Web Hosting

[Sinon]

I can't think of a witty title, I;m too pissed off.



Years ago (read: 2005) I ran a reasonably successful general discussion forum. It went through a lot of incarnations. PHPBB2 using the free host Forumer, InvisionFree, Zetaboards, Jcink, and eventually vBulletin. As you may guess, it began as a freely-hosted site with a free domain given by the hosts. Eventually the traffic reached a level that I decided it was time to upgrade to paid hosting, and a paid domain name, to make it more professional. Plus with free hosting, there wasn't all that much I could do customization-wise without creating server slowdowns and other issues.



Enter 1and1 Internet Limited. They seemed pretty good--low price domain names, and reasonably good deals on hosting. So in 2008 I took the plunge and set it up. There were a few issues with them, but their customer service generally helped me through it and were quite friendly and useful.



Fast forward to 2010. The website I ran was on a massive decline, and I couldn't really warrant the upkeep for it. So I closed up shop, and sent through a cancellation order to the hosting company. I received confirmation that they had closed the account.



Fast forward to today, 2012. I receive a letter from 1and1 Internet Limited about an outstanding balance payment for the 12th September 2012. This seemed odd, as I closed the account down and was told it was gone. I called their customer service (And despite being a UK company I was greeted by an American named Samir) who was less than helpful. After much backtracking through old email accounts, reactivating various things, I managed to log in to my account, only to find that despite confirmation they never followed through with the closure. As a result I have to pay up because I have no proof that they told me it was closed originally. And why would I? It was two years ago, on an email account I no longer used.



So yeah. Word of warning, any of you budding forumites/site owners. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY.

 

[Jazzy]

This is a shame you have to pay. I, however, would have tested the account once they told me it was cancelled just to make sure. I never take anyone's word when I cancel accounts. Good example would be that I once had a Verizon cell phone. I wasn't happy with it so I called and cancelled service. I heard the other person on the line typing away. They then said: Done. Your phone will no longer be in service as of 5 pm today. At 6 pm that same day I called my cell phone number. You guessed it, the phone started ringing. I called back and after an hour on the phone, I was told the phone is now deactivated. I made them hold on while I called the cell number. This time the phone did not ring.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I'm going to bump this thread because I'm currently using 1 and 1 (or actually it's called ionos now.) I did use them in the past for registering my domain name, actually about a year after this thread was posted. I haven't had any issues with ionos, but maybe since they rebranded they are better now. I recommend ionos actually, I got a good deal on a year of hosting last year but they no longer offer $6 for a year anymore.

 

[Nebulous]

We use Hawk Host over here. They are great.