This is not hate mail. This is my objective experience as a veteran webmaster and SysOp. They really -are- this bad.
Begin review:
This is the absolute worst, most cheating host I have ever dealt with in my 20 years of online presence.
They brag and brag about reliability. I’ve been down 2 straight days, with no number to call, and no reply to email or customer service tickets.
They swear up and down about unlimited data transfer, then they shut me down at 3 gigs in a month’s time.
When my site was up (rare), I experienced over 10 full days worth of downtime in a 30 day period. They say it never happened. My hit counters say it did. Te fact that I tried to access my site from different computers around the city (friend’s houses, etc) say it did. They claim that my site was up 24/7 and that I just don’t have visitors. HA! My site shows an average of 10, 000 per day. My numbers have NEVER dropped below 5, 000 in a day. Ever. (Well, except for the downtime days.) In other words, they cheated me.
They stole my money and refuse to refund it. They essentially replied ’’F you, sue us. You’re in the US, and we’re in Australia.’’ That’s from the customer service department.
Hostonce is a scam and is not to be purchased under any circumstances. I assure you, I will be doing everything in my considerable power to shut them down permanently, and recoup my lost revenue. They just messed with the wrong white boy. I’ve been doing this longer than most of them have been alive, and I assure you... taking down a site, through legal channels or otherwise, is not difficult.
I suggest a class action suit. Anyone wishing to participate, please contact me directly at thejake420@hotmail.com
Signed in big letters for hostonce reps to see,
Jake Russell
It’s on.
---
UPDATE:
My site has been down for three, count ’em, THREE days now, and the only person to answer an email was the sales department who said ’’I refuse to answer this because you sent it to sales@hostonce.com instead of properly filing a tech support ticket.’’
Note that I have filed 2 tickets. They are 3 days old and are as of now STILL UNASSIGNED!
I also sent an email to a valid tech support email address, as I have it in my address book since my site has been down so much. He (MikeM@hostonce.com) refuses to answer either.
I even went so far as to manually track down their phone number in Australia, and call the other side of the planet, only to get an unmanned fax machine.
NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER buy from them. Ever! They lie, cheat, and steal.
Jake
UPDATE:
After I discussed the matter with the registrar that they use, and informed hostonce that I was going to do everything in my power to get their account terminated from their registrar for abuse of the registrar’s TOS/AUP, they suddenly gave me my domain. How interesting. They’re real tough guys until they realize that they’re about to be sued and go out of business.
To paraphrase an old agade, ’’When hostonce fights and runs away, they live to cheat another customer another day.’’
Now they’re harassing via email me because I wrote this review, and dared to say that they cheated me. They did. They STILL have not refunded my money, nor do they appear to have any intention of doing so. In fact, they insist that this whole episode is my fault because I surpassed the ’’unlimited’’ data transfer level. A) You can’t surpass something that is unlimited. B) My site did not generate any extraordinary amount of data transfer. In fact, I was only at approximately 1 GB per day, which is about the average of most hosting services ’’small site’’ packages. Hostonce cheated me over and over and over, and they’re still sticking it to me.
They are cheats, thieves, and to put it bluntly, criminals. Plain and simple. It is all in plain black and white. There is no ’’disclaimer’’ clause that can justify flat-out cheating people out of their hard-earned money. I am on a very limited budget, with very bad back injuries, and they do not care. They would rather steal my money than allow me to simply have the services that they promised, and for which they were more than willing to charge my credit card. SCAM SCAM SCAM!!! There is no debate on the matter, nor is there any room for excuses and explanations. They cheated me, and according to the other reviews on this site and many others, they have cheated many, many, many other people as well.
I hope they are shut down, and may every member of the staff get arrested and beaten down by some backwater hillbilly rent-a-cop. I would love to see them out of business, and I am personally doing everything I can to see them permanently shut down. This may be a civil matter, but if I find that I may legally file criminal charges, I will do so without a moment’s hesitation. I -HATE- thieves. Hate ’em, hate ’em, hate ’em. I think all thieves should have their hands chopped off like they do in some countries. At least that way they wouldn’t be able to type up false advertising on their website.
If you have been cheated by hostonce, I encourage you to contact me at thejake420@hotmail.com so that we may combine our complaints into a lawsuit large enough to not only shut them down, but to personally bankrupt every one of those unethical SOB’s. If I can’t get my money back, I can at least make sure that they can’t spend it either.
Signed,
Jake Russell
UPDATE:
They’ve now (after reading this review and hassling me about it...) offered me a refund. HOWEVER... the refund that they offered was a whopping $2.65 USD. Now, I did manage to get the domain that they were having difficulty remembering to transfer to me, and they charged me $32 for it (steep, but it’s in the TOS that I agreed to). That still leaves me out about $30.00 (including hosting fees for the 5 months of hell that my site suffered with them), no matter how they try to justify it.
Of course, I haven’t actually gotten the pittance amount of $2.65 USD yet, though I imagine they’ll refund THAT amount, just so they can say ’’We gave Jake a refund.’’
Wow... I -really- hate hostonce.com. I mean I -reeeeeeeeeally- hate hostonce.com.
I do have some good news, however. I moved the site to a new host, and I’m 200% satisfied with them. Lunarpages.com has got the best customer service of any company I have -ever- dealt with. I mean EVER. In fact, I’m going to start a whole new review thread just to tell the world how great they are. These guys answered my email at 2 AM, and did so in under 30 minutes. One tech even gave me his home phone number so that I could call him in the middle of the night. (I don’t imagine this is common, though... LOL)
They were apparently really familiar with hostonce.com and their techniques, and had apparently gotten a lot of former hostonce.com sites. They helped me through the whole move, and even went way out of their way to do a manual import of my forums’ .SQL file, so that I wouldn’t lose all of my messages and members.
WOW! I was so impressed with Lunarpages.com that I now recommend them EXCLUSIVELY to every single one of my clients.
Anyway, the score is:
Hostonce - HORRIBLE, BAD, EVIL!
Lunarpages - Awesome! (And pretty cheap, too!)
https://secure.lunarpages.com/tracking/cgi-bin/clickthru.cgi?id=thejake420
Not a ’’beg’’, but if you’re going to sign up with them, why not throw me some spare coinage? :)
Jake Russell
UPDATE:
After many threats of legal action, and the fact that my reviews have cost them a good deal of potential business, hostonce finally issued me a refund. It didn’t begin to cover losses, but I wanted to mention it. Somehow they still think they’re being nice for issuing it. LOL