Small webhost robs me...
 

Hiya,

Just though I'd share. Not so long ago I was looking for a webhost, and after a few offers I was intrigured by one that seemed to be just what I needed.

500Gb hdd, 'unmetered bandwidth'

$20 setup, $80 for the year, will even register my domain for free?

Sounds great.

After paying, I didn't hear anything for days. Then when I did get my account, it lagged horribly and the control panel was almost unusable.

Then when I tried to upload anything, I just got error after error after error. Bearing mind at this point I also had a paid designer waiting to build a site for me.

When I finally received 1 reply to my 10 emails, and it was finally fixed, I look a my accounts nameservers and realise the host si nothing more than a reseller selling budget hosting!!!

I promptly asked for my money back, as he promised me a 7day money back guaruntee, and my account was only functional from this Sunday, so I figured no problem its well under 7 days.

Now he says he wont refund none of my money, he owns the domain (which is quite a good domain IMO) and it's tough luck.

I'd love to laugh at $100 but Im just starting out and thats pretty much most of my investment.

WTF can I do? I've already set up Paypal dispute. The user is on GFY and Im giving him a chance to act professional about this before I name him and his business. Im sure robbing a 19yr old of 100 bucks is hardly worth a hit on his rep.

names? :)

see sig =))

need anything ill hook you up

I don't want to name him yet, I'd rather give him a fair chance to resolve the situation.

Not only pissed about the money, but he stole my domain too.... :(

Ive now gone with a UK host who has the servers situated about 30 miles away :)

For peace of mind, im driving down this weekend.

(p.s. UK server... kiss my ass 2257!)

If it sounds too good to be true . . .

yeah, something I've learned the hardway! lol

If your gonna be a tight ass, your gonna get shit service.

Service has a price.

500Gb of space? damn

unmetered bandwidth? damn again

all for $6.66/month? damn

bandwidth is cheap but not that cheap

That sounds almost like DreamHost - only good in dreams.

Clue # 1: don't let your domain in other peoples name ....
Clue # 2: read clue # 1 again.

You get what you pay for.....

hehe luckily for me I learnt this lesson early!

I guess thats how we learn :) by fucking up

......................

The host has emailed me to say he will contact Paypal about the situation :thumbsup

It seems the host, Phillip Martucci-Egan http://www.atomicwebhost.com/ is planning on riding out a Paypal dispute.

I have offered to lose the setup cost, and the first month of hosting (even though for nearly 2 weeks it didn't even work.

I simply want a refund for the months that I have no intention of using his hosting (which is only resold hosting from someone else).

What an idiot. He's trying to setup a business, and yet he acts as if he's never seen $100 before and needs to scam someone out of it.

I would have though maintaining a good reputation was worth much more than that to him.....

Well his site is currently "down to re design" so obviously he did need your $100.

the cheap comes expensive, heh?
wish you good luck with resolving that

and also in my opinion hosting is too important to try to save few bucks on it
stick with the well knows and estabilished names, even if its a lil bit more expensive it comes cheaper when you consider the lost money cause of downtimes and other problems with cheap hosts

Take it as a lesson, the golden rule for hosting is: What you pay for is what you get.

If you are just starting, you can save money on content, on design, on scripts, but solid hosting and and a good domain registrar are the most important basics...all your income depends on them.

well, it seems like your $100 and this thread made him "re-design" his site :1orglaugh

hehe funny that aint it....

His last e-mail says that no matter what Paypal decide, my account is cancelled.

So if Paypal have a brain and force him to refund my money, its all good and I put it down to experience.

If Paypal are the dim-wits that I've heard they can be, and decide the dispute in his favour, Im $100 out of pocket with not even a shitty hosting account to show for it.

What REALLY pisses me off, is I even know how much he pays for his hosting which he is selling me - budget $24.99 "unlimited"

So now I know, if I had approached probably anything over 50gb/month he would probably have cancelled the account.

I just can't believe how much of a dick this guy is. His e-mails are as if he's a fucking retard....

He says that the account was created on 29th.... and although it was unusable (no ftp function at all, the account was all corrupt and had to be reset on 5/6th May) his 7 day refund policy starts from 29th.....

Phillip Martucci-Egan you are a cowboy

That sucks to hear.. If you are still in a lurch, I have no problem hooking you up on our shared platform with a $100 credit to start you off. This should last you a few months to get you on your feet at which time you can make more long-term arrangements.

Otherwise good luck!

Paypal won't cover things like webhosting. Your fucked. Name names, point fingers, and make them look like shit. Its probably the only chance you have

talk to webair mike mate, they host from the smaller to largest guys. They are very accommodating if you need you to upgrade your plan

Also contact the BBB. If he doesn't fix it atleast he's branded for life in their database as a scammer.

Thanks very much for the kind offer :) I have however found a replacement host. This time, a UK host who physically own the servers, and is within driving distance so should anything like this happen again, he wouldn't be able to hide behind e-mails :thumbsup

Well im hoping they realise that not only am I covered under the sellers 7 day refund policy, but the guy has now cancelled my account when he's claiming a years worth of payments.

I've already started contacting various sites, and I intend to never let this guy get another customer until I get refunded :thumbsup

haha funnily enough, Ive just noticed that he has changed the WHOIS info on his domains to private LMAO A week ago, they had on his phone number, address, everything :thumbsup

Sure.. basically his "website" is non-operational, he's trying to play the disappearing act after having been in biz for a couple of months - classic :pimp

Still checking but smells he may have been involved with hosting in the past where that also ended up failing. Either way, Phillip Martucci-Egan is another lump of human waste heading for settlement day.


BTW... DaddyHalBucks - what do you know about atomicwebhosting.com??? It's not a name which is totally unfamiliar to you, is it?? :pimp

Error... Last post should read atomicwebhost.com and not atomicwebhosting.com..

Whad dd paypal say about all this?

wow, thats some fine detective work there!!! :thumbsup

how/where you find that out?

Hey there,

I'm a rep from Atomic Web Host and I plan to discuss this mater with the people of GFY because our company feels that you are being mislead.

On April 29th, we set up Mr. Goodings account and it was fully functional. We sent him his log in details and let him log in. He started creating MySQL databases as soon as he signed up. Two days later, he sent us an e-mail saying he couldn't upload files. We investigating this issue, and it was true, and got it fixed within a few hours. In exchange, we gave him his own NS's for his inconveniences.

The site was working fine since then until 2 days ago when our servers were down for weekly maintenance for about 2 hours. He e-mailed us as soon as they went off line, and we let him know, as well with our other new customers that they were down. We got them back up and running, and everything was fine.

Yesterday at around 3 P.M. EST, we received an e-mail asking us to refund his money that he was taking his hosting elsewhere. We told him that we cannot refund him, that the 7 day money back guarantee is now over. He filed a claim with Paypal for a refund.

Talking to PayPal today, they agreed that we owe him nothing since he canceled days into his account and the 7 day money back guarantee is void. Now due to harassing e-mails, we are going to let PayPal solve this and we are currently not responding to any e-mails.

We are also currently down for re-design, as we have been for a few weeks now, doing a complete do-over of our sites. This hasn't been new. We have pleanty of customers that would give you their word saying that they love our hosting. We offer direct IM support through all major IM's, and e-mail support all of our customers have.

WHOIS info is still up, and will remain up.

PayPal agreed it is on his fault, because he did not closely read the 7 Day Money Back Guarantee. They are currently reviewing the claim.

I host a few domains on Atomic Host and I have never had a problem.

OK.... Since you felt the need to pull down your whole website while alleged redesign was going on, perhaps you can state the corporate name, full postal address and phone contact number for your company??

wow this is funny!!!!! :thumbsup

The file upload bug was their from the start. Ask HadesPass - he tried to start working on my account but couldn't upload anything. After a bit fo investigation we discovered the account was fucked.

On the weekend of May 5th/6th the account was RESET which appeared to fix the problem.

I experienced slow servers and poor support. My product was not functional until the weekend of May 5th/6th. I asked for a refund a few days later. As far as I'm concerned, THIS is well within your refund policy.

Now, you are trying to steal a years hosting money from me, and yet you have terminated my account after less than a month!!!

Paypal have not agreed anything in your favour, you have provided a bullshit digital delivery code which means fuck all because I didn't even have a working account until this weekend.

Everything about the way you handled my "account" was horrible. I am surprised you have ANY customers at all. You have simply purchased hosting from here: www.valu-host.com and sell it on.

valu-host (valuhost4u) sells this lifetime hosting for $24.99 (unlimited EVERYTHING) on Ebay, or $39.99 on their site.

This explains why my service was so shit.....

did he tell you he just resells these guys hosting? www.valu-host.com

When my account was first created, my domain was at their nameservers until he realised this and changed it quickly lol

We own our servers, and do not resell anything. We do, however, know the owners of Valu-Host, but we do not resell off of them.

PayPal has not officially agreed in our favor, however, when talking to them today after a phone call they said that the buyer doesn't have a case. He told us exactly what to put, and we have done so. If PayPal feels we should refund you, we will gladly do it.

We have not terminated your account, you asked to cancel it yesterday and we did it. We did not give you back a refund because it was after 7 days.

The account was working fine because you were setting up many MySQL databases. On the 2nd day, it went down, and we got it back up within a few hours and e-mailed you. The server speed is fine, and the only real downtime we had were from the weekly updates.

no they havn't.

closely read it? YOU NEVER FUCKING PROVIDED IT

"Full 7 day refund from date of web hosting account creation

"creation the act of bringing something into extistence."

"web hostingthe activity or business of providing storage space and access for Web sites"

The providing of storage space did not come into existance until May 5th/6th. Therefore my claim for a refund was within your 7 day policy.

Therefore you are a dick

The website has been down for redesign, look up some archives of early April and you will find it. Find the WHOIS information and it will be up as well, we never and never intend to have them private.

The account was working fine the day we put it up. If I would of took a screen shot I would glady provide this.

so you feel it good business practice to steal 100 bucks for a years worth of hosting, and only provide less than 1 month of hosting?

Thats how your gonna run your hosting reselling business, by stealing from people?

Are you genuinely saying, you think it fully fair and legitamate, to charge me $100 for a few days of "hosting"?

And the error that affected my account from working does not affect MySQL databases. Read up on your WHM/cPanel manual :thmbsup

I'll try asking again... you obviously just overlooked the post....

Would also add... since when have you been in business using atomicwebhost.com???

Will wait and get the fuller picture before saying much and let any "conflicts" show up :pimp Things can appear to be something they are not, but a gutty feeling says otherwise.

No, what I'm saying is that when we have many clients and your the only one complaining, we have something going on here. You heard John, he said everything was fine on his end.

and ffs stop syaing I cancelled my account.

This was my e-mail to you after realising you were reselling me hosting:

I asked for a refund. You don't cancel the account and then refuse a refund... are you retarded?

Simple question... since when did you have these "many clients" and what is the legal entity or DBA and the address of this enterprise?

We registered this domain in early April. I have also worked for Valu-Host, and also was partnership in 2 other hosting companies before leaving them all and forming my own. Also owned a reseller account back in early 2003, before going to work for hosting companies.

You can find the address by looking up the Whois information. We have received many clients from Valu-Host after switching from their shifty business.

Sure.. that ties in. And... what is the corp name and address you are trading from and taking hosting orders from clients?

You filed a claim with PayPal telling them about canceling the account. Also, thats not the e-mail you sent canceling the account, we have other ones.

Webby I'm guessing you've smelt another rat with this guy???

OK.. thanks. So basically there is no corp and this enterprise is operated from Hanley Road?

Atomic Web Host
217 Haney Road
New Galilee
Pennsylvania
16141