Thousands of users have purchased plans with DreamHost for their blog hosting. Many will think otherwise, after the 11th-largest web hosting company in the US and 15th in the world (600,000+ domains) accidentally billed customers for more than $7.5 million USD in billing inaccuracies. Accounts were billed for pre-payed hosting up to two years in advance, with debts/charges up to $9,000 in some cases. Problems didn’t stop there. Hosting accounts were automatically suspended, leaving people to deal with bank account and credit card overdraft fees. 

By the way they responded on their blog, with the title “Um, Whoops.“. To date, more than 350 comments have been left on their Official DreamHost blog, 1100+ on the DreamHost Status/problems page, and received much attention across the web, including many traditional news sources reporting on the issue. 700+ people have Dugg the story.

In my opinion, nothing that overcharges customers by any amount should be taken as “a teensy eensy weensy little billing error”, even if just one customer is affected. The company with the “Best Corporate Blog of 2007″ now must deal with the problems caused by simple carelessness. The main problem was under billing, as a new system was being put into place.

Many customers were disappointed with the lack of formal notification (a simple mass email) telling them that they were facing problems. Instead, many logged into their account to find it no longer existed. Excuse after excuse after excuse combined with the belief that all their devoted customers realize the “professional” company they are dealing with. Perhaps they were “so high right now you don’t even know” when this all happened?

Does any of this sound professional?

.. you thought it was a joke!

Ha, the joke is on you! I guess. Um, okay, no, not really, I’m sorry.

How on earth could something like this happen?

and

I couldn’t remember. But, since the biller is super-safe and robust anyway, I went ahead and ran it for 2008-12-31, 2008-12-30, 2008-12-29, 2008-12-28, 2008-12-27, 2008-12-26, and 2008-12-25, just for the hell of it.

Notice Anything?

Don’t feel bad if you didn’t. I kind of missed it myself.

THOSE SHOULD HAVE BEEN 2007!!

Heh, uh.. um, er.. my bad?

and

Well guess what… NO! We will NEVER want to rebill as though today were a day that hasn’t happened yet! But instead, somebody along the line (Sage? Me? Somebody else?) figured, “What’s the harm in keeping it flexible?”

About $7,500,000 in harm, that’s what!

A comic by Brad Fitzpatrick at bLaugh. 

A temporary fix to the major problem:

A new service is running right now (in parallel on all the controllers) that fixes all those future charges, re-enables your account if it was erroneously suspended, and if your credit card was automatically rebilled, refunds the payment automatically. You don’t have to contact us or your bank, and you’ll get an email when your account is finished fixing up. It’s going to take several more hours to complete. There are (or were, after this incident) a lot of you these days!

If, because of this billing mistake, you somehow incurred some fees from your bank or credit card company, please let us know after tomorrow (today we are just replying to all 10,000+ billing messages with a generic explanation) and we’ll do our best to make it right for you.

And of course, the biller no longer allows dates in the future.

To succeed, their main objective now should be putting their company in debt, by providing a free year of hosting to EVERY customer affected - to at least regain a little bit of respect from customers.

Lunarpages is taking advantage of the problem by offering a $40 off hosting package and they will also pay for the remainder of your contract (up to 9 months) by using the code DHRefugees. Out of 30 comments, 98-100% of them stated they were dissatisfied with their service, despite being lenient with their downtime problems, and were now looking to switch to a more professional service.

[sources: Unofficial DreamHost Blog, InfoWorld]

The year is quickly coming to a close and some of the top fifteen to twenty web hosts, mostly shared hosting services, are having great specials. If you haven’t started a blog - whether a ‘make money online blog’ or personal site, now is the time. While many of the specials don’t last long, Below I have outlined some of the best hosts with their discounted price. 

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Before the thought ever came to me to start my own site, I came across BlueHost. It looked like a professional site, offering professional web hosting. At that time, I was even attracted to the outrageously cheap, affordable and good services they offered. I had already heard the horror stories of shared hosting - huge amounts of down time, slow page loads, horrible support. Although BlueHost does oversell (500-1000+ sites/box), they constantly monitor the sites and have advanced hardware - keeping the loading times up. BlueHost’s CEO and President Matt Heaton’s blog show what type of company he wants BlueHost to be.

Several months later, I began looking more at what I needed in a host, eliminating any that didn’t meet my general needs. In this process, I also browsed through many reviews (both negative and positive), sites hosted with them, and also chatted with their support (to see what should be expected once a customer). Out of all the reviews and reports I found, I kept coming back to BlueHost. The two key features that most influenced my decision was the support, tools, and space (bandwidth/web space).

In finding a host, there are many requirements that you should consider. A few of the most important may be:

• Web Space - Is there enough space to add images, text, scripts, and multiple pages or add-ons without the worry of having your account banned?
• Bandwidth - With more and more people using broadband connections, content is becoming increasingly larger - many sites are between 300+ KB, meaning that for every page load, you can expect to use a similar amount of your bandwidth. Almost every host provides at least 5 GB of monthly transfer. If you want lots of visitors, find a plan that offers more space.
• Add-ons - Planning on adding a forum, blog, or other interactivity feature to your site - find a host with Fantastico or other similar tool to easily install software into your site.
• Multiple Domain Hosting - Another aspect of expansion - if you plan on creating more than one site, it is much easier if you can host them all with one account.
• Email - Having multiple email addresses can make your life easier if you need a separate address for advertising, support, etc.
• Support - Does the site offer multiple contact methods - live chat, email, phone? Is it 24×7, reliable, and fast?
• cPanel - cPanel is a control panel with access to an FTP server (uploading files), stats, web mail, and other site tools. Although a standard in web hosts, be sure your web host has this.

To see an image of all the features of BlueHost, click here.

So far after a couple weeks of using their hosting, I have been very satisfied. Their support is outstanding, using the chat feature I can typically get help within 5 minutes, their speed is great, and everything has been running fairly smoothly.

Prices are $6.96/month for 2 years, $7.95/month for 1 year, and slightly higher prices (with setup/domain registration fees) for 3/6 month plans. All BlueHost plans come with a 30 day money back guarantee with a pro rated refund if you ever choose to leave BlueHost.

If you need a good, reliable web host, then BlueHost may be your solution.