Webhosting. com

This company is a squirming pit of snakes.  Do not encourage them to stay in business

I don't ordinarily begin by making defamatory comments about any company, but in this case I have no other choice but to lay it on the line: Webhosting.com sucks. This review will attempt to show you why.

Back in 1998, I registered a domain name for my brother, who was interested in getting his business online. I performed the registration through a small, friendly Canadian company known as Dynamic Web Internet Services. There really wasn't any need for customer service at first, since the page was little more than an online placeholder until such time as we could put together some real content.

Then Dynamic Web became Webhosting.com, and the hell began.

I had started putting together pages using MS FrontPage (please don't respond with jihads about which is the best set of web tools—this was my choice) and wanted to upload some Active Server Pages to the site. This did not work—repeatedly—despite Webhosting.com's repeated claims that it would, because Webhosting.com had not set permissions correctly. I tried to get through to e-mail customer support in order to get them to change the permissions, and never received a response. Then I tried calling their NT support line, which rang, and rang, and rang, and eventually dumped me into voice mail (the mailbox was full for weeks) or hung up on me completely. I filed several complaints with the automatic system at ineedsupport.com, the built-in subdomain that claimed to offer Webhosting.com customers support, both with technicians and their supervisors. Nothing.

After several weeks of this monkey business, my fuse was getting pretty short. I decided to try using the LivePerson service that claimed it would get me hooked up in real-time chat with a support technician. I also decided I would write directly to the company president and let him know how I felt about his company's "service." I tried as hard as I could to be polite and patient. The following is an actual log saved from that exchange (yes, my chosen chat name was really "frustrated as hell," because I was at that point):

Log of LivePerson chat, 3/1/99, around 1:00 p.m. PST
Welcome to LivePerson, frustrated as hell. You are 1st in line for CustomerService2.
CustomerService2: May I please have your domain name and/or IP address with us?
frustrated as hell: My domain name is [mydomain].com, and I'm currently also on the phone trying to reach someone, anyone, in NT Support.
CustomerService2: ok..what seems to be the problem?
frustrated as hell: All I need is to have permissions set so I can run Active Server Pages on my site.
CustomerService2 will be with you in a moment.
CustomerService2: ahh, ok
frustrated as hell: I believe I've set permissions correctly on my end, but I get an error when I try to access the test .asp page
CustomerService2 will be with you in a moment.
CustomerService2: ok...I'll check the permissions.
frustrated as hell: Thank you. I'm wondering if I could also get the name and snailmail address of your company president.
CustomerService2 will be with you in a moment.
CustomerService2: If you would like to file a complaint..goto ineedsupport.com and file an esculation with the supervisor.
frustrated as hell: I understand the nature of the complaint system here. I would like the name and address of the company president all the same, thank you.
CustomerService2 will be with you in a moment.
The call has ended
CustomerService2 has hung up

Incidentally, the trouble with permissions was never fixed. Someone DID manage to go in and change permissions to GLOBAL, meaning anyone with FTP access could have hacked my site.

I did manage to find the name of the company president (Jesse Rasch, if you're taking notes) and address on my own, since his own company was incapable (or afraid) of giving that information to its customers. I promptly sent him a letter via registered mail, explaining the experiences I'd had with Webhosting.com up to that point, that I was through with his company and that I was immediately moving the domain to another host. I made it clear that I expected a refund of the balance of the money I had paid for the year's hosting, or legal action would ensue.

On 3/18 I received a call from Denise at extension 240. She was asking about a fax I had sent. I had not sent any fax—as far as I can tell, this was an internal company fax of the letter I had sent to Jesse Rasch. She tried to keep me as a customer, but I explained to her that my patience had run out and that I wanted a refund of my money. She said she would see what she could do and would call me back; I said I expected a response by the next day.

On 3/19 Denise called at 7:10 AM PST. My husband answered the phone and told her to call back in two hours, as we were still asleep. I called Denise later, around 10 AM. She told me the news was "not good;" as I had signed up for a full year of service, they could not refund the money by unused months. I verified that it was a company policy. I then asked her for a signed statement to that effect on company letterhead so I could furnish it to my legal counsel. She said the information was on their Web page. I indicated that was insufficient evidence for legal action, as web pages can easily be changed on the fly, and again requested a signed statement. She then said she could forward the information to the company president. I indicated that the letter had been sent to the company president in the first place (hello?); he should therefore have been the one to read it first. She told me the president was out of town for a few days, but she could send him email and he could look it over. I said I expected a response from him by the beginning of the next week, at the latest.

Shortly after completing the call, I made a call to my legal counsel and left a message asking about what was necessary to begin a class-action lawsuit.

At 10:53 I logged on and received a message from Webhosting.com's Accounting Department, dated 3/19, 9:57 AM:

Greetings,
Please print a copy of our company refund policy off of www.webhosting.com.
Accounting
Webhosting.com

The link led to the company's front page, not to the company refund policy. When I finally finished digging through the site to find the refund policy, it stated the following:

Refund Policy.
Each of WebHosting.Com's web hosting plans carries a 30-day money back guarantee. If you are not completely satisfied with our services within the first 30 days of your contract, you will be given a full refund of the contract amount excluding setup fees and overages. There are no refunds on prepaid amounts after the 30 day money back period has elapsed.
All cancellations must be received in writing as per the deadlines indicated; postal mail and fax notifications are acceptable. Phone and email requests will not constitute acceptance of any cancellation. There are no refunds on a la carte services.
Management escalation is available via ineedsupport.com's escalation form.

There was no indication anywhere on the web page of the original refund policy issued under Dynamic Web Internet Services, the name of the company when I first signed up to have my domain hosted. Further, my legal counsel advised that because the company was operating in Canada, a suit was terribly complicated and would have to comply with the laws of another country—in other words, although they admitted I'd clearly been screwed, they wouldn't touch the case.

It wasn't even over then. Through some bureaucratic SNAFU, Dynamic Web had originally registered the domain name with not my contact information, but theirs. Since the name change to Webhosting.com, they hadn't bothered to make any updates, so there was no new contact information and the old contact address was no longer working. As Network Solutions has a strict policy of reaching the old contact as well as the new one when changing information, and since the automatic system was continually trying to send a contact message to the old, invalid Dynamic Web address, I was in effect hijacked—unable even to move my domain to a new host. Several weeks of calls and faxes to Network Solutions later (don't even start me on the joys of working with NSI... therapy was enormously expensive), I managed to convince them of the problem and they moved me to a new host without the "assistance" of Webhosting.com.

My last act was to file an official complaint with the Canadian Better Business Bureau. Hopefully discerning companies will now be warned of the kind of "business" Webhosting.com does.

If I were the only person to have been treated this way, it might not be so bad. But literally everyone I've met who has had some dealings with Webhosting.com has experienced the same, or similar, problems with support, refunds, etc. Further, they have not yet learned their lesson—if you do a search of the newsgroups at Google and look for "webhosting.com," you will find they show up most often in telltale areas like alt.spam, news.admin.net-abuse.sightings, and a number of other newsgroups that specialize in reporting immoral or illegal practices on the Net. They've actually had to remove their site from inclusion in a list of hosts rated by individual webmasters, because they were ranked dead last for everything—but this, my private review site, need not buckle to such pressure.

In one advertising supplement for Webhosting.com, Jesse Rasch was quoted as saying, "Remember, web hosting providers are the landlords of the Internet." If that's so, Mr. Rasch, you are truly the worst absent slum-lord online.

Do not encourage this company to stay in business. Avoid them like the plague. If you are currently hosted with them and you were fortunate enough to pay by credit card, have your credit company reverse the charges because services were "not as represented" (this is the only way you will get a refund) and move immediately to any other host of your choice.

All material displayed on this website is © 2001-2009 by S. B. Houghton, writing under the alias "The Pirate King." All rights reserved.
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