Did Dreamhost ever unscramble its snafu?

[dreamshark]

I heard the beginning of that story, but not the end. Did Dreamhost users ever get their accounts unsnarled? Did they get their money back?

I'm thinking of this as I watch my own website hosting service, iPower, trip all over its own feet AGAIN as it attempts to transition to a new version of their hosting software. They screw up my account pretty much every time they try to change anything. Sooner or later, after many emails to clueless tech support people in India, they straighten it out. It's really irritating, but never quite irritating enough to make me go through the enormous hassle of switching services. And they ARE cheap, I must admit ($95/year, including automatic renewal of my primary domain).

This time it almost looked like it was going to work. I got the email about the Big Transition. My account was moved, and I could still get to www.dreamshark.com (which is the subdomain I currently use the most). However, my primary domain (kahnhome.org) and my other subdomain (toonerville.net) had disappeared, at least as far as the Internet DNS servers were concerned. I emailed tech support, getting a polite but completely wrong answer back the next morning ("I checked the domain ‘kahnhome.org’ and noticed that it is not registered nor hosted with us. Hence, you need to contact your current hosting provider regarding the Web site.") I tried again, forwarding old email as proof that they ARE my current hosting provider. Again with the polite, canned, wrong answer. I forwarded more proof. Finally I got a humble apology ("I am extremely sorry for the incorrect information that has provided in the previous e-mail. Could you please ignore that e-mail?"). Somebody fixed something, because www.kahnhome.org is back. However, I am still trying to convince them that toonerville.net was also registered through them. It looks like they failed to renew that one months ago, and somebody else may have grabbed it. *sigh*

Comments

[laurel]

Kevin got his money back, but it took almost a week or maybe a week. Probably longer than it would've otherwise because it happened right before a holiday weekend.

I've been looking around at other hosting providers; have even tried two before canceling them (they had 30 day trial periods so I got my money back).

What I've found is that DreamHost really does have one of the best user interfaces for making changes to your account. Their web-based admin tool is pretty spiffy.

There are better hosts if one is willing to do the sysadmin parts yourself (Slicehost would be the way to go if one is good with unix and likes setting everything up oneself).

But I'm still looking for a host to draw me away from Dreamhost.

I'd still probably recommend them with the following caveats: I wouldn't set up a credit card to autopay things or else would set a threshold (can't charge you more than X amount at a time). And if you have a mission critical server that can't handle downtime of multiple hours or even a day, it might not be the best because they've had their share of snafus over the years. Probably averages out to one a year, but for some people and applications, that's not acceptable.

They've never lost any of my data (web stuff, nor any email that I've noticed).

I haven't used them for domain registration (but they do that), I use joker.com for that and just have to remember to renew stuff (well, they email reminders).

[laurel]

If you ever want to give Dreamhost a look, it's very simple for me to create an account for you to use to look around.

And, of course, I'm an affiliate for them so if people sign up via my link, I get some money. (But that really doesn't influence my opinions here).

I've been with Dreamhost since 1999, I think. At least.