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.

He seems to have found more success with GoDaddy as compared to HostGator, which is probably not terribly surprising given the size of GoDaddy.

Dan mentions his efforts to fight off blogspot splogs which were not successful. 

I personally have found that it is possible to report Blogspot splogs directly to Google, but Google does seem to work at their own speed and sense of urgency.  On a lighting website that I worked as a copywriter, I found that several of my articles were getting splogged all the time.  One article that covered Seagull lighting of all topics, seemed to get picked up and spread around about 23 different sites.  Now, initially, I didn’t mind as the site owner was looking to spread the word about their products, but soon the splogs started to get the facts completely mixed up, backwards and false and so we ended up going after the batch of them with mixed results.

The normal path for people to address these issues is through the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) at http://www.copyright.gov/.

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.

Seems like a simple enough concept, don’t you think?

If you want money to come in (on time even) make it easy for your customers to pay you.

• accept cash
• accept checks
• accept credit card payments
• accept debit cards
• accept pay pal
• accept online payment options
• accept money 24 hours per day 7 days a week
• Make the payment process easy to find
• make the payment process easy to navigate and use
• Don’t make it difficult or frustrating

Your customers do not need an excuse to NOT pay you.  They do not need an excuse to delay paying you either.

Here’s an example that I encountered today with Ipower.  My credit card month and year needed to be updated.  They sent me an email telling me as much.  But their email looked like a phishing scheme.

So I tried to go directly to their site and log in somewhere into my account so I could update my cc date. 

My account wasn’t set to bill again for 7 months.  I was being proactive.

They didn’t appear to have any way for me to login, update my credit card and pay them!?

Now, I happen to know that their phone support sucks.  I do not say that casually.  I have had an extensive amount of experience with their phone support and it has never, ever been good.  Bad information, no positive results, and hours and days spent on hold listening to very bad hold music.

Avoid Hold Times with Live Chat

So I tried to avoid the long hold time, by using their LiveChat functionality.  In the past this has been much faster (although not much more successful).  It also enables me to get a written transcript of the conversation and advice, which you need with IPower.

Unfortunately, the chat service had a hold time too!  20 minutes of chat hold time.  Now, I’ve seen lots of companies online over the year that do customer service well and that do customer service poorly and everything in between.  From Amazon to Audible to North Face to even more obscure companies.  IPower seems to be a company that is unable to get any control over their business processes.

At least there was no bad hold music.

So to save you some ranting and raving in text, I put together the above video of the incident to highlight the problem. 

Excerpt of the Email Exchange

Dear Customer,
Thank you for contacting Ipower. I understand your hesitance, we do not have it linked on our website, if you chose not to do it through our secure link you can call 1-888-511-4678 option 3. There is an extremely long hold time at this point so please do it when you can set time aside.
Thank you

Rhonda S.
Billing E-mail Team

>
> Can you show me how I can navigate to this area from your website, so
> that I can confirm that I’m not going through a phishing link?

Excerpt of Chat Session

Chat InformationPlease wait for a site operator to respond.
Chat InformationAll operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Chat InformationAll operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Chat InformationAll operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Chat InformationAll operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Chat InformationAll operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Chat InformationAll operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Chat InformationAll operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Chat InformationAll operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Chat InformationAll operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Chat InformationAll operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Chat InformationAll operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Chat InformationYou are now chatting with ‘IPower’s Comment’
My Comment: hello
IPower’s Comment: Hi Brett. I apologize for the wait time. My name is Winston, how are you today?
IPower’s Comment: How can I help you today?
My Comment: There is no secure place where i can log in and update my cc info
My Comment: I would call your phone support for billing, but hold times are over an hour
IPower’s Comment: Due to high phone contact volume, we are unable to assist you on a timely manner.
IPower’s Comment: I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
IPower’s Comment: Also, you can e-mail the information to billing@ipowerweb.com.
My Comment: no problem, its been like that for years
My Comment: I cannot email my credit card information
IPower’s Comment: Brett, you need not have to worry, our e-mail is secure. In case, if you do not wish to send e-mail you can contact our Billing Department at Phone.
IPower’s Comment: You can contact our Billing Department via email or phone.
IPower’s Comment: Toll free : 1-888-511-4678 option 4
IPower’s Comment: Outside USA : 602-716-5398 option 4
IPower’s Comment: E-mail : billing@ipowerweb.com
IPower’s Comment: Fax number :
IPower’s Comment: 1-602-307-5438 (Inside USA)
IPower’s Comment: 011-1-602-3075438 (Outside USA)
IPower’s Comment: Hours of operation :
IPower’s Comment: Mon – Fri : 7am – 10pm PST
IPower’s Comment: Sat – Sun : 7 am – 7 pm PST
My Comment: and wait an hour to pay you?
My Comment: is there really no where I can login and do this?
My Comment: I have hundreds of accounts with you, to call for each of these is not really possible.
IPower’s Comment: Unfortunately, you cannot update the credit card information from your end.
My Comment: You almost make it easier to switch to a different company than to update the date on a credit card number.
My Comment: not your fault just commenting on the irony
IPower’s Comment: Yes, I do understand your concern. However, we are on the process of upgrade of the our vDeck which will also provide interface to update the credit card from your end.
IPower’s Comment: This upgrade should be done soon.
My Comment: weeks or months? my domain doesn’t expire for 7 months
My Comment: the domain I received the automated cc notice about
IPower’s Comment: It might take some months.
My Comment: I guess I’ll use that as my barometer to determine whether or not to stick with iPower. I appreciate your help.