Ambrand.com

I have many sites, with many different hosts. I’ve decided to consolidate.

Consolidation is a nice word, but the downside is it means one is putting all ones egges on one basket.

So I will need to check the quality of the baskets before putting my eggs in. To dispense with the metaphore this means I will need to somehow guage the quality of hosts before opening accounts.

At the start of last week I was 99% ready to give my business to Digiweb, whom I previously admired. But now I wouldn’t dream of it. So what happened in the last week?

I received an email invoice to renew the cheapest plan they had. I’ve been using it for the last year to host one site. However the invoice is very badly designed. It wants me, the customer, to jump through hoops to pay. There is no hyperlink to a credit card form, not even a fax number where I can fax a completed form. I am asked, in the small print, to phone their customers support line, which I do only to hear a recorded message saying it is only open xam to a-pm monday to friday blah blah blah.

I print the email to take it to work the next day, so I’ll have the figures in front of me when calling. I phone during office hours and hear a recorded message again, thinking they are still closed I hang up. After two more attempts I google their name to see if they have gone out of business, or been bought by a larger more faceless corporation like Namesco. But there are no rumblings online. So I phone the number again, and listen to the entire message, ah it turns out that is just there 1 minute standard introduction, yawn. So I press X to speak to a customer service agent, but all the agents are currently busy.

That night I receive an automated email

Please be advised that the credit card / laser card details we hold on file for your account has failed for payment as the card details are now invalid / expired.
Your account is now in arrears and WILL BE SUSPENDED IN 3 DAYS unless payment is received in full.

I emailled their customer support outlining how they are committing the cardinal sin of making it difficult for a customer to pay! I get no reply. I still want to do business with digiweb because they use hsphere (my favourite hosting control panel) albeit an emasculated version of hsphere, where the billing section is disabled, hence the need for the above, along with other toys such as throttle being absent.

So just moments ago I logged into the relevant registrar and changed the DNS for the hosted domain to another host I use. I moved the Digiweb emails to the “Storage” folder in outlook, and shredded the printed invoice. Goodbye Digiweb.