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Singin' the FeaturePrice Blues If you're looking for dirt-cheap web hosting, don't use Featureprice.com |
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Don't expect to get a refund from FeaturePrice.com I signed up for Internet hosting with FeaturePrice in December of 2001. They collect a full year's fees up-front, which seemed acceptable at the time, but after numerous problems with their service over the course of 3 months, I moved all my sites to another hosting service and requested FeaturePrice (FP) to refund my money and cancel my account. They refused, citing their online 'contract', which contains clauses that are clearly punitive in nature -- and should be unenforceable. Essentially, the only 'reason' for a refund would be a technical issue they could not resolve. Their method of determining whether or not there is a valid technical problem is unknown and FP is the only one 'qualified' to determine if there is a valid reason for refund. Therefore, it is unlikely you, or anyone else you know, will ever receive a refund from FP, as nearly as I can tell. In leaving, I cited numerous reasons: 1: When I experienced several days of not being able to email a client using their servers, one of their technicians deleted ALL my mailboxes and inserted one of his own to test the results. I found out about this the next morning, when I could not receive or send mail from one of my commercial sites (www.wizard-2000.com). Any non-technical client would have been S.O.L. Fortunately, I was able to reconstruct all my mailboxes and only lose whatever mail was 'bounced' overnight. This is completely unacceptable and FP has never responded to this issue. 2: Their Front Page response time is excruciatingly SLOW. I regularly update my sites and the speed of their servers is roughly 20% of what it would be on any other provider's servers. This is completely unacceptable with my volume of updates. They have never addressed this issue. They don't even respond to the topic. 3: In February of 2002 they were hit with a DOS attack which rendered all my websites off-line for more than 36 hours. This amounted to two full business days with no email and non-existent websites. At the time, several other commercial hosting companies were also attacked, but were back online in a matter of 2-4 hours (typical response time for a competent hosting service). Obviously, FP does not have the expertise in security to host commercial sites. During this time I could not send or receive email on any of my sites -- and customers (and potential customers) attempting to reach my sites received error 404 - page not found messages. This is the 'kiss of death' for an Internet-oriented business such as mine. I would like to point out that during the DOS attack, Featurprice's site was never down. When queried about this, the representative said their site was on a different server. What does this tell you? It tells me they don't trust their own hosting for their own commercial site. 4: Their
mechanism for handling customer service issues is an arcane web-based
interface. It is not possible to simply email them with requests.
To find out what has happened with an issue, one must log back on to their
Customer Service system, attempt to navigate it and search for the results.
As soon as they 'reply' to a trouble ticket, it is marked as 'closed'
and the client is responsible for 're-opening' the issue if it is not
resolved (mine rarely were). This is unacceptable. FP no longer responds to my emails. They refuse to communicate with myself or my other clients who have requested refunds on their contracts ( names withheld ) and have moved their sites to new providers. Both of my clients continue to do battle with FP in an attempt to have their fees returned. Even though FP has re-billed my credit card company (CapitolONE) and received their funds back, two of the IP addresses I paid for in advance are still blocked. See for yourself: IP address
Website Given my experience with FeaturePrice, I suggest anyone considering cheap web-hosting to avoid them like the plague. Don't just accept defeat -- File a Complaint: If you have
had a negative experience with Featureprice web hosting, I suggest you
file a complaint with the FTC (www.ftc.gov)
and the Florida Attorney General's Office. Another option for voicing your complaint -- a form courtesy of the FBI may yield better results than complaints to the FTC and the Florida AG -- Click Here for the web page. I have also filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau (bbbonline.com)and FP has yet to respond. Continuing updates: Every day I receive horror stories in my email from disenfranchised featureprice.com customers whose websites have been down for DAYS. Curiously enough, whenever featureprice's hosting collapses and takes all the sites they're hosting off-line, their own website is up and running just fine. What does this tell you? To me it says they are smart enough not to host their own website, knowing they are incompetent to do so reliably. Some quotes from recent email: 10/29/2002: "Did note one thing that happened to you that they just did to me too. My e-mail folders all mysteriously disappeared this morning and, of course, they are not helping me recover them." 1/1/2003: "they lost their servers on Xmas and my domain has been hosed ever since." 1/8/2003: "My site has been down for 8 days, the phone lines busy, and no response." 1/30/2003: "I'm still wrestling with them and have absolutely no luck contacting them. All of their methods of contact and support fail. Their PDF help file doesn't open, their online chat times out before contact, busy signals on their support phone line, no response or "dead" messages from their emails support, and disconnections calling their main line." 2/3/2003: "I have been with this company for one month and my site has been up and down like a yoyo, and I can't get any response from them by way of ticket, live chat or phone." 2/5/2003: "The past few weeks have been a nightmare for me. I've lost so much business and time due to them. They make it sound like it's something that's just now happened." 2/12/2003: "I'd say maybe you were lucky -- my site has been down 11 days with no useful response yet." 2/17/2003: "My site has been down for 5 days and that means no email, no viewing my site, no access to the servers, I have called 4 times from OUTSIDE the US ... Not either them or there "Hosting Network" buddies are there, I get a failure notice from both." 2/21/2003: "FeaturePrice has apparently scammed many of us...They do not respond to e-mail tech support requests, they do not respond on their on-line chat tech support, they have discontinued phone tech support (unless you pay them $25) and I was hung up on when I called and asked how I can get some help." 2/25/2003: "I have had many of the same problems you listed, and now that I want to transfer my domain name, they won't let me! I'm still waiting for a response to see if they will allow me (from on-high, it would seem) access to my domain name record." 3/4/2003: "I have suffered imeasurable damages as a result of featureprice distruption of service, failure to provide a functioning renewal process, complete insulation from their clients, non functioning on line help support and controls. I have lost jobs, work and employment and I am angry." 3/10/2003: "Featureprice host my site which has been down since early January - it is now March 10th. I have tried to contact them numerous times, by phone (until the phone lines got closed) by Livechat (never answered) and via the sales line (only answered once, then insulted by a defensive employee who would not help me). I have since written to their main address to request a refund, to no avail. This is the most frustrating and incompetent company I have ever dealt with and they should be shut down while we get our money back!" 3/12/2003: "Instead of renewing the existing account as requested I discovered that they had set up a new one, and charged me a new set-up fee for doing so, and the domain name was now linked to advertising garbage. I protested and they said they would sort it out "without loss of data". Three weeks passed and nothing happened. The money ($84) duly left my account... my site has now been down since 16th January of this year and the domain name is linked to a message saying, in effect, that I have failed to pay my bill and should contact them (boy, have I contacted them!!!) They have stopped answering my e-mails and I have indeed reported them to the Visa Card people for using Visa services to obtain money dishonestly over the Internet. They still have $84 of my money, $25 of which is for a set-up fee to which even they admit they are not entitled, and they have provided me with no services of any kind and failed to refund any money. Unfortunately they also have conrtrol of my domain name" 3/12/2003:"You should see how bad, er, non-existent, customer support is now. My email (and my clients who I recommended to FP) goes out for days at a time, an when it is up, it is finicky as hell." 4/12/2003:
"I'm also a miserable featureprice sucker! Since January 2003, they've
made my life hell. Here are a list of things, just to name a few, that
they've done to me. BBB Reliability Report
Original
Business Start Date: January 1997 The information in this report has either been provided by the company, or has been compiled by the Bureau from other sources.
Based on
BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau due
to unanswered complaint(s). Additional Information Additional
Doing-Business-As Names: Hosting-Network, Inc. Additional Featureprice Complaint resources: google search: featureprice complaints FeaturePrice Class Action Suit News Just thought
you all might be interested in the class action suit that's brewing over
FeaturePrice. I've stored the form
you need to fill out and all you need to do is forward it to fpclassaction@comcast.net
after you've filled-in the blanks. After you click on the form link, select
File > Save from your browser menu. Save it to a local
file and fill it out. Save it with the changes, then attach it to an email
to this address: fpclassaction@comcast.net
and send it on its way. FeaturePrice Seems to be 'History' Znews.com relates the following infomation regarding the fall of featureprice, leaving 60,000 customers S.O.L. The Florida State Attorney General has launched an investigation into Featureprice's deceptive advertising, failure to fulfill contracts and poor customer service
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