DreamHost $7.5M billing accident

[lilpixie]

I have a/cs with dreamhost and I actually like them! Yes I have hosting with cyberwurx etc but dreamhost is a cheap & cheerful option

lilpixie x

[pocoloco]

I am a happy DH customer as well !

I use multiple hosting companies. Dreamhost is the cheapest one by far and I can't even remember when my sites were down, while the other two hosts had serious downtimes last year. My biggest sites have all been transfered to Dreamhost to avoid downtime.

I love Dreamhost for their support, the huge space they are offering, the price and the one-click-installs. I hear bad stories about Dreamhost all the time and then I am asking myself: "Am I just a lucky customer ?" After many years I am still not facing problems with Dreamhost.

I have also received the "apologies mail" yesterday, but I am not sure if I am really billed 2 times. Haven't checked it yet and I don't care as long as they add 1 full year or send back the money. However, I agree it is a big mistake and I assume some people will be in trouble by this action.

[BadWolf]

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck then it is a duck.

Anyone still with DH is on borrowed time. If even getting billed for a year by mistake doesn't faze them, though, what would it take?

[Bertik]

It won't take anything BadWolf; I am also on three different servers and if I compare DH with others, then DH is winner (in a good way).

Bertik

[Varzi Network]

Originally Posted by Bertik

It won't take anything BadWolf; I am also on three different servers and if I compare DH with others, then DH is winner (in a good way).

Bertik

But only if you compare them to other bottom of the barrel services that cater to webmasters who make almost nothing.

[paul7]

DH is cheap. This is the only positive thing about them

[Hentaikid]

The recent 2 posts on the official blog are a lot more contrite and they're paying for overdraft charges as well as refunds, and they're refunding money left on accounts for people leaving the company - they're doing what they can. One thing about them is they're transparent, they always tell you what is going on, unlike others.

Obviously you can't compare them to expensive dedicated hosting, but to other virtual hosts? They come out really well. My first host, liftin turned into a bodybuilding site overnight (I was already gone by then, thank god) and yes, they were the official reccomended host from the xbiz boards. Velcom was not so bad, but they didn't tell you shit. One day my site was hacked with a pseudo child porn index (No images, thank god) and not a word from Velcom, same goes for downtime, what downtime? They didn't tell you shit.

Then webgems hosting. The official netpond host. We all know how THAT turned out.

Lelahosting I didn't use, because I was already wary of board reccomended hosts, but you also remember what happened there.

So all things considered, yeah, I'm going to stick with dreamhost.

If anything, their network ought to be handling a lot less load over the next few months, after losing so many customers... (Always a silver lining, see??) :P

[Varzi Network]

Originally Posted by Hentaikid

Lelahosting I didn't use, because I was already wary of board reccomended hosts, but you also remember what happened there.

Well im not going to try to persuade you to move but not all services are created equal.

[clsunli]

Originally Posted by Varzi Network

But only if you compare them to other bottom of the barrel services that cater to webmasters who make almost nothing.

don't think its fair to say theyre bottom of the barrel services for webmasters who make almost nothing. i dont make what the big shots make but i can single handedly support a family of 4 on what im hosting and I do. does fear of a little downtime make me want to move? no - the fear of doing something differently tho does. what if i cant handle dedicated? i dont know anything about it. i have always used virtual hosting plans so im a little intimidated to change. i have bigger fears of google going off the map than i do of my hosting company going somewhere lol actually i should say i have bigger fear of my sites going off google as my income soley depends on search engines. so hosting to me, just plays a small part. considering past history of downtimes, a few hours here and there aint gonna undo me, a few months of no traffic would.

[NY Jester]

I didnt get the coalation between DH and "webmasters not making any money"..What does the hosting company you use have to do with the revenue you bring in other than free hosting which just means youre "green" and dont know any better. I use two different hosting services. One is DH and I have to say Ive never had a problem, this issue was resolved for me before any transaction ever went through. I got the rebill email and within a few hours I received the apology/solution email. As long as the solution was followed through on, whch I believe it was as I didnt see any charges, then IM OK with it.

[Varzi Network]

Originally Posted by NY Jester

What does the hosting company you use have to do with the revenue you bring in other than free hosting which just means youre "green" and dont know any better.

If Playboy, Hustler or even The Hun was down for a single hour it would cost them thousands of dollars in traffic. If your sponsors were on some cheap $6 a month hosting plan and they were down frequently or things got slow im sure you would not be very happy about potential lost sales. In fact i have seen the rants of countless webmasters who were blacklisted from TGP's among other things due to hosting issues over the past decade.

I myself was once kicked from Zulu Database and Richards Realm because of hosting issues that were beyond my control. The owners did not care that it was not my fault they told me get a new host or get the fuck out. I ended up banned from the gallery database used by the Adult Buffet network of sites which was only open to a small circle to begin with. So while some might sit here and pretend that even minimal downtime or slowness has no effect on their income i happen to know better. If you have no problem with being lied to about what you are paying for and like to take risks then more power to you.

[facialfreak]

Originally Posted by paul7

DH is cheap. This is the only positive thing about them

The hooker I was with in Tijuana was cheap too ...

She even threw in Chlamydia at no extra charge!

[Antonio.Don]

Originally Posted by Varzi Network

If Playboy, Hustler or even The Hun was down for a single hour it would cost them thousands of dollars in traffic. If your sponsors were on some cheap $6 a month hosting plan and they were down frequently or things got slow im sure you would not be very happy about potential lost sales. In fact i have seen the rants of countless webmasters who were blacklisted from TGP's among other things due to hosting issues over the past decade.

Yes, you are right. But most (all?) of the DH users in this thread (including me) say they never had problems with downtime.

[Varzi Network]

Originally Posted by Antonio.Don

Yes, you are right. But most (all?) of the DH users in this thread (including me) say they never had problems with downtime.

So you all just managed to stay up when everyone else was down?

Just because you are willing to deal with being down every other week does not mean you never have downtime or problems. In fact here is just a brief summary of their own documented outages and slowdowns since October.

http://www.dreamhoststatus.com

Quick network upgrade
Posted 4 days, 2 hours ago (January 14th, 2008 at 2:58 pm PST)

Emergency maintenance window
Posted 1 week, 1 day ago (January 10th, 2008 at 5:16 pm PST)

Network hiccuping
Posted 1 week, 3 days ago (January 8th, 2008 at 12:08 am PST) by Terri

Annoying Network Issues
Posted 1 month ago (December 15th, 2007 at 2:19 pm PST)

system problems
Posted 4 weeks, 1 day ago (December 20th, 2007 at 12:36 pm PST) by danwy

Annoying Network Issues
Posted 1 month ago (December 15th, 2007 at 2:19 pm PST) by Jason C

Network hiccuping
Posted 1 week, 3 days ago (January 8th, 2008 at 12:08 am PST) by Terri

Network Outage
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago (October 26th, 2007 at 10:09 am PST) by brians

Major Outage
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago (October 25th, 2007 at 9:53 pm PST) by JamesH

Secondary name server experiencing packet loss
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago (October 23rd, 2007 at 9:31 pm PST) by Brian

Core Router Maintenance
Posted 3 months ago (October 19th, 2007 at 10:17 pm PST) by kitchen

Major networking issues
Posted 3 months ago (October 18th, 2007 at 2:03 pm PST) by kitchen

Network Issue
Posted 3 months ago (October 17th, 2007 at 12:08 pm PST) by Terri

Major networking issue.
Posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago (October 2nd, 2007 at 2:31 pm PST) by JamesH

[Hentaikid]

Those don't affect everyone, you can get a custom rss feed for the announcements that affect servers your stuff is on.

In any case I monitor my uptime with choker's betterbeup, and like I said, I have less downtime with them than with other virtual hosts. If I needed 99% uptime like the examples posted, I'd get it, but I don't do TGPs and the like, so I don't.

[Varzi Network]

Im going to offer my own Dreamhost coupon and see how the tune changes when there is no money to be made.

Thanks to the entire Dreamhost defence team for helping me figure out how to fix my broken wagon.

[ScreaM]

Originally Posted by paul7

DH is cheap. This is the only positive thing about them

Positive?

Look at Facialfreak's post.

[NY Jester]

Im not arguing any point at all. I am stating my opinion from my own experience with DH. I have used DH and havent experienced any problems yet, and I say yet because I dont know what the future brings. And that goes for any host. I have 20+ mainstream clients on non adult hosting so packages are less and the server load is much less, and I have had those very things happen with them..email outages, domains down, server crashes, maintenance, perl/cgi not running right SQL servers down..its unfortunate but it happens. That is over a 7 year stretch - wth probably mere hours of downtime, but Im sure sales were lost..I have one client with a 1.3 million online candy company and another with a $3 million a year cookie gift basket biz, and they understood when a form didnt work or their email was ut for maintenance...Im not banking a million myself from adult so Im not going to get crazy because I was down for an hour..which I havent been with DH..so far. I think webmasters should base their business decisions on their own experiences and not what someone else claims, if we lose sales, and stay with them so be it, thats our problem and if we dont ever lose uptime, or run into server errors, then we did what MOST webmasters havent. Weve all had outages, its part of the Internet. Not everything runs 100% and if it does hats off.

Thats just my 2 cents, OK maybe that was 5 cents.

[e_d]

Dreamhost allowed me to quit my job after 2 years using them in the adult biz.. I'm sure any host could have provided the same thing, but the fact that i have an emotional relationship with them will keep me as a customer until the end... Go dreamhost, love ya loads...I'm not saying new people should use them... I'm just saying in my situation it's hard to "quit" them.. Ide be glad to take a few hundred dollar charge any month since they have paid my bills for a few years and allowed me to be "free"...

[Hentaikid]

Originally Posted by Varzi Network

Im going to offer my own Dreamhost coupon and see how the tune changes when there is no money to be made.

I beg your pardon?

Thanks to the entire Dreamhost defence team for helping me figure out how to fix my broken wagon.

You might want to update your site's main page, when I go to a site that's still talking about Halloween specials in January I have to wonder if it's a live site.