DreamHost is in a bad position, LunarPages is even worse!
For the last 5 years or so I’ve been with almost a dozen web hosts. Some work out well, some don’t right away, etc. For some reason, I can’t seem to keep one for long without finding some huge issue. I’m happy with my web host of about 2 years, (knock on wood.)
I’m not a current customer of either LunarPages or DreamHost but probably was with at least one at some point in time.
Here’s something to read before continuing:
Dreamhost’s billing “snafu”
http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/01/15/um-whoops/
And LunarPages’s response:
http://blog.lunarpages.com/2008/01/15/dreamhost-robbing-their-customers/
Lunarpages, you’re dicks. From fake pics on myspace to gain the interest of young horny geeks, fake reviews of your service, stealing 404 traffic, and now calling out a web hosting company for a mistake that could very well happen to you. And telling people that based on that screwup that nothing the other company can be trusted. What I want to really see in a blog post from Lunarpages, how can people trust you as a hosting company? Who is this “Renown Web Development Technician” anyway? How about a name? If he’s so darned “Renown” then maybe someone has heard of him.
I’m posting the above paragraph as a comment. LunarPages has been accused of deleting comments on many f their blog posts. It is their right since they host the blog but it’s still dirty of them. We’ll see how long it takes for that to be deleted!
(You can see the post here)
Here’s my source on stealing horny nerds, fake reviews, and the 404 issue:
http://spacytracie.com/dreamhost-and-lunarpages/391/
My thoughts on DreamHosts’s issue, sucks. And I would leave if I was one of their customers. Especially if the issue affected me hard. The big problem with a lot of the refunds that DreamHost will issue is that banks can take days to straighten those out. And every day they do, these people will be charged fees if their account is overdrawn. I’ve had this happen to me, and it sucked. I was so damn broke for almost two weeks because my credit card payment went through for $600 instead of $60! On the side of DreamHost, that should never of happened. Who the hell can’t write in a date failsafe in a billing system? (I’m going to throw one in at work as soon as I show up on Monday, btw) I work with a fairly buggy, high maintenance, custom billing system. When I work in that billing system, EVERYTHING is checked multiple times ANY TIME that something involves money. I admit, I still make mistakes, they do get through, but the issues where you look at it after and say “Awwww, duh!” Those should never happen.
One piece of advice to anyone who manages a billing system. If this can work with your setup: send your batch file to your payment processor separately from running billing. You’ll have a little more time to look over everything before fucking with people’s lives. I’m pretty sure then DreamHost would have noticed the millions in additional revenue and looked in to the issue before sending the batch file off to be charged.