I have been
goofing around on the
Web for many years. I have a total of 5
domains that I play with. My first domain has been
hosted by the same company since 1998 (note: this
daylog is not meant to
generate traffic for my personal sites, so I won't insult you by posting the URLs here). On January 21st, they decided to change my billing to yearly,
paid in advance. Unfortunately, they forgot to tell me this fact. They were more than happy to pull my regular monthly fee up until May 1st, when I discovered my site was down hard. I called up
tech support, they couldn't figure out why my account was
locked out (it showed I was current with my payments), so they re-enabled it. The next Monday, it was down hard again. I called them up, and was told that the billing had changed
retroactively. I could only talk to one person, they
literally refused to transfer me to a
manager ("We're sorry, you may only speak to *person* about your website"). While I particularly liked the
tech support and the
perks for hosting there, I decided that it was time to find another home for this particular
website.
I decided to switch over to another host that was already hosting one of my smaller websites. They also had good tech support, but their perks were different. I'd also have to live with 200megs less space. I contracted with them and submitted the host change to Network Solutions to change my DNS server and tech contact to the new host.
Imagine my surprise when I typed in my domain name, only to see my old host still hosting my website. When they received the change notice from Network Solutions, they decided to reactivate my website (again, without informing me). They also refuse to talk to me at all now, so all I can infer is that they're trying to gouge me for some more cash.
The host I am talking about is Xeran.com. Again, excellent techs but a very poor billing department, which includes people who flatly refuse to let you speak to anybody else, especially management. I sent them eight customers who are still using their host services.
So, I'm in the midst of transferring a huge website to a new host, reconfiguring CGI scripts, reconfiguring permissions and generally being annoyed at a company that forgot customer service is what keeps your customers coming back.