Review of Hostpapa.com (actually a warning of Hostpapa)

I just had the most terrible experience with Hostpapa. Thats hostpapa.com, the canadian hosting company. They are totally lost with not the slightest idea of what customer service is.
Firstly they cannot provide a change to their servers without down time. All serious companies provides a service where moving the account to the do not cause down time. But do you think Hostpapa care about that? No.
They also have a system that force the customers to use their name servers, its not possible to do like in all other normal web hosts, to point the domain by IP. That is truly stupid.
So now I wanted to use the 30 day refund because they didnt live up to my standards. They would refund, but not the entire amount. Thats another stupid action from their side. I mean, they cannot deliver,but still will not refund full.
And now when I made a dispute in PayPal they shut me out from my own support ticket regarding this case. Thats a very clear evidence on that the ticket will not gain Hostpapa.com. They are now afraid of me showing the ticket to PayPal.

Man, just leave those pitty people alone and chose a good company for your hosting.

 

glad i read your post as i was considering them.

 

Anyway:

1. Why cannot you use your local Norge hosts? Are they too expensive?
2. Why would you go with a small company? Cannot you find a big and established one?

 

Good to know, though I would hardly consider them. GoDaddy has never disappointed: for a side-by-side comparison of the four hosts I've used, check out

http://www.rioleo.org/webhosts-made-easy

 

1.They are to expensive and they normally dont use cPanel.

 

Being on the hosting business, all I can say is that the costumer has many times the reason on its side but it is still reading the Terms and conditions and passing all the pre-sale questions to the hoster, before signing up the Obligation of the costumer and it is the obligation of the Hosting firm to answer those questions with no lies.

Personally I have seen so many costumers coming to us from such big and well established hosting firms after not getting what they were promised. Just a week ago we had a costumer coming from DrexxHost.xxx because he was offered an staggering amount of traffic and space for mere pennies, but as soon as he grew big and reached 30% of the space, he had its Database unplugged so the site was half functional, still online (100% uptime, lol) but not processing a single sale, lead, etc. Those technicians gave him a smart solution to Contract with them a New Dedicated server! For around $250 every month! - Nice strategy no? Now this poor guy was stuck with a big site hosted in the wrong place at the mercy of this big and nice company! He was left with no more options but to pay a lot of money to them.
How many times I have heard the same story before? man you will not believe it.

if interested you can read here more about overselling practices on wikipedia

Hope this post can open the eyes of so many entrepreneurs falling victims of empty promises of those so called big hosting firms.

Regards!

Maurice

 

Talking about overselling. Bluehost is notorius. Do not use them if you need close to 100% uptime. Almost all hosts has issues, Hostgator too, but when it comes to overselling Hostgator is to trust, I dont think they oversell at all.
Anyway, this thread is not about overselling Its about www.hostpapa.com

 

Even though I don't need hosting, after reading your experience, I don't think I would use them.

If they guarantee a money-back policy, they must abide to it.

How much did you paid them? (and therefore lost by now)

 

The amount doesnt matter. Its the priniple that matters. Hostdaddy.com have a sneaky money-back policy. Apparently they vave a set-up fee (I didnt notice any setup fee) and when the customer ask for a refund the setup fee is deducted from the refund. Thats rude.

 

Well, I have to say, I don't like to discuse about other hostings. I this it's rude to gain customers by making someone lose his/hers.

But that's right. If they guarantee something, the less that could be expected from them is to provide it, should it be a hosting or a refund.

 

The suggestion that you can't use your own nameservers isn't actually true, I've set up various domains via external nameservers and with weird endings. You do need to get hold of the right tech support person and have them configure it manually for you, though. It also depends on who you bought the domain off, too. There's 1001 different ways to do your your domain, and even if you're prohibited from doing various forms of pointing, you can get clever with redirects. Using their nameservers does make everything work optimally, though. It's recommended.

I consider myself lucky to even *have* tech support answer emails.

I've admin'd bunch of sites for various clients on hostpapa, and I know that where it comes to hosting there's no such thing as perfect unless you pay $$$$ for something like mediatemple, or have physical access to the machine. They're not perfect, but I've never known a problem not to get fixed, which is unusual in my experience, usually one just gets a "sorry no". You do have to know your stuff, though, and not ask silly questions.

For cheap hosting, I've always been pleasantly surprised by what hostpapa deliver. One tip is to use the phone if you're trying to do something a bit funny, and have them transfer you to the guys in the basement. I've got some horror stories from other hosting firms, but hostpapa aren't a horror story, I consider them good & solid. Happy bread & butter hosting. Have found the bandwidth, speed & uptime to be not perfect but lose maybe a day every couple of years, or stuff like their billing system will go down for a day while they migrate stuff etc. But that's life.

You sound like an angry customer LOL. Do you find yourself demanding the manager in supermarkets?

Cheap datacenter hosting never wipes your arse for you, you know.

 

My horrid experience with Host Papa;

Hi there!

I've just spoke to your representative "Johnathan", and he said that he has submitted a ticket for me in order to resolve this situation. I would like to point out though that I have not purchased this domain yet, and I am very confused as to why the order has already been submitted.

The last page that HostPapa has lead me to is an "Order Summary" page, with the final line with: "Total Due Today" (screenshot attached).

As you can see in red, the domain name in the order summary is ledmsg1, and the one which I have signed up for instead is ledmsg (the name of my company - see email address). My company has been known to customers as LED Message for some time now, and it would be very misleading to have a domain named ledmsg1 Not only that, it is not the one I have signed up for, nor have I even confirmed my payment for this order. It is as if a payment has been submitted from my credit card without my approval. This is very frustrating, upon inquiring a friend who works in law , illegal.

I have signed up with HostPapa after being referred to this site by a friend, who have only had positive experiences with the company. It is very confusing to me why I have been calling for the past hour and explaining my situation, but to no avail.

 

The representative Johnathan was not very helpful at all, and if anything, rude. At times I was cut off from what I was saying, and he simply argued with me that I have made a typo, and the entire situation has been my fault. From all my experience with speaking to customer service representatives, this was the most shocking and unpleasant experience I have ever had.

This is all very perplexing, and the possibility that I have had made a typo is close to impossible.
I am positive I have typed in ledmsg (and I have a family witness standing beside me who double-checked my order), and on an average keyboard, the distance between the "G" and "1" is great. I am positive that this has not been a typo, and simply, a system mistake. Having a company website name with a "1" in it is very confusing, not memorable at all, and it will even cost me extra advertising dollars in my news ads.

It would be great if you can help me resolve this situation as soon as possible. I have been waiting to establish a website for some time now, and this additional wait is frustrating.

Since I have had no confirmation of payment on my part, I would like to receive the FULL payment of $80.68 back. I understand that your company has paid for the domain registration separately to another company, but that is not of my concern. It is very ethical for money to be extracted from my credit card without my permission, and I'm sure that this ordeal has simply been a system mistake. Originally I was planning on staying with HostPapa for at least the next five years, and so has my friend who was planning to sign up after I signed up, but the horrible experience I have had with your customer representative has made me doubt this decision.

I hope that this problem could be quickly resolved, and I look forward to your response.
My cell number is ----, and I thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Amy

REPLY
Hello Buyu,

Your ticket was recently brought to my attention. It is unfortunate that you have been registered with the domain ledmsg1 You have requested it be changed to ledmsg. However, you stated it was our error and I must respectfully disagree as it is an automated system and there is a verification prior to processing the payment. The order is an automated process.

To correct the situation the best solution is to do a brand new order with the correct website (ledmsg) and then we will cancel the old order and refund your money for ledmsg1 hosting. However, this domain ledmsg1 has already been registered and paid to the domain registrar and under our Terms of Service is non-refundable.

Please let me know if this is what you want to do and how you wish to proceed. Let me know of any questions you may have.

Best regards,

Jack P

REPLY BACK
Dear Jack,

I appreciate your email back, however, the issue at hand now is not mainly that I was not given the domain that I have requested. Payment from my credit card was taken without my authorization, and to any customer who uses services online, this is just simply unacceptable.

It defeats the sense of security the online transactions has, and diminishes the integrity of your company greatly.

Though I do believe it may have been a system mistake that my payment was not confirmed, though still received, it is a mistake that your customer service department should be able to resolve. With that said, if my credit card was used without my authorization by your "automated" system, then the chances are great that it made a similar mistake while processing my requested domain name. Though I am not an expert at computer systems, sites like Gmail and Hotmail often adds a "1" to the end of domain names when they are taken. Seeing that "ledmsg" is still vacant though, I do not see why such a change was made. What vexes me more is why this mistake was not informed to me before my purchase went through, again, without my authorization, and why your company is failing to resolve the situation in the most appropriate manner.

As a customer, I deserve to receive the products that I have paid for, and the right to choose whether or not I would like to purchase this product. All I received from this ordeal was a purchase summary, and to make matters worse, a product that did not match the descriptions to what I wanted to purchase in the first place.

According to the Ontario Ministry of Consumer Protection, both of the actions above are affirmative grounds for filling a complaint. I am not simply perplexed about my own situation alone, but concerned that your flawed system would bring hardship and frustration to customers after me. After visiting a couple of forums that discusses your company, this has already been the case.

I am sure that your company did not purposely intend to afflict such confusions, but an explanation and resolution is still necessary in this case. It frustrates me why such a straightforward problem has taken this long to solve, and I am willing to continue with my case until something is done.
Having money taken out of my credit card is the same thing as stealing it, and I demand that it is fully refunded.

I await for your reply.

Sincerely,
Amy

This is simply wrong. Unless they fix up their customer service, do not use their service!