Avoiding the Web Hosting Nightmare - The Webhost Who Deletes Upgrades

Her web host would take it upon themselves to “tweak” her web files.  This usually meant overwriting the work I had done.  Her site was finished in September, and it worked wonderful up until the very day they got in there and messed with her files, which was exactly November 23rd; they then had the nerve to claim her site wasn't working because of my "third party scripts," even though it was working well for almost three months.  What was almost funny about the situation was that the “third party scripts” they were referring to were simply upgrades with addons that were designed by her e-commerce software company.  The problem with the design in the first place was that they had installed software that was several years old, for which the company who developed the software no longer supported.  The “third party scripts” were actually upgrades.  The other “third party scripts” they talked about were simply 301 redirects in her .htaccess file.   They changed the .htaccess because they claimed that she'd have better design options with FrontPage extensions, which they did without either notifying her or asking her permission.   Please take a moment to laugh here.  They also told her, “The optimization you paid for has corrupted our work.”  Well, if they meant upgrading to the new software, then yes, I guess I corrupted their work.

They then proceeded to add FrontPage extensions to her site, telling her that because they were no longer supporting their off-site WYSIWYG editor, she would have to use FrontPage.  For those of you that are familiar with FrontPage extensions and Linux, you can only imagine what the problems were.  They then deleted the .htaccess file, and uploaded old, unsupported software files.  It became clear to us at that point that a new host was in order.  You may laugh again.

When she complained about their “tweaking” efforts, they emailed her that as long as a third party company had her logins and passwords, they wouldn’t provide support.  I’ve never heard of a web hosting company telling anyone this.  Considering that I had been out of her site for months before their tweaks, honestly, this was probably irrelevant.  But she knew that their problems, which they blamed on my work, were hurting her site.  Unfortunately, they told her that she couldn’t move the site, because she technically didn’t “own” it, even though she paid them to develop the site, paid for the domain name, and paid for the hosting.  I might mention, by the way, that her server was a shared virtual server, and they charged her nearly $60.00 per month for only 600 MB of space and less than 1 GB of bandwidth.

There were other issues with this company that she had, while not directly related to her hosting issues, were just indications of being a bad company all together.  These were things like retaliation for complaining, charging her another $400.00 so that she could “own” the site, and then never giving her registrar login information.

She signed up with a new host, who came highly rated on web host review sites.  After she paid them, they then told her they wouldn't help her transfer her website; she had to do it herself.  This lady doesn't know what an FTP program is (she thought I was talking about my car), so that's not really an option for her. They claimed that because they were so cheap, they didn't have the resources to transfer her site.  She then found another web host who not only helped her move her site, but they were cheaper than this other host.  This host she finally found came by word of mouth recommendations.

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