DreamHost Blog » The Final Update

The Final Update

January 17, 2008 on 12:52 pm | In Foobars, Updates by Josh Jones |

Okay, all the people who had still not gotten their refunds was starting to seem a little weird, so after further investigation yesterday, I think we’ve finally got things completely fixed.

It turns out, there was a glitch in our new PayflowPro.pm that resulted in only the first transaction in a single second actually going through! According to Paypal’s site, that PayflowPro.pm should be just a drop-in replacement for the old PFProAPI.pm… and it did seem to be, after changing two lines everything seemed okay.

However, there was one little difference. The new HTTPS interface requires you to pass a unique id for each transaction, and PayflowPro.pm generated that unique id as follows:

my $request_id=substr(time . $data->{TRXTYPE} . $data->{INVNUM},0,32);

The problem was, we never passed in the (optional) “INVNUM” field.. we had an invoice number, but we passed it in as the (also optional) “COMMENT1″. So, our “unique” request_id was pretty much just the current time (plus whether it was a sale or a credit)!

In my testing this didn’t fail, because I didn’t run multiple transactions in the same second. Also, they apparently still return the same old success code we test for when this happens! But when multiple biller services run in parallel on all our controllers, lots of transactions end up happening on the same second.

The Upside

It turns out of the actually closer to $9,600,000 we thought we mistakenly charged, only actually about 1/4 of them ever _actually_ hit people’s credit cards. Our system thought we charged them, and they received an email receipt, but that was where it ended. It turns out we actually billed “only” about $2,100,000 incorrectly.

The Downside

This bug still existed until late last night (around 4am).. so when we ran our super-refunder script, the same thing was happening. Only about 1/4 of the refunds successfully went through. This resulted in the following situation:

About 9/16th of our customers: weren’t actually billed OR actually refunded.
About 1/16th of our customers: were billed AND were refunded.
About 3/16th of our customers: were billed BUT WEREN’T refunded.
About 3/16th of our customers: weren’t billed BUT WERE refunded. (of course, nobody wrote in about it!)

Anyway, last night we fixed the bug (by passing our invoice in as INVNUM) and re-ran another fixer that took an actual log of successful transactions downloaded from our processor and cross-referenced everything with our system. This is what it did:

About 9/16th of our customers: marked their bill and refund as $0 amount.
About 1/16th of our customers: left everything alone.
About 3/16th of our customers: redid the refund.
About 3/16th of our customers: redid the charge.

Double checking now, there were no more of those glitches from before, so everything seems okay.

Once again, all the stuff mentioned in the last post still holds true (you may not see the correction on your statement yet, but if you call your processor they should see it coming, for REALs this time), and once again, I’m very sorry about this whole fiasco.

Sincerely,
Josh Jones

P.S. For people wondering how the “robust and stable” rebiller could have created multiple future charges for the same date… I guess I meant “robust and stable” in regards to normal use over the last ten years. It looks like in this case, when multiple instances were running in parallel on a future date, race conditions allowed some multiple charges for the same period to be created. That too should never happen again now that we don’t allow future bill dates.

427 Responses to “The Final Update”

Vlad Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
What a headache. For all involved. I assume you’ll be running simulations on your new “robust and stable” biller starting now?
Aaron Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Everyone makes mistakes, and I love you for your honestly.

I prefer your style to a silly press release that takes me for granted and does not give me any information. I don’t understand those who say they do.

All the best! And if you are going to change your style of writing because of a few whiners, that would be the next big Dreamhost foobar. I hope its all behind us now. Cheers!
Simon Jessey Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
This is fun! Can we do it all again?
Kriss Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
by far my favorite week to be a dreamhost customer… a few got pissy but most of us laughed about it (you don’t want those cheap bastards as customers anyways, hahaha) … I almost told MW that if there were multiple threads or multiple machines running the script it’s highly possible for the duplicate billing to occur but I didn’t want to have to bite my tongue later, glad this was cleared up… I still think the “I Survived Dreamhost 2008″ t-shirts are called for…
Kriss Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
The problem MW is youre wanting answers right away, you pounded them for two days about the duplicate billing issue… What you don’t understand is that sometimes it takes more than 2 days to fix a bug or to understand WHY a script did something in programming … I’ve had to spend weeks before analyzing code and debugging just to fix 1 stupid line of code, so I entirely understand why it took them so long to tell us about the duplicate thing. When youre dealing with multiple machines, multiple threads, thousands of customers, not a static error (notice how he said some were billed and some were not) these sorts of things can make debugging and finding a programs flaw VERY painful and time consuming. Theres literally NOTHING you can do to speed it up. If they don’t know the answer then what would you like them to say? Do you really want to hear them just say “Oh yeah we know about the duplicate billing but we don’t know why…”. No you don’t, what does that resolve?
Simon Jessey Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Of only it were as simple as:

if($cock-up === true) rollback($last-action);
Mindbender Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
It still hasn’t gone through on my end. I hope it does by tommorrow or it looks like no beer for me this weekend :(
Allan Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I’d like to mention, this fiasco has reinforced my affinity for Dreamhost. admittedly, I do not use you for mission-critical stuff, nor was I directly affected by this foobar, but observing the way you handled both the fallout and the response from your initial post gave me hope for companies.

I personally prefer the jokey, lighthearted style; I somehow got that they were sincere, and were trying to find a lighter side of a bad situation. That is a personal preference, however, and I know many people didn’t agree. When those people made their displeasure known, we not only got a different, yet still friendly and thorough, style, but also an apology for the “mishandling” of the initial announcement.

What this says to me is that Dreamhost truly does listen, an attribute and action that very few companies follow through with.

While I certainly do think the error was definately a PEBCAK error, and (honestly) a touch boneheaded, I appreciate the person responsible for personally accepting responsibility.

Thank you for your honesty, thank you for the explanation, and thank you for toning down the jokes in direct response to your customers. Good luck with your Biller.
Aaron Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
MW, Mindbender: No cash for beer, no cash for webhosting, but cash to spend on an internet connection and unlimited hours of free time to rave and rant on blogs?

Maybe time to actually get a job, you guys?
thomas Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
“According to Paypal’s site, that PayflowPro.pm should be just a drop-in replacement…”

wait, so all of dreamhost’s accountings and billings go through paypal?

um.
fail.
this changes my entire outlook.
Tim Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
“About 3/16th of our customers: weren’t billed BUT WERE refunded. (of course, nobody wrote in about it!)”

I got a “refund” but I used Google Checkout so it actually didn’t give me a refund because my card wasn’t on file. Nor did I get charged anything. So some of that 3/16th were people like me who just figured nothing was charged or refunded so ignore =P
Tim Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Oh MW.. If you cancel that card, can they send a refund to it? (I don’t know, but if you haven’t it might be something to check before you do cancel/change it)
Josh Jones Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Just a note on Payflow Pro .. it’s _owned_ by PayPal, because they recently bought it from VeriSign, (who bought it from cybercash I believe, which is where we originally signed up) but it’s not at all related to what everybody normally thinks of when they think of “paypal”.

It’s a regular credit-card-payment-gateway thing, not related to the ebay-email-your-friends-money thing.
c Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I appreciate the tone and detail of this post a lot. I’m still watching my accounts like a crazy stalker though.
kestasjk Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I sympathize with you Josh, that sounds like the kind of mistake I could make. I hope everything clears up quickly and you can get back to your lighthearted style, and I hope the people who are financially ruined because of this will seek help from a financial planner.
OnyxRaven Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
thomas, payflow (which was once verisign) was bought by ebay/paypal a couple years ago. Its a tried-and-true full card billing system thats been around a long time. Its kind of a pain in the ass system though - but at least someone is maintaining it (I swear, verisign just sat on it).
Jeff Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Your system is still fucked up, you double charged my bank card AGAIN this morning, sending me into the red.

Since there are overdraft fees, you can look forward to a pleasant and swift chargeback from my bank. Let this be a valuable (and soon to be EXPENSIVE) lesson.
Bill Brown Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I appreciated your professional entry as well as your lighthearted one. I’ve been a Dreamhost customer since 2004 and you’re going to have to do a lot more than overcharge me $750 to get rid of me. Just kidding. I’m so glad that I have Dreamhost charging to an empty Discover card!

Mistakes happen, you’re going to pay dearly for this one, and I think you’ve learned a lot from it. Thanks for the update.
Brian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Honestly,

This incident has only proven that you are an honest company.
Most other companies will cover up and pretend nothing happened.

You blog posts are just as they should be, informative and fun to read.

Regards.
Brian.
Flatvurm Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Kriss had a great idea. I’d definitely go for an “I Survived DreamHost 2008″ shirt. :) Hey, why not? I recently got my 2007 keychain. :)

Thanks again for keeping us updated. I remain an appreciative (and happy, of course) DreamHost customer.
Jeremy Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Yes - kudos for the honesty and up-front description of what happened [again] (OK, without the pics it isn’t as fun to read, but it is a lot easier to DIGEST. next post you can put pics in again).

Looks like I’m in the 9/16. No bill no refund. Shucks, I was looking forward to spending my ill-gotten $400.
Thomas (A different one though) Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Oh for the love of god, MW.

At this point you seem to be actively creating situations in which you can be pissed off about something… You’ve whined nonstop about what a tremendous error all this is, and how direly it’s affecting your financial situation but come on. If you cancel the number that Dreamhost has on file, and that they charged, OF COURSE they won’t be able to refund your money. That’s the only way they HAVE to refund your money.

Dreamhost screwed up in a fairly large, but not all that uncommon sort of way. They have owned up to that, and they’ll lose customers and a HUGE amount of money over it. They won’t get their astronomical credit card fees waived because they screwed up, whereas they’ve said that you’ll be compensated for YOUR fees. In the face of all that upfront dealing they’ve done with us, you’ve complained about the style in which they’ve been so upfront, you’ve complained even after they changed the style to suit you, you’ve repeatedly called them liars, in spirit if not in word, you’ve threatened legal action well beyond what’s realistic, you’ve made asinine references to some conspiracy, and overall you’ve acted in a ridiculous manner. I know you’re upset but you’re supposed to learn around the age of five that screaming after someone broke your toy train won’t hurry them along when they’re already trying to fix it.

And I’m sure, once you’ve removed any possibility that DH could get your money back to you, then you’ll be freaking out all over this non-official message board AGAIN on the basis that they lied and didn’t give your money back.

Honestly, if I were running Dreamhost I would be ECSTATIC that you won’t be continuing your patronage. I don’t even really like being a fellow customer with you.
Steve Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Josh,

You’re doing a damn good job at winning me back. I was pretty pissed at the lighthearted response, but you and Team DreamHost have been clearly working around the clock to resolve this issue. And keeping us all in the loop about it, down to the technical details. I really do appreciate it.
Its been emotional Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Good news, everyone!

/farnsworth

This type of detailed backend junk is why you’ll keep the majority of your customers.

We appreciate and get it.

I *do* want to see some funny spin on this in the next newsletter, tho.

k,thx (but not bye)
Anon Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
On the plus side, at least the system is being fully tested and all of the problems are being brought to the foreground. Hopefully this means there will be a lot less problems in the future.

On the negative side, it’s too bad no one thought of doing a lot of QA and testing the system in the background first before this all happened. Sadly, that’s a common problem with most accounting software though.
Thomas Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Hmm to many Thomas’s around…

For those wondering, when a charge goes through the Credit Card networks, it can take up to a couple days for a transaction to actually go all the way through. In the meantime you have the temporary authorizations that people have been seeing. Exactly how long it takes to go through depends on several factors including the bank if I remember correctly.

At any rate as I mentioned in previous posts, this was a major screwup. Everyone to me gets a chance, this one used up that chance. I will be staying for now but I will be being careful.

To those claiming fraud company… Typically a fraud company does not have a many year history of doing business. There are companies that when they have financial problems will float money, but I don’t see that being the case at this point, much to expensive for the company and no hope of resolving it in a beneficial way. I could be wrong certainly, just don’t see it in this case.

Thomas
Word Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Yes, when you cancel a card, you CAN still get refunds/credits made to it. Any purchases before the cancellation will also still go through. You simply can no longer make new purchases through a canceled or blocked card as soon as the cancelation/block has been placed and will then need to use a new card. So, that shouldn’t be a concern. The time it takes to receive the refund is both up to the merchant (DH in this case) and how quickly they do it, or how long it takes to dispute it or do a charge-back if they don’t (can be up to 60 days or more for a charge back, if the merchant disputes it — and I don’t assume DH would dispute your charge-back).
Dany Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Whoa….

um..MW?

Cancelled account that charge was made to = nowhere to send refund.
Nowhere to send refund = no refund in MW’s pocket in a timely fashion when it DOES happen.

No refund in MW’s pocket = Two more days+ of MW screaming because he didn’t get his refund and blaming DH for it.

I don’t get the impression that you’re making this easy for anybody, least of all yourself.

As for the rest of this? Well, all I can say is that I’m on Day Two. I’ve already stated what happens at Day Seven. I look forward to not having to go through that.
Dany Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
OK, Word clarified a bit. But still, not making it that much easier.
Brian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Thanks for keeping us up to date; I really appreciate it. I seem to be one of the customers who didn’t get charged or refunded, and I saw the billing issue entry on the status blog before I checked my email, so this hasn’t affected me at all, but I do appreciate the openness and candor with which the problem has been addressed.

MW: Please, stop complaining about this issue. Dreamhost made a mistake (a big one, but still, an easy mistake to make), and is working on it as quickly as possible. I deeply appreciate the open, honest way they’ve dealt with the issue. I can understand how the joking blog entry could upset you if you’ve been burnt by this problem (I found it funny, and in good taste, as he was apologetic at the same time as he was joking, but I can see how someone who’d had serious issues wouldn’t take it that way), but by now he’s apologized for the tone, explained why some of the refunds didn’t go through immediately, and done everything he can to fix the problem and pay back everyone who was inconvenienced by this issue.

The way Dreamhost has dealt with this is far better than how most corporations would have. There are so many cases when companies try to hush things up, only releasing the barest minimum information possible, cover their asses by only promising refunds on the next month’s bill, and so on. I would be very upset to see Dreamhost stop this policy of being open and honest about their problems because of some people who got upset when the problems weren’t fixed immediately or when there were some problems with the promised fixes.
hogarth Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
@MW:

WHY on earth would you have canceled the card number that the original payment to DH was drawn from? You have just effectively made it impossible to automatically refund your account.

Your action in canceling the card makes no sense whatsoever.

In my own case, the refund has not yet appeared in my account info at my bank, but then again neither has the payment I made on that account two days ago. Banks are often slow about updating credit card charges and payment. I will be patient.

Thanks, Josh!
hogarth Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I just read Word’s post. Apparently payment can still be refunded to a canceled card. Good.
Mike Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
I got charged $1000+. No problems for me. It went on my AMEX, and it’ll get refunded by Dreamhost. In fact when I noticed the charge, I just sent a quick email to support and asked them to fix it. Then I went on with my work and didn’t think about it. Later, when I read Support’s email and Josh’s blog entry, I enjoyed a good laugh. I appreciate that he’s at least willing to explain it truthfully.

I think this experience shows the value of using credit cards wisely to pay for these types of bills. Most adults have this option available if they manage their credit well. This way any errors made can get fixed before the money actually leaves your checking account. Thus no overdraft fees, no tears, and just a good, hearty laugh that actually helped to alleviate some of the stress in my life. Thanks Dreamhost!
Nick Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
MW:

You do know you could have called your credit card company and said, “Do not approve any further debits from Dreamhost, but please *do* approve andy credits”. Then, once you receive your refund, cancel the card.

Canceling the card really wasn’t too bright.
androo Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
@MW

“Thomas (A different one though)” nailed it.

It feels creepy sharing the same filespace as you. Souls of Glass my @ss.
Mike Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
@MW… follow my advice for your future benefit. Use a credit card wisely and you avoid all this hassle. Otherwise, you should have used the option that Dreamhost has always given you to put a charge limit on your account.
Adam Backstrom Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Muumuu Homer says, “Be more funny!”

MW, don’t you have better things to do?
Zimmy Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
DAMN THOSE RACE CONDITIONS! THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED!
chadvavra Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
still no refund. really amazing how bad at this ya’ll are. seriously.
Anonymous Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Your site is showing that you issued a refund to me, however my bank is 100% absolutely sure you haven’t. It’s 8:22pm/CST, and NOTHING has been refunded. I think it’s time for a class-action lawsuit.
rlparker Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
@Thomas (A different one though) Says, on January 17th, 2008 at 3:38 pm - “Oh for the love of god, MW.”

Well that just about sums it up very nicely! Thanks for saying what so many are undoubtedly thinking.

As for MW - Good luck, man! From the way it appears you handle “crisis” in your life, if you live to be anywhere nearly as long as I have, you are going to need all the “luck” you can get!

Hang in there!
anon Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
The best show in all of this is watching MW get all pissed off and wasting all his time on here complaining about it.

Don’t get me wrong - I know what it’s like to live hand to mouth, and losing $360 in that position would suck. But it IS highly stupid to cancel the card when Dreamhost has said they are refunding the money. And griping here won’t make it any better.

Refunds always take a few days at least (I’ve rarely, if ever, had one hit my card immediately). Canceling a card only makes it that much harder to get a refund that was ALREADY in process most likely.

The best thing to do is relax, call up any companies you owe bills to, explain the situation, and then go and work on bringing yourself new work and new money in. Sitting here griping won’t fix it, and calling up the attorney general is a waste of energy that could have been spent earning replacement money.

Lucky for me, the credit card I had on file with Dreamhost was expired. All of my hosting bills have been paid by referrals this year so they have had no need to charge me in a while and the card is very old. So it is easy for me to find this whole thing a bit amusing….

…and I still love Dreamhost. At least they are honest when they screw up. They are HUMAN, not some faceless corporation. Thank you, Dreamhost.
Lor Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
I am continuing to get billed on my card. As of today, January 17, 2008, my credit card has another charge of $120 on it, without any money being refunded whatsoever. The email DH sent me on January 15, 2008 (a very light email seemingly acting not overly concerned), two days ago, stated I would get a refund. I have not been refunded, but charged again. This is unacceptable in every sense of the word.

It is unethical and deceitful.
Its been emotional Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
@MW wrote: “So long, Dreamhost. If I do get my money back, I’ll let my state’s AG know that the refund made it, at least.”

This was some time ago. Since then, you’ve posted a lot more about the same thing. This makes your previous statement somewhat fraudulent given that you clearly gave the impression you were outta here.

I’d contact my AG and make some class action something or other, but I’m too lazy and we don’t sue people for silly things like that in my country. In fact, I don’t even know if I have an AG.

Dude, chill.

I’d be pissed too if I was you, but freaking out here is only amusing the blog readers. At your expense. Notice how the tone has changed in the last 12 hours or so? People are starting to get over this. I really hope you could too. I want you to get your refund now as much as you do.

PS: I believe you when you say you’ll miss DH. You’ll be sorry when the control panel at your next host is full of ass.
JohnnyRnR Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
I don’t have my refund yet, and my bank isn’t showing a reversed transaction in processing yet. I know that this stuff takes time so I’ve just put in a ticket now.
Its been emotional Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
@MW: about the trout

Wow. Thanks. I’ll take trout over goldfish any day.

I really, actually, honestly am empathic towards your grief over this. I thought your ranting about the multiple billings to be somewhat moot given the billing clusterfuck to begin with. I figured from the start that the wildly different experiences people were having was from a rampaging billing robot dumping massive quantities of transactions to DH’s billing agent in what may have been akin to a DDOS attack. Even the people reporting issues this late is likely due to the delay commonly seen with credit card transaction postings.

My account was paid for by VISA. When I heard people had stuff bouncing because of this, there was a big disconnect because the concept of using a bank card/account to pay for an online service seemed totally alien to me. In fact, I didn’t know that was possible! Before that point, I thought people were making stuff up. Now I know that’s not the case.

I like DH for their corporate personality. I see this as a huge cock-up (love the British), and a freak accident, but certainly not a willful and fraudulent action.

I respect your reasons for splitting. But, as you said yourself, you’ll miss the cool stuff.

Oh, and if you do split, as you say you will, it would be hilarious if you show up now and then and make cameos on the blog comments. Since this fiasco, I know I’ll be reading the comments a lot more than I ever did before.

Cheers (and I still also really hope you get your refund soon)
JohnnyRnR Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
The trouble ticket system seems to be crashing. I’m just seeing a swirling pattern when I try to submit my ticket.

Is there an email address out there I can use?
Its been emotional Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
@Johnny: AFAIK, “billing@dreamhost.com” is a good one to use, assuming that billing is the issue you’re wanting to talk to them about.

This was the email that was sent in the original (and incorrect) billing notices that were sent out at the start of this party.

I just tried to get into the panel and it’s working and fast for me, so it mat be a hiccup somewhere in the intertubes for you.
Desmond Lim Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
I still have not been refunded the overcharge fee yet and my bank is starting to put overdraft fees on my account. I’ve sent 4 e-mails now and no one has responded to me, I would like to know what’s going on, thank you.
MW is a loser Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
MW’s situation is funny. Couldn’t have happened to a bigger jerk!
vindog Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
when this whole thing happened i checked my account and nothing was on there. what a relief. but today, i went to the bank to consolidate my two accounts into one and found out that there is a hold pending, from dreamhost, for the amount of two yearly subscriptions.

now i have to wait a week for me to finish my banking business.

i still like you guys; i’m just letting you know this is still an issue with some of us.
Matt Van Dusen Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Oh, MW, FYI, you probably would not have problems with being spam banned if you would get out of the interweb world and back into the real world every once in a while.

I admit, I have not been overly excited about this. I haven’t been posting every 2 minutes on both the status *and* blog because of this issue. Why is that? Because
1.) I have a life. Bills to pay also means I have a job.
2.) I take care of my money. There is a decent cushion of cash in my accounts, that admittedly was not present a few months ago.
3.) Because I send DH a check every month, for my monthly rate, I had a positive credit as of 2008-12-31 when the billers ran, and therefore was not affected.

Had this happened 6+ months ago, I probably would have been screaming here just as loud as you. However, since my circumstances have changed, I can sit here laughing. Even though its probably not smart, my debit card is even still tied to my account. With its $100 daily limit in place.

Refunds do take time. My present employer states on CC transactions, it could take 7-10 business days, and with checks, it takes 4-6 weeks. This is due to various processes carried out by hand, in much the same manner DH’s script has done (and is still doing). Money is Serious Business, and DH has exemplified that they do realize this.

I’ve closed all of my comments I’ve made with a constructive suggestion, and here’s a couple:
1. If your account has been mishandled by this script, give DH the same amount of time I would expect refunds made by my employer - which is 7-10 days. Some banks and CC companies, mind you, take a MUCH longer time to process a credit than a debit.
2. They have these great things called savings accounts. Look into them.
3. As I’ve said before, Josh Jones needs to have his access to any financial scripts revoked immediately. I don’t care that he is one of the co-founders, in most businesses the owner/CEO/Chairman of the Board does not have access to any of these processes, for exactly this reason.
4. As most people have pointed out, this company (and especially the individual that created this situation) has done a great job of providing all the information they can to their customers. I have no doubts in my mind that DreamHost and Josh Jones learned quite a bit this week, and this knowledge will be applied to future situations. As I said before, I am keeping everything here, for precisely that reason. Now, if this happens again, I may have to reconsider that - but for now, I have no issues with DH.
Its been emotional Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
@MW: This is the best comment of any idiot so far. Thanks for the laugh, guy!

I just saw this now (missed it prior), but it made me chuckle. Actually, I can’t get worked up over this internet argument thing, but I still get why you’re upset.

I posted again to ask that when you do get your refund, at least come back to tell us. I think it would be unfair if we didn’t get any closure after all this.

(Fo’realz. Despite my mild annoyance at your gazillion posts, it’ll be good to hear when you finally have some closure. I’m not super rich myself and an unexpected ~$400 out of my check account would suck for me too at the wrong time.)
marvin the martian Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
@MW - Stop lying about your situation. We all know you work for Lunarpages. Stop the madness and save it for the basketball court.
Martin Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:11 am
You’re a compete fucking amateur Josh. And no, my refund hasn’t gone through yet. And no, my bank doesn’t acknowledge that it’s pending. And no, I WASN’T able to pay my rent this week. Sort it out and hire some professionals in the future you irresponsible fucking twat.
Martin Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:36 am
FFS MW give it a rest. I’m as pissed as anyone else (see above comment) but your posts are getting boring an monotonous. Shut the fuck up, you’re worse than Dreamhost.

Meanwhile I wait on my refund.
Zimmy Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:31 am
Okay, I think it’s hilarious that people still think Josh Jones actually did this, and that it wasn’t someone else within the company and he’s just manning up and covering for the person who is likely very embarrassed because Josh would rather weather a personal shit storm than have the thousands of idiots who buy webhosting calling on him to fire the poor sap. There is no way he’s the one running these billing scripts. He has people for that man. He has people
Martin Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 3:40 am
I haven’t received my refund yet. How sad that the billing took effect inmediately on january 15th… :-(

I’m a bit pissed.
James Henry Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:27 am
In all seriousness, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

I was just charged AGAIN.

01/17/2008 Purchase PURCHASE DREAMHOST.COM 01/16 $119.40

Thats almost $300 that I have been charged for this past week for hosting
c Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:41 am
DH has just crossed the line into incompetent. The pending charge at my bank has just become a completed charge, still with no sign of a refund.

As soon as my bank opens this morning, there will be a chargeback issued.
OtherHost Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:45 am
Hi all.

I own a hosting company (albeit much smaller than DH). Yes, DreamHost is a competitor. Okay, now that’s out of the way. I wanted to say a few things as someone who has been in the industry for nearly 10 years, and as a hoster that recently went through a fiasco of our own (though not of our doing - Google “NaviSite” when you have a minute, it’ll give you some perspective).

First and foremost: I commend DH for the way they handled this - both for the full disclosure (including technical details and code snippets that many won’t understand) and HUMAN responses. We don’t have many customers that we know of who prefer CorpSpeak® over honest and open (and light-spirited) communication. Yes, it is insane that this happened. There was however no spin, no attempt to hide this, no “it’s not our fault”. Josh was right up front about his “fat finger”. How many people who work in IT can honestly say they’ve never “been there, done that”?

Josh: as someone who stayed up for 4 days with no sleep trying to fix a major headache I know some of what you’ve been going through. Some comfort can be found in the fact that those who stick with you after this are the ones who “get it”. They realize they’ve found something special and decent in a market crowded with crap, from huge monolithic corporations where you’re just a number to fly-by-nighters who really are out to steal your money and run. The rest will figure it out if they happen to land someplace where the support is bad/slow (or outsourced to someplace where English is a 3rd or 4th language), the servers overloaded and frequently down, spam out of control - but hey they give you 200 TB space and unlimited bandwidth for $2.95 a month!

To Mr. MW: Oh please, oh please, oh please: don’t find our company when you do leave DH. You keep looking for that special company run by people who never ever make mistakes and with perfect computers and software that never fail - we’re certainly not it. However, there are some companies I could recommend to you. I hear CI Host is having a special. It’s a steal, in fact!

I’m not going to leave our company name in here because it’s not my intention to troll for clients during someone else’s crisis. That is bad karma if nothing else, and we’re still recovering from our own disaster at the moment. And while it may not make good business sense to root for your competition, we are sending Josh and the gang at DH some positive mojo. Kudos to you for keeping your clients informed, and all of us here really hope you come out of this okay.

To the customers of DH: how a company handles a crisis (even when it’s of their own making) is often far more important than the crisis itself. From the perspective of another host: they’re doing it right.

Craig Mayers
Owner, some other hosting company
c Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:49 am
@MW

Your bank has some unpleasant business pratices I’ve left other banks for. Good luck.
Roger Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:49 am
All I know is I want my money back. I seriously do not care how it happened. Analyzing the error amounts to you guys trying to place blame when the person that entered the wrong dates is at fault, period.

Up until sometime last night I had a pending charge on my account and now if has gone through so now I’m official over my limit. I guess I fall into the 3/16th mentioned below.

“About 3/16th of our customers: were billed BUT WEREN’T refunded.”

So when do I get a refund? We are three days into this and I’m no better off but rather I’m in in worse shape.
Andy Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:52 am
Thank you, Josh! It finally went thorough.

I really feel for the people whose refunds haven’t gone through yet, but they are going through. Mine went through this morning (Bank of America), and my friend’s went through two days ago (Wachovia).

Also, check to make sure that the original charge is still there - BoA simply deleted the pending charge instead of posting it and then posting a deposit.
Andy Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:52 am
^ “thorough”? I obviously need more coffee.
Dan Bruno Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:58 am
I also woke up to see the charges finalized against my account. This is taking a turn for the WTF.
spider Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Doesn’t rechargeable credit card exist in USA?
I’ve one I use for all my on line shopping, and I put money on it (for a maximum of 2300 euros /month) as I need it, as the feed is immediate.
Buy one of them and protect yourselves from mistakes like this one, which can happen to everyone.
c Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:03 am
@MW

Unfortunately, it’s typical of BoA from what I’ve seen. I know people who work there and won’t bank with them.
Simon Jessey Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:13 am
@ MW is spam banned again

Are you still banging on about this? You’re not related to this retard are you?
Alex Brett Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Disclaimer: I’m not a DH customer, but do know a bit about banking systems, although UK ones rather than US ones.

I suspect the charges been confirmed is not DH’s doing, the confirmations are probably coming from their payment processor - I suspect all DH do is submit a request to take $x from card y, or to refund $x to card y, and the card processor does the rest. Certainly this is how a number of similar systems I’ve seen / been involved with have worked.

So the card processor has been automatically confirming transactions as normal, hence why they’re showing up as confirmed. It’s also entirely possible that some of the refund delay is due to the card processor (deliberately or otherwise) not processing them as quickly as it does charges…
OtherHost Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:15 am
MW: “I’m looking for a company that tests new parameter sets before they’re run against thousands of live accounts.”

Admittedly I only have knowledge of the situation through reading the blog, but this was a case of a typo - not an experimental new procedure, not new software. Not a test run. Just a screwup exacerbated by the software allowing it to continue, because it never occurred to the writers to code against it. I believe Josh said they had used this program for the better part of a decade, and they had run batch jobs to ‘catch up’ the billing before as well. I didn’t see anything about ‘new parameters’ or untested procedures. The man typed in the wrong date, for Pete’s sake. Are you saying he should have typed in the wrong date in a test environment before typing it in the live one? Huh? You can’t engineer out human error, and you of all people should know better if you really work in IT.

As for the charge being “finalized” - this could simply be a case of the authorization turning into the charge because no refund posted against it. I know when we bill, we don’t have to do a second transaction to make the charge ’stick’ - it just takes 2 business days or so. We batch out each night, and the charges post around 48 hours later, sometimes longer. We don’t transmit anything additional to the bank, and we don’t ‘confirm’ any of the hundreds of weekly transactions we process. No second batch has to run from our billing software to tell the bank “yes, we really meant to charge that guy”. It’s automated. If you run a store or take credit cards online you know what the deal is. You don’t run a second transaction through your cash register or software, it just goes ‘live’ after a certain amount of time if you don’t void it or post a credit immediately afterwards (and even then sometimes it still gets ‘confirmed’ and then credited). Who’s your bank anyway??? They’re telling you some interesting stuff.

Short version: the credit didn’t get there in time to void the transaction, but so what? When the credit is posted it will do the same thing, and take away the debit that shouldn’t be there.

Since your mind is not open to the possibility of DH not being ‘criminally negligent’, this message is really for the rest of the folks who have not yet embraced the evil conspiracy theory/”running away to Tahiti with your money” angle you have adopted.
Nate Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:46 am
My charge just posted too.

Did dreamhost forget to pay their electric?
MW is an idiot Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:08 am
I knew it. MW in the comments is muppet77 on digg. http://www.digg.com/users/muppet77. This guy is ridiculous.
Shawn McAllister Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:15 am
I still haven’t gotten a refund… my account doesn’t even reflect that I paid into 2009… my bank doesn’t show a refund… this is all very shady and unacceptable. I have disputed the charge with my bank.
Jenn Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:15 am
My BoA charge just finalized as well. I opened a DH support ticket yesterday evening to confirm that they had a refund in the pipes for me (as my bank showed none), and they sent me a form email! I even referenced this blog, and they sent me a form email mentioning that “fat finger” again.

I know you all are getting tired of dealing with this, but please just read the support tickets before you copy and paste that reply. It’s going to piss off many of us who have been keeping up with this and have valid concerns.
OtherHost Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:18 am
@ MW: “Of course it was new parameters, it was a new date range.”

Surely, you jest. Typing in a valid date range incorrectly does not equal new parameters. Even if they had tested the December dates from 2007 in a test environment, they would have worked fine. But they still have to be typed in correctly by a human being in the ‘live’ environment. Which they obviously weren’t. This was a DATA ENTRY problem. Jeez! Are you actually suggesting that they should have foreseen this typo and tested it first?

Man, I feel sorry for whatever host you end up with.
Dany Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:21 am
As of today, the charge to my credit card of 237.81 hit my account as visible and added to my current balance. I haven’t called yet to see if there is a refund pending anywhere, but I probably will later today.

It’s Day Three. You have four more to go, Dreamhost. At that point, I go through my card to dispute and I move on.

I hope I don’t have to wait that long, honestly.

I’m being far more lenient than many people here about the situation, but I am being fair, as I understand it takes longer to fix things than to break them. At the same time, I should put out there that I’m not THAT lenient. You’ll be seeing the cancellation no later than the end of the day on Day Eight if I can at all help matters, and the credit dispute will be right alongside it.

Tick tock. Let’s see how it goes.
Dee Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:23 am
I am with Chase. My charge also went from being an authorization to an actual debit in our checking account. I don’t know about others, but because it is Friday, it will be Tuesday now before anything aside from debits show up on my online register. I am guessing that if a refund was issued on the 15th - per the email I received from Dreamhost - something should have showed up in my account by now.

I hate to institute a chargeback but you guys need to be more forthright and forthcoming with information. I can only make decisions based on what you have told me - that I was refunded on the 15th.
bob Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:37 am
fyi - all emails about this billing trouble are going through the “leads” and not the regular tech support crowd. expect slightly greater delays in getting a response and expect it to be a form letter.

you see less anger in people when a laptop full of personal data goes missing

http://pcworld.about.com/news/Dec232004id119039.htm
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/14353117/detail.html
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.laptop31aug31,0,5215317.story
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/22/AR2006052200690.html

and remember, dreamhost made a mistake… didn’t lose anything or have it stolen

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/17/AR2005061701031.html
http://www.thewhir.com/features/addr_msnbc.cfm

mistakes happen and the least any of us can do is allow some time for this one to be corrected.
Nate Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:38 am
The problem lies with dreamhost, not your banks and not your method of payment. Anything else is just blaming the victim.

I gave them a chance to rectify this, but now they are really raising some suspicions. Between the lack of personal contact and their not actually knowing whether the charges were removed I am definitely beginning to suspect fraud of some sort.

At they very least, I imagine they were intentionally ignoring those whose charges were in the pending category until the status changed, because the complexity involved was “not worth their time”. If that’s true, and they said they were working on it, there *might* be something naughty there from a legal standpoint.

Will be interesting to see the situation 1 week from now.
Matt Algren Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:03 am
It’s Day Three. You have four more to go, Dreamhost. At that point, I go through my card to dispute and I move on.

Why wait? I’d lodge the dispute today. Silly over-reactions aside, if it works out without the dispute being formally addressed , yay for everyone. But it seems prudent to go ahead and dispute the charge just in case.
c Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Ditto what Matt Algren said.

I filed the dispute today. If the process goes all the way through, I get my money back by 1/26. If the refund from DH actually shows up by then, I call and cancel the dispute. If it doesn’t, it’s covered by the bank, and becomes DH’s problem, not mine.
phoenix Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Great job you guys. Good to see you’re handling this with good incident response methodolgy, you’re keeping your customers updated, and you’re making sure through and through that all of your customers’ issues are being taken care of. I was surprised when I got my bill, and I was confused when it turned out that I actually was never charged in the first place.

Also glad to see you guys are doing real root cause here, and you’re being transparent enough to share that with us. A lot of companies, when something way more serious than this takes place, like data theft, they stonewall their clients and the public from gathering any real information, shower them with false “don’t worry, we’ll take care of it” messages with no detail, and don’t reach out to them to help them recover from the issue. You’ve done better on all of those counts and more, and for that you’ve probably got a lifelong customer.
LessonLearning Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Calling this the Final Update was a bit foolish. I’m certainly hoping there is another update today.

I’m not too bothered by the finalization of charges only because I honestly am clueless about the machinations of banks and assume the bank itself will take every chance to screw me it can.

My eye begins twitching when I get billed for my monthly hosting in the midst of this fiasco. It shows a certain lack of sensitivity to the problem. But, business must go on, I understand.

If this does clear up and we weather this storm, we should buy each other a drink. Who ever came up with the t-shirt idea “I survived Dreamhost 2008″ really needs to pursue it. I’ve got to get one of those.
Julie Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Seriously - Aside from all of your reassurances, the full amount in no longer pending and has posted to my bank account. This is ridiculous. I can’t believe people are congratulating you while customers are dealing with overdraft fees and inability to access any of their money.
birdofparadox Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:31 am
While I appreciate the lengthy explanations on the situation (really!), I find the sarcasm and the “humor” to be almost as bad as the mistake in the first place. Other companies may not have been as forthcoming, and I realize you’re getting hammered from all sides (rightfully so, in many cases) but the (fake) irony and sarcasm is hardly helpful, and tarnishes what would otherwise be helpful updates to the situation.

It’s good customer service for you to take responsibility in the face of gross mistakes, but it’s fantastic customer service if you can do so without being an ass in the face of outcry.
Dee Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Hopefully this update is helpful to some. As I said, I am with Chase and I was using a debit card for payments.

I called and Chase gave me a “provisional credit” for thirty days. The funds will be posted back to my account in the hopes that the refund comes through within thirty days.

I don’t know if this is only an option for business bank accounts or if they will do this for individuals. I do have my personal accounts there too. So maybe they are confident they will get their money regardless. LOL!

Anyway, good luck to all!
HKR Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Josh, the charge went through on my account today (478.80). When I called my bank, they said there was no refund posted at all.

I am furious.
Dan Bruno Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Dreamhost, you had better post an update ASAP to explain this.
Dany Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Why wait? I’d lodge the dispute today. Silly over-reactions aside, if it works out without the dispute being formally addressed , yay for everyone. But it seems prudent to go ahead and dispute the charge just in case.

Two reasons:

1. This is a chance for Dreamhost to prove that they’re on the ball and are going to step up to retain me. It shouldn’t take 7 days for a refund to hit if the current explanations are correct. In fact, it should take a fair bit less than that to at least see a pending credit, let alone an active one.

2. My credit card is already aware that this charge is not accurate, and I have 60 days in which to file the formal dispute. In the meantime, it’s noted on my account.

3. Because of my billing cycle, had it been legitimate, I would not be required to pay on it until the end of my February billing cycle, i.e. sometime in March.

I’m just letting Dreamhost to perform their due dilligence here, or giving them the rope to hang themselves. At this point, whether I stay with Dreamhost or not is the expediency of which my refund returns to me. Not to anyone else, because while I do feel very badly for some people here and understand their anger, my experience and decision is my own.
Nate Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Once again they were quick to give me a personal response (five minutes) when I asked about setting up an account, but have ignored all my emails for 3 days about billing issues:

> I was wondering about setting up dedicated servers with you guys. I was
> wondering what sort of pricing options you had in comparison to both
> Slicehost and Amazon’s EC2 compute cluster.

The details on our Strictly Business Enhanced plan are on this page from
our site:

http://dreamhost.com/hosting-dedicated.html

If you have any questions about that service, please let me know!

Thanks,
Patrick M
Jim Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:15 am
While Dany has a point, I’m not one to give any company the benefit of the doubt when it comes to access to my account or $$ after a mistake like this. I really appreciate Dreamhost being upfront about this, and dealing with it honestly and openly. The best I can understand is that they have thought they had it fix twice, and it actually wasn’t. Now - on the third try, we’re hoping it’s really fixed and our $$ is flying back at us electronically.

Matt Algren has the best advice I’ve seen so far. I filed a dispute this morning when the charge of $432.55 went through. If dreamhost issues a refund I’ll cancel the dispute, if not I get my $$ back in 5 working days.

Guess I’m just a little bit more protective of my card info than most. I cancelled the card as soon as Dreamhost’s first “it’s REALLY REALLY on the way now!” statement didn’t pan out.

Having my paypal account hacked by a kind in Vietnam and purchasing phones in Hong Kong has taught me that ANY company can make mistakes, so the best we can do is have a good card, issued by a good bank, with a history of good customer service.

Josh… you won’t lose me as a customer, or the 20 of my friends who host with me. But seriously bro - hire a pro to handle this kind of stuff in the future. The company has grown past your ability to do everything, and the ramifications of a mistake are much bigger now than when you guys were still living with mom and dad and dreaming about launching your own startup.

Jim
Jim Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:17 am
“kind in Vietnam” should read “kid in Vietnam”

I need more coffee
matthew Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:21 am
If I lived in Dreamhost’s area, I would arrive at the front desk with my toddler and his dirty diaper, and make you idiots go buy him a replacement with the money you still haven’t returned to me. That it has taken this long for you to resolve the problem doesn’t fill me with any confidence in your future ability to secure my data and provide my hosting.

I would really like to punch someone in the mouth right now. And put a dirty diaper in it.
Jim Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:22 am
also.. just one more thing. Being an old dog I know from personal experience that Foobar is actually spelled FUBAR. It’s an accrostic for

Fu@#$ed Up Beyond All Recognition

A wonderful memory from my Army days…
me again Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Just curious, but was DH allowed to accrue interest on the money it mistakenly took then mistakenly held?

I’m sure anything they could make will be lost in the poopstorm this has caused, but, as I said, curious.

What would be the daily interest on an account holding, say, 2.5 million?
mr Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:50 am
I’m in the same boat as many others today. While the charge on my account was pending, I was willing to wait and see what happened with the refund. But today it has gone from pending to an actual charge, and my bank tells me there is still no refund in the pipeline.

I called them yesterday to inform them of the situation and ask about my options, and at that time, they told me it was possible that the refund could hit while the charge was still pending and the two would cancel each other out, restoring my balance to what it should be. But despite several reassurances on this blog and on the status page that refunds were processed… still nothing.

I don’t think you guys are acting fraudulently; I think you’ve monumentally screwed up, and you’re trying to fix it. But as refunding errors pile onto billing errors, I’m getting less and less patient, and less and less confident that your billing department is staffed by competent, responsible people.

I know you guys are dealing with a lot right now, and I don’t want to pile on, but I also have to protect myself. I’m going to dispute the charge this afternoon - and as others have said, if the refund shows up, I’ll cancel the dispute.
MW H8TR Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:52 am
MW– you’ve really overstayed your welcome. you’ve let this fiasco consume you for the past week as evidenced by your overabundant ridiculous posts. You have allowed DH to take far more than $200 or whatever it was. I believe you think it is cute to continue posting how this has affected you. Really it is not. Do you lack attention? Is that it?

We get that “because of DH” money was taken from you, your wife is going menstrual and you cat cannot eat. But seriously man, give it a rest. There comes a point where nobody gives a shit about you anymore and my friend you’ve far surpassed it! I am all about people’s right to free speech, but dude you’re abusing it. You’re about as annoying as a zit in my crotch I can’t discharge!

So MW spammed again, (think about that, there is a reason) for all our sakes, if you have nothing constructive to add, then please shut the fuck up.
JoBu Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:01 am
I can’t believe that many here are still gushing about how great Dreamhost is handling this. There are many of us who have been overcharged, and bank accounts over-drafted. This has been a major thorn in the side of those of us who actually work for a living and can’t afford bogus charges.
Eric B Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I just want an update on the situation. Please tell us when the money is OFFICIALLY been sent back, not some fraction list of who got what and who did not. It is so easy to take the money away, yet so hard to put it back. In three days you could have manually done the returns…
Anonymous Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:24 am
So which is worse: leaking 300 FTP passwords or this one? I really hope your inept company goes out of business for this.
Anonymous Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:28 am
I just submitted this to my State’s Attorney General via their online complaint system. Copy and paste it to your state’s Attorney General if you are still angry. To those who think it’s BS that I’d do this. I could care less what you think. This ball is rolling and I want that ball to thoroughly crush Josh Jones and DreamHost.

Here’s what I filed:

Due to what they called a billing glitch this company DreamHost charged their clients (me included) 7.5 million dollars and took the money out of everyone’s account as an unauthorized transaction via credit cards and bank accounts. They charged me for something I was not due to have renewed and have wreaked havoc on my expenses because they have not put the money back. My issue is that they’ve violated the trust and unlawfully, no matter how much they try to claim it as a glitch, stole 7.5 million dollars from their clients. The 7.5 million dollar figure is straight from the company via their blog statement about the billing. Go to blog.dreamhost.com if you wish to read the info straight from the Co-founder/CJO (Joseph “JOSH” Jones) about the 7.5 million. Please read his first comment regarding this which will be the second blog post down the page (You’ll see an overweight Homer Simpson graphic) and also notice how matter of fact and heartless his admission to the theft is. It is my assumption this was done on purpose to give them some sort of short term cash flow (even though they have to get it back) to cover expenses for a day or two. the billing glitch is just the cover story. They know full well that the money will enter their account and then not go back for at least 3 days. I show the money has been debited from my Checking Account but not returned. It is my intention to have the State involved so that they may communicate with the State of California in regards to the fraud and identity theft that has happened to thousands of people. Any time our trust in the banking system has been compromised it is my belief that the culprits should be held completely responsible for violating our trust.
MW Lvr Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am
MW, I hear you and feel your pain. You are acknowledged and heard.

Now begone.
Anonymous Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:37 am
This is being handled extremely poorly.
Anonymous Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I’m with you MW
MW Lvr Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Tell us about a time when you monumentally f*cked something up. What happened and how did people react to you? Were you forgiven?

It’s time to forgive yourself and heal your Inner Child:

http://www.coping.org/innerhealing/forgive.htm
MW Lvr Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:40 am
@Anonymous: I agree but we’re trying to get MW the help he needs.
steev Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:43 am
this is still not acceptable. My bank still hasn’t seen the refund and they just told me it can take up to 30 days. This is not something i’m waiting 30 days for. Even if I close my card it can still take 10 days, according to my bank.

This is, frankly, bullshit. I think you need to do MORE. You need to give everyone some kind of compensation just for their time and annoyance. You should be giving out free months of service or something. People’s time and stress-level is worth something, even if they’ve not experienced any tangible penalties that they can fax a copy of a statement to you of.

I’ve been so content with DH for 2.5 years and now i’m really really really pissed. And if it was easy to switch to someone else i would be doing it right this minute.
me again Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:45 am
“It is my assumption this was done on purpose to give them some sort of short term cash flow (even though they have to get it back) to cover expenses for a day or two.”

Sorry man, I think this a major screw up and they could have handled it better and people who STILL are out money deserve better compensation, at this point…but if you really think they did this for that reason, you’re nuts.

In the long run this mistake is going to cost them so much more than just money, no business would willfully do this to themselves.
Adam Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Still haven’t received my refund. Overdraft charges are already $105. The bank wont help me out at all. They said its DH’s mess than they need to fix it. I am waiting to send in the info I need to get my overdraft charges refunded from you. Waiting to receive the first refund! It does me no good to send in the charges when I will get more each day until this is refunded.

Once I receive my refund then I have to jump through your hoops to get my overdrafts refunded. Its just one big mess I wish I didn’t have to deal with.

But if the overcharges are refunded and the exact same account will be credited to my DreamHost account then I’ll be happy. I just can’t do anything until i get the first refund. Imagine my reaction coming to this blog today only to see that now there is a problem with the refunds. When can this nightmare end?
EMKay Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Alright I was told by Chase that the refund will be posted by next Thursday at the latest for me. After that they said feel free to start a claim. This is for my case guys not trying to tell you what to do.

I will file a claim when that day rolls around advised by my bank. I don’t care if its not a “big” hit in what some are saying. I hope this gets resolved so I don’t have to waste any more time after next week.
Still No Refund =( Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 11:06 am
“What would be the daily interest on an account holding, say, 2.5 million?”

2.5 million x 2% interest = $50,000 per day

Its been 4 days almost, so thats around $200,000 in interest (free money), if its a 2% rate, which is around average. PLENTY of money to give back to those who have overdraft fees and bounced check fees.
Some Guy Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Where in the HELL do you find a bank that gives you 2% interest PER DAY?
anon Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Pardon me, overzealous people who want to take Dreamhost down by charging fraud to the attorney general - I LIKE DREAMHOST. I like having all my websites here, it’s cheap and affordable to me, and I don’t want to have to move all my sites to another probably worse webhost just because you tied your Dreamhost account to your BANK ACCOUNT and you didn’t have enough money to cover an emergency.

I don’t want to see DH go down. This serves NO-ONE except your petty need for revenge. If you don’t like what happened here, then leave, but the rest of us want to stay and continue our business relationship.

You have no proof of fraud, only your paranoid delusions. They made a mistake. Get over it and do something positive with your life instead of kicking people while they are down. If you think they have benefited from this screw-up in anyway, you SERIOUSLY have a screw loose!
Kristin Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 11:53 am
My bill from you went approved today, which means not not only did you charge me almot 400 dollars you then collected the charge three days later.

Thanks to you I can not buy formula for my child. I am glad Monday is a holiday since I do not have gas to get to work. All of this after being one of your first customers.

I deal with billing on a daily basis. CLEAN IT UP. At this point this is FRAUD.
zethreal Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
@Still No Refund=(

Lets do some math using the same numbers you have.

$2,500,000 @ 2% APR, compounded daily.

2% APR, which is what I think you’re thinking about, means you get 2% of that per year. SO…

they would get roughly $50,000 per yer(per your math)
Per my math (and a freebie interest calculator) they will receive roughly $135 per day they have the 2.5 million. Seems like a rather dumb way to make a few hundred bucks. If you ‘re that worried about getting your interest back, you can send me a SASE and I’ll mail you your 1/10th of a penny.

Sorry if I sound upset, but I just wanted to make sure you were basing your anger on facts.
Martin Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Still no refund here. Tick tock.
freebradley Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
no refund, spiraling overdraft fees, bounced email, full vmail box, no support response, no official response since yesterday… throw me a bone, dreamhost.
Bitching and moaning Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
if(isset($_MW)) {
crying_ensues();
}
hogarth Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Weird thing happened to my account. DH refunded the charged amount TWICE, so now I have a positive balance. They gave me too much money back.
I think I’m just going to wait this one out.

And I still feel this is ultimately going to mean the financial downfall of our webhost service. Sad.
Still Being Charged Again Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
My credit card company is showing that the charge went through for $120, which would be a few cents less than one full year. This is unethical and unacceptable on all counts.

The email DH sent me on Jan. 15th stating I would receive a refund is just that, an email, with no credibility to it. Not to mention the fact that they made light of it in the email. It is now Jan. 18th, three day after the initial email, and nothing has been resolved. This is a serious situation, not only for me, but so many others.

My CC company does not see a refund coming, and has no notification of one (”for real”, as you stated).

If this isn’t resolved today I will be sending copies of invoices, billing, credit card charges, etc. to my attorney. One must protect themselves from this type of situation.

There are no more acceptable excuses, and the issue has gone on much too long, without a resolution.

There has not been a reply to my email I sent them, in reply to their ridiculous worded apology, with words like “fat finger”, etc., almost mocking the serious problem, and the fact they are continuing to charge me, situation. In this circumstance, humor doesn’t fit into the scheme of things. Multiple charges, means that the system is not fixed, and refunds are not pending. Their lack of professional response and professional attitude is abhorrent.

My refund is the priority, period, the end. I too wonder how much interest, if any, they are making off of this blatant situation, with our own funds tied up. They might not be, but they might be, who knows for sure. And, here it is Friday, and the next business day will not be until Monday, how convenient for DH, and how inconvenient it is for me and so many others. Just one person having a problem, in my books, is one person too many, never mind the overwhelming amount of customers affected by this horrendous situation.

My son who used DH, had $800 charged to his card, and not corrected. So many others had charges that are not corrected, yet. It’s deplorable.
Kriss Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I’m guessing MW isn’t a christian… that’s right folks.. guess whos back…
Fraud Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Time to start reporting dreamhost for fraud, people. Let dreamhost deal with the headache. Call your banks, credit cards, and ______ about the charges, report them as fraud, and let dreamhost feel your pain.

All this talk…time to make it hurt. 10,000 fraud accusations hurts.

good bye dreamhost.
Jody Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Josh:

I was charged over $800 (have an outstanding support request) on my “debit” card. You tried and tried and tried and tried to take $$ off…then you put $$ on…and tried to take off again.

This script has Fubared things so bad that I got a bill from you, my invoice for this month saying I owe $142.00 when I only owe $55.00 and change.

None of this should of happened, if you would of left well enough alone things would of been straightened out on the 15th. Instead I was hit like it was WWIII last night with charges and charges with the end result being my bill so screwed up that your billing system can’t make head or tails of what I should owe.

NOT GOOD!
Jesse Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
at this point i dont care why this happened… this is an excuse. it hasn’t fixed my situation yet, and i am now incurring overdraft fees, as are several other people. i cant believe how sketchy your billing system is… it makes me wonder what else is hanging on by a shoestring…
Still Being Charged Again Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
The final update? So, does this mean you are no longer going to keep updating us on the situation? That is what the word “final” implies. Does it mean you won’t answer our emails that were
sent?

As far as I’m concerned, nothing is final until I receive my refund on my card, and until you stop charging me. As recently as yesterday, you charged me again.
TGIF Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
@MW: I understand the anger, the need for you to get what you feel is a straight answer. I even understand your desire to leave in that, probably, you suspect if this could go wrong on such a large scale, just what else could go wrong on an even larger scale.

However, as this nor the dreamhoststatus.com page is an official communication forum to the people who work at Dreamhost, why do you post so frequently and sometimes vehemently? I don’t typically read comments but yours truly make my day. I am pretty relaxed and didn’t get nailed nearly as bad as you did. I had the normal monthly charge ($10) with a note saying that I had a back bill of nearly $200 and that I had 30 days to pay or my account would be suspended. So please don’t take this as inflammatory as it is not meant that way. How much time and energy have you put into responding/creating posts on blogs that are not official communication methods that will get you no return on your investment into them? How does this equate monetarily to you?

I do want to thank you for keeping these threads entertaining.

Good luck with your future endeavors and may financial tragedy of this magnitude never strike you again! :)

If I’m ever in your neck of the woods I’ll have to buy you a beer for your efforts.
God Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
You guys are the biggest freaking idiots…..and u put this on a blog, i hope this company goes under.
anon Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I have no idea why some people claim they never hear back from Dreamhost. Every single time I have posted a ticket I have gotten a response back the same day. This includes a ticket I posted yesterday.

Maybe they purposefully take longer to respond to people who are screaming at the top of their lungs, since DH is figuring they lost the business anyway.

I’m also amazed that certain people here apparently have children to feed and they are living so close to the edge that they don’t have cash on hand to buy BABY FORMULA.

If you have kids you should have some cash socked away in a drawer for emergencies, a savings account, hell, a 401K or SOMETHING. Otherwise, stop breeding until you can afford to do so. Yeesh.
Dreamhoster Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
LOL @ Kriss… you have to be a cheap bastard to be here so yeah…
Matt Algren Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
In the meantime I see it as keeping some heat on. Letting this slide is not an option. Since everyone else seems to have an amazingly short attention span, it seems to be up to a few.

MW catchy phrase guy is a hero, folks! You heard it here first!
ktpupp Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:11 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.
TGIF Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
@Matt: that was my initial reaction also.

And now I guess I now need to put in a footer.

All opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not reflect upon any company or other persons associated with me.
So very tired of this Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
All of you/us who are having problems because of this error should be sure to document everything.

Keep every email you receive from Dreamhost and print them out (with full headers).

Save and print out the official announcements Dreamhost has made about this mess here and at dreamhoststatus.com. Just in case at some point Dreamhost should take them down or modify them, you’ll want to have copies.

Even if you’re confident they’ll get you that refund and make this right, it’s good to document all this stuff in case things don’t go through (or, heaven forbid) get worse.

I’m also wondering what Dreamhost will do to make things right for people. They’ve said they’ll refund overdraft fees etc. and add on an equal amount of credit on top of that. All fine and good and the very least they should do.

But what about people who haven’t actually incurred fees but who have had all-but-empty bank accounts (or credit cards almost maxed out) for an entire week? Being lucky enough to have $10 in your bank account after multiple charges from Dreamhost means no overdraft fees, but it also means stress and hardship this week as you can’t buy food or pay bills, etc.

But it sounds like it also means no credit or anything from Dreamhost other than an “oops, fat fingers, sorry” post on a weblog. Emails from Dreamhost haven’t exactly come very often nor have they been very helpful.
TGIF Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
@MW, is it your intention to post once you have received a refund? For all of us following this episode we would surely like to follow it to resolution. Also, have you decided to go with lunarpages or pair.com just yet? Are there reasons you are passing up hosts such as inmotionhosting.com ?
Joan Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Who gives out this much information about their company? You never had to tell anyone it was 7.5 million dollars, let alone joke about it. If you were to have remained calm and cool to begin with and quit acting like all your failures are funny, or a non-issue, then you’d be much better off.

”

About 9/16th of our customers: weren’t actually billed OR
actually refunded.
About 1/16th of our customers: were billed AND were
refunded.
About 3/16th of our customers: were billed BUT WEREN’T
refunded.
About 3/16th of our customers: weren’t billed BUT WERE
refunded. (of course, nobody wrote in about it!)

”

We don’t need your fraction stats, which don’t make sense. 9/16th of our customers? Think about that. 9 : 16 or 9 of 16… Maybe so, anyway, regardless of your inability to compute (which has cost you all your business), “Anyway, we fixed the bug” - Oh okay.

“Double checking now, there were no more of those glitches from before, so everything seems okay”

Hmm. If only you double checked your work the first time. And last time, and last time, hey, did you really do it this time?

“only actually about 1/4 of them ever _actually_ hit people’s credit cards.”

Then you’re lucky 1/4 is leaving the company rather than 1 whole”

I’m going elsewhere. Sorry guys. I accepted the issue at first, but its gotten ridiculous.
KBofTW Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I just want to thank Dreamhost for everything they’ve done and the wonderful support they’ve given. While I was thankfully in the majority of people who were not actually charged, if I had been, I’d have the patience and the trust to let Dreamhost work it out themselves. For those who were suddenly thrust into overdrafting or not being able to pay bills because of a $100-$200 fee, I worry for your situation and what would happen if you suddenly had an emergency on your hands.

Nobody’s going to be running off with any money. While things may move at the speed of light on the Internet, when you’re talking about payment systems and banks, you’re going to have to wait a few days for things to show up properly.
Marc B Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
In case you’re wondering how to handle something like this in the future:
http://status.37signals.com/
http://37signals.blogs.com/products/2008/01/what-happened-t.html

THAT’S how you do it, Josh. Sorry, but after 7 years my Dreamhost days are over.
miss peas Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I’m still waiting for my refund. And I’ve emailed Dreamhost many many times, without getting a single reply.

Not only do I want my money back ASAP, but I think it would also be a terrific gesture on your part to give us some kind of credit, or a year free hosting.

I’m otherwise taking my business elsewhere.
Danger Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Dear DreamHost,

Did I read this post correctly?

You *have* to send a unique ID to your payment gateway.

So you figured that taking the current time (up to number of seconds) and turning it into a string was a good way to get a unique ID.

And of course, this was never a problem in your tests — because they never ran more than one transaction per second.

Um, guys? This isn’t something a *test* should catch. This is something that half-a-brain, after three or four beers, should be able to catch!

It’s damned terrifying, and I’ve got to say that while I admire your transparency, you’ve also shown me just how incompetent you guys are as developers (and, presumably, system administrators too.)

Wow. Just wow.
Danger Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Okay, I re-read your post and see that you were attempting to concatenate both a time *and* an invoice number but accidentally forgot to pass in the invoice number.

Well, that sounds less terrible than I made it out to be, so I will retract my previous hot-headed comment.

-Danger
Corey Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
So, not only did they screw up once by processing the payments, they also CONFIRMED the payments instead of canceling them. I didn’t see any mention of that in this blog entry unless you count where they “thought” something hit a credit card. If they can’t figure out that they actually DID hit a card AFTER the original batch, the numbers will climb yet again.
Tom from Philly Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
All,

I’ve had no problems with DreamHost to date. Indeed, I would have recommended them as a host.

I find it rather hard to believe that so many people see the lighthearted, jokey tone of all things Dreamhost (including Josh’s regrettable initial post) as “genuine” and “honest” and non-corporate (or at least not typically corporate) and fail to recognize that while it may seem cool and hip it is without question part of Dreamhost’s carefully-constructed corporate image and an important component of their marketing. They’re not the first or only company to take this approach, and while it seems cool (”hey, these are laid-back, no bullshit, regular dudes just like me!”) it has been and is cultivated as carefully as the weed Josh must have been smoking when he tried to make light of the misfortune of his customers.

Personally, I will make my decision about whether or not to stay with dreamhost based on how they improve their customer service. The non-response to my emails (I still have yet to receive a refund), the absence of a customer service phone number, where, at the very least I could here a recorded regular update on when to look for my misppropriated cash, frankly are unacceptable to me, and, I think indicate a belief that, with all this cool technology, customers can be kept at arms length and made to jump through the company’s web hoops in order to have their needs met. “Contact us through the control panel” isn’t very customer-friendly. I can’t do that from my cell phone in the airport after leaning from my bank, which just declined a checkcard purchase, that my account is now overdrawn due to an authorized megadebit from my hosting provider.

Good luck to everyone else who was affected by this idiocy. Don’t mistake savvy marketing for sincerity.

T
me Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Does being savvy with marketing negate sincerity?
TGIF Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I think Tom’s point is that being savvy at marketing doesn’t negate a good customer support system.

If there was no way to contact Dreamhost on a more expedient basis than the web panel, that is going to concern a lot of people. All of the “face time” this blog brings doesn’t replace the “face time” you may want to have with support.
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
It’s easy to talk about being patient when it’s not your money. Let’s not forget that this affects our standing with our banks. Our credit rating is what we’re measured by in the world of commerce. Like many of you, I have not received a refund and have canceled the debit card I used to sign up for the service to prevent DH from making any more charges in addition to the two they have already made. Now I have funds tied up with an erroneous overdraft on top of fees, which my bank (US Bank) says they’ll refund as soon as they determine that the error was indeed on the part of DH. I value my word and follow through with what I say, unfortunately, this seems not to be the case with DH. As a retailer I know it isn’t that hard to go through and credit people when they return a product they have purchased from you — takes a matter of a seconds. How then, does it take days to credit an incorrect billing? I don’t buy the cavalier “honest mistake” attitude. This just seems like a carefully calculated business maneuver.
Still Being Charged Again Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
It’s past the close of business, and nothing has been done to resolve the inaccurate charges on my card. No refund transaction in sight, according to the company, and $240 of my money has been eaten up by DH. How convenient for DH…how inconvenient for the rest of us.

This has now become an issue of ethics, and true colors are beginning to show. How long do they think they can keep this attitude and inaccuracy going. I am beginning to think like Beyond Pissed…that it is a “carefully calculated business maneuver”. Why else the lack of contact and information, why else the blase attitude and immature blog posts, why else the lack of refunding my moneys.
Mark Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I still don’t have my refund. This better happen today. You took it out of my account awful quickly. You should be able to put it back just as fast. The error after error is inexcusable. Someone manually go in to the system and give me my money back. Not only was a charged in error once, I was charged twice. I wish it was a measly $100-200 fee, but it’s not. Some of us were charged 3x, 4x, probably up to 10x those amounts.

You could have handed a kid on a tricycle a bag of pennies and it would have gotten to my bank faster.

Money. Refunded. Today.
RighteousIndignation Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
http://fuckdreamhost.com is now online!
Mark Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I am anxiously waiting the next *final* update. This isn’t over yet. I hope people are working overtime getting our money refunded. And while I don’t like to see *anyone* lose their jobs, someone needs to get fired over this.

Haven’t received response to my emails, either.
me Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I see that point, TGIF; however a lot have stressed about servicing that is out of DH hands, and they’re going to get the same answer over the phone that they get here. Besides, the desire for “in your face time” started way before people wanted any kind of “face time” apparently, and there’s gross disbelief of anything DH or others post about how problems like this take time to resolve so why should I believe that hearing it instead of reading it will get thru to some. I understand that a human voice can be more reassuring to some, but I don’t want DH to pay some poor person to be verbally abused just because some people don’t believe the communications DH does get to them.

On the other hand, aside from his point Tom does sound as tho he’s warning against believing DH is sincere or honest; that it’s only marketing. My question wasn’t about customer service, I simply question whether or not a company can be both sincere and savvy with marketing. As in, the posts that say they’re fixing the problem and refunding money was honest and sincere, not just marketing.

And really, if you believe a post like that is sincere and honest there’s no need for a phone call to make sure, is there.
anoneemus Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
People people people. It takes LONGER for a debit card to be refunded than a regular credit card sometimes. Why? I have no clue. But the lack of refund may not have anything to do with Dreamhost. It just takes a certain number of business days.

Why is it that when I withdraw money from my PayPal account it takes sometimes up to 5 days to post? Shouldn’t it be immediate with electronic banking? But it isn’t. Because these things somehow get stuck in the system. I’m not sure why or how but credits ALWAYS take more time than debits.

If you honestly think that DH is purposefully screwing you over because a refund hasn’t posted yet, you have a poor understanding of how long these things generally take to process. Blame the bank, blame the credit card processor…it’s probably out of DH’s hands already.
Still Being Charged Again Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
I even had my account set so that auto billing was turned off and would not go through, before all of the problems began, and you managed to bill me, anyway, twice. What deceit, what a sham, what a scam.
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
In past experience with contesting incorrect charges to my account, the banks do take a few days to investigate. I will probably see the money from my bank in 5 business days if DH doesn’t follow through. Bear in mind, Monday is a holiday so our money will be tied up one additional day. It would be nice if DH would update on the blog as to what they are doing at the moment to resolve the issue. I agree with me . . . that it wouldn’t be fair to some underpaid poor soul to have to endure call after call of angry customers. I think Josh should have to take those calls. How convenient that he’s unapproachable. Can you imagine treating our customers that way, how long do you suppose we’d stay in business?
Anon Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Why can’t people who want to leave just get the fuck out and STFU?

miss peas,
“Not only do I want my money back ASAP, but I think it would also be a terrific gesture on your part to give us some kind of credit, or a year free hosting.
I’m otherwise taking my business elsewhere.”

You just want to get profit out of this. Why don’t you PAY for the service you want? Somewhere else, preferably.

You people know what, the only dumb thing in handling this DH has done is letting you guys comment. Without that everyone would have checked the status page, shrugged, waited and kept their mouth shut. You’re talking each other into madness. Seems like some customers can’t handle the tools they are given and make it the best choice for companies to follow a no-communication no-community policy. But as I want to keep this possibilities, please STFU.
me Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
>I think Josh should have to take those calls.

Think that’d get a better response, or move those complaints to the front of this very long line? Sounds to me like a fine line between justice and vengeance.
me Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
MW did you just try to Godwin this thread?
GREG KING Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Where is my refund?

You charged me $239, I see it in my account not in my bank.

Please get back with me asap.
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
It is what it is.

In this “instant” world we become enraged when things aren’t instant. This will just have to play out. There are options and stop gaps that the banking system has in place to protect the consumer. We just have to wait and let it work itself out. No amount of complaining will speed up that process. Best to just fuhgetaboutit and have a drink. By Tuesday this will hopefully be all resolved. Life is too short and no point ruining a good weekend over this.
I realize times are tough for some, but I seriously doubt DH would purposely do a massive debit just to get some cash flow problems taken care of. It would be corporate suicide. The customers they stand to lose far outweigh the money they would be making in the short term.
I’m glad it’s not my problem to fix. That’s the poor soul we should be pitying. If I have to eat the $200 then I’ll write it off on my taxes. Either way, there’s not a whole lot to be done at this point. I’m going out to my studio to throw pots, far more productive than worrying about something I can’t change.

Have a good weekend.
me Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
What a wonderful post, Beyond Pissed. If mud must be slung, at least let it be fired into an object of art or function instead of clogging arteries of thought.
Mike Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
@MW and others… follow my advice for your future benefit. Use a credit card wisely and you avoid all this hassle.
J williams Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I too saw another $100 charge on my account on 1/17. ARGH
Mark Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
“You people know what, the only dumb thing in handling this DH has done is letting you guys comment.”

Are you serious?

Dumb Thing #1: I received an email that the money would be back in my account “almost immediately, within a day or two max”. Not true. Does the crack Billing Team not know how long refunds take to process? They set an expectation that was not met.

Dumb Thing #2: They then proceed to tell us that everything is taken care of, and… what do you know… they screwed up the refund process as well.

Dumb Thing #3: They attempt to handle the situation with more seriousness, but we haven’t heard another word in days. No emails, no blog posts, no updates, nothing. If I were at the helm, I would be updating my customers every few hours, or at the very least, emailing status updates once or twice a day.

At this point, we are totally in the dark, and have to wait this thing out.

I had tried to have my bank refund the charges, and they wanted to do a conference call with Dreamhost to discuss the matter. Ha ha, that was funny. Guess what, no phone number. The CS rep for my bank was in disbelief.
Mark Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
“Why can’t people who want to leave just get the f*** out and STFU?”

I would like to leave, but it would be a massive undertaking. Some of us have more than a few html pages and jpgs sitting on these servers. Some of us are trying to run businesses, and it’s not easy to even start thinking about migrating right now, unexpectedly.

Time is money. The planning and effort to even think about migrating everything, in addition to the time it takes to research another web host, back everything up, migrate. recode, rebuild databases… potential data loss… email loss… downtime… and doing this across multiple domains…

I wish it was as easy as getting the f*** out (as you put it), but it isn’t.
Jeff Carr Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
I would be willing to read through these for useful information if it wasn’t for MW who is annoying the hell out of me. Anyway, I’ll check my account in a few days (haven’t looked yet) and let you guys know if everything is kosher.

Thanks for the update!
Brad Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Mr “MW is spam banned again” - Dude, there are many providers out there charging web hosting for $2.00 per month. If you can’t fork out $2.00 for web hosting then I’d suggest you take a long hard look at your finances.

One thing Dreamhost does well is provide a service with a lot of transparency and honesty. Granted, they did screw up big time, but they admitted it and they were honest about their mistake. I wish a lot more companies were as open and honest as Dreamhost.

If anyone from Dreamhost management is reading this, I thank you for your honesty and open-ness. My account was fixed without delay. And, to be honest, since you guys were open up front, I found the humour cool.

Keep up the good work DH.
me Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Haven’t heard from them in days?!?

me thinks the date of this blog entry need be read. It was, what, 29 hours and someone complains that it’s been days since the last update about the matter? Okay, almost two dayzzzzzz, but come on….

me is amazed that so much energy is put into imagining problems instead of solutions.

me sees that people like to share experiences, so here’s mine. The harder you fight the system, the harder the system fights you back. Doesn’t matter if it’s a system of banking or a system of happiness, either.

peace
Wondering Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Why does “MW’s is…” name link back to Fark?
Brad Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
MW-

> Do you want $2 web hosting? Nope, me neither.

What’s your web site dude? Must be important to be worth more than $2/month.

And if your web hosting is so extremely important then my previous comment applies: get a money manager.

> Do you mean the honest Dreamhost who told me to expect a refund immediately or by Thursday at the latest?

Put your money where your mouth is and post a detailed reponse on this forum from DH, or your own blog (DH provides a good solution to install wordpress) about the inaccuracies.

Until then, I don’t really believe you. Just STFU.
miss peas Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
when you fuck up this retardedly, the LEAST you could do is offer something to fix customer satisfaction.

i’ve been with dreamhost for years, and no i don’t want to just “profit”… a year’s free hosting isn’t that much of a profit.

i’m just saying, customer service at dreamhost is sorely lacking.
Corey Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
@Brad
Here is an example of what those of us who were charged received on 1/15

Hi Corey!

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’m really really realllly embarassed about this, but you have nothing to worry about. Please ignore any confusing billing messages you may have received recently; I’ve already removed all those bum future charges on your account (#xxxxxxx) and already refunded the $xxxx.xx charge on your credit card.

You should get the money back on almost immediately, within a day or two max, and there’s no need to contact your credit card company or bank for the refund.

Again, I feel terrible about this whole thing.. there will be a blog post soon at blog.dreamhost.com fully explaining how this bug was even allowed to happen..

Thank you very very much for your patience with this.. we PROMISE this won’t happen again. There’s no need to reply to this message unless of course you have any other questions at all!

Sorry again,
Josh!

I have still seen no refund personally, and if you will note, the email says immediately, or up to two days. I am pretty certain that most US banks are now closed until Tuesday.
Still Being Charged Again Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Brad: I received the same exact email on January 15th that Corey did with the same “ack” the same “fat finger” the same everything, word for word), with my name in there, obviously, and not Corey’s.

I was charged on my card a second time, the last time being January 17th, two days after they said things would be taken care of, and that “You have nothing to worry about”.

Yes, most U.S. banks are closed until Tuesday due to the holiday on Monday. How convenient for DH, and not convenient for us.
Mark Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Regarding not hearing anything in days…

I shouldn’t have to come dig up a blog to get informed about where my money is. I should be receiving email updates, at the very least.

At least Corey’s email was “personalized” as if it were from Josh, and directed to visit the blog for an explanation. My didn’t have any of that, and came from “The Foolish Dreamhost Billing Team!”. I had no idea this blog existed until earlier today.
me Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
me got email that I had been billed

me then got email that the bill was in error and would be corrected

what more can me want?
Mark Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
me want money back in a timely manner like email me received stated.

The money came out in minutes, it should go back in minutes. I don’t care if someone has to be there 24/7 doing this manually. I am not waiting until tuesday (a full week) - it was promised “almost immediately, within a day or two max”.

The only thing we get for our troubles is being allowed to terminate our service. Like I have the days it will take to move my hosting… Dreamhost knows this.

We need something better.
Mike Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
MW needs to learn how to get a credit card and use a credit card. MW will then have less to complain about in life, and will spend more time doing things useful in life other than complaining on the dreamhost blog.
me Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
me getting money back in timely manner, why Mark picked on?
Martin M. Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
original form email written from Josh said:

“You should get the money back on almost immediately, within a day or two max, and there’s no need to contact your credit card company or bank for the refund.”

Okay, fine, so it was wishful thinking on his part, and it also predates discovering a couple other oversights about the system that made some of the refunds not get processed when he said they were.

So, on the 16th my bogus $580 and change charge leaves pending and becomes a real charge on my Amex. Whatever. I call Amex (because I don’t care if Josh told me there was no need to — it’s my money, not his) and I put the charge in dispute status assuming it’ll be in that status for a day or two until the refund catches up with it and then we’ll be fine.

Early on the 18th (1am or so), I call Amex to check on it. Still no sign of a refund, and the rep tells me that there’s really no such thing as a “pending” credit the way they work it at Amex. As soon as one is issued, it should post to my account and look like it’s there, he says.

So I open a ticket through the panel like Josh has indicated I should if I’m still having trouble with my refund not showing up yet. In my comments to billing I explain that I’ve called Amex every day to check, haven’t seen it yet.

I also ask why I was billed for the same service three times (because at that point it hadn’t been addressed here) and what if any compensation they have planned for people like me who probably won’t have any fees waived by our CC company because we called and informed them about the problem (and have good enough credit that we will likely be able to request a fee reversal and get it).

I don’t care if I get any kind of extra compensation beyond the money that’s supposed to be mine anyway, but it strikes me as pretty lame that people who incurred fees will get additional credit to their account as well, and I want to know what the logic behind that decision is. Because, though I have other ways to pay my bills, I use my Amex card constantly, as it earns me other benefits simply by being in use. At the moment I cannot use it at all until this is cleared up because even a charge in dispute lowers your available credit…

I did get a response from billing in under 24 hours.

- It addressed my question about multiple billings by pointing out that Josh’s “final” update had been posted.

- It completely ignores my question about compensation for those without use of a credit card but who aren’t going to incur fees. And by “completely ignores” I mean “does not even acknowledge that there was an additional short paragraph in my email that ended with a question mark.”

- And the best part of all is how it addresses my statement about not yet seeing my refund:

“If you’d like to confirm that you received your refund, the best option at this point is to give your bank a call.”

Um, I said in the email that I’ve called them every day since the 15th. That’s why I emailed you to say I haven’t seen the refund yet. Because I called, and they HAVEN’T SEEN IT.

“They should be able to identify the pending refund and let you know more information about when it might post.”

Wait, what? I just said they don’t see it. I also told you in my email that the Amex rep says refunds don’t sit in “pending” status. It’s either there or it’s not, and it’s not.

Are you reading my email or cutting and pasting this response?

“I’m sorry that they haven’t been able to see it yet, but I
do see that we processed the refund on the 15th.”

So now you acknowledge that Amex hasn’t seen the refund yet? Why are you telling me my best bet is to call them again? I called them less than an hour before writing to you.

“You should receive this refund by the 20th at the latest. If you don’t, please write back to us and let us know. I did double-check things on our end, however, and I’m confident that you should receive it without anyone needing to take any
further action.”

a) The 20th is a Sunday, and the 21st is a national holiday. If I don’t see me refund by Friday the 18th, it’s unlikely I’ll see it by the 20th. It’s POSSIBLE it comes through on the 19th, but unlikely.

b) Of course you’re confident nobody will need to take further action because you don’t plan to take any. I will have to make more phone calls or write more emails if I don’t see it by the 20th. Besides, in business days we’re talking about the 22nd here, a full week after the original error was made and not even 24 hours shy of a week since the erroneous bill hit my Amex account in earnest (i.e. no longer in pending status).

I would have preferred the email response to take LONGER but to have actually appeared to be written IN RESPONSE to what I wrote rather than cut, pasted and slightly edited to appear to address a cursory read of my original ticket.

Again, my 2 cents… First person who calls me names or ridicules my finances because my Amex wasn’t in a position to get hit with a charge over $500 gets a free copy of Quicken Premier from me once Dreamhost refunds my card. Just send me your address and phone number along with the ridicule because you’ll also get a free beating.
Dan Bruno Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Jesus Christ. I was gone for most of the day, but I expected to see at least an update on this post when I got in. Alas, no update — and, of course, no refund.

At this point I’d be out of here even if they offered me free hosting for the next decade. I’ve gotten emails from Nigerian 419 fraudsters who sounded more trustworthy.
Mark Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
I agree with everything you say, Martin.

My bank is not seeing anything in any sort of “pending” status either. It just doesn’t exist.

Pretty pathetic that people who weren’t even charged in the first place are getting refunds and we aren’t.

At least you received a response from DH to your inquiry.
Martin M. Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Of course I’m kidding. I’ll be happy to administer a beating, but I’m not buying anybody a copy of Quicken Premier.

The real point is that there are tons of circumstances under which a credit card would have less available credit on it, and to assume that everyone carrying a big balance on their card doesn’t know how to manage their money isn’t really logical at all. I have enough money in my checking account to pay the erroneous Dreamhost bill several times over, but I use Amex because then I pay it off at the end of most months and end up getting free air travel out of the deal. So, maybe I won’t run it up as high now, and I certainly won’t put it down for autopayment anywhere again, but it’s not like I’m paying for web hosting when I can’t afford food
Martin M. Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
“Pretty pathetic that people who weren’t even charged in the first place are getting refunds and we aren’t.”

Yeah, I agree. However, that kind of thing happens. What really bugs me most is that DH can’t seem to find a balance between “transparent and honest” and “quiet until we’re certain the thing is fixed.” If they weren’t so eager to tell us every time they think they’ve solved something, they wouldn’t have to eat their words the next day when something else turns out to also be wrong.

That, to me, is far more telling of what kind of developers they are than any amount of “overlooked test cases” or whatever. Almost every developer has made some dumbass mistakes in their career. (I know I’ve made my share.) The difference between a good developer and a good developer who also has some experience not being overconfident about his or her abilities has nothing to do with the number of mistakes made. It has more to do with how quickly they rush to report that everything is A-OK as soon as they think they’ve solved the problem or fixed the bug.

I mean yeah, looks like you fixed it… You should be excited. Yell BOOYAH or whatever makes you happy and give your fellow mission critical response team developers high fives, but for crying out loud take a break. Have a cup of coffee and run a few tests before you run off to write a blog entry that essentially says DUDES WE TOTALLY SOLVED IT DON’T WORRY YOU’LL GET YOUR MONEY IN A DAY, TWO TOPS! Heck, if the problem’s big enough (and I think this one was/is), maybe even sleep on it first.

There’s a fine line between “simply excited” and “premature.”
Josh Jones Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Hey everybody,

I just double checked everybody who posted in these comments to see if there was anything possibly still screwed up in the refund process, for real!

Everything has gone through at this point on our side, it looks like. The typical transaction record for somebody we thought we refunded but didn’t was like this:

VUJA1F01A567 Jan 15, 2008 2:34:49 AM
Sale
MasterCard
5XXXXXXXX
06/08
USD
381.60
Approved
2008.1.15.2.35.23..605064..228720

VTJA1F1B1FFA Jan 15, 2008 2:39:28 PM
N
N/A
5XXXXXXXX
06/08
USD
381.60
Approved
2008.1.15.2.35.23..605064..228720

VXJA1F5E06C5 Jan 17, 2008 3:49:32 AM
Credit
MasterCard
5XXXXXXXX
06/08
USD
381.60
Approved
2008.1.15.2.35.23..605064..228720

(the “N” status transaction is the first failed “Credit”).

At this point, I’m really sorry, but all we can do is continue to wait. I was hoping after doing the refunds yesterday morning they’d make it through today, but I’m afraid if you haven’t gotten it yet, it’s probably not going to happen until Tuesday unfortunately? I really really wish there was something I could do now to get them to go through faster somehow, but I think all I can offer again is if you write into support with any and all inconvenience charges charged you by your bank, we’ll credit that amount to your bank account (as real cash, not just dreamhost credit. Although we’ll give you dreamhost credit on top of that as well.).

Again, I’m just really sorry.. no excuses, this was all 100% my fault, and I definitely shouldn’t have been so quick to think things were rectified after the first attempt at refunds.

Please hang in there just a _little_ longer. You will all get your money, I promise!
Martin M. Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
“I think all I can offer again is if you write into support with any and all inconvenience charges charged you by your bank, we’ll credit that amount to your bank account (as real cash, not just dreamhost credit. Although we’ll give you dreamhost credit on top of that as well.)”

And what about inconvenience that is not in the form of a charge? I can’t use one of my credit cards at all until the refund clears up the available credit. I most likely won’t end up with any additional charges on it, but what do I get for losing the use of one of my primary payment methods for (at least) a week?
S Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Thank you for updating Josh, hopefully it will put some people’s minds at ease.
So very tired of this Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Martin M is right on, here.

This is seriously inconvenient and awful for many people who haven’t incurred any sort of overdraft charge. Having to live with a credit card that’s maxed out or a bank account that’s all but empty (with just a few bucks in it) for seven days is seriously Not Cool or Fun. It’s just plain Bad and screws with people’s lives.

Yes, people who incur overdraft fees etc. should get those refunded as promised, but everyone else who was charged should get a credit of some sort or *something* not just those who ended up with overdrafts.
Eric Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I DEMAND FREE TACOS
cosplayphotos Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Tacos? Now you are talkin! But seriously those who didn’t get overdrafted should get something. Everyone except the people who had old/expired cards (like me) should get some kind of compensation for the money that was tied up.
peeeen Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
tacos are a good choice, but really - a couple bucks for the trouble is A LOT better than refunding the remainder of our plan and losing our business for like, the rest of our lives.

Srsly, our compensation is an offer to leave Dreamhost? That’s just silly.
Sunny Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
@ So very tired of this, Martin M.

It was an error. A horrible error, yes, but one which Dreamhost seems to be trying to rectify to the level that they know how to. While credit of some sort may be a sufficient amends for their mistake, it would not be a reasonable expectation that Dreamhost can somehow make up for the entirety of the inconvenience. Banking is slow, regardless of whether it is electronic or not. Had Dreamhost immediately refunded each and every case moments after the error occurred (and frankly, they likely took it one step at a time to avoid further problems), it would still leave periods of inconvenience.

So, what good is there by complaining about such inconvenience? There’s very little Dreamhost (and your banks) can do at this point to make it less inconvenient. It is a detrimental mistake, but one which could perhaps encourage the end user to better protect her/himself financially in the future. At least it can be fixed, and people can return to a previous status quo. It could have been handled much worse, and with much more damage.
Martin Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
John your apologies and excuses mean nothing, my bank account is still empty and that’s your fault. What are you going to do to make it right?
Martin Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
That should say Josh, not John.
Kriss Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
No, that should say “Hey Josh you have millions of dollars to manage and you made 1 mistake… I only have a few thousand and I can’t seem to do it right either… I guess were the same kind of person, we all make mistakes…”
zzz Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
The difference is, one of them gets paid to not make this sort of mistake. Not that they still won’t happen, but you can’t expect people to be sweet about it when it does. Nobody would complain if you fell asleep watching a boring tv show, but if it was your job to watch feeds from security cameras, your boss probably would.
Martin M. Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
@Sunny

Please look at what I wrote again. I’m not actually complaining or demanding compensation. All I want is an answer as to why people who incurred fees get “something for free” and people who were simply inconvenienced get nothing. I don’t even care if Josh buys me a beer or a taco. I just want to know why he (and Dreamhost) feel someone who was charged an overdraft fee deserves a beer or a taco more than I do.

All this stuff about “learning lessons” and being better about managing your own money is a red herring anyway. I have well over $3000 in my checking account right now, but I use my Amex to pay bills to earn points. It had $500 free when I was charged $580 and change by Dreamhost. I think I’m doing okay when it comes to managing my own finances. I just want to know how people who got hit with fees merit special treatment ABOVE AND BEYOND simply refunding said fees.

I’ve already conceded that it was an error and that the number of times it was declared “fixed” prematurely was wishful thinking. I called into question what that premature declaration of success meant in terms of responsibility, maturity and professional behavior, but I still understand it, and it alone isn’t enough to make me say “bah, I’m leaving.”

Again, let me reiterate:

- I can buy my own tacos. I just want to know why Dreamhost feels the need to buy some people tacos and let others take it on the chin.

- I’ll be able to buy more tacos next week even if my Amex is still maxed out and tied up. I’m just asking for an answer to a simple question.

- I can fill my apartment with tacos and still pay my rent come the first of the month, but that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to hear the logic behind the decision to give handouts to people who got fees and not to people who just lost a payment option for a week.
Michael Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
I’m not sure I understand the procedure for testing over there…

So let’s just make sure I understand it correctly, you wrote another script to fix the problem, didn’t test it, and so not only did not do what you thought it did, it managed to compound the problem on your end by issuing refunds that weren’t possible?

Maybe your billing system doesn’t work the same way our does (authorize.net vs. payflow pro) but I believe the following holds true:

#1 - When issuing refund you are supposed to reference the transaction your refunding to prevent refunding a non existent charge. The only way to get around this is to use the person’s full credit card number. That said, you should only have been able to refund people that you already charged.

#2 - At least in my world, charging a credit card goes in phases. First the card is authorized and captured. It then goes into a “waiting” pool to be batched processed at a certain time of day (Roughly 4:00pm CST for me). Prior to that I’m able to void the transaction (not refund, but void). After that I must refund. That said, assuming you have similiar tools, wouldn’t the smart thing have been to get in before batch authorization took place, voided all of the transactions, and then worried about fixing your internal billing system AFTER the fact?

In fact, we had that happen once to us as well… someone ran a script that was supposed to be in test mode, ran a couple hundred transactions (which put a bunch of pendings on people’s cards for the day) but the pendings never flipped over because we voided them all before they had the chance… if PayflowPro doesn’t have this ability, I strongly recommend switching to authorize.net!

In any case, I am now just a third party observer as I have written down all of my good advice as to what makes a good host, and sadly, you no longer meet my standards. If you want to see what I now deem to be my level of standard, check my site:

http://www.thewebsitechecklist.com/
LaDonna Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
I’m sorry, but this is all a crock. I got an email saying the charge was reversed and it wasn’t. As a result, my account is overdrawn and I have overdraft fees. Are you really going to refund these or am I going to get screwed again? So I’m supposed to wait until Tuesday because you emptied my bank account and have no food in the house? I accepted your first apology because it was supposedly quickly rectified, but now I’m angry. I’m currently removing my data from and you have lost a customer.
Kriss Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Heres what you have to understand… I will try to make it as clear as possible for you guys…Remember while reading this that your hosting for this amount of bandwith/space cost you very little… Honestly if youre only using 2 GB of bandwith per month and 100 megs of space you should NOT be using dreamhost (in my opinion) … dreamhost is about a large quantity of space + a large quantity of bandwith for a cheap price… You don’t even get these kind of limits (500 gb storage + 5 TB monthly bandwith) on a DEDICATED SERVER in other places … if you know where I can get these elsewhere please let me know and I will signup tomorrow and use X hosting company from this point forward… this point being made… with these kind of promises you must make cutbacks in certain areas… In the hosting areas there are a few places to make cutbacks which include:

1. Hardware - you must purchase cheap hardware which in result means what? the hardware will fail more often and as a result will have more downtime… Want proof of this? Look into how google’s infrastructure is setup, they LITERALLY have people that walk around with shopping carts full of nothing but hard drives to replace failed drives… You never notice it because each drive only holds the index for a few thousand websites which you’ll probably NEVER run a query for. And even if you do their algorithm will simply compensate for the error..
2. Employees - you must limit the number of employees you can pay … this results in a few issues which include a limited amount of tech support…. this means that usually when hardware fails it will be down for a bit longer than most hosting companies… why? becuase they have LESS EMPLOYEES TO FIX STUFF! … when you only have X amount of employees and you have X*10 Servers it is difficult to manage… Remember they must handle billing + tech support for server management + security aspects (wouldnt want to get your site hacked would you) … As a security professional for a long time now I can say keeping 1 server alone secure is a serious pain in the butt… this also brings me to my next point… if you have to limit employees then Josh probably took on the roll of handling billing part time with others + his normal duties… sure hes no CPA but that’s what you get when you purchase cheap hosting. If you bought a cadillac for $2000 and they offered you free repairs at the dealership would you expect the best certified cadillac repairs people to be working on your car? Would you expect the finance handler for your payments to be some major player? Hell no…
3. Overcrowding - This is where they stick thousands of customers on the same server. If even ONE of these customers happens to land on the front page of “Digg.com” for example, it results in a major bandwith increase to this single server… What happens to the other sites from other customers on the same server? They tend to slow down as the server can only handle soo much at once…

Seriously, unless youre hosting MAJOR bandwith or SPACE eating materials with dreamhost you should just go somewhere else… dreamhost is almost like newegg.com … they will sell you the hosting at a BULK rate but you must know how to put the stuff together and realize there will be issues… If youre just running a hobby site and crap go elsewhere (there are millions of those “Get 10 GB Bandwith + 500 megs space” per month for only $2.00/month) …I host major bandwith + space requirement sites … my monthly average for bandwith on dreamhost is about 10 GB a and I use about 50 gigs of space… Most people who need these sorts of things plan on making money with their websites (which I have, which is why I’m not mad about this issue because in terms of ROI dreamhost has made me thousands)… THIS is why I use dreamhost… I need ALOT of space and ALOT of bandwith… If you don’t need this I seriously recommend you take your stuff elsewhere… Sure it should work fine for the small guy but if you don’t need a JET ENGINE why would you buy one? Even if it only costs $10…. because it seems like a good deal? REALLY? well dont expect a $10 jet engine to run perfectley ALL the time, expect there to be problems, and don’t expect the people who sold it to you to lick your butt if it doesn’t work right EVERY time… Is this enough explanation or do I need to continue?

If you were not aware that this is REALLY how dreamhost is then I apologize that you were duped… take it as a loss, do your research before you just JUMP into a hobby like web design, SEO, or programming (Remember some of us make our living from this) …
Mark Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 12:56 am
uhmmm…. no one is complaining about the quality of service we receive… it’s that they TOOK OUR MONEY PREMATURELY & WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION and are making claims to have refunded the money WHICH OUR BANKS OR CREDIT CARD COMAPNIES ARE NOT SEEING.
Martin M. Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 1:01 am
@Kriss… I make my living from this stuff. Just not with the sites I have on Dreamhost.

I use Dreamhost not because it’s a cheap Cadillac but because it’s a much more reliable Hyundai than the $2/month places.

Remember, being condescending from the first sentence doesn’t make people read all three paragraphs because they’ve already decided you’re just being a jerk. Because, you pretty much are.
Kriss Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 1:04 am
They made a mistake… they are trying to fix it… I’m only pointing out that the mistake occured due to their business model… Remember as I said employees must take on multiple roles, at which point Josh had to assume the role of the billing person… the average joe is not going to be able to fix a 3 million dollar fuckup in a week… I WILL agree that if by tuesday everything is not fixed they should hire a pro for a fee, cut their losses, and move on…

I will admit that he jumped the gun by saying everything would be fixed by “XXX” date and “XXX” time… Josh, you seriously messed up by giving a permanent date and time for the resolution in this…. don’t promise those sorts of things if youre not a PRO in that area… That’s like me saying that a certain bug will be fixed in a program even when I’m not a programmer at all (which btw microsoft and other software companies have their support reps do this all the time an it causes programmers serious headaches) …
Kriss Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 1:07 am
@Martin …

Yes I am a jerk, that post was only pointed at those who continued to be a jerk themselves. It takes one to know one… and it takes a bigger one to convince one…
Martin M. Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Yeah, I agree, and that’s why I attempted to say the same thing about overconfidence leading to more unsettled customers.

I’m a developer, and I’ve had product and program managers give clients ridiculous deadlines on behalf of developers many times. It is a headache for the devs, and it’s even worse when it’s clean-up work for a screw up rather than like “rolling out a new product.” No doubt.
Martin M. Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 1:10 am
@Kris… I was agreeing with your other post… not with the one where you called yourself a jerk. Heheheh.
Mark Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 1:22 am
And this is why I will plan to move my business elsewhere, as soon as I can afford the significant time investment to migrate. An “inexperienced” person, as you claim, should not be in any position to cause a potential $9.6 million Colossal Cock-Up like this.

But as a founder of DreamHost, so I would expect he is more than capable. I just won’t make any more excuses for them. It’s a business, regardless of what level of service you or I expect, and it needs to be run like one.
Aleman Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Oh ouch!,

Expired card here so no problems and I’m cool.

Screwed up one recommendation from me though, they have decided to go elsewhere because of all the whining here.

And Dreamhost are giving you something for the inconvenience, they only need to refund your money, and your incurred charges. They are also giving you Credit for your dreamhost account equal to the charges . . .ok so you got no charges . . . Poor you

“Life’s a Beach, until you get sand in your shorts!”
Nate Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 6:32 am
Here’s what dreamhost should do, in addition to fixing this problem:

Give everybody who sticks with them a free upgrade to next highest class of service. With the mass exodus coming their way they no doubt will have the bandwidth available…
Anonymous Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 7:02 am
I’m curious as to why there are suddenly 40 or 50 posts missing from this thread, overnight.
Class Action Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Dreamhost, why suckst thou thusly?

My configs error free, all see.
My width of band a mere mirage.
My use of space a laughing joke.

Thy wages paid in full, in time, and yet
Thy temper so villain, so foul.
Molly Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 7:26 am
I dont know about making Dreamhost shirts, but I have a button maker and could design/make “I survived Dreamhost 2008″ buttons!
doesn't matter Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 8:17 am
hahah, no one has survived 08 yet, there is 49 weeks to go………
Mike Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Full refund posted to my AMEX account late last night, 1/18/07.
Ty the Typogrammer Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 9:40 am
As much as I hate coming in out of nowhere and throwing a fuss, I feel I must.

Some of you need to take a serious chill pill and be patient. Constantly berating someone and whining at them over an obvious mistake, no matter how small or large, does NOT help at all. I’m not just getting this stuff from thin air, either; I speak from experience.

I work in customer service at Wal-Mart. (Yeah, it sucks, but it pays.) One day a cashier really screwed up an order of 65 items. I ended up having to take it to my desk and HAND-KEY the entire order in again. The entire time I was doing this the customer was griping at me as to why we can’t just go back and do this and that and etc. Long story short: it didn’t help. I am an expert in ten-key, but the customer’s complaints caused me to constantly screw up, making her wait even longer.

You must be patient and give them time to remedy this. Judging from what I’ve read, this may take a few more days to fix. Look on the bright side: If everything gets fixed over the weekend you get to wake up Tuesday morning to a nice fix to your account, or at least getting you closer to normality.

Now, I’m not saying DH is in the clear here; in fact, they REALLY goofed on this one. And it wouldn’t hurt if they were a bit more frequent in updates. But I am saying that when things happen, don’t automatically assume the worst and act like a jerk. Patience is a virtue, and a little optimism ain’t gonna kill anyone.
Lauren Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 9:57 am
I finally got refunded last night. I had not yet called my bank to dispute it, but that was my plan for Tuesday morning. My charge was over $450. I’m with Bank of America, and 2 days ago, the charge was confirmed and no longer pending. Today I checked, and it was fixed. I had no overdraft fees, so thankfully don’t have to deal with that.

Haven’t decided whether to stay or not…it’s a big pain to switch, and unfortunately, they know that, which is why I believe they have not offered any incentives to stay.

Btw, why are all MW’s posts missing this morning?
RighteousIndignation Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Re. 214. “… Btw, why are all MW’s posts missing this morning?”

Ha! I hadn’t noticed that, but I’m glad to see them gone. Perhaps he exceeded the annoyance tolerance level of someone with the ability to delete his posts?

http://fuckdreamhost.com
Beth R Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:11 am
I checked with my bank yesterday afternoon before closing- still no sign of anything back from DH.
I’ve submitted 3 tickets (updating bank charge screenshots) and I have heard NOTHING back from any of them, even though the tickets are showing on my support history - no responses showing there either. The only email I’ve received was the first one.
Sorry to those of you who can’t believe some are not getting responses, but we’re not.
Dal Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:17 am
“if you call your processor they should see it coming, for REALs this time.”

Uhh….. NOT!

No refund for the $526.90 erroneously billed, although my DH invoice page says DH reversed the amount on 1-15. My bank begs to differ.

Then…. I get this email today:

“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 19th
of the month (when there is an amount due).

We have the last payment on this account to be $-526.90 on 2008-01-15 14:05:36.
Since then the following charges have been made to the account, which you have just paid for: ($23.95)

(This is after I unchecked the automatic rebill box on the 1-16-08)

In other words, DH HAS NOT REFUNDED ME AND HAS COME BACK FOR MORE $.

Now that’s ballsy!

I wonder if this post will be deleted along with MW’s posts.
marvin the martian Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:27 am
There are certain events in a lifetime that accidentally serve as litmus tests to separate the people “who get it” from the people “who don’t get it.”

The people that are:

a) suggesting this might be a conspiracy to make short-term interest off the money Dreamhost errantly billed

b) suggesting that there is some way for Josh or Dreamhost to make payment systems, banks and credit cards post a credit any sooner than they normally would

c) suggest that Dreamhost will be crestfallen to lose them as a customer

d) have no food in the home, have a kid with dirty diapers, or have electric service that gets shut off from a payment late by one week

… ***don’t get it***.

Please to leave Dreamhost to the people who don’t get it.

many thanks,
hugs and kisses,
marvin
Dal Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Marvin the Martian????? posts,

“There are certain events in a lifetime that accidentally serve as litmus tests to separate the people “who get it” from the people “who don’t get it.”

Wow! Since you are sooooo much more enlightened than us. Is there somewhere I can sign up to take your class? You can have my credit card number and rebill it for any amount you want, whenever you want.

You must however be over 15 years old. You are, right?
Adam Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 11:00 am
i got my refund - all $191.80 last night around 10:00 p.m…. fyi for people wondering if refunds were actually being sent out. i’m sure it depends on your bank, and mine uses a horribly archaic and ho-bunk system, so maybe it was just luck of the draw with me, but i ‘did’ get it.

also, if mw’s comments got banned, i’m sure it was his redundancy and ability to incite anger even among people who empathized with him. he’s no martyr being quieted by ‘the man’, Dal. simply put, he was whiny and annoying, which unfortunately overshadowed the individuals who were genuinely hurt by this situation, but didn’t feel the need to act like bumbling morons while expressing their frustrations.
Dal Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Wait, maybe I am confused.

Marvin the Martian????? posts,

“Please to leave Dreamhost to the people who don’t get it.”

Do you mean leave Dreamhost to the people who “don’t get it?” :-)

Or …. the people who “don’t get it should leave something to Dreamhost????

I really need your class!
Adam Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Yes, Dal - we get it now. Twice you’ve said you needed Marvin’s class - just take it already ;]
Dal Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Adam,

Thank you for the rational explantion and reasons for late refunds and removal of the MW posts.

I am with BofA (hardly an archaic and ho-bunk system) and have been trying to resolve this since 1-16. They are efficient and are aware of the DH situation at a high level.

I was told and shown on my DH invoice page the reversal had been done on 1-15.

I have been with DH since 1999 and have had a few quickly resoved glithches. This really scared me with the way it was handled.
marvin the martian Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Man, I can’t believe I wrote that whole thing and screwed up the last line.

Man.

blah blah blah _do_ get it.

sigh.

– sad marvin
Adam Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Dal,

yeah - it took a while for mine. josh explained it, and it was a billing error, so people who were told they were refunded didn’t actually get refunded. mine took about five days, but it did come. hopefully yours gets there tomorrow or next week. i know it sucks, but you should get it ;]
Nicholas Gerasimatos Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 12:56 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.
Wake up people Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
What is really interesting is how many self-proclaimed authorities there are on here in business, money management, banking…etc.

Dreamhost overcharged people…not by a little…not a few months worth of hosting fees, but by exhorbitant amounts. It’s a major fuck-up. They don’t need the customers to apologize for them (do you people make excuses to stay in bad marriages and jobs you hate too?).

The only issues are Dreamhost overcharged people and then apologized by joking about it and promised things not yet delivered. It’s clearly a poorly run company. You stay with them, then you’re saying that’s ok with you. End of story. Telling people how much they can complain and making judgments about how they manage their money when those people haven’t done anything wrong is the act of cowards that can’t direct their anger where it belongs.
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Just checked with my bank and still no refund. I canceled the debit card I used to open the account with, so at least I won’t be charged again. My bank (US Bank) had me file a dispute. They will contact DH and see if the charge was legit. If DH says it was, then I have to try to go after it myself. If they give the bank the run-around and they suspect fraud then US Bank will go after DH to recover the funds. If DH says it was their mistake then the money gets put back in my account along with the overdraft fees being reversed. In that case, it could take up to 5 days. I checked my DH account status and have been invoiced 9 months in advance leading to the auto debit last week. This is definitely a lesson learned.
me Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
me think MW was removed because he abusive. me also not like MW.

marvin the martian - me is fascinated by your philosophy, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

me see Nicolas Gerasimatos combining three issues - management or payroll dispute, customer billing, and customer service. me thought this article for customer billing issue.

me amused.
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
@me

I am amused as well.

I thought this was about the billing issue. Not wrongful termination. Let’s not muddy the water. I have a great bank that I know will do all they can to take care of this. And who knows . . . Tuesday may come with money in the account and all will be well in my little world. It just reminds us that technology nor people are perfect. What better lesson to learn than to see how poorly this was handled from it’s inception and not to do this to others.
me Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
me know banks remove fees when error. me also know not all banks are perfect either.

me don’t like being jumped on if I say I’m satisfied and suggest shopping around for host, bank, or job like me to be satisfied, so me say nothing.

me no understand assassination and entitlement. It’s less than not perfect.
Dr. Pangloss Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I think it is a testament to DH that Josh is still working there. If DH wasn’t the best host I have ever used I would probably be going elsewhere. Interesting how a ‘fat finger’ can really damage a company’s reputation. The billing software also should have also been slightly more robust. I create tools people use and you just have to account for some things.
me Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
me laugh it’s so squishy here.

Josh funny, too.
me isn't funny Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
just weird.
me isn't funny isn't clever Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
me laugh again

thx! =)
Dany Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
OK, as of today, the refund to my account has been processed and shows active.

So, a grand total of about 5 days, and only one of those days with an active effect on me.

I can put up with that.

You keep me for now. Bear in mind, however, that I, and many others, are expecting that something like this does NOT happen again.

The rest of you? Here’s hoping that it gets expedited along. It took time, but my stuff went through at last.
Erik Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I was charged to my debit card $248.75 TWICE, and I call the bank and they can’t even see the refund coming. I asked if I would be charged overdraft fees (because I only had a hundred in my account), they said I would and would have to call them after the refund goes through to alleviate such fees and that it can take 30 days.

So essentially I don’t get to buy any food this month, thanks a lot. >:(

I would appreciate it if you would email me so we can get this sorted out as soon as possible so that I don’t starve or get kicked out of my apartment, thanks.
miss peas Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
good luck getting a response from DH. I’ve given up and don’t plan on seeing my money until the dispute goes through.
John Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I was charged but I haven’t seen the refund yet. Initially, I was disappointed with the billing error. Now I am pleased with your honesty and willing to work with you in resolving the issue. I’ve had my fair share of mission critical errors so I can empathize with your situation.

In the future, I recommend sending an e-mail to us, your customers, about the issue. I only stumbled upon the blog by accident. I would not have given you the benefit of the doubt had I not read the blog.
Eric B Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
I posted about not getting my refund earlier and am I am happy to report that my refund has gone through. Good luck to all those still waiting.
Beth R Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I just got the first communication from DH since Monday- it’s the mass email, basically saying it’s my bank’s problem that’s causing the money not to show up. It also directed me to send an email requesting OD/NSF fee refunds, and that will be handled separately.
At this point, when the billing is refunded back into my account, I’ll still be overdrawn. I guess I’m going to have to borrow some money to get my account back in the black til this gets worked out.
I understand how things can get messed up; just pinches when I’ve got things I need to take care of and can’t because of mistakes like this. At least I don’t have any critical payments that will be returned while this is going on (hopefully). It’s bad for those who do, though.
The communication on this has been disappointing, to say the least.
Mark Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Still no sign of a refund here.

I don’t think (at least from my perspective) that anyone was trying to throw salt in the wounds or make Josh feel even worse than he does. The intention is to get DH to double / triple / quadruple check that everything is 100% repaired and refunded, or to let us know that they have done so already.
Cydney Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Well I personally dont know what is going on, But I do know I DID NOT receive a refund at all, so something still needs to be done. According to the invoice page on Dreamhost I was given a refund, but according to my online bank statement not only was the money taken.. but I now have a overdraft for something tha was supposed to have been given back - as stated in some email i received a few days ago. Id like to know when the rest of us will get our money back, or do we have to continue to get overdraft fees with a big smile?
marvin the martian Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
There is hope for some of you yet: please remember, when Dreamhost asks their payment system/your bank/your credit card processor to issue a refund, it can takes many days to appear on your statement. Please to have patience and let us know on Tuesday afternoon (Monday is a holiday) where you stand. Please to not jump off bridges this weekend.

@me: we’re still finalizing plans for the newsletter, but we have decided that we will put you on the list of people who _do get it_. And there’s no typo there this time.

–marvin
Gerard Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
It was mentioned above in a couple of posts as somebody was working out the kind of interest Dreamhost made off this that it was a 2.5 Million dollar mistake. Read the initial post again - it was a **7.5 Million Dollar** mistake.

I was billed TWICE. Once for $800 PLUS and a second time for $651. My bank says NO REFUND is “pending” and have not been notified of any cancellation or refund of the charges. I’m getting a tad worried.

I don’t really think this, but can you imagine if Josh has planned this for years, building trust, etc. and is now sitting on the beach of some exotic island flush with over Seven and a half Million Dollars? The stuff of TV movies! (Or at least a good episode of 48 Hours/Mystery). I’m kidding, but speaking of DreamHost, some of us are going to have a bad dream tonight. Otherwise known as - a nightmare.
envygeeks Says:
January 19th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
“if($cock-up === true) rollback($last-action);” - Simon Jessey

Correction, you can not - a variable. It would need to be “if($cock_up) rollback($last_action);” - note I removed the true, since technically it would evaluate as true if something is in the variable, except for false and zero of course =P.
zzz Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 1:49 am
@Gerard - You don’t seem to have read the blog you are commenting on.
marvin can kiss my... Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 1:56 am
The fact that we’re relegated to venting on a blog should tell you all you need to know about Dreamhost.
Andrew S Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 2:38 am
“super-refunder script”

You got to be fucking kidding. Pull your head out of your asses guys!
Angry Dog Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 2:49 am
Good God.. reading some comments here, it seems some of you idiots LIKE to get fucked up the ass repeatedly. This is like some sort of beaten-wife stockholm syndrome.. unreal.

I’m so fucking gone once this has been cleared up - IF it gets cleared up, which I’m having doubts about.

DH your days are surely numbered as a going concern. The good thing is that it’s employee owned, so Josh is gonna be paying for this one big time. His fellow employees ain’t gonna be too happy with him either, that’s fo’shore. Wave buh-bye.
Refund Received Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 3:27 am
In between all the whining going on here, I think its worth mentioning that I just received a text to say that my refund’s been paid in at 13:00 UTC+2 on a SUNDAY. And I’m on the other side of the Atlantic! (Transaction is effective on the 18th.)

I’m sure those of you still waiting will be sorted out once your banks stop slumbering.

PS: I’m still out of pocket by about $5 because of exchange rate fluctuations, but at least the major problem’s been sorted.
leech Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 6:47 am
What happens with people of countries that dont uses dolar as current currency? We have losed money!!!!
Geoff Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Well… I’m a bit bummed… early in the week I saw a hold go on my CC for 2x my annual fee ($119). Early Saturday morning, that hold turned into a charge. In my experience interfacing to a payment processor (Paymentech), we first requested an authorization for the funds, and then with the auth code we received would eventually finalize the transaction and request a charge. If we didn’t request that the transaction be finalized, the auth would just go stale. So, what happened here? After several emails from support (not mass emails… this was earlier in the week) that I’d get refunded (for what? I wasn’t charged anything at that point), after watching any evidence of the multiple billings removed from my account (I would have prefered seeing them stay there and then see the reversals), I see the auth get turned into a charge early Saturday morning… ummm… wtf?

So… just how much interest does one earn on $9.5m in one’s account for a week or more? About $5000 it looks like… What’s going to happen with *that* money?
marvin the martian Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 8:42 am
@Geoff and @Gerard go on the _don’t get it_ list, due to lack of reading comprehension abilities.

@248 - This martian will gladly kiss your ellipsis.

–sleepy marvin
Geoff Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 9:07 am
@marvin… I’ll be the first to admit it’s possible I missed something… there have only been about 1000 posts about this… personal slams really aren’t necessary.

I’m not even on the refund bandwagon yet because, as of Friday night, I hadn’t even been charged (or did you read my post?) All I asked was how the hold (auth) on my CC got turned into a charge? That doesn’t take 5 days through any payment processor that I’ve ever dealt with. In my experience, the change from auth to charge is a proactive event, not something that just happens on its own.

So, if I missed something, point it out because I’m all for learning new stuff. If I didn’t miss anything, I don’t require a kiss… thanks.
Anon Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 9:10 am
@leech:

Tell them via support ticket about the oversea fee by your credit card and send them a screenshot of your onlinebanking transaction. They refunded me the roughly 5$ I payed, and the refund will work just the same as for dollar people!

@Geoff: pay for stuff like overdraw fees as above. Don’t believe they are making money here. Especially not now that so many people cancel because they think they will find a better place and prefer being lied to.
marvin the martian Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 10:26 am
@Geoff - fair enough. Quoting OtherHost in comment #71 on this post:

“”"
As for the charge being “finalized” - this could simply be a case of the authorization turning into the charge because no refund posted against it. I know when we bill, we don’t have to do a second transaction to make the charge ’stick’ - it just takes 2 business days or so. We batch out each night, and the charges post around 48 hours later, sometimes longer. We don’t transmit anything additional to the bank, and we don’t ‘confirm’ any of the hundreds of weekly transactions we process. No second batch has to run from our billing software to tell the bank “yes, we really meant to charge that guy”. It’s automated. If you run a store or take credit cards online you know what the deal is. You don’t run a second transaction through your cash register or software, it just goes ‘live’ after a certain amount of time if you don’t void it or post a credit immediately afterwards (and even then sometimes it still gets ‘confirmed’ and then credited).
“”"

–marvin
Angry Dog Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Someone is telling lies, and it’s not the banks. The continued silence from DH says it all.
Geoff Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 10:40 am
@marvin - thanks. Where I worked, we took orders, ran the auth first to make sure that we’d be able to secure the funds against the customer’s card, shipped the product, and then finalized the auth… I believe in our case, the two step protocol was required by the FTC… you can’t charge until you ship the product. So we did the two steps. I can see that the process would be different in a case where nothing actually ships, so the auth wouldn’t have to be finalized. I appreciate the edification! Now… to get the money back! lol…

Geoff
Mike Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Hey.. I’m going to enjoy better performance on my servers when some of these whiners leave dreamhost! ;-)
CGHill Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Indeed. I’m expecting a major speed boost.

Oh: charged 1/16, credited 1/18. I guess this makes me one of the fortunate 9/16ths.

Where we batch our CC receipts, the authorization goes through immediately, but the actual charge isn’t official until the close of that day’s batch - around 10:30 pm Pacific. This has one unfortunate side effect: if we send in an unnecessary authorization, we can send a void, but the void doesn’t become official until the close, yadda, yadda, yadda.
niall Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I’m still out $100 dollars on my credit card.

If dreamhost don’t make this go away soon I’ll be reporting it to Visa as a fraudulent transaction.
Angry Dog Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Hey Mike - can’t wait till this happens again and you get taken for thousands and don’t get it back - that should wipe that shit-eating grin off your face you asshole, and that’s exactly what you deserve you self-centered cunt. FUCK YOU ASSHOLE.
Angry Dog Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Niall - go ahead and report it now, others already have, and there are fraud investigations against DH already in progress. Their time to remedy this has been and gone, and they don’t give a shit. made patently clear by this response to another user waiting for their refund:

““Unfortunately our Billing team leader won’t be available until Monday to access our fund processor account and verify the refund (we can’t allow additional people access to that for security reasons, otherwise we would be more than happy to go ahead and verify it from our end for you).””

They’re in a crisis situation and they take a fucking day off? Yeah, like they give a shit. Sounds like another day head start to South America with your money.
So very tired of this Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
We’d all have a lot more confidence that we were just waiting on our banks to make the refund if Josh hadn’t promised that refunds went through . . . and then later posted “oops, a bunch didn’t”.

How do we know things aren’t still screwed up and our refunds aren’t going through? We’ve heard this stuff before (that they’re going through, just waiting on banks, etc).

It’d be nice if customers were emailed data on when refunds went through (from DreamHost side) with transaction details for their account, etc.

I got a non-helpful form letter response when I contacted via support panel and it took 24+ hours and didn’t address my complaint and questions at all.

I’m also rather appalled that the “Billing team leader” has the weekend off given the situation.
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Put in a support request via web panel regarding refund and NSF fees along with snapshot of my bank statement. I just got a generic email that says:

“Your inquiry has been moved to the queue of a specific tech support team member (this is either because they are already familiar with your case or are the best equipped to assist you with this specific issue). They will respond to you as quickly as they can but depending on the complexity of the issue it may take longer than normal for them to get back to you (even in excess of 24 hours in some cases).”

In other words, still no progress.

@Angry dog — my bank said they would turn it over to their fraud division if DH doesn’t either say that it was their mistake and auth. the refund, or say it wasn’t their mistake but doesn’t prove it’s a legitimate claim.

Allowing the bank to work on your behalf does help although the process is slow.

Good luck!
Still Being Charged Again Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I’ve yet to see a dime of the refund they owe me, and billed me, once again, on January 17th, two days after they said it was refunded.

Tuesday morning, my credit card will be handled by fraud investigation mode, if no refund appears (per the CC company).

In the initial email received from them on January 15th, part of it read:

“We’re really really realllly embarassed about this, but you have nothing to worry about. You should get the money back on almost immediately, within a day or two max, and there’s no need to contact your credit card company or bank for the refund.”

Well, I didn’t get the money back, I got charged, again.

And, of course they don’t want you contacting your credit card company or bank, because it just means they are in further trouble than they already are/were (investigations, etc). It makes no sense, that they should hold up refunds, and makes no sense that we should just sit idly by, waiting for them to decide to take care of things. It is my credit card, my money, my account, and nobody else’s to do with as they choose. I’m responsible for myself, not anyone else who has responded in this blog, and certainly not Dreamhost. Dreamhost has been totally irresponsible. I’m the one who holds the credit card.

I have contacted my credit card company, and am glad I did. This isn’t just a matter of being told I’d receive a refund, and being wrongfully charged again, two days later, but also a matter of their charging me when I did not have auto billing/auto pay, as it was disabled. Hmmmm. It is a matter of being responsible and watching out for my credit card.

It is a matter of the fact that they have misused my funds and credit card, without my permission. And, also the fact that it is possible that there could be future identity theft incidences that occur through the unauthrized use of information. Credit card and bank information is out there, on their servers and databases.

For those of you who want to try to intimidate and make fun others who are trying to make certain their bank, credit card, whatever, is handled correctly, I say too bad. It’s not your money, your card, your bank account. The rest of us can just put you on ignore.
Zimmy Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
“It is my credit card, my money, my account, and nobody else’s to do with as they choose.”

GEE, maybe you shouldn’t do some or all of the following:

1) Allow your credit card to be auto-billed
2) Not set a limit to what charge can be put on there in the case you did allow your card to be auto-billed
3) Put your credit card on file to be charged
4) Made that stupid statement I quoted. Plenty of people can do plenty of things to YOUR money, YOUR account, and YOUR credit card. The government can freeze it, the bank actually OWNS your account, and your credit card is just that — motherfuckin CREDIT. This is a pretty big deal, and sure you’re pissed, but save me the hyperbole.
Andrew S Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
“and your credit card is just that — motherfuckin CREDIT.”

In a lot of cases today a credit card isn’t actually credit. Our credit card is linked to our debit account and when we pay for stuff using credit card it is actually our money! Reading through a lot of posts it is apparent that a lot of DH users have the same setup.

Now because this is our own money and the risk that someone could swipe your card and/or numbers we tend to keep only the necessary funds in the account to which we are going to spend. We don’t want out card to be stolen and for some prick to wipe out our own money!

Understand that not everyone is in your same boat. Once you look beyond your own circumstances you might learn something about the rest of the world.

Obviously the smart thing to do is not have things setup to autopay. Direct debit and auto pay credit cards are recipes for fricken disaster! Get organised and know when to pay your bills.
Still Being Charged Again Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Yes, Andrew, quite often our card is linked to a bank or debit account. And, although there is a low balance (intentionally), it is still our money, a liquid asset, not credit, not anybody else’s to do with as they wish.

Gee. Zimmy…

1. my card wans’t on auto-bill/auto pay, that is the entire point, they billed anyway, ignoring the fact I had disabled auto pay/auto bill, quite a long time before this debacle started.

2. There was not a limit set, because my card was not set for auto bill/auto pay, and I was to be contacted by them for any future payments due. I had no payments due until ten months from now. There was no permission given to use my card, but they did anyway, without auto pay/auto bill authorization.
It isn’t credit, it’s cash, a liquid asset, my own money.

“GEE, maybe you shouldn’t do some or all of the following:

1) Allow your credit card to be auto-billed
2) Not set a limit to what charge can be put on there in the case you did allow your card to be auto-billed
3) Put your credit card on file to be charged
4) Made that stupid statement I quoted. Plenty of people can do plenty of things to YOUR money, YOUR account, and YOUR credit card. The government can freeze it, the bank actually OWNS your account, and your credit card is just that — motherfuckin CREDIT. This is a pretty big deal, and sure you’re pissed, but save me the hyperbole.”
Jiminy Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Quit whining. If you can’t get by without $300 for 2 weeks, you’re in a mess anyway.
Angry Dog Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Zimmy fuck off you ignorant asshole. Try looking beyond your own circumstances you self-centered pig. As others mentioned, I too never use credit although I have a card - I always operate on my own accumulated funds, so go fuck yourself, and keep a limited amount available through there.

As with ‘Still Being Charged Again’, I do not have autopay with DH and request that they ask me when I’m getting close to expiry/renewal time, and then it is up to me to log on and pay the amount falling due, so I never authorized this in the first place, so SHUT THE FUCK UP you ignorant shit-head because you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.
Angry Dog Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Jiminy I wanna kick your fucking head in too - I’m a student - just paid thousands for university fees and had some more funds left for books for classes that start this coming week - this is not being in a mess, this is called living on a fucking budget you fucking moron, something you obviously know nothing about probably because your parents pay for everything you spoilt little brat. FUCK OFF. I have to pay for this shit and rent NOW not in two fucking weeks you fuck.
Angry Dog Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Oh and one other thing Jiminy you retarded cunt, there are people who have had near $10,000 taken from their account, so where do you get this $300 bullshit from. Oh yeah - you’re an ignorant self-centered fuckhead, that’s why, and you can’t imagine anything beyond your own pathetic miserable existence. FUCK YOU.
Another one with refund issues Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Thanks Angry Dog! Seriously, I am getting tired of reading the likes of Jiminy downplaying this. The amount that was taken and what I may or may not have is immaterial, its the fact that they have taken something they shouldnt, and some of us have yet to see it returned.

Jiminy, if whatever the amount is no big deal, make arrangements with those of us who have not received a refund and give us the money out of your own pocket. If I ever get the refund I will be sure and pass it along.
Beth R Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I got an email tonight from the overdraft email, stating that they were refunding the overdraft charges to my account, but it may take 5-7 days… they’re also crediting the same amount to my hosting account. In the original email, they also said they’d extend my hosting for whatever amount I was billed. All this is nice, I guess, but it will be next year (and the next) before I see any of that money, because the client whose hosting account this is, pays yearly. And that’s if they continue to have a website, or don’t decide to move to another hosting company.
Who suggested t-shirts? my vote is for Dreamhost to have them made for us, and ship them to us. at least then I can wear it and tell this ‘humorous’ story for anyone who asks.
hopefully the rest of you will be receiving emails soon…
Just saying Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
FYI: A few blogs out there are actually making DH look a bit better by pointing out how some of y’all are more omnipresently whiney and profanity laden than unemployed drunken pirates at closing time.

Hoping the rest of you have good luck at a quick resolution. (And I love the t-shirt idea.)
Corruptor Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Hrm, still no refund, bank sees nothing pending as of Saturday, so I’ll give them until Tuesday and see what ends up getting credited.
Cydney Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
@ Beth R, I got that same email as well after I wrote about asking where My money was for the third time in all this.

and I got a email stating how because the banks are slow, it would take up to 5 days or more to receive my refund, and how the holidays are here to be patient and as far as the overdraft fees they will pay for them, and will put something on my account.. But they also noted to say they wanted me to Fax in my bank statement, to show that I didnt get a refund even though its posted on the invoice page, this was of course after I stated that I do not receive paper statements i do My banking online.

Like someone else said, I doubt that DH will ever refund the money back as they promised, and after seeing people getting the same emails as me almost word for word, Ill be contacting my bank and visa with a copy of the DH invoice page showing I received a refund that was never posted.

Its funny how so many are making light of this, because they havent experienced whats going on or got their money back, saying people are whining. - If they knew first hand what was going on they would feel the same way the rest do that didnt get their property back.

it took DH ONE DAY to take all this money from people that trusted they were dealing with honest business people.. but its taking them almost a WEEK to honor the promises, which Im now doubting will happen.

and for those that are jumping for joy with out fast your sites will load after all this is done, enjoy it while you can because when the rest leave that got burned that only leaves you rude, self centered, people left to rip off. - Then you’ll understand how we all feel right now.
Just saying Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Cydney: Would they take a ctrl+alt+prt-screen screen shot of your on-line statement in-lieu of a paper one?

Best of luck that it is alright on Tuesday when the banks and credit-unions are back open. (I know my credit unions on-line statements don’t usually update with things like this outside of business hours.)
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Just got this email from DH in response to my 3rd email to them on my “refund”.

“I’m sorry for the problems this has caused you. For some reason, your screenshot didn’t make it through our support system. Can you please upload that image somewhere (you can password protect it from the htaccess section of the panel) and send us a URL to it? I checked your account and don’t see any additional charges to your card. Here are all of the charges and refunds we have listed for your card:

As you can see, the refund was processed the same day with no additional charges on the 17th. Are you sure that the charge just wasn’t being held by your financial institution until the 17th and listed as a duplicate? If you can forward us that screenshot again, we’ll be happy to assist you
with this until we’re able to resolve it.

Thanks!

Dan”

I did send a url for them to see the screenshot. Beats me why they couldn’t see it before. I did also tell them that my bank said if this isn’t resolved Tuesday, it’s being turned over to their fraud division for investigation. No point in mincing words. I mean business. I fully intend to see this through.

I wonder if their response was just another one of their canned responses they have been sending people. I have been checking my bank, and there’s no refund in sight.
umtn Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 2:40 am
Oh and the people who use check cards like credit cards for reoccurring debts is very dangerous…

Check cards are not credit cards and should not be used like a “credit card”
spam banned rides again Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 5:47 am
Gee DH good thing you deleted all of my posts because the NEW pissed people are MUCH more reasonable…

Keep up the good fight.

(PS I finally got my refund. Would have said so days ago but you seem to have filtered me out quite aggressively this time)
Alan Olsen Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 5:48 am
Please check my refund. It still is not showing up and I have called the bank. The charge was for 1419.00 and still has not been refunded. I think you had better look again.

By the way how do you plan on addressing the overdrafts.

And I am certainly not convinced that you have solved anything.

Please for the last time make this inquiry and ghet things back in place.

This is beyond stupid…
just saying Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 5:54 am
Alan: It looks like neither this blog’s comments nor the status pages’s comments are official ways to contact dreamhost about anything (at least according to the top of the status page)… and you’d have to use the control panel support or the fax number.

Best of luck.
ditto Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 7:02 am
“spam banned rides again”: please just go away!
Alex Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 7:39 am
If it’s billing that causes all the problems…. why not get rid of that altogether? I’ll take free hosting!
Jesse Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 8:52 am
just out of curiosity…

for those with wells-fargo, did they try to suggestively sell overdraft protection to you when you called them?

i asked the guy if theres anything that i can sign up that will help me immediately, he said no. so i said no because i am responsible enough to not overdraft… i got him to laugh from it…
Justin Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 9:29 am
Where is my f—ing money? Where is my f—ing money? Where the f— is it?

It’s great that you feel you can blame my credit card handler and just wash your hands of this cock-up, but in reality, these refunds have STILL not gone through and you are STILL responsible.

To those people who just LOOOOVE Dreamhost because they have cheap service and ‘down to earth’ support: cheap hosts are a dime-a-dozen, there are many other services out there who will provide spotty service and snotty support, and odds are, they WON’T accidentally double bill you for an entire year.
Sean Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 9:48 am
MW finally got his refund. Thank the gods.

It looks as if it is a slow trickle process in getting the refunds out.
Another one with refund issues Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 9:53 am
Re: Justin

Try triple bill.
Another one with refund issues Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am
and still waiting on refund.
sfam Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 9:59 am
This is all well and good and all, but my website MySQL server has been offline all morning - which means my website has been offline all morning - and NOBODY is responding to my trouble tickets. Is Dreamhost planning to have anyone respond to outages in service today, or should I just assume you’re planning on leaving my website offline all week?
Jay Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 10:59 am
same here. my charges were “pending” with my bank for days, and they actually went through! still no refund…
webgirl Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 11:30 am
Josh, you f*d up, but you & DH handled it well. We all make mistakes from time to time. Thank you for being so up-front and honest about this.
Mark Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 11:38 am
It’s interesting that those of us still waiting to see any trace of a refund are the ones that got charged the most… just sayin’.
Yvo van Doorn Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I hope that people have at least learned the lesson to not use their DEBIT card for any on going electronic purchases.

It is surprisingly scary how many people here used the card that directly ties into their checking account for any payment. You do realize that you have far less protection when you use a DEBIT card versus a CREDIT card.

I’m not trying to take away blame from Dreamhost (but its cool they are so up front about this whole ordeal) but you could’ve saved yourself a lot of hassle had you protected your own financial assets in the first place. If it isn’t DH accidentally overcharging it could be some other place. Using a debit card online is just plain not smart.

This is a great website to start:
http://www.pirg.org/consumer/banks/debit/fact.htm
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/atmcard.shtm
Beth R Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 1:24 pm
@Cydney, I did a screenshot of my online banking statement and uploaded it on a separate site, and sent a link to that image to them; I think I had seen in my email that they couldn’t view anything attached to support emails.
According to my DH statements the refund was sent out the same day as the billing; I’m calling my bank tomorrow and if they don’t see anything, I’m going to ask them to investigate.
I’m also going to be ready to move the website if need be, to another host- I hate to do that, because it will mean a few days downtime for them, but I can’t afford to wait another two weeks to overdrawn $200.
@ those who keep saying not to have your card set to autopay, I see there are some whose cards who were billed, even though they had autopay turned off.
Martin Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 2:17 pm
My refund still hasn’t gone through, my bank says it’s not pending and the initial transaction from Dreamhsot was just CONFIRMED this morning. Not happy.
Dylan Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Add me to the list of people with a confirmed original charge, no refund, and a request for overdraft fee reiumbursement that’s lingering in limbo with no response. Actually, make that a second request. The first time I sent the request, I got a form letter back, asking me to provide the information I’d just provided, and linking me back to the blog post offering overdraft reimbursement (a post which I mentioned in my original e-mail)!

I’m hoping that things get cleared up tomorrow, as my bank is closed for MLK day, I think. It’s now been a week, and nothing has been fixed. not the original charge, not the overdrafts.

I was giving you guys the benefit of the doubt when this situation began, but my patience is slowly wearing thin as you struggle to correct it.
Mike Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Angry Dog, I hope you still have a few dollars left in your budget to buy a vocabulary book. I understand the troubles this caused you, but good grief, you’re so mad you can’t even come up with anything beyond the 7th grade locker room vocabulary. I really hope your bank shows the refund soon, so you can calm down. All the more reason for an anger-prone person like you to look into using a credit card for this type of stuff. It’ll save you the rise in blood pressure.

BTW… I think that banks are allowed two business days to honor EFTs. Maybe your bank says they don’t have the money, but they are really hiding it from you for those two business days. I’m just saying that because my refund cleared my AMEX already. But I guess it is quite possible that Dreamhost still hasn’t gotten it all straight yet.
Don Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 4:06 pm
The supposedly ‘fixed’ update still hasn’t made any difference at my bank. Please do NOT post more claims about the situation being fixed until it actually is.
Martin Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Hey DH, since you’re no longer replying to my e-mails, why was my charge CONFIRMED a full week after the incident. A CONFIRMED charge this late in the game moves the problem away from being a simple mistake into theft. You have had a full week to cancel the charge and either through malice or negligence you have failed to cancel the charge. On top of that my bank is not showing a pending refund. What’s up?
Mrs. Micah Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 9:34 pm
You people do realize that banks are slow as…well I hardly know what’s slower. If I want to transfer money from one bank account to another (at a different bank) they tell me that it could take up to 10 business days.

And charges post automatically, once DH billed there was no stopping that cycle…it’s not like they said “Ok, now post it.”

PayPal has some nice 1-time use credit card numbers available for places where you don’t trust the site or just don’t want to be charged a second time.
Dingelye Junior Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:52 am
Still waiting for refund
Brian Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:59 am
Also glad for the information, but have not yet seen a refund to my account. I think sending out e-mails to those affected and not just making blog posts (which I only started thinking to check) would be a better solution as no one should have to read through 300+ comments of “love you!”, “hate this!”, “not yet!” or “me too!” to see which group they’re in.

You guys do great work, but this was not the best time for this to happen, so I’m hoping that reversal comes through soon, as well as an actual response to the e-mails I’ve sent in.
Bramz Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:35 am
Thanks DreamHost!

I’ve actually made a profit out of this, thanks to the declining US dollar. A whopping 0.66 EUR or 0.96 USD!

Of course, I do regret all these who got into financial problems because of this huge mishap, and I hope you all get fully compensated beyond the actual refund. At least, you have to appreciate their open and honest way of dealing with it, instead of trying to cover it it up. OK, the first blog post was very unfortunate, but I’m sure you will be able to laugh over it, once it all has cooled down.
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:36 am
Well, its’ Tuesday. No refund. I’ve sent yet another post on the web panel hoping for a response. I feel like someone who’s been stood up on a date. Not a good feeling. My bank says to check tomorrow.
Zaq Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:59 am
What a fucking disaster. Once my current cycle is up, I am taking my business elsewhere. Between this and dreamhost’s history of unreliability, they’ve left me no choice.
Anger Rising Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:09 am
It is Tuesday now.

I checked with my bank for the seventh time. No refund nor any record of a refund.

I have two emails into Support with no response.

I feel stupid now for believing them last week when they finally responded to my original complaint. Nothing has been fixed and no one in email has admitted that the extra delay was caused by another DreamHost error (the 3/16 problem.)

Dishonest, unprofessional, and ridiculous. I want my freaking $400 back.
Joshua Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:26 am
Still no refund here either. I’m using M&T Bank and I called them this morning. Same thing as what others are saying. No pending refund in site. I got hit with a $240 charge (not as bad as alot of others), but still kinds of sucks. It didnt put me in the negative or cause any over draft fee’s, but I could of used the money for much better things than to have it all go towards hosting.

Hopefully DH gets things fixed soon and everyone gets their refund by either end of business today or tomorrow. Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever visited the DH offices? Maybe if there was someone local to them, they could make a visit and talk with employees there in real time to see whats going on with everything. =)
losing patience Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:39 am
I think we all deserve balloons, flowers and teddybears

http://www.upstartblogger.com/i-leave-dreamhost-dreamhost-leaves-me-almost-speechless
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:08 am
@losing -

I said that on the first blog or status post. I forget which.

:-)
MW is a dirty spammer Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:09 am
Oh yeah and even though I’ve received my refund, I haven’t gotten a single reply from Dreamhost to my 3 emails about the billing error. Do they just figure that once the money’s back, no contact is in order?

They’re really winning people over, here.
Justin Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:15 am
Concerned bystanders: please stop telling us that we should have used our credit cards instead of debit cards for this transaction. Debit cards have fraud protection too; I received a phone call last week about this charge from the fraud protection hotline provided by Mastercard (the debit card provider), and me being the good-natured person that I am, I figured that this billing screw up could be resolved without leveling fraud accusations against DH. Well, I guess that was my mistake, because apparently it takes much, much longer to void a transaction than it does to send it through in the first place.

The icing on the cake is that DH has the gall to charge me for this months service, even though the original mistake has yet to be fixed.
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:17 am
I could send a “friend” of a “friend” to pay them a little “visit” . . .

Seriously, tho, if someone does live in the LA area, they could help us all out by paying them a visit. However, DH offices are probably closed for that very reason. I’m sure there are people in the area that have already tried. If they don’t respond to the web panel postings or this blog, what would make us think they would actually speak to anyone face to face.
professional weirdo Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:41 am
Sorry, no one is in the office, everyone went to Aspen/Snowmass for winter X-games and Aspen Gay Ski Week…
Mark Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:02 am
I think they are about 35 miles or so outside of LA, which - if you know LA traffic - would take about 3 hours to drive round trip. No way.
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:07 am
@mark
I don’t blame you. LA traffic alone is enough to put anyone in a bad mood. Why waste the gas and time anyway.

I was wondering how many are actually still waiting for refunds. Are the people blogging a percentage overall or are we the only ones?
Jason Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:57 am
This reminds me of the mailing problem you folks had a while back. The same ‘unique message id’ problem that you fixed by piping in /dev/urand data.

Gotta love testing and production…
Benjamin Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 am
Oh for Pete’s sake people.

Guess what, I bought a pizza on my credit card. I got double billed. Called the credit card company as soon as I saw it. They’ll refund me, no problem.

But it will take from 2 days to a MONTH to do the refund.

These things take TIME. Stop your frigging whining.

Yes, yes, I know, I could just stay away from here and not read your whining little self pitying posts, but seriously, it’s like a car wreck… just can’t stop watching. Like a car wreck, but much funnier.

Welcome to the real world.

DreamHost, you’re the best I’ve dealt with in the past 11 years. Keep it up!
Raf Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:00 am
This is really frustrating me. I still have not gotten my refund and since i had it on my debit card it is hitting me a bit harder then normal. They need to make an effort to contact us directly. No more of this canned email garbage.
miss peas Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:12 am
yeah hi, still here, still waiting. beyond pissed.
Martin Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 am
Got my refund today! Finally!
Anaguma Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:36 am
Still no refund for me. Still no response at all from repeated emails and web panel posts.
Jesse Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 am
It is tuesday afternoon, still do not have a refund…
Another one with refund issues Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 am
After not hearing from DH since last week, I have turned this over to my bank. Its theirs now, I should have done this from the start, I would have had the charges reversed by now and DH would be dealing with the bank.
Still Being Charged Again Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 am
I’m still waiting for a refund…it has not gone through as of noon, today, when I personally appeared at the bank to ask the disposition and status. When I saw the results, I expedited a fraud dispute, because no refund initiation could be seen by the company. Today is the 22nd. It’s been a week, and nothing. That’s long enough for me.

I have left, and I moved my domains to another registrar a few days back, and moved my websites to another host at the same time. I can’t take the chance that they will rectify things, and I can’t take the chance that it won’t happen again.
Jon Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I just wanted to inform everyone, that a few users calling us whiners and criticizing customers are actually DreamHost employees. I have also seen several employee posts stating that they have received a refund and are happy with the level of service. This is utter crap created by DH to make the situation look better. Please call your bank and report all charges as fraudulent so they can’t make the same mistake.
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:23 pm
@jon
That only makes me madder! When I see people making fun of those of us that are overdrawn, I get even angrier at DH. I am a new customer - only since sept. I’m glad I don’t have alot invested with DH. If their employees are doing this, it is backfiring! This company has only proven to be unprofessional and unethical. I certainly hope the Attorney General of California looks into this.
No more mister nice guy Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Just filed a complaint with the FTC.
Bramz Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:44 pm
@jon
… and you can tell this because of …?
Molly Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I did receive a reply to my refund inquiry on Sat. Was told it was processed. Guess what, no refund today.

GRRRR.
Roy Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I called my bank (BofA) today to confirm the credit. Customer service was unable to see it, but claims were able to see that it had been posted to Visa’s network on the 18th, but with the long weekend, said I should give it another day or two.
hogarth Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:30 pm
My account is now square with Dreamhost, but it happened like this. First my credit card showed a credit (surplus) of over $400 from DH, and then, a day later, the account was debited the same amount. In other words, first they paid me, then they charged me.

Weird.
Deamos Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:21 pm
I’m still out almost $600.

My bank shows the charge as pending so maybe some day I’ll get that money back.

My last e-mail went unanswered as to the status of my refund that supposedly happened a week ago.

I would really like that money bank. Not my rent money or anything of that sort, but I just want my damned money back. Its MINE.

Billed for almost 28 months of service, unreal.
rlparker Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:15 pm
@jon - “I just wanted to inform everyone, that a few users calling us whiners and criticizing customers are actually DreamHost employees. I have also seen several employee posts stating that they have received a refund and are happy with the level of service.”

I just wanted to inform everyone that “Jon” is clueless. Go ahead, Jon, and “inform everyone” which posters here are DreamHost employees, and how you determined this to be true.

What’s that you say? You can’t do that? I see.
marvin the martian Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Wait… everyone else agreeing with me works for Dremahost? Why can’t I get in on that fun? Maybe it’s because I’m an illegal alien.

*groan*

–punning marvin

Today’s serious advice: ACH or EFT or any other sort of 3-letter bank-involving transfers take ages. And for some reason unknown to me, non-business days don’t count. If DH initiated a refund to their payment processor middle of last week, I’d give the payment processor a couple of days and a bank a couple of days. That takes me to the end of this week. Just guessing.
jonathan little Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Still not refunded and I have overdraft fees because of this I have sent you countless emails this is not funny. You need to do something about this ASAP.
hil-arious Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:02 pm
can’t help but laugh at the comments.
nope, not a DH employee. Never got charged, I send in my payment every month.
for those declaring fraud, won’t you look stupid when they investigate and discover that the refunds are being held up by your bank.
LOL
Nate Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I don’t doubt that some are dreamhost employees or friends. Lots of companies do that sort of thing.
Corruptor Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Sorry guys, I gave you a chance to fix this, and all I got were form letters and dead air. I still dont have my refund, so, I’m going to have to have my bank treat this as a fraudulent charge since they have no record of any kind of pending refund.
Chell Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I can’t imagine the stress, time drain or hardships some DreamHost customers are apparently going through. How awful that their own money wasn’t left alone in the first place, and that it’s still not available! But I really think the financial institutions (banks, credit cards) are dragging this out much longer than it should have been. After DreamHost issued refunds, it became up to the financial institutions to process the credits for their customers.
not an employee Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:42 pm
I am not an employee nor do I know one person who works at Dreamhost. (I have made some money off of Dreamhost referrals, however.) I am very supportive of Dreamhost in regards to this mess, and if you want to read why, you can click on my website link.
dan Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I got charged on the 17th, sent a “WTF, DH?” message that same day. The response I got back was along the lines of someone pissing on my leg and trying to tell me it was raining, “No, you’re incorrect — the charge hit your account on the 15th and sure clear up Real Soon Now, kthxbai!”

Well, DH, my bank said you were full of it. You ran that fresh charge on the 17th, NOT the 15th, refused to acknowledge your mistake and — since the charge cleared today — lied to me about the refund.

I don’t care if, when or how you get this sorted on your end. I’ve already initiated an ACH dispute with my bank and have my money back. Whatever you do now is between you and the bank.

Thanks for nothing, jerks.
Corruptor Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:30 am
Figures, I send my strongly worded email to DH and my refund posts shortly after I hit send. :)
Philip Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:00 am
@MW Spammer-
Just checking in to see if you ever received your refund! Glad that you have finally! :-)
I had a little amusement reading a blog post elsewhere about this in conjunction with the LunarPage slam on DH. It was mentioned that while LP had been banning and censoring all over the place, DH had taken all the flak full on without any censoring “with the exception of someone who had camped out on their virtual doorstep” (paraphrase). Made me chuckle. But honestly, I felt bad that it was so frustrating and inconvenient (light word) for you so I’m glad you’ve been reimbursed!

Cheers
Philip
Beyond Pissed Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:34 am
Refund hit today and am on the phone with bank to reverse NSF fees. This is a lesson learned. I will be shopping for a new host. I have 9 months left on this one. If things continue to happen then it’s adios. I hope everyone receives their refunds today as well.
Still Being Charged Again Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:22 am
@Chell: Yes, money wasn’t left alone to begin with. The initial email from DH stated that they tried to charge my account three times, but couldn’t. They couldn’t because I had auto-pay/bill turned off and disabled. Then within minutes, they did manage to break through the disabled and turned off auto-bill/pay and charge me.
Brian Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:40 am
Thanks, got my refund today.
Relieved Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:09 am
FINALLY! Money is in the bank! Now it’s time to go talk to a new hosting company that has a phone number for customer service (since in dire times emails seem not to warrant response). It’s like the end of a high school relationship, you look back on all the fun you had and smile, but in the end you realize she is a immature crazy bitch. No dreamhost, I will not go to prom with you!
just saying Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:42 am
“Now it’s time to go talk to a new hosting company that has a phone number for customer service (since in dire times emails seem not to warrant response).”

I’m wondering how many people would be commenting here about how awful DH’s customer service was when they got put on hold for hours after an event like this.

No small to medium size company is set up for thousands of calls to an actual person over a short period of time. They would do exactly what power companies do during outages - they would check your account and say something like “We are already aware of a billing error on your account. We are dealing with the error at this time. If you are calling about another issue, please identify it from the following menu…”.

And, even if they did do the phone thing, why would they have any more time to give you satisfaction than they do when checking the control-panel-support-requests where they don’t have to retype your information? (I’ve gone through plenty of places by phone where they don’t follow through with what they tell you — the control panel way you at least have everything in writing).
Still Being Charged Again Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:53 am
The refund did come through. I am now completely washed of DH.

My account is completely closed, and my domains were moved to a new registrar four days ago, along with a new host.
Jimter Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:23 am
I am now able to buy Anusol now I have a refund. Hooray!
Dee Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Just wanted to say that I got my refund and I am very happy about it. Whee! Please don’t put me through this again. Thanks!
Chunky Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Just sent them a msg. From what I gathered from my online statements… it looks like DH credited back my account on the 17th (~$400), however, I’m now showing as of last night a charge to my card in the exact same amount as what was credited back to me less than a week ago. Did they accidentalyl re-charge me?!?!

I feel bad for the others that got hit really hard by this! I mean I’m hurting as well, but not as bad as some of the others out there! Anybody got $20 I can borrow?
Beth R Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:21 pm
After checking with my bank yesterday and no refunds in sight, I sent another support request to DH stating that if money wasn’t returned today, I’d have to start charge-back proceedings- lo and behold! this morning all money was returned to account- not pending, as I would have expected, but right back in my account. I think it’s odd that the refund for the hosting was dated 1/15 and the refund for the overcharges were dated 1/20 but they both appeared today.
hopefully everyone else’s will get straightened soon.
Ralph Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Hey mister can I have my ball back?
Adam Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Funny how the bitching level has gone from ‘ridiculous’ to (well…) ‘ridiculously low’ ….

:)

Chargebacks take time, welcome to the real world. A long weekend could only have excasebated issues and further clogged the networks.

I’m sticking with DH, honesty like theirs is all-too-rare these days.

Regards,
Adam
Ralph Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
“Funny how the bitching level has gone from ridiculous to ridiculously low”

There’s only so long that one can yell at a brick wall before realizing the futility of it.
GREG KING Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Hi,

My account shows I have been refunded, however, I never recieved ANY refund.

DH charged me 239.40 on the 15th, there is no REFUND pending, and no refund has ever been made according to Bank of America.

I have been in similar situations before, and all refunds have been held in pending status when a refund was indeed sent. It may have taken a couple of days to “clear” but the refund was still visible.

I’ve been rather silent on this issue as I know mistakes are bound to happen (being in the IT industry myself), however, it is now January 23rd and I was overcharged 8 days ago. This is becoming ridiculous.

I do not need to waste my time regarding this issue, I just want my money back ASAP. Plain and simple.
Anand Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Josh

I was quite ok with this episode hoping that the extra $190.80 I paid through paypal would be refunded correctly. [Yes, I am such an idiot. I knew that I had paid for the site until Aug this year, but I panicked when the email talked about suspending my account]

I contacted your support and they said since they have no record of the paypal transaction in my account, I should talk to paypal and get it cancelled there. I raised a dispute with paypal and they say that they tried to reach dreamhost and you have not responded.

NOT COOL. Not only do you have my money now you are jerking me around for a refund. Totally not cool at all. Either refund my money back or talk to paypal and make sure they refund it to me. I am really pissed with this thing.

anand
Matt Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 6:13 am
My money was refunded yesterday morning. No pending charge showed up in the days beforehand, it just appeared. So stay hopeful if you haven’t received it yet.

I wish we’d get an update on the overdraft fees, since that’s the next big issue and it doesn’t look like anyone’s gotten them yet.
brasscrest Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Those who are mentioning that the refund never showed as “pending” - this is probably because of your bank’s processing rules, not anything that DH has control over. I received my refund on Tuesday.

Many banking systems will not show a deposit as a pending transaction, and a refund is a deposit. For example, I know that the direct deposit for my biweekly salary is transmitted to the bank every other Wednesday, but it never shows as pending, just as a deposit which I can’t see (and my local branch can’t see either) until Friday. The refund from DH was handled exactly the same way.
Sam Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Hi,

I see that some of you still are blowing sunshine up our asses and kissing Josh’s. Kriss, you are a tru moron to make certain comments as you have but I am guessing you are that troll in the office who kisses ass to make friends. Seriously sad.

I have yet to see a refund. My friend Sylvia got charged and hasn’t seen hers yet either.

I am assuming that if you didnt see the blog as my friend or complain, you got nada done?

What is the story on those that didnt know about this until just now? Were those people just “taken”?

I recommended you to friends I design for and they are starting to call me pissed off about these charges. I said that DH was handling it but to contact them anyway.

Seems you guys are still behind the eightball or just doing to much of it.

Sorry to sound pissed but I thought waiting it out would be beneficial until I went back to my bank and they said they have received no such contact from DH on the matter and I had to get my money back from them.

Nice. We are done with this company. And Kriss, you can bend over like the rest of the lackey’s and say “Thank you sir, may I have another.”

Thanks.
We want our money.
ed Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 7:03 am
well, at least this didn’t happen….

Internet Provider Mistakenly Deletes 14,000 E-Mail Accounts

http://www.nbc5i.com/technology/15115969/detail.html?dl=mainclick
marvin the martian Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 7:58 am
@Sam, do you work for LunarPages? We know you do!

–conspiracy marvin
Father Luke Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 8:24 am
So glad I’m not a dreamhost.com customer.

Bwahahahaha !

Idiots.

- -
Okay,
Father Luke
Sam Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 9:36 am
@marvin

Nope.

But I am so mad I am going to BLOW UP THE EARTH with my X-1 modulator.

:)
Current (staying) Customer Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 9:49 am
I completely understand the hardship that this has caused for people who live close to the financial edge. That impact should never be denigrated.

Each of us will judge the impact on our lives and act accordingly. If you feel defrauded, go get a lawyer. If you want to designate the charges as fraudulent at the bank, do so. If you feel like leaving Dreamhost as a customer, cancel your account.

I guess I wonder why adults would need to spew such venom on a blog like this. The relationship between Dreamhost and any given customer is a business relationship. We didn’t marry the company only to have it cheat on us.

Take the action that you feel is necessary and get on with your life. There are risks in any business relationship. There is the risk that the company will screw up your billing. There is the risk that the customer will not pay their bill.

I have never seen a place for personal attacks and crude behavior in a business relationship. I mean, this isn’t politics! :-)

In terms of the light-hearted nature of the initial post, I think we all know the nature of our hosting company. Anyone who expected a more “normal” response to the issue should have bolted after reading their first company newsletter.

I host here because I like these guys. They screwed the pooch and detailed it to us on-line. It looks like they have been working to get this resolved as quickly as they can despite the vagaries related to the our byzantine banking and electronic transfer infrastructure.

So, to sum up. Take a breath, do what you need to do, and try to keep it professional.

There! …have at me!
Jonathan Little Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Any word on when the will pay back all the charges we have all recieved from the bank? The money they took out for hosting is a drop in the bucket to what the bank has done to my bank account after it went negative from this mischarge. Gotta love overdraft charges and more charges because you are still negative and so on.
Dylan Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
OK, the refund went through. Now I’m still waiting to hear any response to my second request for the overdraft reimbursement that wa offered last week. i’ve heard nothing from anyone, automated response or personal, since Friday. I’d at least like an acknowledgement that my second request from 6 days ago was received.
Robert Goddard Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
My refund still hasn’t gone through. I’m seeking legal help. This should never happen.
me Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Sam - are you referring to this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_the_Martian

That’d be: Uranium PU-36 explosive space modulator. X-1 modulator sounds like an X-10 module, which is scary if they make one that can blow up the Earth.
freeideas Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I love dreamhost.
David Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Still have not gotten my money back guys, but thanks for pretending it is all fixed now. Billing customers over $9 million bucks is not too funny, I don’t expect any jokes in your next newsletter about this.
carlivar Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
No refund here yet either, but support tells me to spend MY time contacting my credit card company first, so I’ve dutifully done that.

I was too lazy to switch providers after the power and networking debacles, but now that you’ve hit me in my wallet I think I will be searching for another provider between my crazy-busy job and raising my 5-month old son. Thanks Dreamhost for making my life even more complicated!
Mark Hammermeister Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Okay, it’s Jan. 25 and I still haven’t received my refund either. I, like everyone else who has been put through this, have been pretty patient. I’ve sent a couple of e-mails, but otherwise I’ve silently waited this out. Can someone please let me know where my money is at?
carlivar Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 10:10 am
I owe DH an apology in my case. Due to a coincidence in timing, my actual 2-year billing cycle kicked in at the same time as the billing errors. So my charge was legit.
Jonathan Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 10:13 am
1/18 $78
1/22 $195 for contiually being negative
1/23 $195 again
1/24 $117 look some more for some charge i have no idea

Have fun paying all this off Dreamhost. Sometimes I wish I was a corporate lawyer making tons of money so I wouldn’t have even noticed this charge. Then I remember being an artist and living check to check is so much more fun. Thanks for putting me in the biggest hole with the bank ever and also thank you ever so much for never responding to emails other than the automated your email has been recieved in 24 hours well its been a week and still no email. I’m only an artist but I think a week is few more hours than 24
COPC Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 11:05 am
I finally got my refund through the bank!
Daniel Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Support reject my complaint, so I put it in here:

1. On Jan 15 Dreamhost tried to take from my card $238,80. But because my card have some protection, the payment was automatically rejected.

2. On Jan 16 Dreamhost sent me an mail explaining the BIG mistake (more than $9.000.000 billed to customers by mistake).

3. On Jan 18 I received a new mail saying my account has $238.80 due and if by 2008-02-18 I do not pay the $238.80, my account will be automatically suspended…

4. I replied asking about this debt, and the billing people replied: “We refunded you $238.80 on accident so that’s why you have that charge. Unfortunately we can’t make that payment for you so you will need to repay back $238.80 as it shouldn’t have been refunded.”

5. Obviously, I replied (on Jan 19) and I said I can’t see the money in my card, so “I will NOT pay it until I have the money in my pocket”.

6. Dreamhost (Mike P.) replied “No problem with that. There is 60 days grace period to pay this”

7. Today (Jan 25) I found Dreamhost charged me again with $238.80. Someone from the company went into my account, taked my credit card information (even with the automatic rebill switched OFF) and made the payment.

And now, my complaints:

- To have a bug in the billing system is bad luck or maybe wrong company procedures. But to make a payment in the name of other people, with the credit card information your company have in your servers, and without the owner permission, IS ILLEGAL.

- Because the Euro-US dollar daily rates, the $238.80 your company returned to me on Jan 18 changed to be 161,42 EUR. But the payment you made yesterday (Jan 24) illegally on my card changed to be 163,84 EUR. So I lose money: 2,42 EUR (about $3.55 today). I lose money BECAUSE OF YOUR MISTAKES. FUNNY!!!!

I want an specific and detailed explanation of WHY SOMEONE CHARGED ME YESTERDAY. That’s illegal (almost in Spain), and I can sue your company because of it.

And I will do it, if Dallas Kashuba or Josh Jones in person and with detail don’t explain me the reasons of this mistake after mistake after mistake.
Robert Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Whew! Glad that is over with. On the other hand I was forced to have my credit card number changed due to a separate incident that occurred the day after I received my refund. Apparently someone hit my card up for $110.89 that I never authorized. I will have to deal with the credit card company but I know what the company name is so I also emailed them in an effort to find out who used my card number. I’ve also placed an auto-pay daily limit for my account. Now I can’t be charged more than $30 on any given day at a time. My bank doesn’t actually have any such limit but it is a good safety net now should this happen again. Hopefully we never actually have to go there.
shifuimam Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
@jonathan:

wouldn’t it occur to you after the initial $75 charge to OMG PUT MONEY IN YOUR CHECKING ACCOUNT SO YOU AREN’T OVERDRAWN?

Or are you so unbelievably broke that you don’t have $100 to your name at any given time? If that’s the case, perhaps you should find some source of employment that allows you to afford your web hosting…like working at Starbucks or something.
jonathan little Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
@shifuimam

Well The overdraft fees came from stuff that was already in place and I am a budgeting nut. So, what happened is everything would have been fine if dreamhost hadn’t taken out the $119. When they took the charge our the $104 in bank account went overdrawn and the bank charged me $78 this then sent me into a big negative balance and since certain items like a $5 BK purchase was still pending when it ticked over I got billed for each item an overdraft fee. So Five items were put through which then caused an $195 overdraft fee. So on and so on. Well whatever but yeah not my fault all of these fees came on my account.
Jasmin Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
WHY ISN’T ANYONE FROM SUPPORT RESPONDING TO MY E-MAILS??????
Dave Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
@ shifuimam : who the fuck do you think you are? Jonathan, like many people, clearly does not have huge wads of cash, and as hard as it may be for you to understand in your little world, some people work for love of their craft, despite the monetary awards being minimal. Many people like Jonathan are in a situation where having $100 in the bank is about all they have much of the time (for example university students). Millions of people live on a shoestring budget who don’t have parents to bail them out like you probably do. When unforeseen things like this happen, it really hurts, particularly when banks then start charging $30 for bouncing $5 purchases. For you to start blaming them for an error DH made, and belittling them with condescending comments about working in Starbucks for not having as much money you have, is nothing less than disgusting. Count yourself lucky you are not in a similar situation, you spoiled brat.
3stripe Says:
January 29th, 2008 at 6:10 am
So you fucked up the billing and then fucked up the refunds of the billing. Oh deary me.
Feeling the pain Says:
January 29th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Ok, let’s recap…..

2+ weeks
Still no response from DH
A whole bunch of overdraft charges that they said they would reimburse, but haven’t
Ongoing requests for more information
No response from any human beings

One interesting tidbit…I was talking to my Bank’s support department and they knew of DH right away…said there had been many problems with them. But hey, erroneously billing your customers millions of dollars gets you noticed.
Minh Says:
January 30th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Hi,

I am from Australia and my credit charge issuer charge me conversion fees from USD to AUD for every transaction, so even though dreamhost refund the same amount in USD to my account, I’ve lost AUD 15.08 due to two transactions, will dreamhost compensate me in this case?

Regards,
Minh Hoang
Adam Says:
January 31st, 2008 at 2:34 pm
@Min Hoang

Yes. And quite frankly if you’ve got this far and shown up on the corporate blog site for Dreamhost i’m assuming you’ve made *some* effort to read the posts before you asked this question.

Or the e-mails that have been sent out.

Or the comments….

Obviously not….
*sigh*

Adam (who is also from Australia)
Minh Says:
January 31st, 2008 at 5:19 pm
@Adam

Sorry but I do have a job to do and can’t afford to spend trillions of hours like you to go thru every single posts and comments on here. And I believe I am a customer of Dreamhost so I have the right to ask for help when needed especially in this case. It’s called “Customer services”. I wasn’t complaining or anything, just seeking for quick help.

And thanks for your great helpful post.

Minh (Who is from Australia and not an @rse)
Michael Says:
January 31st, 2008 at 8:54 pm
I’d happily forgive and forget all if Dreamhost would just send me the keychain I sent off for at the end of October. If Brett decided to keep the 82 cents postage from my SASE, at least he could’ve said “Thanks for the stamps!”
Sam Says:
February 1st, 2008 at 11:54 am
I sent Justin a support ticket that showed an attachment with the overdraft fees incurred on the 15th of Jan.

He passed me off to Brian who asked to see the attachment with my account number this time. I sent it.

I attached this in good faith along with the DH EMAIL that was sent to me the day this all happened stating that they attempted to collect on my account but got a bank error code (insufficient funds).

They are obvoiulsy giving me the runaround. To make things worse, my client I referred to DH was charged and never got a refund yet either.

Seems that they intend to keep what they can out of this “billing error”.

These guys are first class morons.
Andrew Kemp Says:
February 5th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I wish my account got,
“About 3/16th of our customers: weren’t billed BUT WERE refunded. (of course, nobody wrote in about it!)”
I would love that.
;)
Meredith Says:
February 5th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
I’m sure if I had incurred overdraft fees I would have been really annoyed, but as it was, I barely noticed. Yeah, you billed me. Yeah, you refunded me. I didn’t blink an eye. I still love ya.
Barn Says:
February 5th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
I’m just happy this whole thing wasn’t the result of a horrible rent in the fabric of time — a rift, as it were, in the space time continuum.

Whew!
donna Says:
February 5th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I protest! I wasn’t billed, but was refunded (a legitimate payment I’d made the day before), and I did write in about it. But turns out, I had to repay the payment anyway. :)

Alas!
XpatTech Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 2:48 am
User from the UK.

Just read through as much of this blog as I could stand. Dreamhost are THE best hosting I have come across. I use a special credit card in the UK which is a prepayment card. No funds can be taken unless I put them there in the first place. I received an email apologising for double billing. Thats all I needed to install even more faith in Dreamhost. Come on you whiners, get a grip on reality.
Mike Kamermans Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 4:48 am
Last post.
Soup Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 5:02 am
1)People make mistakes. It’s like a breath of fresh air when they’re honest about it.

2) Banks are sometimes very slow in processing. Banks almost never admit that this slowness can be the root, or even part of an issue.

3)DH has always been a good host, quick to answer and help out.

4)There’s no reason to believe that DH will shirk refunding any and all accrued fees - particularly in light of their honesty about the error(s).

5)We’re all more than a bit spoiled and trained to expect everything to happen in an instant. When it doesn’t work that way, we’re like tantrum-throwing 3-year olds.

6)Each of us is not the only customer DH is dealing with…give it some time to ‘come out in the wash’.

…and no, I don’t have extra in the bank or on my credit card…and no, I can’t just ‘make a deposit’ any ol’ time it’s running low…
paulab Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 5:48 am
i agree 100% with the post from Aaron: “Everyone makes mistakes, and I love you for your honestly.

I prefer your style to a silly press release that takes me for granted and does not give me any information.”

It was extremely refreshing to hear the real deal. and not some corporate puffery speak. Thanks for owning the responsibility of the problem and for talking to us like real folk.
Steve Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Hi,

I always cancel the card after making the purchase with any company that keeps my card information. Specificially when they say “auto billing will happen”

When it does, or errors like this, it has zero effect on me.

Also when the time is legit, people are always ever so nice in asking me for my money.

If they are not, they dont get it ;-)
Jes Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 6:44 am
I’m still really bothered that you let this happen. My account is due in a couple of months, and to be honest I’m leaning toward moving to another host, as I really need to upgrade to a VPS-style solution and don’t feel comfortable giving you access to my new credit card, especially with the larger fees you could erroneously double and quadruple bill. It sounds like even now you don’t really have a handle on your strung-out billing system, and I can’t afford to have you toying with my finances.

To keep many of us you’re going to need to come up with some sort of retention bonus. Given your track record, many feel it warranted that you pay us to stay this time around. Perhaps an “I survived Dreamhost 2008″ coupon would do more for you than a t-shirt.
Sean Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 7:19 am
My bank charged me $25 for the over draft and dreamhost has yet to respond to my emails. What a joke. You cost me an extra $25 and you cant even respond to your customers request (I sent a snap shot of the over charge from my credit union web site, still no reply). You can bet i will be shopping around when my year is up. If nothing is done in the next few days I will be contacting the BBB.
Customer A Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Martin, if you make your living from this stuff, then you are not making much of a living if one Dreamhost charge leaves you with next to nothing in your bank account. Seriously, the people who are complaining the loudest seem to be the most financially irresponsible. Yes, the error is the fault of Dreamhost, but Dreamhost is not responsible for your maxed out credit card or your rock-bottom bank account balance. If you live in a world where you count on never having any financials errors made in order to keep your head above water, then you are not being very realistic.

Sure, I understand, some people are students or just starting out, but if one duplicate charge wipes you out, then maybe you can’t afford web hosting. You can’t blame Dreamhost because you have no money. Those of us who are solvent could care less if Dreamhost makes a one-time error, as long as they fix it, and it seems clear to me that they are doing so. If you can’t put food on the table though, look in the mirror to see who is responsible. THAT is who is to blame.

Sheesh!
Keith Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 8:10 am
I love Dreamhost! They are fun, honest and actually feel like a “real” person instead of a giant corporation…
Armand Cerna Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Anyone can make a mistake. You’re still the best!
Thomas Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Between this event and the down time of the server move has now got me looking for a new host. Being randomly billed and having to sort that out is an annoyance. The really frustrating part is when it actually cost me money because I don’t reside in the same country as Dreamhost, I ended up losing about $14 due to currency conversions.

This was one very damaging ‘error’ to the company. Looks like they may need to run another ‘777′ coupon code to attract customers.
Shawn ClarkWilt Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 10:17 am
What a hoot! With all the businesses that hide their internal problems that affect the customer, from the customer, it’s refreshing to see a transparent and honest publication of an accident.

You guys have probably created more loyalty and word of mouth advertising from all of us who know that nothing is perfect.

Abe Lincoln said “what ever you do, do your best at it.”

Nice to see a company that I am doing business with is doing there best at it!

Thanks.
Chris Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I agree that it’s nice to have a company talk to their customer’s like they’re talking to a single customer rather than a teaming horde of boneheads. But I also think it’s pretty sad that people have lost money through bank fees because of DH’s mistake.

DH should definitely reimburse the customers who can provide proof.
Joe Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
seems like #403 is the SMART one !!!!
Joe Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Question: How much interest you make if you deposited $9 million for say a week?

Just a thought !
Akcean Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Look it’s okay to make mistakes and Dreamhost offers a great product so being completely pissed is in my opinion an overreaction.

That said when you make a mistake of this magnitude I’d expect some kind of effort to make things right for your customers. Just saying sorry we fxed up might be okay if you allowed the same from us but I know the last time I missed a domain renewal that lapsed into redemption by a few hours sorry wasn’t an appropriate response - a redemption fee was. And that’s totally fine but from Dreamhost I’d expect some more initiative towards the customer service aspect of this issue.

Maybe it’s just me though, I don’t know; either way I’m not cancelling my service and I’m not really upset - just a bit disappointed since I expected more on your part.
G Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Dreamhost got my losses due to currency conversion nicely covered today, to the tune of a credit for 2 months of hosting fees (my losses were a little over 1 month’s fees). It will cover the losses even if the US dollar takes a dip before it hits my account.

If anyone else is still out due to currency conversions, drop Support an email now that things have calmed down a little.

Thanks Dreamhost!
Frank Kaszuba Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Re Billing Error:

The only problem with the credit back into the account is a shortage difference of $ 40.83 for your error.

How can that be rectified?
Staying right where I am Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Something to think about….

First let me say, yes my account experienced the same bug, second, in all honesty no serious money problems here because I use a prepaid card for internet transactions.

Now… For a little story from my life experiences. This is a story about credit card charges by a large computer company who also happens to manufacture high end electronics test equipment.
At work, we were shopping for a new high precision bench meter, nothing extravegant, in the $1,000.00-1,800.00 range.. After selecting this piece of test equipment from the manufacturers website we purchased it online through the OEM. No email no problems apparent. Short sweet story of electronic banking right? Noooooooooo, over a WEEK later, my boss attempts to use his corporate card again and its declined. After contacting the CC company he was informed that the large company we had purchased our test equipment from had attempted to run charges in excess of $30,000.00. Did we get an email? Nope…. A letter???? Nope. Was there already a credit in the works? Nope. Was there already a plan to issue a credit? Not that we could tell…. On contacting this giant equipment manufacturer we were informed that since it had already been a couple of weeks that we “SHOULD” see a credit by the NEXT bill, NOT the current one. In the meantime just bear with them… How many people did this happen to? I have no idea, it was never mentioned, never posted in the news, never heard a word about it. My guess? Far more than are affected here, and from the looks of it, for far more money, and for over 30 days….

Just a little food for thought, how much money did those guys really hold onto for how long? I’m still guessing a lot more than our beloved host, and there was no effort to inform customers at all, they just waited on the calls and credited as they came in, in 30-45 days….

Think about that before someone makes the next post about smaller companies and mistakes, or how well things are tested in large corporations.. I suppose that since there is a paper record of the charges and the circumstances its not an issue for me to say that the test equipment in question was an HP Agilent bench meter.

If you read this far to see this, good for you, I stopped at 3 pages, I only wish that I had seen this sooner so I could have posted to it sooner.
Phil Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
I’d just like to say how much I appreciate how transparent you guys are. I’m not sure that many people understand billing systems (or their finickiness when being tested), but it’s really nice to have that explanation rather than some “We’re experiencing technical difficulties” or worse still, nothing at all.

Kudos.
Lercio Teotonio Gontijo Says:
February 7th, 2008 at 1:24 am
Thank you!

Very honest.

:-D
Angry Dog Says:
February 7th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
FINALLY I AM FREE. EVERYTHING HAS NOW TRANSFERRED SUCCESSFULLY TO A NEW HOST, AND I JUST HAD THE GREATEST OF PLEASURE DELETING DREAMHOST FROM MY BOOKMARKS.

TO ALL YOU FOOLS STILL WITH DREAMHOST - I PITY YOU. ENJOY YOUR NEVER-ENDING DOWNTIME, LOST EMAILS AND AT THE VERY LEAST, LATENCY. I HAVE NO PITY HOWEVER FOR THE DH ZEALOTS WHO CONTINUE TO SING THE PRAISES OF AN INCREDIBLY SHODDY WEBHOST. SURE THEY MIGHT BE A BUNCH OF FUN ENTREPRENEURS, BUT IT’S AT YOUR EXPENSE, AND THEY’RE LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK.

one more thing -
WOOF!
Jon Says:
February 9th, 2008 at 3:23 am
I never thought I would say this to people who accidentally charged hundreds of dollars to me randomly (and then gave it back instantly, duh), but I love you guys.

The monthly newsletter made me laugh out loud, again, and is one of the few (the only?) mass mailings I read (ever).
stu Says:
February 9th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
It is happening again. I just got billed TWICE my normal yearly charge. And my bill isn’t due until May.

And, it is occupied by a threat to cut off services.

We, the customers cut you guys slack. But come one, how about a little safety net on your billing’s end, trust it not since it already has lied.
Arlene Shipley Says:
February 11th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
1. Thank you for advising us of this.

2. This was not an isolated paypal software issue - SecondLife who used the paypal system and services - double billed millions of users several months before YOUR problem. If they did not notify you of this glitch - I’m sure your lawyers will be looking into getting your costs reimbursed (hope you have more luck than I did).

3. Glad to see you learned - as I did from my initial problems at SL/paypal that there are vast divergences in the time/manner in which each step of money movement is handled BUT know this –it is ALWAYS TAKEN from you immediately ;))

4. I initially posted this incorrectly (and poorly) in the help needed area of the forum

http://discussion.dreamhost.com/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=forum_troubleshooting&Number=100709&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&part=1&vc=1&o=14

Arlene Shipley angelAID and AngelHEROS

PS I still need your help - today I got a notice that you will turn off my service -= BECAUSE you refunded the money (that did not get taken becuase the account was closed) to my CLOSED accont — NOW you want the refund AND the new year that is NOW due $400 total.

please be advidsed I am sending my FAX with our not for profit irs ruling letter - and hope to be put on a non pay status — THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE AMAZING SERVICE - please watch for it - I’m sure your FAX is filled with inquiries.

I look forward to remaing a loyal not for profit- client. I will recommend you to everyone i know — AFTER ALL as i learned with paypal/bank/second life
/my own lack of knowledge of banking - mistakes happen.

PLEASE dont turn off our account while we straihten this out.
LMSX Says:
February 18th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I lost 10.6dls because of this, because its not the same in my country to receive money than send money, because of the money vaule differente of sell/buy.
And no one will refund me those 10.6dls, one point less to Dreamhost. One point more to the other host companies that offer Bandwith 1000+GB and Space 100+GB like 5 bugs a month. Instead the 19dls im paying here.
Johan Says:
March 8th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
According to recent psychological statistics, 3% of mankind would have left the country if they suddently got hold of $2,100,000.

Now we know two things:

1) Josh is not within that 3%. :D
2) Josh must have a very strong heart. Mine would have busted when i had to discover such a devastating bug. ;)

And i have always lived by the rule: Never trust automation!

:)
Disappointed Says:
March 9th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Although the title of the blog entry is “Final Update”, I’m still dealing with fallout from this issue. Please try to remember this is Dreamhost’s problem, and not that of its customers!
Disappointed Says:
March 20th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Dreamhost’s mistake is still impacting this customer. How is it possible for this not to be wrapped up by now?

Meta:

Powered by WordPress. Pool theme by Borja Fernandez, modified by DreamHost.
Like WordPress? Consider attending WordCamp LA.
Entries and comments feeds. ^Top^

The Final Update

427 Responses to “The Final Update”

Categories:

Archives:

Meta:

The Final Update

427 Responses to “The Final Update”

Categories:

Archives:

Other Sites

Meta: