Webhost4Life -WORST web hosting service EVER!

The BBQ Pit
1

Gah! How incompetent can a company be? I purchased hosting services the beginning of February. Late February I put up a dummy website testing the service. Last Friday I uploaded my actual web page. I verified that the website behaved as expected and then went about my business. Saturday evening I logged on to create an email account. After creating the email account, I tested the web page.

Of course, all I get now is a 401 error. The website has been down since then. The email works --sporadically. Send an email to my WH4L account and it is just as likely to bounce as to go through.

WH4L has admitted that the DB has issues. So I’ve been begging this company to delete the account and recreate it. Finally today, they said they would do that —if I pay them. That’s right I get to pay them for their fabulous screw-up. They did say they would consider reimbursing me the difference on the old account. Why do they have to do it this way? That’s the way their billing is set up.

Google Webhost4Life and what do you see in the ad list?
This:
“Problems w/ WebHost4Life? Get Powerful Windows .NET Hosting with MS SQL for only $4.95/mo.”
and this
“WebHost4Life Customers Community site Speak out!”
and this
“WebHost4Life Customers We Want you here at Green Geeks! WH4L coupon saves $25 on your order”

So how did I end up with this barely functioning company? Recommendation of course!

Some of my favorite lines from WH4L include:

“We’ve given your issue the highest priority.”
I don’t say it, but I think, “Really? That’s supposed to make me feel better? Your highest priority techs are unable to resolve a 401 error in a timely matter? You actually think I believe you’ve given my matter highest priority?”
*
“We can’t do that because of how our system is set up.” * YOU BIG FAT LIAR. Of course you could delete/ recreate the account. No system is that poorly designed."

The email account seems to be working for me." Idiot. Did you not just hear me tell you that the account works intermittently? One email will go through and the next will bounce like a super ball even though both emails originate from the same address.

Finally, a hearty FUCK YOU to Mark Dunn for recommending this shitty company. Pardon me, while I go find a new provider.

2

I feel for you. I had to switch from Chamber Gates earlier this year. They were good for a few years, then the service started getting crappy and eventually I couldn’t contact them at all. Had a big email & FTP outage that lasted for a week or so, then it’s like they disappeared off the face of the earth.

I had to go above their head to get my domain transferred without their consent, because they never responded to my requests for a transfer. Then I sent repeated emails (and left voicemail messages) asking them to stop billing me and stop hosting my files.

They just charged me again for the new billing cycle. I had automatic billing set up through my bank account, so now I have to work with them to block Chamber Gates from continuing to bill me for services I asked them to discontinue at the beginning of February. Grrr.

3

Linode and Slicehost are great.

4

I went through a couple bad hosts before I hit on A2. I’ve had them since December now, and have had absolutely no issues.

5

Thanks for recommending them. They seem to offer a bit more than I need.

I’ve chosen a new host. I hesitate to say which one simply because I based the selection on internet reviews. I will say that putting up my site was easy and the service is MUCH faster. The control panel actually works too. Now I have to see about changing my domain control. Using WH4L’s domain control panel, I’ve attempted to point to my new domain name servers. Of course it’s impossible to tell whether WH4L’s utilities are making the change. Currently I’m using a redirect to bring up my page.

6

Dreamhost has been golden for me for a few years now.

7

Just yesterday I switched a client of mine from one of my hosting packages to another, both on NetworkSolutions. I asked them if I could move the SQL databases myself, they said no. I asked them to move it. They said they would.

At the end of the day, after they confirmed the transfer was complete, I switched the client’s site, took a look…hmm…the databases aren’t connecting properly…strange. I called tech support, they confirmed the databases had been transferred (after about an hour of phone tree, hold time, and explaining myself.) I decide to actually log in to the databases and look at that they sure did transfer the databases, BUT NONE OF THE TABLES THEREIN. Empty databases. I balled them out and here was their response “I guess they didn’t realize you wanted the data transferred too.”

Oh really? So I just wanted the “bases” not the “data”? What is there to databases if not the tables? How do you transfer a database without the data?

The guy then has the nerve to tell me I could have transferred them myself. Excuse me? The other guy I talked to this morning told me the complete opposite, and I’m pretty sure the guy telling me his company needed to to extra work was not the liar.

I got his supervisor on the phone, (who did not "Tell me exactly what the CSR had just said. Dicks, I hate it when they try to tell me that) who said he would escalate the problem and have it done right away. I asked for an ETA, was told “There is no way of knowing” or some bullshit like that. Was told I would receive a call from the (liar) CSR when it was completed.

Got a call from him an hour later (At this point I started the transfer three hours ago, three hours past the time they had originally told me the databases would be complete. Three hours of my client trying to access their site and getting coding errors. Two hours after I was supposed to have started my weekend with my husband.) telling me the tables were in the databases. They were in 3 of the databases, but not the forth. I am ready to murder them through the phone.

They will get me an engineer, they say, he will make it all better, they say. Mr Engineer is the type who is super fun to talk to if you are in a good mood, but when you are blazing with the fiery anger of a thousand suns his jokey “How ya doin’” is not doin’ it for me. He promises he will get things fixed for me, never fear, all is well, I’ll take care of it for you. He asks if he can call me back when he gets it taken care of. I tell him it’s almost 8:00 now and I’ll call him back in an hour after I eat some fucking dinner.

9:00-- I call Mr Engineer back. And then am placed on hold for nearly an hour until he gets his ass ready to talk to me. The whole time I’m checking that fucking database. Finally he condescends to speak to me and tells me it’s fixed. You better believe I kept his ass on the line while I checked every nook and cranny of that fucking site.

11:00–finally email my client with a recap of the evening, saying all is now well. Then I spend the next hour on FlickChart.com obsessively grooming my top 100 until the rage passes enough for me to sleep.

*Footer: Any time I call there it’s at least 30 minutes of hold time, transfers, explaining the problem over and over and asking if they would read the fucking notes on the ticket before contradicting the stuff I was told on an earlier call before I actually get anywhere with anyone. Usually after I hang up nothing gets done right, so I started just not letting them go until I got a solid promise that someone would be calling my ass back in the next hour with an update.

How fucking hard can it possibly be to transfer a database? I work with databases all the time on our locally hosted sites and even when I don’t have a fucking clue how to do something I usually get it done in a couple hours. How could this have taken 12 hours?

8

Sorry Little Bird, but I had to laugh when they thought that only the bases had to be moved- not the data. Dear me.