Has your hosting company ever screwed you?
 

OK, I literally just got screwed by my hosting company and I have no idea what to do about it. Basically I have been working on a new site for about 4 months (release date is next week) and my hosting company basically said **** you! The randomly close down my account and tell me that the account holder is the only one they are going to talk to. Yea well this wouldn't be a problem except the account holder has been gone for about 4 weeks and won't be back for another 3-4 months because of business. I paid for half the hosting and have been using it since the first day my friend (the account holder) has had it. If the account holder doesn't respond in 2 weeks they are going to close the account and delete the contents. Their is no way that I can get a hold of my friend till he returns. So I am going to lose 4 months of work (because all my Database backups are still on the server) and I have never made a full site backup to my local computer. Do you have any ideas? If not i figure it would still give you a good laugh...

always backup your content =/
Common Sense

Contact your friend, im sure he should have internet access where ever is is to talk to them be it vial mail or they live support system.

Yea I do db backups nightly lol but they are saved on the online server...

Ouch...never had an issue that like this. I hope I never do.

I sure know that I would never do it to any of my clients either...unless there is very very good reason to, and even then there would be some warning.

Can they not be persuaded to allow you to generate a full backup, download it and find another host?

Based on the info you have given, i don't think they are that much unreasonable. If an account is suspended that is usually only communicated to the owner of the account. Same goes for a backup, you don't want your host to give a backup of your site to just someone who asks for it and claims to be a partner of the owner (given that the host probably can not verify this).

True but i am the only one who has used the account in the last couple of months. I provided all the cPanel logins that have been used since the account was first created plus I am the owner of all the domains on the account. I think at the least that fact that i still know all the cPanel logins since the account was first made(which their has been 6) would be proof enough to at least give me a backup. Since before the account suspension I would of been able to do that anyways because I have the login info. Plus I am the founder of all 3 websites that the server hosts.

Well after arguing with the guy for about 2 days I managed to be able to have him unsuspend the account for 2 hours to do a backup. So I was supposed to get 3 site, about 4.5 gigs of files and 9 databases each one over 150mb off the server in 2 hours... needless to say that I had 7 different people including myself scrambling to get all the files and databases off the server in time. We made it by about 15 minutes if that...

well thats good to hear. I have never felt to screwed over in my life. They robbed my of 8 months of paid hosting(They canceled my account and I still had 8 months paid for, They refused to refund me) and my websites have been down for several days now and will not be able to get them up for at least 3-4 days. This whole thing has been a nightmare.

Anyone wanna recommend a good cheep hosting company?

Ouch, I'm sorry to hear all that.

For the size and resource usage of your sites I cannot recommend a good host as I've only been on a VPS/Dedicated server a couple of times and the service where sub standard to say the least.

Glad to see you got everything sorted, good luck with getting everything back up.

I'll ask.

Why was your account suspended and terminated with 8 months to go?

x2

Also there are no "good cheap" hosting companies, it's one or the other... Personally I use URLJet they have an unadvertised super basic plan for $14.95 and it goes up from there...

Best to have a look at the vBulletin.com Server Discussions forum.

They said it was because of I was using a large ammount of resources but my forums have actually been quite a bit slower then usual so I don't see what they could be talking about. One of my forums only had about 75% of the usual people on it then usual. Plus i didn't even have a 1/5 of my bandwidth and used so their is no way that I could use that much resources when I had so little people on.
Hmmmm I'll have to check that one out.

Maybe there were talking about the produced load and not the bandwidth ? Resizing an image from 15000x15000 down to 750x750 pixels produces a lot of load on the server. Also some VB addons eat some resources.

I'm sure they were complaining about this

Yea I am just saying that the less bandwidth meant their was less people then usual, their for server load should of been down.

We got suspended once for server load - after complaining for months that the load on the server was too high! Since then I download my daily db backups via FTP scripts. And download full site backups monthly.

Is this guy deep in the jungle or something? Have him call and tell them they can talk to you. Not a big deal.

Bingo, everyone is reachable unless he's in the armed forces i.e. deployed overseas then it's a matter of when/if they can talk and have access etc but you said Business, well this is that ion one shape or another so give him a ring.

Marco mentioned the hosting thread, here's a link: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...osting-Options

The one I like most in particular is this thread: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...monials-thread

Very simply put though, dealing with Hosts is just like a Car Dealership... sometimes you get everything as stated, sometimes as-is, and often times you have to read the fine print to know more and that they have you by the basketballs ;) so in essence some are with a host that they love and many others do like Chevrolet for example while others would never use them, strict Ford lovers catch my drift?

No, he is overseas and is doing several large business deals and i have been able to have him get the chance to send 1 email in 1 month. He is busy beyond belief and yea..

Then send 2 eMails, every day!
C'mon man... you want your data or not?

Make it easy for him.
Send him a PDF, where he can provide his information and what not, and a letter authorizing you to do whatever is needed on the account.

Or ask the hosting company who can he contact DIRECTLY (no phone-menus).
He won't be pissed by 5 eMails a day... yet he'll be pissed about a missed deadline on a project you took on.

My 0.02! :)

I can't say I was screwed but I had some poor service from dreamhost. Currently using globalgold and I'm very happy with their support.

I said screw it and bought a dedicated server now i handle all my own problems :)

I used a company called UH hosting for 3 years, towards the last year, I found them rude, abrupt and pretty useless at talking to customers and so much more, lets just say I will NEVER use them again!!

I had once a dedicated server, where my provider did run on a second account for his customers gameservers (I rented the full box, not a part).

Lucky he didn't wanted to involve the police and send all my money back.

So watch also on own Servers close, still much space to screw you over ;).

Yes, that's why I switched from HostNine to HostGator. Had countless technical and customer service issues with Host9. HostGator has been giving me about a 99.9% up time and has a competent and courteous support staff.

Yeah, HostGator took some money from me even when I tried to cancel.