I'm hoping to create a new sticky for this forum listing a number of disreputable and unreliable hosts. This might include excessive downtime (i.e. below 99% or 98%), poor support or anything fraudulent as well as other underhand activities - I'd be very grateful if members could post them in this thread, and I'll create the sticky thread fairly soon listing them.

Note that I don't want hosts just suggesting their competitors without any evidence and I'd prefer it to be customers or review companies that answer.

Many thanks,
Dan

I find that it would be at least equally useful to have a thread about reputable hosts. In the end, that's what most people are looking for.

I can point out quite a few. I quite 20 something jobs in the past 3 years because of negeglance on the hosts. I promise not to be bias.

This thread would be useful as long as people realize that a lot of people work for web hosts that post in forums or are are paid by them to post.

I think information regarding unreliable web hosts would be much more useful than a reliable hosts thread.

And look for the link drops in the sigs

Originally Posted by joder

This thread would be useful as long as people realize that a lot of people work for web hosts that post in forums or are are paid by them to post.

I think information regarding unreliable web hosts would be much more useful than a reliable hosts thread.

And look for the link drops in the sigs

I have no oppion and quite frankely I Dont care about a few sales. I make my income already by the clients already on our servers. *just incase that was a stab at me*

I belive in ethics and am a proud member of the Webhosting Code of ethics member.
And no I'm not paid to post I'm paid salery

I don't see why you thought it was about you. Have you taken the time to look over the WT forums? Link drops are all over the place every time a web host issue is mentioned.

EDIT: BTW, I have made the same comment as my previous post more than once on this forum. I see it happen all the time.

OK well I think this min-debate is just about over!

If anyone has any companies they'd like to rant/complain about with sufficient evidence, do so.

I'll shortly create a sticky thread to list hosts mentioned in this one.

Dan

I'd like to bump this thread so hopefully people will notice and begin posting - I really need your help to create the new thread.

Thanks in advance,
Dan

I'll start the ball rolling Dan

1and1.co.uk
- have worked on my cleints sites that were hosted there
- if you got through on the telephone to their Phillipines based helpdesk it seemed to be pot luck as to how good the help was. I have to say that some of the staff were very good.
- cancelling a 1and1 hosting account is pretty hard, they don't want you to leave. Even after an account was cancelled some have been billed afterwards, meaning more support calls to get the transactions cancelled.

Thanks for the information. I'll be creating the sticky thread really soon. Anyone else had poor experiences with a host?

Fasthosts.... along with other issues mentioned around this forum, like having all ftp and email passwords reset because they have a security problem, I have one major issue with them...

I use a dedicated Unix sever here in the office. Its not payed for by me so I have no say in who its rented from. The first one we had a year or so ago stoppe letting us add databases and was asking for login details in our control panel - something it had never done before...

Called the support line - answer, "You must have logged in through SSH and changed the details Sir..."

Without details for me to be able to log in through SSH, this was very unlikely... After a few weeks of arguing our case (without much luck) they agreed to reset the whole thing for us, so we backed everything up and thats what we did.

Straight away, a stranged FTP problem occured... We couldn't FTP whole site up inone go. The folders had to be created maually, and then everything put in them or we got a "No such file or directory" error...
Again, FH support was next to useless.

After switching to a Windows server (then back to Unix again.. not my choice!) we got a brand new, all singing all dancing server - With ANOTHER PROBLEM!

from day one, it wont accept .htm as the default landing page for a site - we just get the apache holding page.... Back on to the phone to support again...

Now this is where I get to main reason for posting here.
The level of customer support from this call actually astounded me so much I had to give the phone to someone else near me and leave the room...!

I explained the problem and was faced with an 10 second silence...
I explained the problem again.... Off went the chap to see what he could do to fix it (by putting me on hold for a few minutes where he obviously went to ask someone else...)

After he came back he told me that they could send it down to "2nd level support" but that would cost us £75 + vat for them to do...

But hang on... this server is NEW - its just been activated... and it dosnt work? Why should we have to pay for it to be fixed???

After more silence and then more waffle about "are you sure nothing has been chaged via SSH?" I started to get annoyed and came up with the outstanding speech of...

"If I went to Tesco (large UK Supermarket...) and bought a microwave, got it home and it didn't work, Tesco would exchange it for one that did - or at least fix it..."

(no heres the reply that stunned me...)

"Well Sir, using your analagy, your microwave IS working, its just not heating up to the correct temperature..."

*Falls on the floor from that remark*

"Well that would mean its still not working and they would fix it!"

At that point, I gave the phone to someone else and went and had a strong cup of tea.

In fairness, when we complained to customer services about this advisor, we did get someone call back, appologise and say they would look into it...

3 Months later... Nothing...

Now we either duplicate the index page to .html (cos that worls ok) or just build the whole thing in .html

Originally Posted by rolda hayes

Now we either duplicate the index page to .html (cos that worls ok) or just build the whole thing in .html

Yes. You need a new host but to solve your problem above put the following in .htaccess file and put it in the document root of your hosting

DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm

Thanks for the information. I'll be creating the sticky thread really soon. Anyone else had poor experiences with a host?

I think that everyone had such experience, especially when bought tons of sp/bandwidth for few bucks. And soon you will start getting requests from web hosting companies to deelete them from the list. IMO

There is freedom of speech - simply telling customers about which companies former customers have had problems with is hardly breaking the law

Hi whym

Don't know if this has already been covered but domains with the status "locked" have caused me big headaches in the past. Some hosts do this as standard. 1and1 in particular as I had to move 20 domains away from them.

Another absolute must for me is a telephone number.

Originally Posted by blue-dreamer

I'll start the ball rolling Dan

1and1.co.uk
- have worked on my cleints sites that were hosted there
- if you got through on the telephone to their Phillipines based helpdesk it seemed to be pot luck as to how good the help was. I have to say that some of the staff were very good.
- cancelling a 1and1 hosting account is pretty hard, they don't want you to leave. Even after an account was cancelled some have been billed afterwards, meaning more support calls to get the transactions cancelled.

OK, now I'll bloody well rant.

20 domains to transfer and they DE TAGed about 5 of them.

Nice going guys. 'nough said.

I've also had negative experiences with 123, fasthosts and a whole load of "free" domain name companies in my time but you live and you learn, or do I (read my signature )

Originally Posted by whym

Note that I don't want hosts just suggesting their competitors without any evidence and I'd prefer it to be customers or review companies that answer.

The problem as I see it will come when few disenchanted clients start attacking their old WHC and ranting about things they themselves brought by not reading ToS or examine properly plan options and learn about WHC support policies and believe that if support is free then they can "chat" with support day and night etc.

You probably already had 1 or 2 clients like that and you surely understand that there will be a few per every thousand of satisfied customers that no matter what you do to keep them happy will be b****ing and complaining as if you had ruined their lives.

If you want to have unbiased survey then you should look what clients say about their hosts in reviews posted on WHC sites. Honest host will post name, email and site information so you can contact reviewer in person and ask real questions and if host careless about reviews then your list won’t make any difference because Joe Public hardly will be using it anyway

Also keep in mind liability for reviews that might be fabricated by competition or where the only fault WHC had is hosting some moron who has blaming his own mother for giving him life


My 2c.
fastreplies

Thanks for the reply FastReplies. I try to source my information from as many places as possible to keep it fair. I also try to indicate that certain things, such as poor support, may only be a minor issue while credit card fraud on the other hand may be more serious.

I may alter the sticky thread to emphasise this further.

AVOID is a very authority sturdy word and implies that you are basing you statements on your personal experiences with particular host. I would change it to something like recommendation



fastreplies

OK changed