CANCELED!
I was caught completely off guard on last Thursday when I attempted to go to The 6th Floor and noticed it was a parked domain. Fearing my account had been hacked or taken off line for whatever reason I contacted my host, ipower. In the past 5 years I have had nothing but props for my hosting company. Unfortunately the information and lack of support I received the last 5 days has been quite disappointing.
It seems on March 16 they received a noticed that hosting should not be renewed and the web site was being canceled. Their files show that I made this request. They claim they have documentation to back this up. At any rate I had not changed my default yearly renewal since I had been hosted, so that leads to the question, why was I canceled?
I still don’t know, guess I have to go with their answer, while I don’t believe what they say getting my site back online, as I had it before it was canceled has been challenging, to say the least. Aside from having to sign up with ipower again, after being hosted for 5 years. I lost everything. For inquiring minds, no I had nothing backed up that was the responsibility of ipower since I was paying them to do that as well.
I have been in numerous online support chat sessions with sales and tech support. Neither have been all that helpful. I guess that could be the result of outsourcing, who knows and I can only speculate. After repeated conversations, another yearly hosting fee and $30 set up fee, which they would not wave I have my site back online.
Today was a reach bitch to say the least. I will be the first to admit, I know nothing about SQL. Yet ipower wanted $75 (I was quoted $50 by sales) to set everything back up, including my SQL databases. After some nasty responses back to them, telling them I wanted my site returned to the status it was prior to them deleting it and I refuse to pay any additional fees, some tech support individual converted and imported the main database. Yet some 24 other databases remain. To be honest I might just let it go at this point.
I was not done though. I sent a scathing e-mail to a ‘Contact Us’ link explaining everything that transpired. While I don’t expect an answer or any apology I don’t believe I will be recommending ipower to friends who want to get a web site online. Everything was all find and dandy when they were getting my money, but when I really needed help, they more less said sorry, nothing we can do.
Sorry ipower, while I might continue hosting for 12 months, you have lost me as a real supporter to your company. It’s really sad to see companies shitting on their clients when they need them most. I did learn a few lessons, one of which I already knew. Even though I pay ipower to back up my site, I will have to start the task on a weekly basis, for fear they will silence my word or cancel my site.
I was wondering what the scoop was. Seems kind of shitty. I would also request what documentation they have that you canceled and if they say emails, tell them that you want complete copies of the emails including headers so you can see where the email was sent from.
Glad to see you are back Stephen.
Greg
Yeah Greg I was quite frustrated with them, especially being hosted in excess of 5 years. Guess that doesn’t mean much these days, especially when there are MANY other hosting companies to move to, who might offer a better deal. I chose to stay with ipower. Recently got a friend at work to sign up to a long contract and got his web site on the air and the ipower goes and does this. Shitty, plain shitty. It’s also too bad I don’t know SQL, since they want ME to convert all these recovered database files and import them. I won’t pay and I feel THEY need restore my site to pre-deletion condition. Anyway, glad to be back online, now I am backing up all my SQL files.