So I bought a complete, functioning website on eBay about 2-3 years ago, at the time of the purchase the seller had me register an account with PHPWebHosting so he could install the script and transfer the domain, email accounts and such. He insisted on PHPWebHosting because this was where the the site was coded and resided on and he knew I wouldn’t have any problems running the site on their servers as opposed to any other host.

So after tinkering around with the site a bit before I re-launched it, I decided to attempt to move it over to my own web space on my own servers, and failed miserably. The seller was right, it’s an advanced script that required a lot of control over the configuration of it’s server. Time went by, I decided to put the project on hold and eventually I had managed to completely forget about my account at PHPWebHosting, well at least the bill paying part of it :). From time to time I would check the domain at hand and it was always loaded right up flawlessly, I was just never concerned about it being shut down because I had everything backed up on my own web space (even though it wasn’t functional), and when the time came for me to finish the project my plan was to get the script working on my web space or change hosts. I never received any email notifications, stating my account balance was past due and will be shut down due to non payment, or nothing of the sort.

Now the time has come to find a new web host for a number of reasons that I won’t get into now, after doing some research I noticed that PHPWebHosting was getting great customer reviews. So I attempted to log in to my once established account at PHPWebHosting. The login was successful and I had an ‘Urgent Account Message’ that read:

Important: Your account is Past Due.
You need to update your billing information.

We are unable to bill your credit card on file. This is usually due to an expired or canceled credit card. Please take a moment to update your billing information in the billing section of the control panel.

Please click here to update your billing information now.

Please also make sure that your current email address is listed in the billing contact section of your account. We send all billing notices to the address listed as the account contact. If the address is not correct, you will not receive the notices. (click here to update your email address)

This was obvious to me, but what I was surprised about is how long they kept my account open for, without any type of email notification stating my account balance was past due, or in danger over being shutdown due to non payment. At this point I checked my Account Balance in the billing section of my control panel. What I found here was even more surprising..

Without even contacting customer support about my situation they credited my account with a “Courtesy Credit” which is something I’ve never herd of. So basically I was charged $59.70 for around 2 years of uninterrupted web hosting. So I’ve made my decision that I will be transferring my web host to PHPWebHosting which obviously offers outstanding customer service and premium web hosting services.

……………….

Tags: phpwebhosting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 2:58 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.