May de Mayo

May 5, 2008 on 4:55 pm | In Business, Insider View, Rants by Josh Jones | 37 Comments

Real Mexicans don't celebrate Cinco de Mayo!

Hey, you know what’d be fun on a boring Monday in May? A little role play!

And I’m not talking about 12-sided dice and renaissance faires either, I’m just talking about some simple role reversal.

More specifically, I’m going to complain to you about a web host!

So, about three years ago I was trying out some competitors to, you know, test the waters in case I ever decided I wanted to switch hosts.

I used three places, and they all absolutely stank. I mean, they were horrible. I’m talking worse than us!

Some competitors...

Every server I tried with these places was pretty much just not working. Besides that, their support was all universally useless, and their panels were a weird hodge-podge of different systems they’d cobbled together I guess. You also either couldn’t get shell access or had to fax them your driver’s license to enable it?!

The worst thing was, they were all difficult to cancel, and a few even tried to get out of giving me my money back (I was in their “unconditional” guarantee!)

Finally, I decided to splurge (I’d been spending like $7.95/month) and tried a VPS place for a whopping $49 a month!

Well, they were great! I mean, they still had a weird hodge-podge of different panels, and they sure laid stuff out differently than I was used to, but my VPS at least stayed up and I could do anything I wanted.

I never needed to contact support, which was fine with me, and luckily for them, I never really did too much with the account but kept paying them anyway for the last three years (I’m willing to bet a few of you are in this boat as well… thanks!)

One Mexican lady for each year.

Finally

Last month, I finally decided to transfer my little bit of crap I had with them over to a DreamHost PS! When I went to cancel, I decided to check my credit card statement and noticed that for February and March I’d been charged $89 instead of $49?!!

Eh? I searched through all the emails I received from them and the only thing I could find that seemed possibly related was one that mentioned they were upgrading all the features on their VPS, but don’t worry existing users would get them all at the same price!

So, I wrote them a nice email:

Helllooooo….

I just noticed this and that somehow you guys upgraded me without my permission from $49/month to $89/month!

Uh, what happened? It wasn’t my choice.. I did get one email saying resources were going up .. for FREE.

Please refund the extra $80 you’ve charged to my credit card asap.

Also, I’d like to cancel my service as of April 30th, I believe what I’ve already been charged for.

Thanks,
josh!

To which they replied:

Sir,

On 02/17/08 our support team notified you to tell you that your server had run out of resources, and that the only way they could keep your server from staying offline was to upgrade you. They did so for free for one week, and asked you to get back to them to work with them to resolve the issue. They stated that if they didn’t hear from you they would leave you on the higher package level instead of leaving you down completely.

After a week, and a followup reminder sent to this address that the account was being left at Signature level so that you could remain operational, your package was upgraded.

Admittedly this was an atypical situation, but most would probably agree that after not hearing from you the decision to leave you up and operational was preferrable to the decision to simply let your server fail.

As per the contract you agreed to at signup, we do require a 30 day written cancellation notice to close down your account. I can accept this as that notification and close your account 30 days from today, on May 18th. I hope that this helps.

All the best,
Christian

Ha, ha, ha… what?

So, because I was (somehow) crashing my own (private) server, they, without permission from me, started charging me an extra $40 a month, so it wouldn’t crash!

Gee, thanks guys!

I also appreciate it when my cable company notices that I haven’t been enjoying HBO and Showtime and most would probably agree that after not hearing from you the decision to give you all these great movies and original tv series was preferrable to the decision to simply let you suffer with Oxygen and TBS!

But actually, that never happened becuase that would be CRAZY!

I went back to look for this alleged email, and I found it:

Subject: 7 Day Trial upgrade to the Signature package for yourserver.com.

Hi,

This server has reached it’s limit on i-nodes which is number of files on the system.

Below is an output of where most of these I-nodes are being used:

357219 -> /vz/private/1753/root/var/qmail/mailnames/yourserver.com/user/Maildir/cur
457677 -> /vz/private/1753/root/var/qmail/mailnames/yourserver.com/user/Maildir/new

That is roughly 700,000 i-nodes for this mail account. Please clear this mail out and notify us within 7 days so that we can downgrade your account back to the Essential. Otherwise, you will be billed for the Signature package.

Thank you,
Tommy

First off, nice subject! No wonder I didn’t read that email!

Ah, I see.. I had a catch-all at the domain hosted there and it was filled with three years of spam!

It’s besides the point that there’s no mention of inode limits anywhere on their site or tos (I’m not saying who they are because there’s no such thing as bad publicity!), or that I guess their VPS solution has problems with some instances affecting others in certain inode-related areas.

The point is that it is crazy to assume that you may just UPGRADE your customer without hearing back from them, as opposed to say, just DISABLING their account.

I wrote back:

Hi Christian,

Um, actually no, I would have preffered to have the server fail.. I’m sorry I didn’t see those emails, but I did not agree to the upgrade!

Please refund the $80 extra dollars and set my service to cancel on May 18th, after downgrading back to the $49 plan for the rest of the time.

Thanks,
josh!

To which Christian replied:

Josh,

I understand that some people may feel this way. That’s why we gave you free time at Signature level before keeping you there, and the opportunity in successive messages to go ahead and downgrade. We made multiple contact attempts and then provided the service, which you used for two months.
I’ll need to look into the possibility of refund. I’m not sure what the protocol is offhand, so I’ll need to do some digging.

I’ll downgrade your account immediately but if the same problem exists I expect your server to start failing again shortly. If it does, you’ll need to upgrade an I won’t be able to authorize a free upgrade – not with a dispute pending. So make sure that if the server fails and you’re comfortable with that, that if you change your mind you will need to explicitly agree to the new $89 per month rate.

-Christian

HA! Man, at this point I was starting to get bemused and maybe even a little bit angry. Here I am, a guy who totally loved this host, had paid them about $1800 over three years while using virtually no resources, and they’re going to make me fight over $80 at the end?!

Especially when they have no chance in actually keeping it. I happen to know as something of a dabbler in the web host arts myself that it is very very hard for an Internet merchant to win a chargeback dispute with a consumer! My next email brought this up:

Hi Christian,

Please refund the $80 or I’ll have to take it up with my credit card company directly! Yuck!

Thanks,
josh!

Oooh, but he was not intimidated!

Josh,

I will need to take this up with our Controller. My personal opinion is that you were given clear and fair warning of the charges which were not put in place until after a lengthy period in which we provided that upgraded service for you free of charge. We made multiple efforts to contact you and it was your responsibility to keep your contact information updated with us, or in this case keep messages from your provider whitelisted so that we could communicate with you. As you were given plentiful and frequent notice of the upgrade and the consequences for not responding, as you utilized the resources and received benefit from them through multiple billing cycles, and as all of this can be documented, I am certain that we could be victorious contesting a chargeback request. However, as I stated previously this is not my call. What I will do is send this along to our Controller for review, and set your cancellation date to May 18th as promised. Though normally it is not allowed to downgrade and provide cancellation notice at the same time, given the odd circumstances I WILL allow that request to stand, which will save you some funds.

I hope this helps,
Christian

Oooohohhohoohoooo! Well! I hope it helps too! I am so grateful you are now allowing me to “downgrade” to the only plan I ever signed up for!

Anyway, long story short, they said it’d take two weeks to decide, so I contacted American Express and disputed the charges, and then a few days later they credited my $80.

And the moral is, billing issues are the biggest issues for consumers! Why burn up three years of good will at $49/month over $80? Before this, I honestly would have recommended them to people if I hadn’t been their direct competitor! I swear!

People can forgive a lot of bad service/bad product/headaches/incompetence/gross negligence if you just give them back their money. It’s kind of like saying, “the deal is off,” no hard feelings?

It is 100% worth it. Now, when they talk to their friends, they’ll be like “Well, I had a bunch of problems, but in the end they gave me my money back.”

As opposed to me who’ll be like, “They were fine until the end when they stole $80 and refused to return it! I PLEDGE ON MY UNBORN CHILDREN THAT DREAMHOST SHALL CRUSH THEM!”

All my unborn babies.

That’s something that translates across all businesses too, because it’s just a universal way of doing business. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, nor what product or service you have, there are good ways of doing business, and there are not so good ways.

And I feel like although we don’t always succeed 100% at the specific details of trying to offer awesome web hosting for super cheap, we are generally successful at running a business that doesn’t lie, cheat, or steal, and always tries its best.

Now, you guys be me and please go write a ton of blog posts I can use the rest of my life.

Thanks!

37 Responses to “May de Mayo”

  1. Steven Fisher Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 5:19 pm

    Had a similar thing happen with Vonage. Now instead of recommending it to friends (except for the 911 thing), I tell them to stay far away because I couldn’t get a Vonage supervisor to leave his crack alone long enough to refund me.

    And Visa did NOT give me the money back. Because, I guess, they’re Vonage.

  2. John Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 5:38 pm

    Wow, you’d think they’d have charged people 2 years in advance without their consent or something.

  3. Mike Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    I had something like this happen with Verizon. I moved and also switched to a cable modem VoIP phone setup. I tried to port my number over but the cable people said that this wouldn’t work unless the addresses matched. Easy enough, I thought, so I called Verizon, changed my address, then set up the port.

    A month later I got a bill in the mail from Verizon for $40!

    After a lot of phone work I finally found myself talking to a supervisor. A great deal of arguing ensued and she finally agreed to credit me the money but she also made it clear in every way she could that she thought I didn’t deserve this credit.

    Up to this point I had had a completely trouble-free coexistence with Verizon. Now I’m really wary of them and have no desire to use or recommend their service.

    Too bad I live in the US and thus only have two reasonable choices for internet access, which of course means that the other choice is just as bad!

  4. Adam Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 6:07 pm

    @John – Did you miss the point of the post, mate? Yeah, they made the mistake and took 2 years of payment from you. *then they paid you back* ….

    Hence, the point of the post

    F3ck it up.. ok… refund money .. ok… don’t refund money = bad..

    Unbelievable…

    Adam

  5. Jesse Ruderman Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    Why didn’t you see the original mail? Was it sent to the same email account whose three years of mostly-spam caused the inode problems?

  6. Victor Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 6:34 pm

    Any chance of lowering Private Server pricing to be inline with other VPS?

    Since most VPS are now about 1/2 the cost of DreamhostPS.

    Thanks guys. You’re the best

  7. AW Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 6:48 pm

    Hate to derail,

    but is it possible to get an official word on Dreamhost, mod_rails, and private servers?

    This is pretty much the only place you guys actually talk back to us on non-tech support issues, so that’d be cool.

  8. John Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 7:06 pm

    @Adam

    I’m just saying the pot should stop being racist against the kettle.

  9. Kelly@DreamHost Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 10:38 pm

    Funny, the above mentioned VoIP provider charged me twice for services not rendered, even after requesting to be canceled. First request was under their 30 day money back, second was afterwards when they called me to see how my service was going. They charged me $80 to cancel, even after I had charged back the initial payment!

    Needless to say, American Express has given me all of my money back, both times.

  10. BUGabundo Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 3:43 am

    Josh so u are mixing up 3 girlfriends from different races? LOL
    lucky bastard.

  11. David Claughton Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 4:09 am

    I too would love it if dreamhost upgraded its VPS service on the back of this rant!

    IMHO, a (faux)’root’ account allowing me to install software into my own /usr/bin using a simple apt-get is at least as useful as guaranteed processor/bandwidth.

  12. David Claughton Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 4:12 am

    Oh, yeah, and if I can get that ‘root’ account thrown in with my ordinary dreamhost account at no extra cost, that’d be good too!!!

  13. Steven Fisher Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 10:02 am

    @John: The day Dreamhost refuses to refund mistakes is the day they must stop mocking other companies for refusing refunds. Mistakes are mistakes — it’s whether you correct them that moves you from being slightly incompetent to actively #$%@ing evil.

  14. Jeff @ DreamHost Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 11:04 am

    > it’s whether you correct them that moves you from
    > being slightly incompetent to actively #$%@ing
    > evil.

    I smell a marketing slogan in there, somewhere. “DreamHost: Only Slightly Incompetent, But Definitely Not Evil!”

    I’ll run it by Brett. :)

    - Jeff @ DreamHost

  15. Dallas Kashuba Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 11:44 am

    @AW (#7) : We have been working with the Passenger (mod_rails) software for awhile now and were one of the main beta testers. It is coming.

  16. Dallas Kashuba Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 11:47 am

    @David Claughton : We have no plans to give you any sort of root access to your PS.

    @Victor : We believe DreamHost PS is an excellent value at its current price. Other providers don’t offer the same set of features. More options are good for you, the consumer.

  17. Theron Keller Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

    Sounds like a great story for Consumerist.com!

  18. Sean Serritella Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 2:12 pm

    I just wanted to remind dreamhost what a SHIT service they run. I can’t believe I paid 3 years in advance for your shit. It’s the shittiest service I’ve ever received in my life and I really wish something bad, personally happens to you. That’s how upset I am with your no good service. You guys should really be ashamed of yourselves. I HATE you.

  19. Don Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 3:21 pm

    I wallow in shit it appears!

  20. Jacob Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 7:05 pm

    @Dallas

    “We believe DreamHost PS is an excellent value at its current price. Other providers don’t offer the same set of features. More options are good for you, the consumer.”

    I’m so confused because I really want agree with you but can’t.

    Slicehost, Linode, et al gives you the same amount of RAM/CPU for 1/2 the price of DreamhostPS. Or in other words, you get double the RAM/CPU at Linode than at Dreamhost.

    The agrument about Dreamhost giving “more features” than other VPS’ is extremely incorrect.

    Since Linode, Slicehost, etc… gives you root access to your VPS – the amount of “features” (software) are limitless at these host providers.

    Whereas a DreamhostPS can only run what Dreamhost has installed by default (apache, memcache). So no lightning fast NGINX web server, no standards compliant database like postgres, no memcache (which makes a lot of sense to use in VPS environments since you are paying for RAM, why not load it up with database content, etc…

    I love you guys, but others are dead on about the DreamhostPS offering.

    The price needs to come down some (not a lot but some).

  21. Nestor Says:
    May 7th, 2008 at 6:18 am

    If there’s “no such thing as bad publicity” why did my referral rewards from dreamhost completely dry up a year ago? I really miss being paid to host at dreamhost rather than the opposite. :)

    I was wondering if you might have parasites on your affiliate program, if the amount of referred customers is the same, have you noticed a trend of a very few, very successful affiliates sending you all the new customers? Just a thought.

  22. Christian/Ex-DH Says:
    May 8th, 2008 at 10:52 pm

    I am so glad that wasn’t me.

  23. Mark Says:
    May 9th, 2008 at 6:59 am

    Pretty pathetic of you to wait 3yrs for them to slip, and then go public.

    What a lamer. Can’t compete fairly so you resort to bashing?

    Also, YOU would never have a catchall. Either you left it there on purpose knowing the consequences (so one day you could write a post like this).. or you’re incredibly dumb and shouldn’t be a webhost.

    IMHO they were unlucky this time to get stuck with a crap customer. Most other people would love a host who takes the initiative and keeps their server/business going.

  24. Thales Says:
    May 9th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    Why were you hosting with them for this length of time when you own/work for a webhosting company? Seems fishy, liken it to; the Pepsi guy drinking nothing but Coke, the DirecTV installer having Cable Television. Lovely.

    -fin
    Thales

  25. Eric Says:
    May 10th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    Awesome post Josh!

    I’ve loved you guys all along =D

    Maybe in a few years when I’m done with school you’ll see me looking for a job with the best host ever!

  26. zylox Says:
    May 11th, 2008 at 3:40 pm

    @Jacob: Having root access four your VPS also gives you a lot more responsibilities – meaning you have to manage your server on your own and install security updates. DH PS is a managed VPS, you don’t have to worry about security updates to the daemons (e.g. Apache etc.) because DH does that for you. Managed Services are always more expensive, because the hosting company worries about your server, not you. For that the DH prices are absolutely fine.

  27. Whatever Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 7:00 am

    Oh, for anyone curious about what host this is — it’s ServInt (servint.net)

    I’ve had some serious issues with DH but their PS prices are fine — as zylox said, they do managed shit — root access is awesome for people who want to have total control and do all the command-line shit themselves, but if you are either not technically proficient enough to do it (but need resources that exceed the shitty shared plans) or are technically proficient but are tired of having to control everything yourself, a managed solution is awesome.

    Honestly, if I had better results with their shared plans, I’d be game for using their PS stuff – but as it stands, I’m not convinced the service would be that much more reliable.

  28. Andy Huang Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 9:49 am

    *sees his reply in the old blog post*
    Hey, I’m one of those people in the same boat too!

    Ah… good times when we had not even 1/5 of the current allocations… how times have changed.

  29. Dreamhost Sucks Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    That’s as bad as when DREAMHOST won’t refund your money!

  30. Ravi Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 1:35 am

    Well, try comparing to a serious contender like Linode.com!?

  31. Sharon McCormick Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 7:12 am

    Ah… This is the fun part of being a DH customer… It actually makes you warm in the gut knowing that DH has common sense. You keep it up Josh! Even if it’s just to makes us happy.

  32. Matt Van Dusen Says:
    May 19th, 2008 at 5:16 am

    @29: …of course there’s never been a situation where DH won’t refund your money when they say they will…

    Working customer support for a rather large direct broadcast satellite company has given me perspective on what ends up happening at Big Companies. While the customer service rep may (or may not) be competent and know exactly when to give a refund according to business rules and the rules of customer satisfaction, invariably the request for a refund gets sent along to someone in Accounting, where they sit on it for a few days before they deny it with absolutely no further info given, either in the account’s notes OR directly provided to the consumer. Therefore, Customer ends up waiting and waiting for the refund that’s not coming. That, to me, is Bad Business.

    Was it Josh’s fault people were charged as if it were 2008-12-31? Yes. Did he publicly admit to his moment of stupidity including fat fingers and not placing controls on his billing system? Yes. Did he refund ALL THAT MONEY and GIVE CREDITS equal to that amount AS SOON AS THE BANKING SYSTEMS WOULD ALLOW? Yes. Did he pay for people’s bank fees related to his stupidity? YES! That’s something you’d be hard-pressed to find – most companies will tell you “tough shit” in that situation.

    Are the banking systems screwed up in that it takes much longer to get a refund than to get a charge against your account? Of course we all know that to be true.

    For the record, I was not one to get hit by Josh’s stupidity, because at the time my services were paid until June 2009 and there was a credit on my account. However, I would have the same outlook if I WAS hit – I know mistakes happen, and this is one of the few companies that will actually make it right – DAMN THE BOTTOM LINE! Personally, I can’t believe people are STILL complaining about it – not only did they lose THOUSANDS of dollars in merchant fees for doing all those refunds, but they gave you a credit EQUAL to the ill-gotten funds (costing them THOUSANDS more)! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT????????

  33. Kilia Says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    Josh, what WERE you doing going with another hosting company anyways?? Don’t you know by now that DH is the only one??
    *hugs*
    Kilia
    <3

  34. Islami Kiz Isimleri Islami Erkek Isimleri Says:
    June 1st, 2008 at 1:09 am

    Wow, you’d think they’d have charged people 2 years in advance without their consent or something.

  35. FHA Loan Says:
    June 12th, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    Nice Pics. love it. Yea that really is jacked up though. I hate it when companies think that they can bend you over and get away with it or that “you wont notice.” Rediculous!

  36. Matthew Says:
    July 12th, 2008 at 8:52 am

    You’re ranting because they wanted to keep your website up and the contact method was evidently insufficient?

    If they’d have let your site go down, would that be preferable?

  37. WTF Says:
    July 21st, 2008 at 12:47 am

    I pay almost double now what I used to pay when I was with DH, and I am quite happy doing so because the host I now use is almost never down, and they have a 99.9% uptime guarantee that applies each and every month. For the record, the last 6 months or so have had perfect uptime using a quarter-hourly monitoring service, other than a 25 minute scheduled downtime for a server upgrade last month. For me it’s not about getting a refund though, it’s about getting it right in the first place – I’m paying for a service, not paying for a refund of service not supplied. If I wanted that, I wouldn’t bother getting hosting in the first place.

    Yes your ex-host didn’t demonstrate particularly good logic with their billing practice, but at least your service was always up and running. Shame DH can’t seem to keep it up more than a few days without some fuck-up happening. Perhaps sprinkle some viagra on your servers?

    Pot, meet kettle.

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