. I think people need to get their priorities straight.

I’m not being a jerk, I’m just confused why THIS billing mistake is such an issue, and people are tolerating the actual priority problems. I’m simply suggesting a reasonable solution to all of the above problems, including the staff that goof up the billing stuff (again, another result of the way they operate and their mentality — it shows they are kids). It’s not a good way to run a company, but it is a perfect way to build your client base numbers for a future sale to bow out of the business, because this sort of way they operate surely stands to reason that they don’t actually plan to be running the company in another 2-5 years. Often, it’s a fold when that happens, because no one wants to buy a company that makes impossible promises, because there’s no business sense in any of it. Again, if people don’t see how this affects them, then look at this and all of the other issues. If you want to continue to tolerate it, be my guest, because I honestly don’t believe there’s any way to reason with people that think like that. In the end, they’ll get fed up and move away, but hopefully for them it won’t be without a site or any access if they fold before they sell. By all means, enjoy the ride, while it lasts… if you can.
anon Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Word,

Thank you very much for your post above “Let’s look at this logically”. I am currently looking for a host and I was attracted to several deals with specs similar to what you posted. I know that they couldn’t possibly deliver the world for a few dollars a month, but it is extremely helpful to hear some analysis on exactly why. Much appreciated.
rawrly Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
@Dal I received notification the charge on the morning of the 15th, then was propmtly refunded the same day; the refund was even before the charge had fully gone through, so it never even showed on my account.

No love lost on this one for me. Shit happens, Dreamhost has been handling the incident extremely professionally.

In fact it prompted me to setup yearly billing instead of monthly, it’s cheap enough and will save me a few bucks at the end of the year.
Word Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
anon, Thank you for understanding. I really am not trying to insult people that have selected DH or are looking at the alternatives. I’m trying to help people avoid repeating the same mistake. I am absolutely not pushing for, recommending or even mentioning anyone, so I have no ulterior motives. I also want to be clear, I’m not saying this simply to hope that people leave DH. People should consider their experiences and own reasons. This sort of stuff just happens a lot with the hosts that lie about the basics. Site5 used to have a stellar reputation, until they went this route and it doesn’t look like they care to change it. Hostgator used to have happy clients as well, but the last few years, it’s just gone down hill. People used to be happier in general at DH (Dreamhost) as well, but here, again, is the same problem and the same result. It’s not always well received to bring such awareness to people. People just want to be happy (enough) with their host, not debate about this or that or what the cause was. However, ultimately, it comes down to these important things. I’m just trying to offer a little voice of reason from experience (and I’ve been doing admin and support for a lot of big web hosts for many, many years). I’ve seen the problems it causes. I am eager to see when this sort of nonsense stops and things get back to a normal, honest and reasonable level of rationality with how some of these businesses are ran.
Ian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Ahhh, I see MW. Debit cards… they’re just like credit cards, except they link directly to your bank account? We don’t have those here in Canada. Our debit cards are simply our ATM cards, which we can use at almost any retailer… we just have to enter our PIN into the keypad. Of course, we can’t use them for online purchases, but that’s what credit cards are for. A card that provides direct access to your bank account without a PIN sounds pretty dangerous.

Just curious, but why didn’t you use a credit card for this? Safety reasons aside, putting off paying something for a month or more sounds like a good reason by itself.
envygeeks Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
@The Debit Vs. Credit people

There are Cards that are Debit and Credit in the same bunch (same card same account number) and there are Credit cards that tie directly into Bank Accounts using quick pay and even “Prepaid Credit Cards” that are only authorised for the amount in a Savings account and sometimes people set those up to pull directly from that savings account and pay immediately and then later they go put more money into the savings. Just like you don’t need a Checking account to have a Debit card now. My grandma just got a Debit card for her Savings account via the local Credit Union. ;)
envygeeks Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
@ian

Not a lot of people understand that Mastercard and Visa and even Discover card (which is what I use) offer online secure cards so you don’t have to use your actual cards. Yes most debit cards come out of a real money account but not all the time, in a sense (prepaids are that in a sense - aka Western Union Prepaid, it’s not really a real money account they just cover the bill for you because you’ve paid them to).

The best thing for people to do when dealing with companies like this is to get a PayPal account with a Debit/Credit card tied to it and let them generate a “on-time” only card (only in the US) or login to your credit or debit card companies website and do the same, so that they can’t rebill over and over and accidents can’t happen. In real-life situations like this, your bank is more likely to handle a real money debit card situation faster then a credit situation because your debit card links right to your bank account and in all technicality could be your lively-hood. There is also the difference between a “Free” account and a “Platinum” account. At some banks, “Free” accounts are at the whim of “When we can take care of it” and Platinum accounts are at the “WTF, we will kill these mofos right now and have their head on your desk by morning.” I prefer to use my Debit card simply because I can have an action reversed and disputed within minutes of it happening and it be fixed almost immediately, where as with my credit card, I need to wait till it clears to dispute it and even though almost within a few minutes my account will have it’s money back it still takes between 1 and 13 days to clear so that I can dispute it.

That is just how I work though =P, I also have onetime only cards for my debit card for online usage.
Jimmy Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I still haven’t seen a refund. 3pm on the West Coast, 1/17. I hope this is rectified soon….
Word Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
People sometimes use debit cards instead of credit cards, because there is no interest (works just like cash). There are pros and cons to it, but I agree, a credit card is safer — especially if you consider it working like cash. Any theft affects you directly, the company can’t block it once the charge has been made/transaction is completed. Also, while debit cards can offer protection against fraud/theft, they don’t offer the same type of protection as credit cards do. Really, it’s usually a matter of limits (by what’s available in the account in question) so someone can’t charge a huge amount like they could on a card with a high limit, and not having to deal with interest on purchases you’d make with a credit card. But, it’s safer and better, if you can manage it, to just pay off the card from the account before any interests are incurred.
Ryan B Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Are you people for real? Your cable/phone/electricity is getting cut off after 2 days of non-payment? When I was in college I’ve had a cable bill slip for 2 1/2 months before it was cut off, and electricity for at least an entire month without getting cut off.

Yes, I’m calling you all flat out drama queens or just plain liars on this issue.

As far as people who are bouncing mortgage payments and car payments over this… how much were you debited? Under $1,000? And you couldn’t shift anything around to cover for it? I mean, don’t you have any savings or ANYTHING?

I’ve been overcharged $300 by the cable company before on equipment they say I never returned. It took a week to sort it out. But you can bet I had money to eat, because I’m not a flat out moron who is living not paycheck-to-paycheck, but DAY TO DAY! I have friends who do that, unfortunately, and they know they are financial deadbeats. They don’t make excuses for it, at least.

And for that matter, get a real credit card. (Or can’t you? That might explain this a bit.) One that has a bill that you get to review before you pay. Nobody who had a real credit card on their account should be crying. Screwups happen. You aren’t buying food, catfood, and paying for your mortgage on your credit cards, are you? …Are you? The charge will either get accepted or get declined. Personally, I got clipped for $284 in this, but I never even saw it because the charge was reverse. And it never touched any of my bank accounts.

And if you absolutely can’t get a real credit card, at least get a second bank account/bank card to pay your essentials like mortgage, car, food. Checking accounts are free to open most places. Don’t give anybody the ability to financially ruin you because you are paying them a magazine subscription, webhosting bill, or something else silly.

I have had a domain with DH for 2 years and I am staying. They fixed the problem before I even noticed it, and in any case, it ranked as a minor inconvenience and not a financial bombshell because I don’t budget like a deadbeat.
Annie Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I deal with people every day who live paycheck to paycheck and I hear a lot of complaining. A lot of people can’t get credit cards so they use debit cards which can cause problems when situations like this occur.

I’m not complaining
if it doesn’t get fixed then I will later but for now I’m fine. It hasn’t even appeared on my CC statement yet b/c they’re always about three days behind
CL Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Ya know, I’ve been reading here a lot lately and I think the people that are sitting and calling those “deadbeats” because a company withdrew hundreds of dollars from their bank account with no warning completely ignorant. If you’ve never had to live paycheck to paycheck, then good for you & I hope you never do, because you’ll also be faced with people that have zero tact in the way they come across.

I do, I HAVE a job, and am also a struggling new business owner. I work very hard for what I DO have, I don’t take handouts, and I pay for all of my bills out of my own pocket. I have a debit card because I do NOT want a credit card because I do NOT want the temptation of credit, anywhere. I focus on the money I DO have and I work with that every day, every week, every month. I have times where my bank account has been low, but I have NEVER EVER (knock on wood now) been overdrawn, and I am very careful with what I do spend.

For a company to turn around and possibly take hundreds from me, that I don’t have to spare to begin with, and then to be told by someone to “suck it up” and “get over it”…. I find THAT hard to swallow, almost as hard to swallow as the BS that DH is handing out right now by not even updating their own website in almost 24 hours about this situation. If it’s a HIGH level right now, it should be their main focus and they should be updating every few hours if they have to on where they stand with cleaning things up. I’m sorry, I think one person can take 5 minutes to post a response when they’re sitting on millions of dollars of people’s hard earned money.

I am praying that I don’t have a charge go through tonight that throws me in the red, after being assured everywhere that I’m okay. Because if I do, I’ll be one of the people bitching here about it, you can bet your everything on that.

Don’t sit and call someone a deadbeat because they work hard for their money and are pissed when a company takes it and seems to have very little regard for keeping them updated about the situation. Not only does it make you sound like a moron, you better hope fate’s never tested on you.
Word Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Some of what you say might be true or accurate, but some isn’t so black and white. If someone’s running an online business and has so much in their business account, or so much of a max on their CC, perhaps they meet the fees without problems each month. However, maybe their CC has a $15K limit and they only have $5K left. Maybe that’s enough to work fine for a year or two. But, they are charged for 2008 twice and now they had the limit met and also exceeded, what would have lasted for two years. Maybe that’s what they were doing on a business debit card, that many businesses in the USA do use, and it took out all of their money they alloted for months in one day, and they might have other business bills to pay.

Perhaps the business is separate from their personal accounts, or maybe people are just having bad times financially, but were responsible enough to ensure there was enough cash in the business account to cover 6 or more months, and now it’s completely empty until they get their refund. I think it’s a little short sighted and inappropriate to just assume because you had a small amount of money taken out, that it was the same situation for everyone that’s complaining. It does really get old to see people endlessly making excuses, all simply because the issue either doesn’t affect them, doesn’t affect them as significant or that they just don’t care.

That’s fine if you don’t give a damn about how this might have affected people, but to assume they deserve it and act like they are losers because of it, isn’t likely an accurate representation of everyone or everyone’s situation that’s affected by this and happen to be complaining. Don’t get me wrong, if I was DH, I’d totally want that unrelenting fan base type of client sticking up for me, too. However, I think your accusations are misplaced and you’re blaming the victims instead of the company that caused it. Just because you are financially okay is no reason to believe or claim that those who aren’t are just deadbeats.
Word Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Ryan B… and for the record, I don’t assume people are having their cable cut off that very day either. But your other rationalizations are just way off base.
Ian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Word said:

“People sometimes use debit cards instead of credit cards, because there is no interest”

Yes, but if you completely pay off your balance on time every month, you won’t pay any interest. Wouldn’t that be a better option than having it come out of your bank account instantly? If you play your cards right, you can actually make interest by keeping the money you owe to the credit card company until the due date. Of course, don’t miss that due date, or you’ll probably end up paying more interest than you make.

I still don’t see any advantage to using a debit card over a credit card, unless your credit is so bad that the bank won’t give you a credit card.
The Kreek Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
For the overdraft charge ok will see it later, what im really interested is in the refund of the charge, i called the bank, and they didnt have any info about my refund process.

Its been 2 or 3 days. Right now im stuck a bit, with this situation.

If your interested in making up to all the customers, how about an upgrade in the servers (RAM) and maybe an increased in the limit of memory we can use.
Word Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Ian, I actually had said that myself, that it’s better/safer to use a credit card. I also said that you can pay off the balance you’ve incured before interest, so you still have that “pro” and can still use a credit card.

However, there are still advantages, such as all of the incoming/outgoing on one business account, including easier tracking of petty cash, business checks and so on, in one place, on one statement and account.

Still, I did also say that credit cards have just a limit (even if per transaction limits were in place, multiple large-ish one’s could add up), so in case of theft, fraud (or overcharging), a debit card would fail if you choose not to put too much into that business bank account, so you have that prevention measure.

Regardless, I believe a CC is the best option for the same reasons as you and others do. But, that might not have prevented the charges from happening where you meet your limit and can’t do a purchase on the CC for some other business expense. So, it doesn’t solve all of the problems, but I’d not put a debit card online simply because it doesn’t offer the same protection as a credit card.

One commenter here did mention they don’t want to (and why should they, other than for the protection and non immediate fees being taken out), and they said they didn’t want the temptation of credit. That’s valid, and I think it all comes down to “why should I”, if you are responsible with where you put your debit card online. Otherwise, I’m sure they’d also agree with us.
Friendly Neighborhood Spammer Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
@Word - The “per server” wasn’t there in what I read so I took it literally rather than assuming that detail was implied like one would normally expect, only because with Digg and all the blogs who knows who is just popping in here just for the sake of Schadenfreude. Anyhow I understand your general idea, but I doubt there’s anybody whose site actually uses 5TB/month who hasn’t figured out yet that you’ll never get that kind of throughput on $10/month shared hosting. I tend to think of it as harmless marketing personally though, the reason being I get clients all the time who swear they need at least 6TB a month, refuse to bite on anything less, and of course none of them have ever or will ever use more than a few hundred gigs.
wryyyyy Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Hey guys, let’s feed the trolls!
Ryan B Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
It isn’t like I’ve condoned what Dreamhost has done here. They owe you back your money and I feel they owe you back your overdraft charges, if any. That being said, you’re the ones who are living on the edge, not them. You’re gambling and sometimes (like this time) you’re going to lose.

All I am saying is that if you are hanging by a thread financially, setting up auto-pays that debit your bank account that you use to pay for bills and food is probably a stupid move. What if your paycheck takes a day longer to post to your account and your mortgage payment processes a day or two faster than you’re used to? When you’re operating on such razor thin margins, you’re almost into the domain of kiting checks. You’re going to get burned.

Yes I’ve worked paycheck to paycheck. Yes I’ve overdrafted my account(s). Yes I’ve missed a payment on a bill or three or five. But the only person I had to blame was myself. I’ve been paid a week later than I expected. Thats materially almost the same as this. It was caused by a mistake. And I bounced some checks/payments. But how am I going to take it out on them when I am the moron who was teetering on the edge just waiting for a gust of wind to put me over?

I learned my lesson and I spent an entire year building up a buffer in all my bank accounts bit by bit.

Take some responsibility for your own situations. I’m sorry Dreamhost took money from you, and thats their fault. But if your finances collapsed like a house of cards, the only person you’ve got to blame is yourself.
Lor Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
As of today, January 17, 2008, I am still being billed $120.00 on my card. There is a new charge showing, instead of a refund. I was told via email two days ago that I would receive a refund on my card, and not another charge. I am continuing to get billed on my card for services not rendered.

This is totally unacceptable.
that guy remaining in the corner of the room Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Cade Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
I am still waiting for my refund too. It’s not even showing up at all. I contacted my bank and am waiting to find out. I was already to forgive this but as days go it’s not making me feel any better about my choice for a webhost.
Martin M. Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Dreamhost finalized my charge on the 16th, less than 24 hours after the erroneous charge appeared with a pending status.

I called American Express again less than 30 minutes ago, and they see no refund in the system. They also say a refund would post the minute it is received from the company.

I have disputed the charge just to keep it from accruing interest in the meantime until this is cleared up.

The phone number attached to the informational part of the charge data is valid and does get me to Dreamhost, but the general voicemail box for the company is full.

I’m not starving, I will be able to make rent, I will be able to buy food, feed my cats, etc., but I still think this is ridiculous.

I was charged three times for hosting from Jan 2008 through Jan 2010. I did plan for a charge on Jan 25th to pay for two more years of hosting, but I still don’t get why I was charged for the same two years three times.

I have yet to receive an email from Dreamhost saying my account’s been fixed. Logging into the panel I see a credit on my account for the erroneous bill, but there is no refund with American Express.

I’m apparently banned from the status blog though I’ve only attempted to post one comment today, about an hour ago, which more or less says exactly what I’ve said here. It wasn’t even “more angry-sounding” than this one.

I just wanted to say that I don’t blame the people on here who are angry. I’m very upset about this myself, and I have NEVER had a problem with Dreamhost before. As in, my sites have never been down for very long nor have I ever lost email for more than a short time nor have I ever had files deleted or anything remotely resembling the problems people talk about here. And I’m not angry now because of the mess up. I’m angry because it’s clear that Josh’s explanation is not the full explanation, and, more importantly, I feel I’m being ignored.

If I owed Dreamhost ~$600 they would suspend my account until I paid. Right now THEY OWE ME ~$600 and I can’t even leave them voicemail. Life isn’t fair, but you don’t have to smile about the fact that it isn’t, and at the moment I am not.
Martin M. Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Oh, and my Amex card was taken over its limit by this charge. Yes, I suppose that is my fault for only having $500 in available credit to cover what I thought was going to be a ~$200 bill.

However, because I reacted quickly and contacted Amex and explained the situation, and because my credit is good and my account is otherwise always in good standing, I will likely have any fees encountered waived after the fact by Amex directly. Which means I will likely not have any additional fees to submit to Dreamhost for reimbursement in spite of the fact that I cannot use my credit card until this is cleared up. (Even with the charge in dispute status it still counts against my available credit.)

So, basically, if you encounter overdraft or overlimit fees, you will get additional reimbursement in the form of service credits, but if you take it on the chin, even at the inconvenience of not having the use of one of your credit cards for however long it takes to fix the mistake, you’ll get nothing for the trouble you were caused.

That, in addition to being unfair, is shortsighted on the part of Josh and whomever else helped him come up with the reimbursement plan. I hope that it will be reconsidered, and I have pointed this same situation out in the status ticket I just filed to start the process of getting my money back.
rlparker Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
@Dal (Assorted multiple comments) - A sampling: “As a Reserve Deputy Investigator for the Sheriff Dept. ….”

“That is how Ponzi schemes work.”

“The law enforcement motto is “follow the money.” and it sure doesn’t seem to be coming back to the clients!”"

“If this is fraud, the funds are offshore already. This won’t save the perpetrators, though.”

“Josh? Where are you?”

“To those who say they were contacted….
please let me know the name of the person who contacted you and how to reach them.”

“I am in LE. Anyone who has been actually reimbursed, please contact me at”.

Enough! I think that you are either ignorant, exceedingly poorly trained, a fool, or a liar. I’d like to “assume no malice”, so I’m hoping for that one of the first three is the explanation for you blathering.

How’s this work for you:

Please provide contact information for the agency for which you work in a law enforcement capacity. *I* would like to talk to *them*.

There ya go … let’s “kick it up a notch”, eh?
ebjuris Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Well I guess my refund hasn’t gone through yet. Will wait and see as my bank is sometimes slow to show transactions.
AP Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:10 am
There is a system called Verified by Visa which integrates with online banking systems. You authenticate yourself via your card issuer or online banking each time you make an online purchase. It only works with merchants that choose to use it. I highly suggest that Dreamhost implements this as soon as possible. I’ve seen it at an European hosting company while making payments and it works like a charm.

I made a suggestion about it at the Control Panel.

https://usa.visa.com/personal/security/vbv/index.html
AP Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Here’s some more info about VbV. With it, this would have never happened:

http://www.visaeurope.com/documents/vbv/verifiedbyvisa_merchantdeploymentbestpractices.pdf

I really think DH should deploy this.. the customers who are staying might not want to give their updated credit card info unless there is an independent system like VbV in place which ensures that each transaction is authorized individually.
BG Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:32 am
I woke up this morning to find that not only did I not receive a refund, but the charge that was pending on my account was posted. I received a “refund issued” email 3 days ago. UnFUCKINGbelievable guys! Get this fixed immediately! I am waiting to make a car payment and until you get this squared up, I cannot. WTF!
WTF Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:04 am
BG the same thing happened to me. I got the “WE REFUNDED YOU AND NOW YOURE OKAY” email 3 days ago and the pending on my account is no longer pending. So they took my money after they refunded it?

This is bullshit. How can you guys say this has been handled well when no one has received their refund when they claimed they refunded 3 days ago?

This is a fucking scam. I hope DH dies for this.
CONCERNED EX-DreamHost USER Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:16 am
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!

I AM WRITING THIS TO INFORM YOU GUYS OF YOUR SAFETY.

DREAMHOST HAS NOT HANDLED THIS WELL! THEY CLAIMED TO REFUND EVERYONES MONEY 3 DAYS AGO ON THE 15TH AND THEY COLLECTED MORE MONEY ON THE 17TH. THIS MONEY IS NOT BEING REFUNDED PROPERLY!!

FIRST YOU NEED TO REMOVE YOUR ACCOUNT AND CREDIT CARD FROM DREAMHOST! OR ATLEAST SET YOUR DAILY LIMIT TO $9.95 AND/OR DISABLE AUTO-CHARGE.

*****EVERYONE NEEDS TO CALL UP YOUR BANK COMPANY AND FILE A FRAUDULENT CASE REPORT AND REQUEST TO GET THIS DISPUTED! ONCE YOU GET THIS CHARGE DISPUTED YOUR BANK WILL REFUND ALL YOUR MONEY AND OVERDRAFT FEES!******

!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
CONCERNED EX-DH USER Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:18 am
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!

I AM WRITING THIS TO INFORM YOU GUYS OF YOUR SAFETY.

DREAMHOST HAS NOT HANDLED THIS WELL! THEY CLAIMED TO REFUND EVERYONES MONEY 3 DAYS AGO ON THE 15TH AND THEY COLLECTED MORE MONEY ON THE 17TH. THIS MONEY IS NOT BEING REFUNDED PROPERLY!!

FIRST YOU NEED TO REMOVE YOUR ACCOUNT AND CREDIT CARD FROM DREAMHOST! OR ATLEAST SET YOUR DAILY LIMIT TO $9.95 AND/OR DISABLE AUTO-CHARGE.

*****EVERYONE NEEDS TO CALL UP YOUR BANK COMPANY AND FILE A FRAUDULENT CASE REPORT AND REQUEST TO GET THIS DISPUTED! ONCE YOU GET THIS CHARGE DISPUTED YOUR BANK WILL REFUND ALL YOUR MONEY AND OVERDRAFT FEES! YOU WILL ALSO RECEIVE A BRAND NEW CREDIT CARD WITH A NEW NUMBER******

!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
CONCERNED EX-DH USER Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:19 am
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!

I AM WRITING THIS TO INFORM YOU GUYS OF YOUR SAFETY.

DREAMHOST HAS NOT HANDLED THIS WELL! THEY CLAIMED TO REFUND EVERYONES MONEY 3 DAYS AGO ON THE 15TH AND THEY COLLECTED MORE MONEY ON THE 17TH. THIS MONEY IS NOT BEING REFUNDED PROPERLY!!

FIRST YOU NEED TO REMOVE YOUR ACCOUNT AND CREDIT CARD FROM DREAMHOST! OR ATLEAST SET YOUR DAILY LIMIT TO $9.95 AND/OR DISABLE AUTO-CHARGE.

*****EVERYONE NEEDS TO CALL UP YOUR BANK COMPANY AND FILE A FRAUDULENT CASE REPORT AND REQUEST TO GET THIS DISPUTED! ONCE YOU GET THIS CHARGE DISPUTED YOUR BANK WILL REFUND ALL YOUR MONEY AND OVERDRAFT FEES! YOU WILL ALSO RECEIVE A BRAND NEW CREDIT CARD WITH A NEW NUMBER******

!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
CONCERNED EX-DREAMHOST USER Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:20 am
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!

I AM WRITING THIS TO INFORM YOU GUYS OF YOUR SAFETY.

DREAMHOST HAS NOT HANDLED THIS WELL! THEY CLAIMED TO REFUND EVERYONES MONEY 3 DAYS AGO ON THE 15TH AND THEY COLLECTED MORE MONEY ON THE 17TH. THIS MONEY IS NOT BEING REFUNDED PROPERLY!!

FIRST YOU NEED TO REMOVE YOUR ACCOUNT AND CREDIT CARD FROM DREAMHOST! OR ATLEAST SET YOUR DAILY LIMIT TO $9.95 AND/OR DISABLE AUTO-CHARGE.

*****EVERYONE NEEDS TO CALL UP YOUR BANK COMPANY AND FILE A FRAUDULENT CASE REPORT AND REQUEST TO GET THIS DISPUTED! ONCE YOU GET THIS CHARGE DISPUTED YOUR BANK WILL REFUND ALL YOUR MONEY AND OVERDRAFT FEES! YOU WILL ALSO RECEIVE A BRAND NEW CREDIT CARD WITH A NEW NUMBER******

!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
CONCERNED EX-DREAMHOST USER Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:20 am
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!*
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!*
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!*
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!*
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!*
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!*

I AM WRITING THIS TO INFORM YOU GUYS OF YOUR SAFETY.

DREAMHOST HAS NOT HANDLED THIS WELL! THEY CLAIMED TO REFUND EVERYONES MONEY 3 DAYS AGO ON THE 15TH AND THEY COLLECTED MORE MONEY ON THE 17TH. THIS MONEY IS NOT BEING REFUNDED PROPERLY!!

FIRST YOU NEED TO REMOVE YOUR ACCOUNT AND CREDIT CARD FROM DREAMHOST! OR ATLEAST SET YOUR DAILY LIMIT TO $9.95 AND/OR DISABLE AUTO-CHARGE.

*****EVERYONE NEEDS TO CALL UP YOUR BANK COMPANY AND FILE A FRAUDULENT CASE REPORT AND REQUEST TO GET THIS DISPUTED! ONCE YOU GET THIS CHARGE DISPUTED YOUR BANK WILL REFUND ALL YOUR MONEY AND OVERDRAFT FEES! YOU WILL ALSO RECEIVE A BRAND NEW CREDIT CARD WITH A NEW NUMBER******

!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
CONCERNED EX-DREAMHOST USER Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:22 am
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!

I AM WRITING THIS TO INFORM YOU GUYS OF YOUR SAFETY.

DREAMHOST HAS NOT HANDLED THIS WELL! THEY CLAIMED TO REFUND EVERYONES MONEY 3 DAYS AGO ON THE 15TH AND THEY COLLECTED MORE MONEY ON THE 17TH. THIS MONEY IS NOT BEING REFUNDED PROPERLY!!

FIRST YOU NEED TO REMOVE YOUR ACCOUNT AND CREDIT CARD FROM DREAMHOST! OR ATLEAST SET YOUR DAILY LIMIT TO $9.95 AND/OR DISABLE AUTO-CHARGE.

*****EVERYONE NEEDS TO CALL UP YOUR BANK COMPANY AND FILE A FRAUDULENT CASE REPORT AND REQUEST TO GET THIS DISPUTED! ONCE YOU GET THIS CHARGE DISPUTED YOUR BANK WILL REFUND ALL YOUR MONEY AND OVERDRAFT FEES! YOU WILL ALSO RECEIVE A BRAND NEW CREDIT CARD WITH A NEW NUMBER******

!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!ATTENTION!!!!!
ktpupp Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:54 am
I’m in the same boat as BG and WTF above, the charge actually came through with a transaction dated one day after I was told my account had been refunded. I checked with my bank, the transaction date is the date the vendor actually made the charge, not the day it hit my bank. So DH not only erroneously billed, they completed/finalized the charge *AFTER* the date they told me it was refunded.

I’ve been told twice more via email that the refund has been completed, however my bank sees no activity at all from DH other than the initial charge, (the one that came after the ’supposed’ refund date).

There are far too many people this has happened to for me to believe that refunds are actually being provided.
ktpupp Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:05 am
One more thing… while the guy above (!!!ATTENTION!!!) is a bit of a drama queen, I will note that as soon as I received the first erroneous billing email on the 15th, I immediately turned off AutoPay and deleted my card info from my control panel at DH. Nevertheless, they still processed a new charge to that card on the 16th.
me again Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:35 am
Earlier in this I said my money had been returned.

Actually I just got an email saying DH was returning it.

The monet has, in fact, not shown up as of yet.

Fingers crossed. I have liked my DH experience very til this point.
All I can say is WOW Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:52 am
DreamHost obviously is not handling this that well. DH has still collected money 3 days after they claimed to have had the money fully refunded. Still, the only activity my bank sees is Dreamhost.com collecting money. Wake up people.
Dan Bruno Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Dreamhost, you had better post an update ASAP to explain this.
Xam Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Called my bank today (Wachovia). They said to wait until early next week. If the refund doesn’t show up, then I can contact them and they will investigate and get my money back. So I’m not too worried. Can’t say the same for DH. This is going to set them back quite a bit.
Pandrake Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Oh wow, I like this thread. Many more folk with genuine and/or positive attitude. Love the humor, too. Keep dancing everybody!

So, if the DH fax is swamped with demands for compensation today, and somehow they instantly put money in your hands (how I don’t know), and then next week people find their refund was already in the works and the bank retracts all the badness…. will you return the double compensation to DH?
Adam Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:36 am
I also still haven’t received my refund. Now that its friday and its still not in there, it will probably show up on Monday or Tuesday. This means my overdraft charges because of this will be well over $200. All because of your $310 acidental charge on an account that I only use to pay bill and only put a little more money than what I need in there.
Nathan Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Well, regardless about how some people might feel about the “tone” of your apology, I’m more concerned with whether you’re fixing the problems that your mistake created.

And as far as I can tell, you are. I’m not one of your big customers, I’m only worth $10 a month to you. But you’re going to pay for the overdraft charges I incurred. You’re going to end up paying out 75% of the revenue you received from having me as a customer last year to make up for screwing up. Most companies wouldn’t do that, so I commend you for being one of the few companies in this day and age that actually bother to fix their mistakes.
nic pfost Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 11:39 am
wow, guys. seriously. cancel your service already. your comments are just depressing, and aren’t helping anything or anyone.

dreamhost, i’m sticking with you guys. let the haters leave. and refund their money. so you don’t owe them anything. and good riddance.

:-D
Alex Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I still haven’t been reimbursed for the accidental charge. It posted yesterday which caused one overdraft fee and I still don’t see any refunds on my account which means that probably I’ll get at least a couple more overdraft fees…

Still, I’m glad that you’re working on it, even if it takes longer than expected…
Matt Algren Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
One more thing… while the guy above (!!!ATTENTION!!!) is a bit of a drama queen, I will note that as soon as I received the first erroneous billing email on the 15th, I immediately turned off AutoPay and deleted my card info from my control panel at DH. Nevertheless, they still processed a new charge to that card on the 16th.

That may be an issue with your bank’s processing procedures. In the past I’ve seen charges take several days to clear.
Bob Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
The charge was pending for 3 days on my checking account, and my account finally was charged for $200 on the 17th. 2 days AFTER I received notice of the problem and that a refund was coming. I have yet to receive the refund. My wife freaked out and called the bank. The bank gave her the phone number for the merchant and got a voicemail box is full recording. Not feeling very warm and fuzzy right now. Actually getting rather worried. Not comment from DH since the 16th.
Quwano Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Same here Bob. I called my bank today and they said all DH needs to do is release the funds. Unfortunately the wait has also cause my account to bounce and I can’t get a hold of anyone from DH for an update.
ktpupp Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Just to help folks feel better… I just checked my bank account status online and the refund has arrived! This wasn’t showing up at 10am ET when I last checked the account.

I had already put the charge into dispute and my bank floated me the credit, so I didn’t incur any fees, thankfully. I contacted their dispute department to notify them that the refund has been posted so the issue is now resolved.

MW, I sure hope this means your refund is on it’s way soon. I know how much this has sucked for you and the rest of us who were affected by this error.

I seriously began to doubt I would ever see mine, but it all has worked out in the end. BTW, I will still be closing my hosting account with DH as soon as I line up another server and back up all my files.
KS Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
hehehe

i thought it was quite funny ….

nothing in life is perfect ….

if you dont like dreamhost and the constant downtime then farkoff and go to another webhost its not exactly like you are forced to be here you still choose to be here its just an inconvience to yourself which is why you cant be bothered to go elsewhere because you damn well know every shared hosting server is about the same and you get farked everywhere …

personelly speaking i think dreamhost shudda kept the 7 million and ran away with it :)
Tomas Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Just off-hand there seem to be a number of separate problems being discussed all in one big ball.

(1) The original massive personal error that caused the large number of unwarranted charges to customers.
(2) The original light-hearted “official” blog post about it that set people off even more.
(3) The corrective actions that were started by DH immediately.
(4) The follow-up blog post framed in an appropriate tone (this one).
(5) The DH promise to get this sorted out for everyone, and to cover expenses they caused.
(6) The ongoing problems some folks are having from the original error.
and finally,
(7) The possibility that there are some continuing problems still showing up for a few customers.

(Yeah, I know, I probably missed some.)

I’m sure DH, and especially Josh, are doing the best they can to make sure that all affected customers have their problems addressed as quickly and as well as possible, but some things just aren’t going to go perfectly.

Josh: Bad screw-up that will affect your company for a considerable time. Thanks for being open about it and honestly apologetic. I hope the customers with remaining problems (or new problems) caused by your error are taken care of as soon as humanly possible.

Thank you for still being open enough to admit error even though your lawyers probably get apoplectic when you do. Thing is, DH is big enough these days that it really does need to grow up a bit, and this is very likely the “trigger event” that may turn the company more professional.

In some ways that’s very good, but it’s also a loss of the innocence and freshness you started with.

Still sticking it out,

Tom
University Place, WA
Molly Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I’m sorry, but my account was charged almost $300 on 1/15 and NO REVERSAL has come through yet.

Its unforgivable, when I received an email soon after the 1st one saying my refund had been processed.

I am not a bank, I can’t float a $300 loan to Dreamhost. The cable bill is due, amongst others. I am filing a report with my bank tomorrow, and removing all of my billing information from dreamhost so no account I own will ever be charged automatically by them!
Jasontho Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
OK, the charge went through today instead of coming off my statement today!! WTF and to top things off my website doesn’t work!!!!! WTF WTF WTF!!!!
Beth R Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I saw the pending charges on my account early Monday morning, and replied to the ‘billing’ email (notifying me I’d been successfully billed for hosting); a couple of hours later I received the ‘oops’ email.
I still havent’ received my refund, and now my account is overdrawn; my bank doesn’t see anything in limbo from Dreamhost, so it will be next week before things are straightened out.
I’m not sure if I’ll stay with DH or not; the problem with getting a credit for hosting in that amount is that this is a customer’s hosting account, so any benefit will go towards them, even though this is my account.
Sure hope to hear something back from them soon. Wish I hadn’t listened to the ‘don’t worry about contacting your bank or card company, the money will be back in 24 hours’ sentiment…
me Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Beth R - do you not charge your customer for their hosting account that you pay for?
Ian Muir Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Hey guys,

Thanks for taking a bit more serious tone today. I unfortuantely have not recieved the refund yet, but I transfered some money around to avoid an overdraft.

FYI, from talking to a fellow DreamHost user it appears that Bank of America has not yet processed the refunds for either of us. This likely means that all Bank of America customers may be in similar situation.

For now I’m still sticking with DreamHost, but I have lost a lot of confidence.
George Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
It stinks that people would get all bent out of shape over a bit of levity. It was clearly of the self-deprecating variety, as in “I fucked up”. I like the whole attitude that there’s actual people at the company, that it’s not all about being a PR machine all the time. Shit happens, you know? Gotta roll with it.
Tanya Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I contacted Wells Fargo, my refund isn’t in there either, they have no record of it incoming, so possibly Wells Fargo customers are in the same boat as BoA customers. Just a wee heads up.
Consumer Advocate Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I would encourage anyone that is dissatisfied by how Dreamhost is handling this situation to call up their bank and dispute the charge. The bank will return your money to you immediately, rather than at Dreamhost’s whim. In addition, the merchant not only pays a hefty penalty for the fraudulent charge, but if they have too many these chargebacks, the credit card companies will blacklist them and not allow them to process credit cards.
Molly Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Shit happens? Maybe you have extra money lying around. Lots of people don’t, myself included. I would like to eat this weekend.

Yeah, its a mistake..fix it when you say you’re going to - the hardship caused here is out of control and not humorous in any way, Dreamhost.
RighteousIndignation Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
http://fuckdreamhost.com is now online, and expresses a lot of what many are feeling.
mark b Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
What has happened with DH is outright THEFT!
I run a .com business, I can reverse ANY charge in a matter of seconds.
For a large group would take ME about 10 minutes to write the code to do it.
I WAS being charged interest on the CC charge, till I disputed it. Which I encourage EVERYONE to do, despite the email from this company telling you NOT to contact your bank or CC company.
Of course they don’t want you to. They can keep the money longer.
The email from then went out on the 15th, my CC was charged on the 16TH, a day after. No not POSTED but CHARGED that day, posted on the 17th.
DH is STEALING from it’s customers, plain and simple and making up excuses for it.
I have been a customer for several years, but this is just plain theft, no other way to put it.
NOT fat finger, FAT fingers can be reversed in a matter of hours AT THE MOST!
Jeremy Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Hey! the mistake charge just showed up on my US Bank Visa yesterday… no refund either.

Dreamhost - you had BETTER tell people to keep checking their cards. It looks like you did charge me and haven’t refunded me yet.

I’m calling the bank now to refute the charge.
George Bush Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Listen, folks… This is all part of my trickle down economics. Cheney said this would be a great stimulus package and I agree. 7.5 million in the hands of tech geeks

Maybe I can get one of those there Eye phones…
Kristen Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Adding to the list, still not refund by the 18th - almost $300 in overdrafts. Sent info by FAX to DH. I’m a little worried. This should have been cleared up by now? DH said don’t worry about checking with bank or credit card? I’m glad I didn’t listen. Needless to say, I won’t be happy until this is cleared up and ALL my money has been refunded. I can’t afford this kind of mistake. I’m broke as a joke and just waiting for DH to get around to fixing this is stressing me out. This should have been taken care of two days ago.
Andrew S Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 3:18 am
Maybe DH are on their way down the drain?

Increase in problems in recent times, maybe they are relying on replacement hardware just kicking around rather than investing in more?

Only 7.5mil in turnover for a year? I would have thought they would be churning over more?

I think I am concerned enough to start looking for an alternative.
Tom Kepler Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Still no sign of a refund for me, either. $218.90 gone — it cleared yesterday. I hope Dreamhost does something fun with it. I’ve written to Dreamhost Support three or four times now with no response. In fact, I never got the billing notification e-mail in the first place — my wife noticed the charge while paying bills. I’m writing here, too, in hopes that Dreamhost reads these blog replies more than their support e-mail?

I’d be happy to wait on hold for an hour to talk to someone and clear this up — sadly, that’s not an option.
I wrote yesterday too Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 9:17 am
well hi again, you owe us all something like (a) money and (b)you write to all the financial institutions AND us a letter we can show the creditors whose payments bounced - but that poor dude or dudette whose elec. will be shut off… hopefully won’t be shut off. But how will dreamhost track things like — now my student loan payment was late with a fee totally because you took the money

Note to any Rich people who don’t want to hear this - I volunteer to help the needy and I know what it’s like and EVERYONE ought to understand it as the economy is still going down and there are a LOT of people having problems.

Just because a person does not keep a steep balance in their account does not mean they are a loser. Sensible people keep a small balance so errors and frauds like this can’t wipe a person out — and the rest in a different account.

Furthermore, Dreamhost, I find it stunningly awkward that to solve this irresponsible mistaken taking - you are asking us all to send you our personal banking information by way of statement copies!!!!! Like you are pretty far down on the list right now of whom I want having more of my personal information.

So, give a credit to everyone who has stuck with you through even having to read this baloney and then have the people who think they were harmed beyond that basic amount get ahold of you to work it out.

In Star trek the “self destruct sequence” requires more than one top-level clearance password to initiate. Take a lesson there eh?

Well, guys, I thought I was being hosted by people who understood the basic everyday middle class but the cavalier attitude towards $7mil and the financial havoc to so many people (irregardless of their personal financial state) needs a financial response beyond a refund that comes too late to prevent the fees and bounced and late payments and closed out accounts.

not to mention my time that was needed on other projects.

You owe us bigtime.

what is the MW blocked thing about?
~ME
I wrote yesterday too Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 9:25 am
about the banks — how many of you have been told (like I was) that you can’t stop the payment because you previously authorized the company to make charges and it’s not their problem that the date or amount was wrong?
Jack Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I got hit for $2k+ on my Strictly Biz acct. I was overdrawn and had to borrow from another acct to cover.

Tip: Credit cards give you MUCH more control over your charges, whereas Debit cards do not.

With a Strictly Biz acct and many sites, it is very difficult and time consuming to switch, not to mention the interruption on client sites.

Nightmarish. This almost appears to be a major meltdown. The biggest problem is not the mistake. It’s the poor crisis management. For one, the amazing absence of responses here, on the status page and in the comments section from DH.

DH: Guys, c’mon. Say something at least twice a day, even if its wrong.
WTF Man Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:38 am
What the hell. I cancelled my service well over a year ago, but apparently my card was left on file. I checked my online bank account and saw the $119 deduction from Dreamhost and couldn’t believe it. Still no refund as of today. Luckily I had enough in there to cover it, but I can imagine how utterly frustrating it is for those who don’t. On my other bank account, I keep a very low balance and would not have been able to cover it. I believe I’ll wait until next week to file a dispute.
Jeremy Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:43 am
@I wrote yesterday too:

My bank and I went through a series of scenarios. This wasn’t a double-charge (being charged 2x for the same service), it wasn’t a “I don’t know this vendor”. It basically came down to the category of “I never received the goods” which was about the best scenario we could fit to this.

Basically, you authorized DH to charge for ACTUAL services received but this was not what you authorized them to charge for, therefore, it is a fraudulent charge. It might help if you told the bank you’ve removed authorization for them to charge you again.
Adam Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:45 am
for people wondering - i DID get my refund last night around 10:00, so all is well so far… i e-mailed a screenshot for my NSF (only $50) afterwards, so we’ll see how that goes. it’s a shame josh and the rest of us “not” bitching can’t be infallible like those of you unwilling to accept the first apology based on its humorous context, or the 2nd apology because it was ‘too late’ for a professional apology. i hope to some day be perfect like you guys :D
Nicholas Gerasimatos Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Hello,

As a previous employee of DreamHost and shift manager of their Graveyard Team I can advise you that billing errors within the company are nothing out of the ordinary, suffice to say I was not very shocked when I read there was a 7.5 million dollar billing error. The DreamHost billing system is far from “robust and stable” as Josh Jones proclaimed on the companies web blog, the only thing that could be counted on is the constant issues that have plagued DreamHost for the past few years. Billing issues are quite common with their company and the “fat fingers” he refers to having have led to countless mishaps causing customers downtime and other costly consequences.

As a matter of fact, I am actually the head of a class action lawsuit “Gerasimatos vs New Dream Network” in regards to DreamHost not abiding by the California Department of Labor regulations for paying employees overtime for working greater than 8 hours daily, and also for illegally deducting vested wages for sick and vacation time. I became a whistle blower on DreamHost and shortly after the DLSE contacted the DreamHost owners retaliated against me for “doing the right thing”.

Here is the exact letter the DLSE representative sent DreamHost prior to my retaliatory termination for engaging in protected activities with the DLSE. The law firms participating in the Class Action suit are as follows.

http://www.coviello-law.com/ and http://www.duvel-law.com/

Thank you,

Nicholas Gerasimatos

Dallas Kashuba and Josh Jones:

I am a retired Senior Deputy Labor Commissioner who was asked to return to assist in answering queries that come to the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement from the public concerning California Labor Law. One recent query had to do with alleged practices of your business. I do not know if the query originated from an ex-employee, current employee or friend of somebody who knows your business practice(s). This response is informational in hopes that your business practices do not generate future wage claims and additional liability for your business.

It is alleged that you offer both sick leave and vacation leave as benefits of employment. It is also alleged that in the case where an employee takes sick leave and does not have enough sick leave time accrued, that you deduct double the excess number of hours from that employee’s vacation leave bank. The example give was that if an employee had two hours of sick leave on the books and took a day off “sick” (a total of 8 hours) then you would deduct the two hours from the available sick leave and 12 hours vacation (double the 6 hours necessary to cover the absence). If this is a factual representation of your policies, you are incurring a great deal of liability.

Labor Code § 227.3 protects vacation hours as vested wages. The California Supreme Court in the case of Suastez v. Plastic Dress-Up (1982) [31 Cal.3d 774, 647 P.2d 122, 183 Cal.Rptr. 846] unanimously ruled that under the provisions of Labor Code § 227.3, vacations are earned day by day and any unused vacation must be paid on a pro-rata basis to the employee at the time of termination. The California Supreme Court concluded as follows:

“The right to a paid vacation, when offered in an employer’s policy or contract of employment, constitutes deferred wages for services rendered. Case law from this State and others, as well as principles of equity and justice, compel the conclusion that a proportionate right to a paid vacation vests as the labor is rendered. Once vested, “the right is protected from forfeiture by § 227.3 on termination of employment, therefore, the statute requires that an employee be paid in wages for a pro-rata share of his vacation pay.”

Vacation wages, being vested as earned, cannot be taken from the employee; they must be paid. Therefore (back to the example) taking an additional 6 hours of vacation hours from the employee’s leave bank is a failure to pay for the hours that were vested. This is cumulative and affects every current and prior employee that has had excess vacation hours deducted from their leave bank. A particular quirk of the protection is that there is no violation of the statute until such time as the employment agreement is severed (termination or quit); when payment of final wages becomes due. If the illegally deducted vacation hours are not paid at the final wage rate in accordance to the applicable statue (either Labor Code §§ 201 or 202), the employee has the basis to file a wage claim against you for not only the vacation hours owed, but for penalty wages under Labor Code § 203 (for up to an additional 30 days of wages at their final wage rate).

I have advised the party that queried the Division of unlawfulness of the deduction and suggested that they have the basis of a wage claim if they were an employee of your business and had the hours deducted or would have such a claim if they were a current employee and such wages were not paid when the employment relationship ends.

Please note that business that combine sick leave and vacation leave into some form of “paid time off” or “PTO” such hours would be entitled to the same protection as vacation wages under Labor Code § 227.3. Certainly you do not owe wages to employees for work not performed; you are within your right to deduct (hour for hour) any absence from the wages owed that were not worked (time off without pay). You could deduct (hour for hour) from the vacation hours (so long as the employee is paid for these hours on their regular pay check). I would strongly suggest that such hours are reflected on the wage earning statement as something other than regular wages (either sick leave or vacation hours, as is applicable). The only issue with your policy would be any deduction of vacation hours that were not paid.

You may access the Labor Code from the left side of our web site at http://www.dir.ca.gov

The foregoing has been provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Information contained here may not be relied upon or used as an official opinion of the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement ( DLSE ) in any forum. Access to, transmission or receipt of, or reliance upon this information from the DLSE does not create, and is not intended to create, an attorney/client relationship between you or any other person and the DLSE or between you or any other person.
Tracie Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
LOL, I highly doubt the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement would post on a public blog about this. Classic.
Driftopia.com Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
No worries, you guys rock
Megan Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
LOL, I highly doubt the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement would post on a public blog about this. Classic.

Learn to read. He’s a past employee of Dreamhost.
Cydney Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Im adding to the list as well. I received a email, and read on the invoice page of DH that I received a refund to my bank account for the 109.45$ they took, only to find out the 109.45$ transaction went thru and now I have a overdraft fee ontop of that as well.

I like many tried calling my bank while the transaction was still pending to get it removed and the bank told me it wasnt possible because it was an electronic transaction and it had to be taken care of by DH… and I see how well that went. Im one of those people like alot that cant afford to have some kind of mistake like this happen with incurring fees on my account. - I could possiblity have the fees removed IF they would refund the money as promised.

So whats going on DH.. do we get our money back or what, and if we wait too long will you pay for all the overdraft fees alot of people got tacked onto their accounts because of this “fat finger” mistake?

Not trying to make a scene, and some might think I am, but Im like most and I would like My money back as was stated had happened already a few days go. And if those that think this is drama you would feel the same way if this happened to you OR if you hadnt gotten your money back already.
Angry Dog Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
I can’t believe people are so self-involved to think that others are making a drama out of this. Not everyone has vast amounts of cash sitting in their bank accounts. Many people survive from payday to payday, and this little mistake has left them without money, and in some cases without food to eat as a result. Not only that, but this may well have damaged credit ratings for some who otherwise would’ve had an unblemished history. To those arrogant asshats who think this is no reason to be upset, I’d like to say something to you: FUCK YOU. I would like to kick your fucking head in for that kind of arrogance. ASSHOLES.

I’m glad to see DH is offering compensation for overdraft charges caused by this, but too little too late. There are apparently plenty of people still waiting their credits now, days later. This should never have happened in the first place.
Angry Dog Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
A particular word to that fuckhead arrogant piece of shit ‘James R’ who seems to be blaming individuals for not having enough funds in their account to cover the next few years worth of hosting, rather than blaming the party actually responsible for this - DreamHaost. WTF, YOU ASSHOLE! There are people who have had over $8,000 charges to their accounts! Gad I hate assholes like you James, I’d like to shove a baseball bat up your ass, but your head would get in the way, you piece of shit.
Jeffrey Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 12:46 am
Well, the only reason I’m posting this here, is that Dreamhost is not replying to my emails or my support tickets, as my issues have progressively gotten worse now. And, I feel that as many others feel here, it’s important to update this blog, and the status blog as well, with whatever is happening to us. Collectively, if this goes to a class action lawsuit, this will be a good record of the events as they have occurred. I’m doing more than complaining here. I’m creating a mark that could be used to protect not only myself here, but others as well. Dreamhost has not held up on their word. My account is charged for the original mistake, as well as 2 overdrafts now, and not a word from their billing department, as I’ve tried to contact them a number of times now. I’ve just faxed them as well. So, come Monday, I’ll be at my bank, not just on the phone, to do what I can do on my own to take care of this, since Dreamhost has utterly failed me, and I’m out $450 now. This is negligence. I’m quite angry about this now. Dreamhost has sunk to a level where I will avoid them like the plague, and will also tell others to do so as well. This is completely unprofessional and unacceptable.
Angry Dog Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 1:05 am
I’ll mention too that I have not received even one email about this matter - the last email I got was the regular news email just before this happened. It was only by chance I checked DHstatus for any scheduled downtime and saw all this crap. My online banking is down for maintenance still so I don’t know if I’m way overdrawn or what now - I haven’t made any purchases the last few days so was unaware of any issue. I’m a student and I can’t afford this. Semester starts next week and I need to buy books. I am so fucking angry.
Newt Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 3:01 am
I have yet to receive a *single* email from DreamHost about this fuck up, only discovered it after seeing a $250+ charge on my bank account. After a couple of days of nothing being reversed, and no attempt at contact or updates by Dreamhost, I filed a fraud complaint with my bank, Wells Fargo. They got back to me Friday afternoon to tell me they’ve opened an investigation into DreamHost.
Aaron Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
This problem is far from fixed. I still have not received my refund. Dreamhost could have mailed me a check and it would have been fixed faster than this.

Also, what company accidentally charges $9 million and doesn’t even say “Here’s a couple months free”?

Thanks for being open an everything, but I would rather have my $500 than a blog post.
umtn Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 2:31 am
I commend DH on its efforts to correct this mistake…

And the people who are living out of their checking accounts w/o savings it is not DH fault…

Save a little and stressful things will not hurt so bad…
Richard Morris Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 2:54 am
Hey Josh, no worries! The whole thing amused me and I particularly liked the style you’d written your previous entry in.

This is one of the reasons I like DreamHost so much…
Rob Brideson Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 6:30 am
Thanks Josh for the swift action. As it turns out, although the transaction was going through the system nothing was taken out of the account and the pending withdrawal has now been withdrawn. All is well for me in Dreamhost land and I hope there are not too many with problems. A very ironic turn of events though.

Many thanks!
Knee Breaker Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 7:23 am
Hi,

I sent some associates to “negotiate” for my money and I think while I am at it, I may take all of Josh’s too.

lol
Zaq Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 9:26 am
I STILL have not received my refund. How much longer should I wait before calling my bank?
don Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 4:02 pm
My bank moved the dreamhost charge from pending to finalized, so I don’t think you guys are done fixing the problem yet.
Helen Chambers Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Thank you, Josh. :)
Martin Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I made a post this morning but it looks like DH are now censoring posts, so this one will probably be deleted too. It is now Tuesday afternoon and my refund has not gone through, my bank says nothing is pending and this morning the original charge was CONFIRMED.
Martin Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I made a post this morning but it looks like DH are now censoring posts, so this one will probably be deleted too. It is now Tuesday afternoon and my refund has not gone through, my bank says nothing is pending and this morning the original charge was CONFIRMED. I consider this blatant THEFT, no longer a mistake. If it was a mistake, why was the charge CONFIRMED one week after the initial problem?
Matt Algren Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:50 am
If it was a mistake, why was the charge CONFIRMED one week after the initial problem?

Because as I and others have said over and over, that’s just the way banks work. I agree that it sucks. Trust me, when my online credit card payment takes five days to clear for no reason whatsoever, I think it sucks.

Dreamhost is ultimately to blame for the screw up, but your bank’s charge/refund delays are not their fault.
Dane Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 3:19 am
Hey guys, just wanted to say I’ve loved the hosting so far and I like the “joke” style updates you give. Accidents happen and it didn’t worry me. Go back to the bold - italic style approach!

Yours crapfully,

Dane
Mustafa Cosgun Says:
January 28th, 2008 at 3:21 am
hi

my domaın is not open

I am paid 47 dollar

please open my hosting
Joe Says:
January 28th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
I have been with DreamHost since 2002, and have noticed a slow decline of this service over the last few years. I was charged 5 times throughout this little fiasco. I’ve got to tell you that I’m really tired of the little “The Happy DreamHost Billing Team” signatures and cutesy one liners like “The Foolish DreamHost Billing Team!” - it is condescending and unprofessional and gives the impression that a bunch of kids are running this company. I have three accounts with DH - I’m definitely closing one of them, and strongly considering closing the others.

Grow up, DreamHost - act like a real company. Give us a real phone number and real people to talk to and resolve our problems, and don’t use gay language like “Ack. Through a COMPLETE bumbling on our part, we’ve accidentally attempted
to charge you for the ENTIRE year of 2008 (and probably 2009!) ALREADY
(it was all due to a fat finger)!” I don’t call it “bumbling” when you take $597 out of my checking account – it’s major screw up.

Dreamhost is becoming NightmareHost.
Kristin Says:
January 30th, 2008 at 11:50 am
My account was refunded a few days later. I’m really glad I had that money in the account or it would have bounced. I hope safeguards are put in place to keep this from happening again :(
me Says:
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:59 am
dreamhost did fine by me
Buy Phentermine Online Says:
February 23rd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
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Darriin hodges Says:
February 24th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Is there still some issue with making credit card payments when signing up? I keep getting “declined err 12″
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March 18th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
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December 1st, 2008 at 6:46 am
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