Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 188 posts

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#41

Post by samarudge »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #36

boriskourt: "That's not cool. Suspending a friends account because of a minor PayPal dispute? When did you get into doing that?" This seems to be about a web host not accepting people not paying their bills. It's not really the web hosts problem if you can't pay, doesn't matter if you've a dispute with paypal. Don't pay and they're in their rights to cease providing service. Don't pay, then bitch about them not provi…

http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/jk195/stay_the_f...

He explains that there was a valid reason for not being able to pay the bills (I.E. PayPal having a problem). This* then suspended all of his accounts (Including the ones that had already been payed for) and, from the looks of it, were very unhelpful in resolving the situation.

Yes, if the PayPal payment didn't come through the domains should probably have been suspended as they hadn't been payed for, but not the entire account and certainly not denying access to backups

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#42

Post by shabble »

From http://www.thiswebhost.com/reviewus.html :

"It's no surprise that when things work as they should, people rarely talk about them. When things don't work, however, people are often very quick to criticise, condemn and even publically discourage the use of the service or product. Fortunately for us, there's none of the latter - and we hope that remains the case for as long as we're in business.

Unfortunately for us, because of an excellent proven track-record, there's relatively little in the way of comments or reviews of this* on the Internet. We'd like to ask for your help to change that.

If you're happy enough to write a review for us, here are some of the best places you could do so: [ ... ] Social Networks - everything from a quick Twitter message to a forum post on any of the forums you frequent. Every little piece of exposure is appreciated!"

Isn't that pretty much...what he did?

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#43

Post by pbhjpbhj »

samarudge wrote: post #41
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #36

boriskourt: "That's not cool. Suspending a friends account because of a minor PayPal dispute? When did you get into doing that?" This seems to be about a web host not accepting people not paying their bills. It's not really the web hosts problem if you can't pay, doesn't matter if you've a dispute with paypal. Don't pay and they're in their rights to cease providing service. Don't pay, then bitch about them not provi…

http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/jk195/stay_the_f... He explains that there was a valid reason for not being able to pay the bills (I.E. PayPal having a problem). This* then suspended all of his accounts (Including the ones that had already been payed for) and, from the looks of it, were very unhelpful in resolving the situation. Yes, if the PayPal payment didn't come through the domains should probably ha…

>there was a valid reason for not being able to pay the bills (I.E. PayPal having a problem) //

It's an excuse, but it's not payment. Continuation of the contract would presumably require payment. A clients inability to pay ends their right to receive service.

Sure a larger company can usually manage to give grace in such situations (but often won't) but small businesses, as this appears to be, seem to suffer a lot more with cash flow problems.

So the story goes:

1. customer doesn't pay

2. customer and friend argue that not paying shouldn't get their account suspended

3. customers friend tells company to FOAD (or whatever)

4. company terminates all services

5. customer and friend start internet campaign

I'm really struggling to see how the company are supposed to have acted so badly - is it really considered such a crime to not let people have service without rendering payment?

Of course, as ever, there's a lack of detail as to the amounts left unpaid and the nature of the PayPal issue and so none of us should really be offering ludicrously emotional and dramatic judgements about either party.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#44

Post by AlexC04 »

jarin wrote: post #35
innes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unprofessional behaviour from the host, but these guys should perhaps have employed a bit of professionalism too - I wouldn't be surprised if the 'perpetually indignant' twitter mode of address, and the tendency to want to summon up mob of the righteous whenever possible, has spilled over into their dealings with this company. Seems like twitter has given every angry person the opportunity to wave a banner of Truth a…

I think there's some truth there. Both sides acted like children, but the reason the focus is more on the hosting company is that they abused their power. As far as the attitudes go, when you're reselling $2.95/month hosting you're going to get $2.95/month customers. In my experience, cheap customers are the most likely to squabble and gripe and moan over tiny things and drive you crazy. But hey, you make your bed an…

and on that $2.95 your profit is $1.50 a month ... that doesn't buy a lot of "taking shit".

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#45

Post by samarudge »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #43
samarudge wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/jk195/stay_the_f... He explains that there was a valid reason for not being able to pay the bills (I.E. PayPal having a problem). This* then suspended all of his accounts (Including the ones that had already been payed for) and, from the looks of it, were very unhelpful in resolving the situation. Yes, if the PayPal payment didn't come through the domains should probably ha…

> there was a valid reason for not being able to pay the bills (I.E. PayPal having a problem) // It's an excuse, but it's not payment. Continuation of the contract would presumably require payment. A clients inability to pay ends their right to receive service. Sure a larger company can usually manage to give grace in such situations (but often won't) but small businesses, as this appears to be, seem to suffer a lot…

I don't think that's the issue, the issue was that they suspended accounts and sites that had already been payed for, and the only payment method the company offers is PayPal so there was no reasonable way for the customer to pay the outstanding ballance immediately (About $5 from the looks of it). He also offered proof that the small outstanding ballance would be payed within a couple of days.

Yes if it was +$100 maybe more serious action should have been taken, but it was just one domain on an account that, up to that point, had never had any issues with payments before (I'm assuming that but the support guy is so defensive I'm sure it would have been brought up before now). Even so there is no reason to just straight out cancel someones entire account without even contacting them, for all they knew the payment could have gone through without a problem.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#46

Post by aeden »

samarudge wrote: post #34
jarin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jules is also listed as the company owner on the reviews: http://www.webhostingreviews.com/thiswebhost-reviews.htm And is the registrant of the domain name (and the only contact).

WhoIs lookup shows him as the domain owner Registrant Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson () Fax: South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB Administrative Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson (domains@thiswebhost.com) +1.5555555555 Fax +1.5555555555 South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB Technical Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson (domains@thiswebhost.com) +1.5555555555 Fax +…

Technically you are not allowed to provide fake information, although you may use an identity proxy as long as they provide the means to contact you in case of a dispute. In reality, enforcement of valid identity information is essentially non-existent.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#47

Post by [deleted] »

samarudge wrote: post #15
jarin wrote: post #5

I hate to say it, but when you go with bargain basement hosting, you're often going to get bargain basement quality. I'm sure we've all heard horror stories of shared hosting providers, but personally I've had one just completely disappear, taking my 2 years of prepaid hosting with them (along with hundreds of other customers, at least).

A few months ago, I was told by Rackspace that "We're not responsible for looking after your hardware" after they'd removed, and destroyed, a working hard drive from a dedicated server instead of replacing the disk that had failed, regardless of the price, all hosting is 'bargain basement quality', some are just more bargin than others =)

[deleted]

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#48

Post by palish »

jarin wrote: post #4
Hates_ wrote: post #2

One of the hardest things when communicating with customers is not taking it personally. Don't take criticisms or complaints as personal attacks and above all else resist the temptation to try and "one-up" your customer. Loads of times we've received pretty insulting emails, but done our best to be polite and helpful back, more times then not we've received a really thankful and praising email back in response. A lot…

It's doubly worse at a porn company. People already half-expect you to be scamming them somehow, and come into it with apprehension if not outright hostility. The upshot is when you give them amazing customer service, they turn into instant evangelists :)

Which porn company?

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

AlexC04 wrote: post #44
jarin wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's some truth there. Both sides acted like children, but the reason the focus is more on the hosting company is that they abused their power. As far as the attitudes go, when you're reselling $2.95/month hosting you're going to get $2.95/month customers. In my experience, cheap customers are the most likely to squabble and gripe and moan over tiny things and drive you crazy. But hey, you make your bed an…

and on that $2.95 your profit is $1.50 a month ... that doesn't buy a lot of "taking shit".

Maybe not, but collateral damage caused by handling it in a wrong way may be worth few orders of magnitude more.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#50

Post by [deleted] »

samarudge wrote: post #34
jarin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jules is also listed as the company owner on the reviews: http://www.webhostingreviews.com/thiswebhost-reviews.htm And is the registrant of the domain name (and the only contact).

WhoIs lookup shows him as the domain owner Registrant Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson () Fax: South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB Administrative Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson (domains@thiswebhost.com) +1.5555555555 Fax +1.5555555555 South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB Technical Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson (domains@thiswebhost.com) +1.5555555555 Fax +…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN