Billing Issues
We are currently aware of some billing inaccuracies which we will be resolving later today. All of these issues will be resolved, and any billing errors corrected. We sincerely apologize for any hassle this has created.
- UPDATE Wed Jan 16 17:03:44 PST 2008 -
Most of you have been refunded at this time, but we have seen some cases where the refund did not go through properly. We will be looking at those as soon as we can.
There’s more information on the official blog.
- UPDATE Tue Jan 15 15:11:17 PST 2008 -
We have gone through all accounts and refunded back money for last night’s billing mistake. We have also automatically re-activated any accounts that were erroneously suspended. We are now going through the support requests remaining to check for any remaining problems. If you are still having problems, please submit a support request so we can check on it for you.
- UPDATE Tue Jan 15 04:13:17 PST 2008 -
The problem has been found and corrected. We are currently going through all erroneously charged accounts and refunding money. Stay tuned for further updates.
- UPDATE Tue Jan 15 07:25:16 PST 2008 -
Scripts are still running to correct the original problem. Last night, this guy ran a standard billing cycle to clean up stragglers from 2007. Unfortunately, the biller was run for 2008 (December 31st, 2008 to be exact). This caused everyone to be billed as if today was 2008-12-31, wreaking the havoc that we are so sorry you had to be put through.
We’re going through and fixing everything right now, but it may take several hours before all affected accounts are corrected. You will receive an email when yours is fixed, and if your credit card was charged, the charge will be refunded automatically.
We’re very very very sorry about this! There is a blog.dreamhost.com post explaining in more detail how this happened..
Also, you needn’t contact us or your credit card company/bank about this.. we’re fixing it right as you read this (and maybe already have for your account)! The best move for you is to just sit back and pretend you never got those weird billing email(s) talking about owing lots of money!
This post will be marked as resolved once (we believe) we’ve fixed everybody’s account.
Once again, we are all *extremely* sorry for the mishap. Thank you for your continued patience while we clean up our mess.
.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Hope this is resolved soon! I was overcharged by $240, and now my bank account is overdrawn! GAHHHH!!!!
January 15th, 2008 at 1:42 am
Perhaps I should have read this first as I just sent a rather aggravated email over to billing. Glad you guys are aware of the issue though. That gives me confidence that it will be resolved. Thank you. Hope your support tech doesn’t take my letter personally
The downside of an electronic and automated billing system…
January 15th, 2008 at 1:43 am
I hope this gets resolved soon…
I just noticed that I LOST all my rewards, and I’m still in debt of $148!! That’d make a huge dent on my credit card, and I’d totally not want that to happen!
January 15th, 2008 at 1:44 am
Oh, man. This incorrect billing thing scared the crap out of me.
I thought I was hacked or something. OI! X_X;; Good thing I checked the support first instead of going nuts.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Yer I was a tad worried when I got an email saying I owed money as I was fully paid up for at least another 8 months.
Hopefully this is fixed shortly.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:47 am
This explains why I was being told my account was due $120 after only two and a half months…
Thankfully I’m not using automatic billing, so my credit card is safe for now. But I’m definitely not turning it on if things like this are going to happen…
January 15th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Nearly had a heart attack when I received the two emails - yikes!
Very comforting to see that it’s not just me though, and that this is a recognised issue. Hopefully everyone who has been charged will be reimbursed accordingly.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Good to see this post. Fortunately my cc was empty
January 15th, 2008 at 1:48 am
I got the email too, It makes me worry about whether the credit card is stolen by someone. Luckily it is just a issue.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:51 am
I got an SMS in my mobile phone (live in Spain) at 5:00AM with the charge of 165€ (2xx $) to my card! and actually I paid my account on november so the whole bill is incorrect.
Thanks for waking me up so early!
January 15th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Like many others I have been overcharged by over $200, you have billed me 10 months early.
What pissed me off is that you say above
Severity: Medium
Well it may be “Medium” to you but it is not to us.
This is a major breach of Trust, if I am not credited within 24 hours I will report you to VISA and seek the removal of your merchant status.
How you expect anyone to trust you after this I don’t know.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:53 am
Ok, I just switched from panick mode to relieved mode. Argh, I was billed twice for hosting services. That was scary
Glad to see it’s all being taken care of. I was all ready to send you a nasty email. Thanks for solving this issue.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:54 am
Almost had a heart attack! Hopefully my CC doesn’t get slammed.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:54 am
LOL! nice going DH
its cheap for a reason!
January 15th, 2008 at 1:55 am
I recieved also a bill asking I need to pay something more, I hope it is related with this billing issues and not with something else.
I hope also to recieve an apology by email as I recieved the warning, or a clarification if I need to pay something. This is really scary.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:55 am
is it me.. or has all the servers went down? including dreamhost itself…
January 15th, 2008 at 1:58 am
@xphia: Seems so on my end as well…I thought I messed something up while fixing up my forum XD
But then my main page wouldn’t work, nor would the panel.
Hope this is fixed as well.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:58 am
Boy I just got an email saying i got charged $281.93
scary thing
SUMMARY OF PAYMENT
Amount: $281.93
Credit card: **** (ex **/**)
Payment code: ********
The good thing is my online bank statement doesn’t show any charges although sometimes my bank does not show transactions online till the next day or after.
I am glad anyway that the guys are aware of it.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:59 am
Re: My post
Looks to be back up again. Rejoice!
January 15th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Ditto to the comment above about the medium severity on this post. Any company that thinks making a large charge to my MasterCard without authorization or notice is not about the highest severity is mistaken, especially if that mistake is multiplied by some/many other users.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:05 am
I have got a SMS from my bank that you charged me 119.40$. It’s incorrect billing!
January 15th, 2008 at 2:06 am
we might have the same problem here.. my rewards are deducted.. so I was only charged 42 $$ .. noticed the severity is gone from medium to high :-)..
January 15th, 2008 at 2:08 am
Serious shit guys, and I have to try to explain to my boss that this company is reliable.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:08 am
Luckily my credit card was expired :p
January 15th, 2008 at 2:09 am
I guess that the programmer that pressed the wrong button is having a hard hard day
Sure man, this kind of things happens. Every programmer has done one mistake like this one at least once in his life.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:13 am
Good thing you failed to process the order from my credit card (for some reason)
January 15th, 2008 at 2:14 am
You also have $294.55 past due (owed since 2008-11-10), and if by 2009-01-10 you do not pay at least the $294.55 part, your account will be automatically suspended until payment is received.
So I owe you money since November 2008. Oh wait, it’s January 2008…
Luckily my credit card was expired.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:14 am
I see the severity has been changed to high now!
January 15th, 2008 at 2:17 am
I also live in Spain and received a SMS saying that my card was billed 238.80 USD.
Please fix this asap because an unexpected 238.80 USD bill hurts!!!
January 15th, 2008 at 2:18 am
Good to see that you’re reading these message, even in the whee hours. Let’s hope it can be resolved before I pass out and sleep.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Thank you for changing the severity, this is obviously a Y2k error just running late or did you have your systems set to recognise 1908 as the beginning of the century?
January 15th, 2008 at 2:20 am
Unfortunately this goes beyond the old “it’s cheap, so whatever”, excuse.
I am willing to forgive Dreamhost for a lot of things to do with the provision of service, mostly because I understand what is involved in running an operation on that scale. This is a real test of your customer service skills, you *can not* treat this one like any other technical problem - you have taken money from people without true authority to do so.
I suggest that you initiate an internal audit of your billing systems and also hire an external auditor to double check your processes. The results of the audit would need to be reported back to your customers. Anything less will be a brush off, and if it doesn’t happen your customers will have no reason to trust that this won’t happen again.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:22 am
Glad you guys put up this page.
I’ve just been charged $238.80 also! Hope it gets sorted soon or I won’t have any money to buy petrol to get home from work!
January 15th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Happy I have mine set to manual payment!
January 15th, 2008 at 2:27 am
Gosh… nearly $400 overcharge… To me that’s more terrifying than a 24h server downtime
Hope my CC will be refunded soon or I’ll have a *real* problem.
– Wayfarer
January 15th, 2008 at 2:35 am
Thanks for the quick reaction. I was just wondering what was going on.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Having just dealt with fraud… I’m not to keen on being charged out of my authorization.
If i end up having to pay special interest fees because you trigger an overbalance, I’ll be contacting your billing team for compensation.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:42 am
So an unauthorized $119 gets deducted right away, followed by *another* unauthorized $119 next month….
hmmm….
I smell Class Action….this could cost your customers $MILLIONS
January 15th, 2008 at 2:42 am
I’ve notified the fraud department at my bank to put a hold on my account. If that should somehow fail and the unathorized $262 charge goes through and causes an overdraft I will require complete compenstation for all bank fees that may be assesed.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:45 am
Completely agree with above posts regarding the severity of this issue. As I only have yearly fees I haven’t enabled autopay, and for that I am thankful now, otherwise I’d be missing almost $400. Billing systems are not web servers. This should not be possible.
Also, I’ve received two payment notices ~1 hour apart. The notices also list one (1) unique IP charge twice.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:48 am
You billed me for an entire year, and billed me twice for each month.
You need to do something more than just correct this, I think.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:49 am
I got charged $119, and I hope I wasn’t overdrafted… If I am, DH, you have to pay for that!!
January 15th, 2008 at 2:56 am
Dreamhost need to update this blog (or SOMEWHERE?!) with any new information on the situation. This is major - and it’s disheartening to see that until users piped up, the severity level was a mere “medium”.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:56 am
Just initiate a charge-back immediately. This will cost them at least $35 for illegal charge placed on your account.
So call your bank and dispute the charges immediately! the longer you wait; the longer your money sits!
January 15th, 2008 at 2:58 am
Gah! Thank God that A. this is a known issue, and B. the credit card I had on file had expired, so while they tried to charge it, they couldn’t.
Meanwhile, I can’t access my website… (Dunno if that’s connected or not.)
January 15th, 2008 at 2:58 am
I realize its an error, and I trust Dreamhost will correct it (save your emails though to make sure).
More importantly, how and why did this happen? Is this the 2nd major breach in security within a year? Is my cc# now out in the wild this time? I guess I’ll find out soon enough if random charges start appearing on my statement.
January 15th, 2008 at 3:02 am
I am BEYOND pissed off. You just maxed me out over my limit! I want you to return my money to me right away please.
January 15th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Will Dreamhost cover any overdraft fees that this may have caused?
January 15th, 2008 at 3:05 am
I would STRONGLY recommend AGAINST in issuing a chargeback unless you’re ready to face downtimes.
I got a cryptic message saying if I don’t pay by 2009/01/15, my site will go down (my renew date is 01/15 / today). So if you don’t pay for it, your site will most likely stay up for one more year. If you issue a chargeback, they will be notified, and the system will most likely automatically disable your account because you just “took money away” from them… even though it is probably not rightfully theirs, yet.
Personally, I’d say give DH 3 days to resolve this issue, and if they don’t, then consider the chargeback + downtime.
January 15th, 2008 at 3:07 am
>> More importantly, how and why did this happen? Is this the 2nd major breach in security within a year?
Hmmm, I’m new to DH (thankfully no CC on file so all I got was the bill email). What was the first security breach?