The only problem with this tactic is that when they reran the job, they used the year 2008 instead of the correct year of 2007.  Their system then processed a years worth of charges in advance and that triggered  their Um, Whoops. blog post.

Now on the serious side, its good that they figured things out.  The bad thing is that a few accounts reportedly may have been shut down temporarily due to lack of payment.  Its unclear if any customers credit cards were actually billed for a years worth of service in advance.

From our perspective here, its great that DreamHost figured out the problem, its nice that they have a sense of humor in diffusing the situation, but if you are one of the customers that may have been impacted by the mistake, we hope that you get a little something for your time and trouble, maybe a discount, maybe a free month of service, maybe a free trip to Branson Missouri, but something to take your mind off the problem.

I have recently brought a reseller account and part of the deal was hosting guarenteed uptime was 99% however, the site is down a lot of the time so i was wondering how i go about making a formal complaint, stop them from doing this to other people and getting my money back.
The hosting company just refuse to help saying its not there problem.
Surely if my sites down, then its there problem?

Web Hosting Complaint – Help! – Web Hosting – My Site

Your website is useless if your host is down and your site is offline and so this is a very important question for many people. 

What is a Reseller?

A hosting reseller is a person that purchase up a block of hosting space and then resells that space to other sites.  They can typically get a slightly better deal as they are leasing hosting space in bulk.  However, the real advantage in being a reseller normally comes into play for webmasters that are managing multiple website accounts that they either own themselves or that they manage for their web clients.  The reseller level usually gives them more control over the accounts and easier access to provide a tech support interface.

What can you do to keep your Hosting Company up for as much of the time as they promised?

1. Always pay for your plan with a visa or mastercard.  An actual credit card, not a debit card or a paypal card.  If your provider fails to deliver, you can charge them back.  This should be a last resort as it will likely lead to a disruption in your web service and might force a move of your websites to a new host.
2. If things are that bad, move to a different host.  Do not reward bad service with continued business.
3. Keep good records of the situations where the hosting service goes down, and the amount of time that it is down during those situations even if you have to use a pocket watch ~ I recommend a screen recorder program if the host is down for less than 15 minutes at a time typically.  Make sure you note these records and the statistics to your host when you talk with them.
4. Before charging your host back, try getting them to improve their uptime.  Seek promises in writing, keep copies of emails and chat sessions.
5. Ask for discounts on your hosting plan to compensate for downtime.  It doesn’t fix the problem but places a financial impact on the host and alleviates your costs slightly.  That said, a discount probably is not worth as much as keeping your site(s) up and running and making you or your customers money.
6. Ask for an account upgrade at no additional cost.
7. Review your plan.  Maybe your plan is just not meeting your needs and you need to consider upgrading yourself.  That said, if your host can not deliver on its promises with the level of plan that you have now, then they may not do any better when you pay them more for a bigger plan.

Their customer service is some of the worst I have ever experienced (if I do not count at&t, which is most definitely the worst ever in history).

Anyway, they (iPower not at&t) are making an attempt to fix up their system, in what I can only assume is an attempt to improve their system so people will not have to call customer service so much and experience the second worst customer service in the world.

One of these days, I’ll find a way to end my dependence and maybe go through drug rehab or something and get away from iPower, but the time required to do that is currently estimated at 1 month of actual work and 4 months of hold time with iPower and I just don’t have it in me.  I’d rather be water boarded by Dick Cheney.