When your web host screws you.... We need your support!
 

First things first, I want to say that I am sorry that this is my first post to this board. If you can beleive it I really wasn't aware of what this board was all about until very recently.

I run Somagirls.com and we've been a content producer for about 4 years now. The Somagirls.com site has been up for about 2 years now and before that we mainly made content on contract for some magazines and the like. I have been involved in the internet as a router design engineer and software engineer for internet servers for about 7 years now. We are not new and we are very legit.

Recently I moved to thailand. You may know my other site of pictures from our life here as www.onethaiplace.com which is a really crappy site by the way which I put up for my family to see some snapshots we took of this beautiful place. When I moved to thailand I asked my friend and partner (big time business guy we will call Gary) to pay for my hosting charges using his credit card so I wouldn't have any problems with overseas payments, etc.

I have paid every bill and I currently owe nothing to my provider unless you include this months usage which has not yet been billed.

Today they suspended my domains because I said that if they could not reduce costs that they would lose us as a client. They responded as you will see in the below emails saying that they needed to get authorization to bill our credit cards for previous amounts. Amounts that they have already been paid in full on. They say that because of our threat to leave that they will hold our domains in a disabled state. Keep in mind that we owe them nothing at this moment and that we WILL be paying our bill as we have always done. Current balance $0.00.

Please review the email attached if you have problems believing this story and I would understand if you do. I still cant beleive it!

If you want to help us out please send an email to [email protected] and tell him to grow up. We are not appealing for content purchases and please dont think for a moment that this is a spam technique. I mearly want to dispense some internet style justice to a very bad player in our community.

Thanks very much for reading such a long message - the email log follows:

Paul,

Grow up.

I do not see any link that you have referred me to. I also do not understand why my bank needs to contact me about
a transaction that I put on my credit card in feb! In fact I have since closed that account. You have been paid in
full already for this amount. If you want to get nasty, then its nasty you are going to get. I will send in your
forms if you provide me with the link. Then you WILL release me domains upon payment in full from my friend Gary.
If you do not or if you make up reasons to be an asshole about this then you will be served papers in person within
three days of the receipt of the papers you have requested. I will be showing these authorization forms to our atty
and if he says that its bullshit then you can forget that also.

This message stream is being web logged and I am already getting emails of sympathy from other webmasters on this.
You may wish to think about how your petty actions might affect your future business.

John


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Paul Mitchell" <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 22:01:59 -0700

John,

I confirm that my fax number is 602-923-0263. If you will read the
authorization form that I sent you the link to, you may see that this
fax number is very clearly displayed on that form.

Your sites were certianly not disabled malicously. They were disabled
because of your threat: "Charge me a whole lot extra for this and lose
a client." Anytime one of our customers exceeds the amount of storage
or data transfer specified in their plan, and CERTAINLY when it is a
huge overage, we take appropriate steps to assure that the overage fee
is covered.

The storage overage so far is as follows, although an updated report
will run tonight:

Site ID Plan Actual Storage Overage

EH1095 350 MB 4861.27 4511.27 MB
EH1029 200 MB 336.196 136.196 MB
EH2098 100 MB 101.014 1.014 MB

Total overage: 4648.48 MB

Overage Fee @ $0.15 per MB $697.27

Again, this amount may increase, depending on any increased of your
storage used since the last report (11pm PST Oct 23). I'll let you know
the exact amount due.

This amount is due from you before any release of your account can
occur. This amount will be available in about 3 hours and I will send it
to you then. We will accept payment by money order or certified check
only. Please mail that to

Elevated Hosting
PO Box 27887
Scottsdale, AZ 85255
United States

According to MY attorney, because of the unusual arrangement you made to
have your payment made by Gary, I need a letter signed by both you
and Gary that you are asking him to make these payments for you for
our services. This letter needs to explicitly state that you are paying
for services that we provided and that you have no claim for
non-payment. If this is a problem, we can have my attorney draw up an
agreement, but that will be an additional fee for you to pay and will
certainly take a few extra days, but that is fine with us. Just let me
know.

We certainly won't delay anything in processing your payment and
authorization sheets. We will however have to verify the sufficiency of
these authorization sheets with the various credit card's banks. You
and Gary will probably be contacted by your banks to verify the
transactions.

Regards,

Paul Mitchell
www.elevatedhosting.com





-----Original Message-----
From: John Carlson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 5:55 PM
To: Paul Mitchell
Subject: Re: your account - CONFIRM


Paul,

Please confirm that your FAX number is 602-923-0263 as stated on the
registration you files with the state of arizona.

Please also confirm that your voice telephone number is 602-923-0277.
According to my legal counsel:

The question here is did you stop my domains out of spite or did you
just happen to come in to some information last night that led you to
beleive that my credit card payments were unauthorized? You have not
had a problem with our credit card arrangement until last night. Unless
you can tell a judge why you beleived my credit card payments were less
valid all of the sudden, then it will be considered that you did it out
of spite. Doing it out of spite is illeagal. We are advising you to
activate my domains within 12 hours. If this is done, then you will not
have to tell anyone why you suddenly acted maliciously to harm my
business on the basis of no new information.

John
Somagirls.com


John
Somagirls.com

Too long to read. All I know is nobody has the ability to hold my domains hostage. If a host pisses me off, I change their nameservers to a new host.

Why on earth let a host be your admin contact on your domains.

I agree never let your host control your domain !!!


Tim
:Graucho

I really dont understand this situation.

However, the host does have the right to charge you for overages. Why they would turn off the domains, I don't know - sounds like a stupid way to lose business.

HOwever, you also should be in control of your domains - letting a host have control over where your domain sits is a very dumb thing.

THE LATEST EMAILS FROM THE EVIL PETTY LITTLE MORON AT ELEVATED HOSTING.

Paul,

You are holding our site then because of non-payment of a bill that is not yet due and that you have not billed us for and further that you have yet to calculate. Ok now I understand.

When you get the bill you let me know and we will pay you as usual.

Going back and forth is racking up my time as well. Be a man and run a real business.

John


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Paul Mitchell" <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 00:10:15 -0700

>John,
>
>I made it very clear. Our lawyer told us what form of payment we should
>require and what documentation we need. There is no discussion on
>either of these points.
>
>This back and forth is just wasting my time. My next response will be
>AFTER you have delivered the full requirements. You have these
>requirements clearly stated; you have my address. There is nothing more
>to discuss.
>
>Regards,
>
>Paul Mitchell
>www.elevatedhosting.com

All I can say without being an insider to this situation, is that I have known John for two years now, and I've known his dealings with models and so on (he's a competitor who's used a couple of the same girls), and he's shown every sign of being Mr. Honesty.

I know that since this is likely his first post here, he'll get the usual "where were you when you didn't need us?" kind of response, and all I can say is...don't. Listen to what he is saying and if you use this hosting service, think twice.

However, John, I also don't understand why you let your hosting service control your domain name. Just take it as a lesson learned, I guess. :(

> Site ID Plan Actual Storage Overage

> EH1095 350 MB 4861.27 4511.27 MB
> EH1029 200 MB 336.196 136.196 MB
> EH2098 100 MB 101.014 1.014 MB

> Total overage: 4648.48 MB

> Overage Fee @ $0.15 per MB $697.27
^^^^^^^^^^^^

you're getting raped in more ways than one

Time to change hosts, judging my your monthly cost of just plain webspace.. not even bandwidth...