SUSPENDED???
Updated Feb 3, 07
So what the fuck happened to the page from December 17-22? Did the Canadians finally get me? Did I die in a freak tongue wrestling accident? In fact, I did not, though I came frighteningly close.
Since 2001, my site has been hosted by a company called Infinology. It actually started out as Primemaster. When I first registered the domain and set up the site, Infinology/Primemaster had decent reviews, perhaps because the hosting industry at the time just sucked ass in general, and any deviation from completely shitty service was seen as good service. For a while the service seemed okay, except occasionally the site would go offline. I had to actually re-upload the site a few times due to server crashes. Often, they would change something about my account without telling me, such as the FTP address, and the only way I ever found out was that I would try to log in, be unable, then I would have to chase them down on the phone or email and they would tell me, "Oh, we changed such and such." At this point the company was still pretty new, and while I was pissed, I kind of shrugged it off as a new enterprise going through some growing pains. Besides, I had paid for two years up front, and was determined to get my money's worth.
Around 2003-2004, the hosting started to get a little more sketchy. The page would go down for a couple of days at a time, and it got harder and harder to get a human on the phone. They generally replied to emails, but weren't always 100% helpful. I am one of these guys who doesn't deal with problems. I have had a huge cavity in one of my teeth for months. I don't do my laundry until I'm down to one clean pair of boxers. Considering that it's not in my nature to be proactive about undeniable deteriorating problems, I tend to really hang back on problems that MIGHT get better. This one did not.
This year, my site went down for about a week. Apparently their server crashed and they finally came back up with six month old backups of my page. I can only imagine how much business owners were shitting their pants when they all lost 6 months of orders and records. I tried emailing and they would not reply. I tried calling dozens of times, and there was no answer.
The site looked exactly like it did six months earlier, in other words, EXACTLY LIKE IT WOULD HAVE ANYWAY, because I'm a lazy asshole who is notorious for never updating. Actually, there is something of an excuse for this though. For the last year, updating my page has been a pain in the balls. Using the same FTP program that I've used for years, and trying a couple of others, I was no longer able to connect to Infinology's FTP. I sent them several angry emails, and attempted to call them many times (more on this shortly) and finally after a couple of weeks of bitching I got a message back that the FTP was working fine and that the problem had to be on my end. I gritted my teeth and sort of accepted this, as I am by no means a networking guru, and often have router problems that I want to fix with by throwing the router against the ceiling until it smashes into atoms. So, I was left with only one way to update. Infinology has this fucking awful clunky website-based FTP type thing that made it HORRIBLE to do any updating. For instance, you could only upload like 10 files at a time, and it was impossible to overwrite, that is, you had to delete the files to be updated from the server first, and then replace them with the new files, each time waiting for the slow-as-shit FTP page to reload. So every time I noticed a typo, a misplaced punctuation mark, a misspelling, it would take at least 30-60 seconds after editing to get the new version of the page up. Considering that I'm the king of typos, this made editing the page tedious beyond belief, a chore, and I don't even clean the damn cat box.
So the other day someone sent me an IM on AIM asking what was up with my site. I saw the suspended account page and immediately assumed that the Canadian complaints had finally caused enough of an uproar that Infinology said fuck it. Then I logged in to the page that would normally have all my account info, bandwidth, disk usage, etc. but it only had two links: one to update my billing profile and one for my invoice. The anger was growing. Not only had they not sent me a bill, they hadn't sent me ANYTHING. No warnings, no reminders, nothing whatsoever. I clicked on the link to update my billing profile. They still had an old credit card number, and that's why the charges didn't go through. I had originally registered the site in December, and the bill was probably due. I was still pissed but I was containing it by trying to take steps to remedy the situation. I filled in the new credit info and immediately received an email. I replied to the billing department with a curt "I have updated my credit card info. Unsuspend my site." They did not reply... of course. Then I looked at the amount they billed me and the anger grew again. I then remembered that I had paid for 2 years in advance at the start of the last billing cycle. The amount due... the unreceived money for which they SHUT MY SITE DOWN... was $3.43. Perhaps some overage that happened during the year, perhaps some error on their part... THE PRICE OF A FUCKING BIG MAC WAS SO IMPORTANT TO THEM THAT THEY FUCKED A 5 YEAR CUSTOMER. The bill was due on December 17th, and they SUSPENDED THE SITE ON FUCKING DECEMBER 17th.
Immediately I picked up the phone to demand answers. This is the answer I got.
I called them like some obsessed stalker, probably around 100 times, at different times of the day, over a four day period, from multiple phone lines in case they were screening, and the message above is what I got EVERY TIME regardless of what branch of customer service I pressed. I imagine if I called them a week or a month or a year from now, I would get the same message, as I remember getting it plenty of times in the past. In fact, I would be surprised if anyone would even answer that phone or check the messages during the next year. The mail box on every extension is full ALL THE TIME. You NEVER get to talk to a person or even leave a goddamn message. Even their SALES line, the "Hey, I want to give your company money" line, NEVER HAS A PERSON. Even the dumbest companies in the world at least put someone on the fucking "SELL YOU SOMETHING" line. At this point, I would have been thrilled to speak to some outsourced Pakistani who spoke only four words of English. This is kinda sorta a teeny tiny bit different than the kind of customer support they promise on their site.
"We offer 24-Hour Toll Free Customer Support. If you need to contact us anytime, whether it is during the night or early in the morning, we will always have our staff ready to assist you. Our highly trained award winning customer service representatives adhere to the highest level of performance required by our company."
Apparently, the highest level of performance required by their company is no performance whatsoever.
I even tried to reach them on their web development line several times as a last ditch, hoping that somewhere, somehow, I would find a living human being that might be able to at least point me towards someone who could answer some questions. This is what they had to say. (Yes, this is the entire goddamn phone call from start to finish.)
I mean... REALLY? Is this fucking customer service? They're not even pretending to give a shit. LIE to me. Make me believe you're at least fucking TRYING, or PRETENDING TO TRY. What kind of twisted fuck would even think to have someone speak those words into a microphone as a LEGITIMATE ANSWER FOR A PHONE CALL? Thank you for calling. Go fuck yourself. *click*
I began my search for a new host. This was made difficult by the fact that 90% of "Hosting Company Review" sites seem to be nothing more than FAKE advertising by the companies listed. The reviews aren't even reviews, just sales pitches. Seriously, if some company is arguably the "best," wouldn't it turn up on more than one list? And wouldn't different lists of top companies have at least a couple of the same companies on them? Hopefully this time around, I picked a winner. A promising sign was the fact that when I called the new hosting company, a HUMAN BEING picked up on the first ring. About an hour after setting up the account, they actually called me back to see if I had any questions and to make sure I was able to access my control panel, etc, which, of course, I was.
So I brought up my old pal mister FTP program and attempted to connect to the new company's FTP site, half-assuming that I would run into the same connection problem. A half second later, I was logged in. A few seconds later the site was uploading at a definitely respectable speed. Infinology's claim that the problem was on my side was 100% BULLSHIT. My shit worked fine. It was Infinology's FTP that was fucked up.
Then I went for what I hoped would be my last visit to Infinology.com: The cancellation form. I filled out all the required boxes, and came to a big empty box with a good amount of space to type.... "Reason for Cancellation." I could hardly wait. They hadn't been professional, and I felt that I was due for some unprofessional venting.
"Your service is absolutely nonexistent. I would be greatly surprised if there was even one person in your building more than once a month, if that. I have tried to call about 100 times and all I get is your voicemail line, which is always full and I cannot even leave a message. Your service has been horrible for years, and I was stupid to stay with you as long as I did. You suspended my account without even sending me a bill or any warning, and I submitted updated credit card information, and you still never unsuspended my site. I doubt your company has even the professionalism to read this, or even cancel my account, which is why I will notify my bank to block all future charges from your company. I will recommend against using your service to anyone who will listen, at every opportunity and every venue possible."
Sated, I hit Confirm. I still had a feeling that this would not be the end of the road, and that next December I would have to remember to double check with my bank that the charges from Infinology would be blocked. A couple of seconds after I hit the Confirm button, I received an email. Perhaps this was the confirmation, the end. How naive. The subject of the email: " Infinology mailbox does not exist." The fucking form that you are required to fill out to cancel your account, ON THEIR OWN GODDAMN PAGE points to an email address that DOES NOT EXIST. Let this sink in for a moment. A WEB HOSTING COMPANY has a DEAD LINK as their only accepted means of cancelling your account. IS THIS SHIT REAL, OR AM I HAVING SOME SORT OF FUCKED UP DREAM?
"You are receiving this automatic response because the infinology.net address you sent a message to does not exist. Please contact use the following information to contact the correct department by e-mail."
WHAT IN THE FUCKING FUCK IS FUCKING GOING THE FUCK ON? FUCK! Oh, and nice broken English, dumbshits. Immediately I fired off an email titled "CANCEL MY ACCOUNT" and CC'd it to every Infinology service address I could find on their site as a desperate last hope.
I thought all hope was lost, until shortly thereafter when my junk email filter caught something.
"Dear Sir or Madam, You have submitted your request to cancel your Infinology account. You have requested the cancellation of Account #blah-bitty-blah under the username of blah-bitty-blah. It was been submitted at Wednesday 20th of December 2006 11:29:31 PM PST Please allow 24 hours for this request to be processed."
Merry Christmas indeed.
I still think nobody has been in that building in 6 months or more. Fuck you, Infinology. I would like to say that I hope this page costs you tons of potential clients, but I think the fact that YOU DON'T EVEN ANSWER THE PHONE will effectively do that anyway.
UPDATE: JAN 5, 2007
It's been over two weeks since I received my cancellation confirmation from Infinology, and today, I received another email from them....
This is the receipt for internet credit card transaction from Infinology Corporation. www.infinology.com
If this is a new account Web hosting account you can log into your account now, Dedicated plans please allow 5-7 days for server completion.
========= GENERAL INFORMATION =========
Merchant : Infinology, Inc.
Date/Time : 05-Jan-2007 02:49:22 PM
========= ORDER INFORMATION =========
Invoice : blahblahblah
Description : 1. [A] Advanced Users Pro "Basic Hosting Pro"
Model blahblahblah Amount : 83.40 (USD)
Payment Method : Visa
NO..... FUCKING.... SHIT. The fuckers CHARGED ME FOR ANOTHER YEAR, MORE THAN TWO WEEKS AFTER I CANCELLED MY SERVICE, and on a Friday to boot. So now I get to hate them all weekend until I can fucking verify that my bank didn't actually pay these fucking retarded criminal shitheads.
It turned out that the charges did go through. Seethe seethe.
I called Infinology a bunch of times, and on a few rare occasions actually got a human being. Usually it was a Chinese woman who barely spoke English. You could tell when there would be an actual human because the phone would go to "on hold" music and then start ringing, as opposed to the usual phone menu > ring ring > full voicemail. This, of course, implies that much of the time, the phones are simply set to go straight to voicemail, probably because there is nobody in the building, or maybe Infinology hadn't paid their bills for their Chinese outsourcing. Every time the person told me that they would credit me the money within three days. I would wait 3 days, call back, and they would say "Sorry. We will credit your card. You should receive it within three days." I wanted to avoid involving my bank in this, but after nearly three weeks of this bullshit I called my bank.
UPDATE: JAN 26, 2007
About 3 minutes following a 10 minute phone call to my bank, the following line appeared on my online bank statement.
1/24/2007: CREDIT DUE TO DEBIT CARD DISPUTE: $83.40.
All's well that ends in a huge, evil corporation stepping on Infinology's tiny, hairless balls, ripping my money out of the hands of small-time thieves and giving it back to me.
By the way, apparently I am not an isolated case.
Better Business Bureau rating: F
"Infinology? Take your own RISK if hosting with them"
"We will probably file a small claims action if things do not improve in the next couple of weeks."
"Worst business mistake we have ever made."
"Unbelievably unprofessional and unreliable!"