HostMonster: Over reacting on scam alert?
You should be aware that I complain that HostMonster is oversensitive in term of scam alert by now at my HostMonster review. Many don’t get my point about “oversensitive” and I’ll explain further at this post, using my recent experience with their verification department as an example.
My HostMonster account got deactivated!
When HostMonster Secret Revealed was first started about a month ago, the whole website actually got deactivated for no reason at all.
I was totally stone!
And to be honest with you, it was totally driving me nuts.
Imagine you had just pay nearly a hundred bucks on the hosting services and the next day you found your hosting account banned for no reason given at all!
Communication with HostMonster customer support
So what I did was to hold my temper and submit a support ticket at their service center. Luckily the response from HostMonster was quick and I got this canned reply from them a few minutes later:
Dear Customer:
Your web hosting account for hostmonstersecretrevealed.com has been deactivated (reason: suspicious activity on this account).
Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for
up to 30 days, after which it will be deleted.If you feel this deactivation is in error, please contact customer support as
soon as possible.Thank you,
HostMonster.Com Support
http://www.hostmonster.com
For support go to http://helpdesk.hostmonster.com/
Toll-Free: (866) 573-4678
Responses from HostMonster
Hours later, I got this email form a guy named Tyler:
Dear Customer,
Thanks for contacting us.We apologize for the trouble you’ve been having, The reason your account has been suspended is because we need to verify the information you have us is correct. Please contact our Abuse dept at 866-573-4678 or if you are calling from outside the USA, please call 801-494-8462. We are open between the hours of 8AM to 5PM MDT.
Thanks
TylerLeve1 1 Support Engineer
Hostmonster.com
866.573.4678Most questions can be answered by articles in our forum, knowledgebase, and video tutorials:
Forum: http://www.hostmonsterforum.com
Knowledgebase: http://www.helpdesk.hostmonster.com/kb
Tutorials: http://www.hostmonster.com/tutorials/
Server Status: http://www.serverstatus,hostmonster.com
Calling the Verification Department at HostMonster
I was like “Call your verification department? What the heck?” I was like half the globe away from the States and the support guy are asking me to call them at MDT time.
Having no choice, I called them. The guy who answered the phone was very polite, but unfortunately, couldn’t solve my problem at all. It happened that the account re-activation task fall under another department named ‘Verification Department’ in HostMonster and heck, my long distance call to U.S. got transferred and the connection got cutoff before I can talk to the personel in Verification Department.
Thus, the mess continues and my website has to surfer a few days down for no reason. Long story short, I was finally able to connect to the right person at HostMonster Verification Department and re-activate my hosting account again.
Things got fixed finally
In the last piece of reply I got for them, they explained the reason of the incident and the solution. The whole drama ended a day after I fax in my credit card and identification card copies.
As part of our on going efforts to provide our customers with outstanding service, we have criteria that we use in determining if an account is legitimate. Due to the certain items contained in the account information, this account was flagged for a suspicion of fraud. For security reasons, this flag caused the system to deactivate your account. We apologize and would be happy to reactivate the account.
To reactivate your account please fax or email a copy of your government-issued photo identification and the front and back of the credit card that was charged. You can white out all but the last four card numbers on the card front.
You can fax the documents to 801-765-1992 ATTN: Verification or reply to this email with the attachments.
The system is designed to do this to prevent fraudulent accounts from being created.
Brooke
Hostmonster.com
Verification Department
support-verification@hostmonster.com
(866) 573-HOST (4678) Option 4Most questions can be answered by articles in our forum, knowledgebase, and video tutorials:
Forum: http://www.hostmonsterforum.com
Knowledgebase: http://helpdesk.hostmonster.com/kb/
Tutorials: http://www.hostmonster.com/tutorials/
Server Status: http://serverstatus.hostmonster.com/
Conclusion of the story?
I have been working with more than 10 web hosting companies (yes, using the same credit card and details) and I had never faced such issues (information abused) before.
I am disappointed to know that a reputable web hosting company like HostMonster will actually ask you to “verify the credit card information” by calling and faxing them. I mean… aren’t we doing business online? Why not get everything sorted out online? And heck, what’s up with this ‘information abuse’ claims where I have nothing to do with any sort of scam activity? Who’re going to pay for my long distance calls since this is not my fault? Why HostMonster isn’t doing anything on this to repay my losses?
Well, so there you go – my first rant on HostMonster. Fortunately, their services are so far doing good (in term of server uptime, disk storage capacity, unlimited domain hosting… etc) and the customer service is efficient.
But a fact is a fact: Although their hosting service is among the best, the scam alert is really over reacting and they really need to improve before they scare all their customers away.
calm said,
Wrote on July 25, 2008 @ 7:09 am
Above you have said
“I have been working with more than 10 web hosting companies (yes, using the same credit card and details) and I had never faced such issues (information abused) before”.
Can you please tell the names of those web hosting companies with whom you are working but their you did not face such issues.
These days I am looking for opening a new account with a good host but I prefer a hassle free account activation.
Thanks.
Jerry said,
Wrote on July 25, 2008 @ 7:42 am
@Calm:
Lunarpages, BlueHost, and Hostgator are the other three that’re topping my list.
I wouldn’t recommend Bluehost here as they are managed by the same management with Hostmonster. Thus it’ll be either Lunarpages or Hostgator.
For budget hosting, I think Lunarpages is the best as their monthly subscription ($4.95/mo) is the lowest. Although they are not offering unlimited bandwidth/disk storage, but 1500GB/15,000GB of disk storage/data transfer should be more than enough.
To visit these web hosts online: http://www.Lunarpages.com, http://www.BlueHost.com, and, http://www.Hostgator.com.
calm said,
Wrote on July 25, 2008 @ 9:28 am
Thank you very much for your response and suggestion .
Kanito said,
Wrote on April 19, 2009 @ 1:54 am
Guys, please note BlueHost and HostMonster actually are the same company. Same boss, same datacenter, same IP, and same price, the only diffrence is the name.
Tim Stevens said,
Wrote on May 7, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
The security at Hostmonster is terrible. My site has been hacked 3 times, and completely shut down from it. I spent 6 months getting top ranking first page for several keywords, and now no ranking at all. What a waste of time. Who do you go after with a law suit for this type of F up?
hostmonster said,
Wrote on July 10, 2009 @ 12:55 am
yes hostmonster is scam people…please don’t try to be their client… i have another website to lunarpages.com they work perfect
but hostmonster require your creditcard to attach and to send them by mail, this is scam, please stop being their client
Doni said,
Wrote on July 10, 2009 @ 7:22 pm
Hey who said the hostmonster is scam, it’s not. I had the same problem with account verification but they want to make it sure that you haven’t used any stolen CC or PayPal… so you can send to verification only last digits of your credit card snaped and you erase other numbers, and your ID.
This is the secure way they work on.
Sincerely,
Liridon Agushi
Tom said,
Wrote on August 9, 2009 @ 1:13 am
Hostmonster is scam. They are completely clueless idiots. I had cancelled all my websites there and today – after almost 9 months later… I get an invoice for a renewal. I got enough and will inform the BBB and local authorities about their fraudulent approach. Hopefully they will be taken out of business.
Tom
cristiano nogueira said,
Wrote on March 27, 2010 @ 12:02 am
Yes, hostmonster sucks when it comes to treating the customer with respect. I have been with them for 5 years, and today got my 43 domains deactivated, with a meager “malware/virus on your account” explanation. Since I obviously wouldnt install anything like that in my account, I had no idea what they were talking about. they could have been more specific.
While trying to get support they treat you like criminals, regardless of your history of patronage.
After 44mins on the phone to talk to a tech specialist (yes, they dropped the line 3 times) someone was able to help the minimum sufficient for me to spend a few hours trying to figure it out for myself.
Stay away unless you want the headaches.
Peter said,
Wrote on August 5, 2010 @ 12:15 am
I have been with Hostmonster for over 2 years and I have to admit, that it was wasted time.
They closed three of my sites without giving me any reason. Today my account was suspended due to CPU throttling.
I run a wordpredd blog and lately I started to get a bit more visitors (around 5-6 k a day).
I regulary reper my database, I have deleted all my plugins and installed wp super cach, the site is loading now realy fast, but the throttling is still the same or even worse (!).
I have contacted live support and after a fiew hours they decidet to anable my account but under one reason, that I will upgrade my account.
Now I’m looking for a new host, because Hostmonster clearly turned into scam.
Laura Anderson said,
Wrote on February 23, 2011 @ 9:13 pm
I had a lot of problems with HostMonster too.
They require you to use a credit card on the account and are auto-renew fiends. They auto renewed my hosting and domain after a year. I had them undo this. Then, they re-auto renewed just the domain name. I had them undo this. A month goes by, and I assume we’re finally done. Nope, they set it back to auto-renew just the hosting every 3 months. But do I get an email even letting me know they are charging me without verification, negative. The primary email was through the domain name and is now no longer working. So, they charge me fraudulently for 9 months.
Now, I’ve emailed them 18+ times, just trying to get them to delete ALL of my accounts (I had multiples). They have been completely unhelpful. They refuse to refund my money or delete the accounts without me sending them a copy of my id and credit card (as if).
Do not trust this company!
Tom Wasp said,
Wrote on July 8, 2011 @ 4:20 pm
As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been moving my two web sites away from my old web hosting service. In looking for a new service, I quickly found HostMonster and BlueHost, both of which looked as if they would satisfy my needs. In fact, they looked virtually identical, down to having the same text in many of their knowledge base articles — they just had different plans and prices. When I asked, I learned that they are in fact under the same management.
I started up service with them, and found everything to be satisfactory, until I had gotten all of my site software set up and was ready to redirect my site address to their servers. For obvious reasons, I had waited until that last moment to request an SSL certificate for my site. I was dismayed when they told me I could not get one!
As noted in their materials, a site that needs its own SSL certificate must first have a dedicated IP address, which they advertised for a small additional fee. But when I went to get my SSL certificate from them, they told me that they were out of dedicated IP addresses and could not give me one, which also meant that I could not get an SSL certificate. They offered to put me on a waiting list for dedicated IP addresses. Since SSL is essential to my site purpose, and since I was on the last day of my 30-day trial by this point, I canceled my account and went elsewhere.
There was one other oddity that I noticed while I was with them. They advertise that they provide SSH access (another thing that is critical for me). But I was surprised to find that they only provide *incoming* SSH access. Once logged into their servers, it is impossible to get out via ssh, telnet, ftp, or even ping. This lack was inconvenient but not critical for me, so I didn’t worry about it much, but perhaps it’s worth mentioning here.