Billing Issues

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…

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.

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…

Good to see this post. Fortunately my cc was empty

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!

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.

LOL! nice going DH

its cheap for a reason!

is it me.. or has all the servers went down? including dreamhost itself…

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.

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.

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 :-)..

Luckily my credit card was expired :p

Good thing you failed to process the order from my credit card (for some reason)

I see the severity has been changed to high now!

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.

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.

Happy I have mine set to manual payment!

Thanks for the quick reaction. I was just wondering what was going on.

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

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.

I got charged $119, and I hope I wasn’t overdrafted… If I am, DH, you have to pay for that!!

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!

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.

Will Dreamhost cover any overdraft fees that this may have caused?

>> 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?

I recommended DH to a friend a couple weeks ago and today we both received those erroneous bills, luckily I saw it before her and could calm her nerves, she was freaking out!
Sad day for everyone that trusted the automatic paying mechanism…

April’s Fools!!! (4 months ahead of time!)

Note date on DH bill is DECEMBER 29 2008. Obviously DH billing server tripped to the future. Therefore all bills due within 2008 are now overdue! Imaging what is happening with they bank accounts now…. This is so f…ked up.

Although I had an expired card on record, I’m closing my dreamhost account the moment I’ve sorted out an alternative. This is an appalling error that warrants more than a few words apologising for “the hassle”. I imagine some peoples’ finances have been severally impacted by this error and they are in a difficult situation now, awaiting the chargeback. What a complete shambles this company is.

I’m just glad my CC information is wrong in the auto-billing. This just reinforces my decision to move my business at the end of my billing cycle.

You’d think they’d get this bit right…

Phew. Had a feeling something would be up when I was told that I owed money dating back to the 15th December 2008. LOL.

Now to go check my bank account and make sure I still have money on it @_@

About the only way I stay is if they leave my account extended the year they renewed it and refund the full amount charged..

SUMMARY OF PAYMENT

Amount: $3564.00

Talk about an overdraft..

MICHAEL G - when they start charging people for hosting for the future - up to $3000 in maniacs case, i think it’d be in the best interests for the management team to get the hell out of bed and sort it out?

It’s 12:50 CET! 8 hours from now banks will be closed.

Actually, proposing class action is a pretty appropriate solution.

“It would be nice if one of them could get on this blog and let us know what happened, instead of hiding.”

@David: This status post is precisely what that is intended to do. No one is hiding. There was an error in the billing system, and it is being addressed. When further updates are available, they will be posted. We do fully realize the gravity of the situation, and it will be dealt with appropriately. Again, our apologies…

I have to be honest, I’m furious about this. I don’t remember signing up to any automatic payment scheme and even if I did, this is totally unacceptable. This is a screw up of the highest order, I’m a poor student with rent due and now I’m $150 out of pocket. Not good enough DH.

Luckily my credit card is full, ha! Honestly though, that was pretty shitty. I figure you’re going to be giving out some free months or some shit.

Some of you are seriously overreacting, relax.. Billing mistakes happen and DH will obviously get them corrected - during normal business hours.

behooves??? And by the way, I wasn’t casting calumny, I just think they could have had one of their people post a few explanations and reassurances on this blog, and then people wouldn’t be panicking. Je suis tres raisonnable, mon pote!

I am VERY angry about this billing matter. Manic - your comments are less helpful. Many of us work really hard to make a living and when we are billed in advance (in my case TWO YEARS in advance of when the bill was due) then that’s stretching the friendship. I feel very sorry for those whose bank accounts have been impacted by this disgraceful matter, and expect that DH will be making HUGE efforts to compensate those who have received extra DEBITS by their banks. Fortunately my credit card expired a month ago and I have a new number, so DH’s system failed to access my funds. This is shocking behavior on the part of DH.

After reading the letter 10 times over I started to realize something went wrong. Good DH put a warning box at the contact form, otherwise I would have sended the issue.

But what will happen now? Will DH send us back a notify the previous bill was for real or fake, or should we fish out our selves :S. Just don’t want to lose my account :?.

Well, DH can consider my account closed … just as soon as the ‘close my account’ option STOPS asking me to pay $300+ for a bill that isn’t due until 2010. Not worth the trouble staying with DH if this is how they treat their customers.

And what about additional costs incurred with overdrawn charges? I don’t want 6 months ‘free’ hosting, I need that money.

There better be a really bloody good reason for this. It will take something damn special to stop me switching hosts at the end of my billing cycle.

@Jason - Being angry doesn’t help, just like those overreacting and calling for a class action lawsuit doesn’t help.. With maybe $100 in my bank account my debit card got charged over $3500 by the billing error..

That’s why I prefer to pay using PayPal or GoogleCheckout and allow payments one by one.

Anyway, yes, you should do something to fix this problem (like they say, free hosting or similar…).

I’m in the same boat as Justin (1st post) this charge has overdrawn my account and now it is causing a domino effect of overdraft charges. THANKS DREAMHOST! I really hope you make good on this… :X

Charles - you say it could happen at any time with any company. Well the fact is IT DID happen with Dreamhost. Why should we stay with a company that is so flippant and irresponsible with its customers credit card details?

Manic - I agree. Apologies. Just can’t believe DH’s action on all this. Closing my account immediately upon expiration of current plan.

Please give DH the chance to correct this issue without aggravating the situation, unfortunately it is a shock to many of us including me but we can’t turn back time. DH could email the accounts concerned with some kind of reassurance regarding how and when this will be corrected. Hey, maybe we’ll get a token credit discount towards the next billing , (2010). Go DH go !!!!!

Glad I checked back before I go to sleep. Looks like things are heading the right direction. Since I only lost rewards and was not actually charged due to lack of credit card on file, a sincere apology and refund of my rewards credit should make me a happy dreamhost user. However, I’m afriad same thing cannot be said for those with over draft and or massive bills that set back their other financial plans… Good luck dreamhost, I can’t be of much help there. Sorry.

I’m sad. When I got the email that I was being charged $380 because of this issue, I checked my online banking…overdraft settings are already taking effect. I immediately went to cancel my account, which deleted all of my files, and shut down my email. I also emailed DH immediately as well. I was sure I wasn’t at fault, but I tried to do everything I could to keep my bank account from going south, even if it meant losing my files, and having to switch over all of my emails. This is not a small matter at all. This is just so bad. I didn’t receive notice that this was a mistake. I just happened to see this issue pop up in the support area, when I was looking for a phone number so I could contact DH tomorrow morning. The only way I would come back to DH is if they not only reverse the charges, and covered my overdraft fees, but also, gave me at least a year of free hosting. The work to put everything back into place at this point is depressing to think about. This is just a nightmare.

To Richard. My bank has already started the overdraft processes. I have a few other debits in peril because of this now. You say, complain to get something for nothing? You need to get real dude. No, this didn’t bankrupt me. But it has seriously set me back, and I won’t do business with someone who sets me back like this. Be a sucker if you want to. That’s your bag dude. Something for nothing? I paid for something with DH. And now, I’ve been set back. I’d like to get something..for the something I paid for, and not have to pay for something, when I’m not trying to get anything, which is what happened here. Sure, it’s a mistake. However, it’s not a small one. I will have many charges to account for with my bank. I’ll be calling them first thing in the morning to dispute the charge to make sure this doesn’t go any further in harming my finances. Then I’ll have to pick up the pieces regarding my web sites, email addresses, etc. It’s like a bomb went off.:(

$572.40 taken from my current acocunt, its now overdrawn and I need cash to get lunch, this is a really bad day

My account is due for my yearly payment on Jan 20th, so at first I thought the emails I was getting were just routine warning me that my account was about up. Then a charge appeared for $119.40 covering the next year and it says it was charged on 1-20-2008 (in the future).. that’s when I checked support.

Good thing I don’t have automatic billing enabled. I feel really bad for all the people who are going to have real problems b/c of this. :/

If all of the accounts had been found, why haven’t those account holders been notified? I only found this information here after searching for the “my happy hosting” mentioned in the billing email I received. I was not overdrawn like some others here, but the lack of contact to customers impacted by this error does not help to maintain trust. I see no reason for those customers to continue their hosting with Dreamhost at all.

‘If your next web hosting bill from us is mysteriously tripled, now you know why.’

Looks like he was right. Not sure if i’m going to move, can’t exactly trust a company that just overcharged me several hundred dollars, even if they are correcting it. Shouldn’t have happened once and e-mails should have been sent out already rather than this note on a status blog most people probably don’t read.

cosplayphotos: My CC had expired too! It returned an error

Patrick from Dreamhost said: “Please check back soon for a full accounting of what happened.”

This “full accounting of what happened” had *better* not be one of your typical stupid, cutesy, jokey “woopsie daisie” DH blog posts, accompanied by a litany of idiotic images you pulled down from Google Images. Being silly and lighthearted about serious problems like this will guarantee that I cancel my service with you. I’ve promoted you guys to 4 of my clients in the past year, including my current employer, all of whom switched thier hosting over to DH, solely on the trust they had in my recommendation. I do not look forward to the phonecalls i will invariably get from them when i wake up in the morning, wondering why they hell they are being charged for things theyve either already paid for, or dont have to pay for.

I am absolutely furious about this “error”. There is NO excuse for it, as far as Im concerned. Especially for a supposedly “professional” company like Dreamhost. I have no problems with the occasional server downtime, but screwing with our finances is absolutely inexcusable.

I fully expect to recieve a full credit, in addition to either (at least) 3 months of free hosting, a free, significant bump-up of diskspace or some other form of reparation. In this particular case, saying “whoops…sorry about that…we’ll credit your account” is simply not enough. Regardless of wether its a technical “error” or not, Dreamhost technically *STOLE MONEY* from it’s own customers.

Please do the right thing, guys.

Good lord. Dreamhost really do suck!

Inaccuracies? Since when is a $238 bill that should be $25 an inaccuracy? I’ve defended them before, but um… what?

I was charged $548, 12 months twice!!! Had a total freak out! And no doubt my bank account is overdrawn right now. I hope this is resolved very quickly! Because it is NOT funny at all!!! Someone got their code very wrong… Nice one!

G*

Thank god my bank stopped the transfer, seriously, though now I need to reactivate my debit card, what if I had rent or medical expenses to pay?
I think more than just refunds are in order for this.

Is our credit card data safe?

GT: from the last newsletter. It was a joke about them moving into a new office.
Context:
“”"
Another important thing I’ve been doing instead of writing newsletters
is looking out the window of our NEW OFFICE:

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2007/12/21/were-so-high-right-now-you-dont-even-know

If your next web hosting bill from us is mysteriously tripled, now you
know why.
“”"

I was a little distressed to get an e-mail saying I owed a hell of a lot of money, but that’s only because I have thought that Dreamhost was too good to be true all along, that is to say I thought I had finally found the catch (maybe I overused my FTP one month or something like that). I am glad to see it was done in error as I still love the service I have received here, I’m just glad I don’t have any auto-withdrawals set up.

I also wanted to comment on Martin’s idea about Dreamhost acting like a “serious fucking company” and say I would hate for that to happen. One of the reasons I love Dreamhost is because they don’t sound like a bunch of stiff office workers (regardless of whether they are or not), and I would hate for that to change because of a billing error. I say as long as this is made right it should be business as usual.

So there!

Just a heads up guys that DH does offer a way to help prevent them from overcharging you. On the “billing tab” if you have “credit card autopay enabled” there is a place where you can “limit the amount we may charge this card in one day”. YOu can choose the maximum amount DH is allowed to charge your card each day. I think this may have saved me from the $400 bill they sent me getting automatically deducted!

I’m submitting a news tip about this thread to BoingBoing and a few other high profile tech news blogs…so hopefully there will be wider coverage of this very disturbing problem. Dreamhost truly needs to be held publically accountable for this.

I encourage others to do the same.

I see no need to reiterate the frustration and anger which people are understandably displaying, but will add my story for those who wish to concur.

I was called by my credit card company two hours ago and asked if I’d charged this or not. I had no idea why it would have been charged (have lots of positive credit for DH from rewards) so I had to suspend the account and canceled the card. Not exactly a convenient thing to do.

Additionally, I signed up for a separate account for my employer - after much discussion and convincing of how great DH was. This will reflect quite poorly on me as an I.T. Coordinator and my judgment.

I understand things of this nature may happen in this age of online servicing, but to be honest I feel that something as severe as this deserves a proper apology/refund in the form of some amount of free hosting time to those of us impacted by this unfortunate situation. If we’re to believe in DH, we need to see a strong reason to stay with a company that has failed so drastically in this area.

luckly my credit card wasnt empty and the charges cannot be proccesed. but when i got the e-mail i was prepearing to bomb dreamhost datacenters

Definetly agreeing with those who said this is the perfect oppurtunity to turn off auto billing.

My bank account is, more likely than not, bone dry now. I’m a college student so I never have alot of money in the account to begin with, this does NOT help matters at all. Let’s just hope the bank dosn’t throw fee’s my way.

haha, good thing my card was nearly maxed because the could not charge it lolz, it was a card that i transfered all my balances to. all my other ones are free

Crud, I just canceled my account this morning after hearing that I owed $120 (which I cannot afford at this time) on the 28th, just to now find out it was a billing error. Why was an e-mail not sent out to people notifying us about an error before we freaked out?

In any case, I guess I didn’t use the service enough to really need it anymore, but just the same - I don’t like waking up to find bills that pop out of nowhere, too. =\

This scared me…I thought I was all paid up and everything…

Busting their butts to fix it? How do you know they aren’t all sleeping? There is one post here saying it is supposedly being fixed, but no emails have gone out to those affected. As far as we know from what is here, they have done nothing but figure out that it happened.

Hmmm, I was also puzzled by the message from billing… Hope they resolve it

This needs to be resolved ASAP. There’s one thing you can’t mess with - people’s money.

My charges better be refunded today or I’ll report you to VISA.

really bad DreamHost should give us 1 year free

Phew my bank declined the withdraw request, of ot had gone through i would be overdrawn. Was about to write a very angry email untill i found this, glad to know your aware of the issue and are working it out.

I too thought my account had been hacked until I checked my email and read DreamHost’s billing department telling me I owed $228 for months that haven’t even happened yet. Needless to say I did write a nasty response- and personally I don’t care. This is uncalled for. I’m lucky that I don’t use auto-pay.

Account (suspended)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Site Temporarily Unavailable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What irks me most is that other than the Rebill Receipt, we have NOT received any emails from DH regarding this HUGE, catastrophic event. There are DH customers out there completely unaware of this (I’d JUST received that Rebill Receipt and have been aware of the charges to my account for an hour now) and are going about their day, charging their credit cards and debiting their bank accounts, unaware that they are quite possibly racking up hundreds of dollars worth of overdraft and NSF fees.

This is tremendous. I don’t know how DH is going to recover from this. I was fortunate that I’d just gotten paid my salary, so there was enough money in my bank account (I used a debit card for DH auto-billing); for those who didn’t have the $200/$400/$2000 or more that was charged available — I feel for them.

Get on the BALL, DH! INFORM your customers IMMEDIATELY and EFFECTIVELY when something like this happens.

Thank goodness! I almost had a heart attack when I saw a demand for $572 in my e-mail inbox! Not only were the charges incorrect, but I was hit by them three times (over $120 each)!

I think I was just billed once, so the impact on my account wasn’t too bad. I’ll be waiting for the refund.

This just in… DH is closing down, keeping all the money, and going to Mexico to drink margaritas!

It would have been best for everyone if a mass email had been sent out explaining the problem so we all wouldn’t be fearing for our bank accounts. I also want to know HOW this happened, and how to get off of automatic billing that I wasn’t even aware I was on! That scares me too. Just because they take our credit card once doesn’t give them the rights to lifelong access to it!

Shit, i was charged $438.90, this better comes back to my bank soon or i’m filling charges

I think everyone affected by this should get free hosting for another year to make up for the “mistake” and all the overages we’re going to have to pay due to our accounts being overdrawn.

I expect a full refund within the next hour, and I expect you to pay damages. Yes, damages. You see, some people will now receive angry letters and charges from their bank. Due to your mistake, not ours.

So here comes the lesson, never give anyone the right to take money from your credit card if you can choose. Also I’m really happy person cause I have virtual card exactly for internet purchases and so there’s no credit associated with it. No money in it… so all I got just a warning email and some smiles while reading the comments.

Almost any bank should forgive charges do to a merchant error like this. If they don’t, it’s time to change banks.

While I understand that errors occur, it seems to me that this is yet another case of DH running a program that has not been fully tested. In the past, they’ve had scripts running that ate all of the DNS entries in the network, and other such “errors”. Perhaps it’s time for them to have a real configuration management plan in place to make sure that this kind of serious error doesn’t creep into their production system.

I was freaking out when I received the email saying I owe $218.90 when it’s not even supposed to be due until next month, and the amount should be $119.40… but then I realized it’s charging me for next year so I thought there must be something wrong. Glad I checked here or else I’d be freaking out still. I’m a student and a Malaysian, so that amount would REALLY, REALLY be insane for me after currency change…not that I have that much anyway but if I did, oh my god. I am shocked to read people being ridiculously overcharged by this from the auto payment.

There’s no email, no explanation, no nothing from Dreamhost.
This is seriously gonna hurt your reputation, Dreamhost.

This is to all you guys that got hit with a few hundred dollars in the billing issue, don’t feel bad Dreamhost is overbilling me $9085.00

I expect DreamHost to refund my money and any overage charges ASAP. Even then, I think I might get the hell out of here anyway.

Plus those of us who aren’t using US$ credit cards will be charged an extra fee by our banks. I hope this will be refunded!

Dreamhost being cheap isn’t an excuse for major billing errors. Slow servers and downtime are annoying; causing peoples’ bank accounts to be overdrawn is entirely unacceptable!!!

re: “billing inaccuracies”

Not “inaccurate” - flat out wrong! Billing me more than $447 for a single 9.95/month account is more than “inaccurate”. Does this have anything to do with the shiny new office and the fun “holiday party”? Easy to fix, though - I’ll just call AMEX and let them handle it with you. Twits.

Hi dreamhost, I was referred to this page by a friend…

Do you think in the future, you might…I don’t know…send out an EMAIL to the people who you mistakenly overcharged twice so they know you’re on the case?

Yours,

Happy Dreamhost Screwing Up People’s Bank Accounts Team

We’ve had dreamhost for more than two years and have never had a billing error, but this one does kind of overwhelm the good side.

I agree, there needs to be an e-mail to everyone, but if that would take time away from fixing the problem then I’m happy to wait. I would kind of suggest that you change the forum to post more recent messages at the top, so that the most recent news is the first thing you see — it might calm people like me down a little faster.

Anyway, no charge has actually hit either of my credit cards involved, so I guess you must be doing something about it now. We’ll see if it stays that way –

fortunately I pay it with paypal , no problems here

I am glad it is only an error, but to be sure I have removed my CC from DH panel and I wonder if I ever will add it again.
Technically DH is fine for me, but charging my CC without a reason is unacceptable. My trust almost vanished.

From the Billing panel: Great hosting comes at a price.

No shit…

Dreamhost is a decent webhost but I don’t trust them with recurring billing and never will. Abysmal uptime is one of their features and it’s not surprise it’s the same thing with their billing system.

This is totally the last straw for me…. I’ve been around for too many f__k-ups now, and I’m sick of it. I’ll be canceling my account the second it’s done copying to my new server. The only reason I’ve stuck around so long is the price - but it’s really not worth it at all - was fun this morning trying to pay for gas and having my check card declined because these morons took $500 ‘by accident’. I’ve since logged into my account to see that the charge isn’t even mentioned - but - now there’s a new problem - suddenly they show me as having two accounts, and say I’m a month behind on both of those! God… infant monkey could do a better job.

Do yourself a favor and CANCEL before this bunch of knuckleheads does something even worse…

Matt

Also, I’m amazed at how many people are one bill away from over drafting their bank accounts and defaulting on their mortgage.

I especially like the “stay tuned for updates” and the “we’ll tell you what happened later.”

Um, I deserve to know RIGHT NOW what the HELL the “Happy DreamHost Billing Team” was doing when this “error” occurred?

Passing around the company bong?

Too busy taking videos of your “new office” with your cell phone? Yeah, because that is the crap that I care about - what your office looks like. I mean, that’s so much more important that charging me correctly (both time and price of recharge).

Five hours and counting (since this dreamhoststatus.com blog was posted) and still a lot of pissed off customers.

Great move, DreamHost.

You’ve lost a lot of confidence in people and haven’t made any effort to regain it so far. Do you even plan to? Probably not … will just have to write another lame newsletter after you come down from your bong high.

Thankfully, all of my charges were saved by my referral credits.

I was just charged for $119.40. I demand a refund.

“Also, I’m amazed at how many people are one bill away from over drafting their bank accounts and defaulting on their mortgage.”

A lot of us don’t keep an excess amount of money in our checking accounts. If you do, any web hosting company can have a “billing mistake” and take it.

Well, luckily my credit card hasn’t been charged yet. Hopefully Wells-Fargo will be forgiving when I go to explain to them what happened in an attempt to deny the charge if it shows up as ‘Pending’ on my online account.

Seriously, WAY TO GO DREAMHOST!

I understand accidents happen and all, but this is inexcusable. Award-winning service my ass. Besides, I had ‘Automatic Rebill’ turned OFF before this and suddenly it got turned back on when I popped into my web panel to see what was up.

Yeah. Really class guys… real classy.

this is unacceptable, i’m leaving dreamhost for sure

Drear Dreamhost,

Here’s a screenshot of the invoice, and it says I paid $239.40 “date charged 2007-07-18…. for services through 2008-07-17!!!

And below in your email it says For Monster code sale … ” 2008-07-18 - $239.40 for “My Code Monster SALE!” through 2009-07-17

So which one is it? I know it’s for one year which is paid up, your billing is very confusing.

Please let me know why this is due now when it’s supposed to be due in July of ‘08 by my understanding, And then from July of 2008, due $239.40 to july 7 ‘09.

That’s one year, so why is anything due now by Jan 18th ‘08?

I don’t get it?

Regards,
Glenn
Do you have a phone number I can reach you at to talk to you about this? You really should!!!! THIS TAKES TOO LONG.

Mine is below,.. Please call me. Thank you.

But now reading all these comments I see there’s a problem with your billing system. I suggested you email all who have been charged or emailed about a bill due that wasn’t that there is a problem and you don’t owe anything at this time to make sure everyone is not freaking out. Thanks. Glenn

You idiots have overcharged me $500. WTF is wrong with you people? Plus I don’t even have an email from you telling me that you have screwed up royally - I have to go and search for an answer? COME ON! I hope that we will be more than compensated for this error (as in at least a years free hosting) + I will be forwarding all bank charges on to Dreamhost.

Class action lawsuit anyone?

The other option is to call your bank and issue a chargeback on Dreamhost. This will screw up their credit card processing account, but should cover you for their mistake.

Damn, $381.60 past due… Ouch, that hurts.

For a second I thought I had somehow got some serious web traffic to my site, which was kind of exciting, but not four hundred dollars exciting.

Still happening, I’ve just recieved another 2 notifications for rebills on 2 more accounts - that’s all my 5 accounts been recharged, and I’m down around $1200.

Unacceptable.

Taking money mistakenly is the cardinal sin of customer service.

I’m going to go try to send this to Dreamhost now — we’ll see if I can get through (strangely enough, the panel is at a crawl):

You know, the pithy explanations of serious server problems used to piss me off. The lack of a phone number used to piss me off. The skitchy uptime used to piss me off. But this takes the cake. I completely agree with William — you need to tell us all NOW what the hell happened. I’m likely to see overdraft charges on this account because of this.

I’m done with you potheads. As soon as I get my money credited, I’m closing my last remaining account with you. At one point, I had five different accounts with Dreamhost. One at a time, they got screwed up in some way or other and required a quick flight to another host.

Will closing my account be enough? What guarantee will I have that you won’t screw up and charge me again anyway? You people take the cake. This is a big enough problem to shut you guys down, and maybe it should.

Well, at least my bank was helpful. Bank of America is who I go through. The charge has not fully posted yet, so I’m just sitting here with no access to my money, which sucks of course, since my bank account in now negative. My bank has assured me that any overdraft charges that will come to my account, will be reversed, if the charge from Dreamhost gets resolved as being an unauthorized charge…which it is of course. However, this situation is so horrible, that I think even if Dreamhost were to offer me a free year or two, I wouldn’t take it. This has broken my confidence in them that much. I’ll be signing up with someone else for sure within the next week or so. My car payment may be affected by this, as well as much more. So, refund, reverse charges is all I’m asking for at this point. Dreamhost lost me, and has lost ability to not only recommend them, but they are now from personal experience, someone to avoid. They just don’t have the business minded reputation I’m looking for.

hope you are paying overdraft charges!!!!!!!!!!

Completely unacceptable. I consider this robbery. This is the last straw. Attorneys and compensation are damages are next for sure. Been there, will do that. Breach of merchant account..

After receiving the email about my account being charged this morning I immediately sent an email to their billing department. Understandably I haven’t received a response considering its currently 6:46AM PST.

The only way I was able to find out they were aware of this was googling “dreamhost billing errors” which took me to the status blog.

Once DH was aware of the problem an email should have gone out explaining “Hey, we screwed up and we’re on it”. I get this feeling that someone decided “Hey, lets just try and fix this asap and sweep it under the rug.”

On one hand I can understand the need not to make this totally public to defend the company image however this looks even worse when the ONLY acknowledgement is on a blog.

Like many others, I take some of the DH quirks in stride since its cheap/affordable. Billing errors like this however really make me question the systems in place.

Hey..
this is completely [bold]childish[/bold] !
Unbelievable!!!

You could send a mass email cancelling your first email,.. not to expect us.. to search for what happened!
Ubelievable!!!

i thought that hole Dreamhost have benn hacked…!!!

Billing issues Are TOO SeriOUS to PLAY WITH!!!
DO NOT EVER Do That again!!!

i have written you an email too… explaining that i have not ordered anything! i felt like an idiot now!
thanx!

Yes, an email would have been nice instead of having to check the status blog. I already put in a support ticket about the billing (invoice for $345.) before I came here.

Luckily I don’t have automatic payments enabled and only have email updates/email invoices enabled so I won’t be charged. I’d advise others to remove authorisation for automatic payments.

Wow this is like watching a train wreck. The more people who wake up, check email, and realize what happened the bigger this will explode.

Same here Carl. I closed my account as well, and then I got charged for the fees again. Yep…I closed my account with Dreamhost. Gone, bye bye. Then I got charged, which was a successful charge, even as I didn’t have the money in my bank to cover it. I’ve emailed them a few times, and no reply. I thought too, closing my account would stop the process. Instead, now I have a positive credit with Dreamhost,..one I will never be using. They owe me that money and I want it ASAP. It’s my money after all. It’s our money. I have never seen such a fiasco before, affecting so many people…certainly not one that affected me like this. This problem is not resolved yet. If it goes a fraud situation with my bank, I will take it that far if necessary…or court. I swiftly closed my account, and just as swiftly, I will address this in all other ways necessary as well. I hope for the sake of Dreamhost and mostly, for my own concerns and the concerns of others here on this blog post, that they act swiftly as well.

Is anyone else able to access the webpanel? I’m concerned and want to shut off the autobill so I can manually renew until I’m fully off of Dreamhost, but now I can’t even do that. The lack of communication with customers via email for a problem this big is the issue I’m most concerned about. I’m lucky to only have ~$275 charged to a no limit card, but communication is what I value. For most things, a post here is fine. For this, no.

i hope dreamhost can survive this…

What the hell is this!?!?

I have automatic billing turned off and yet Dreamhost billed me.

I dont care what your reasons are. This is inexcusable.

I don’t think the problem is “resolved” as my erroneous receipt seems to have been sent out within the last 30 minutes.

I suspect that there is an intruder or an insider working at Dreamhost which task is to damage very bad the company –and (s)he is doing a hell of a job. Can we dream about a hosting company that doesn’t give troubles in at least one month?

Can’t access the web panel and ALL OF MY E-MAILS ARE DOWN!

Hey all, has anyone dealt with Wells-Fargo on this yet?

‘Cuz I’m HOPING they’ll be forgiving and willing to deny any charges from Dreamhost.

I think I might be someone who legitimately had some money due to Dreamhost this month (besides getting the emails for a month, my amount is also, like, legitimate and for one year). Like the disorganized person I am, I always forget (I NEVER do autobill) and so therefore I got on this morning and made my payment because my sites were down. My bad on that, but…normally full payment resets the account to active right away. Not so today. Now, everything is down (except, weirdly, webmail) and I have clients calling me and complaining and wanting to move off Dreamhost, I will probably have to move their domain hosting for free (to make up for this crap) which is several hours of my time, besides having to really consider, for the first time, moving my whole hosting service to another one. I have a couple dozen domains and countless databases, etc, and so this would literally take me hours and hours (probably a full week’s worth of contacting clients, one at a time, and setting them up painstakingly elsewhere).

I am seriously disappointed. The down time has been bad lately, so with last Friday and then today, my clients are pissed and want to move, and now I have to give up a lot of MY time to fix this. I’ve been with Dreamhost a very long time and I’m dreading the whole damn fallout.

Count me amongst those both double-billed and billed for an entire year.

$399 taken from my account this morning.

My bill *should* have been $19.99.

My bank isn’t showing the money as having been refunded yet.

To say I’m not happy is an understatement.

Over $1000 charged here. And while I do understand that errors sometimes happen, when was the last time ANY OTHER COMPANY YOU DEAL WITH charged you $1000+ by accident and then had no phone support to call and discuss the problem? I’m willing to bet the answer is, well, none. There’s errors, and then there’s a total lack of accountability and responsibility. For the record: no, I don’t think that free hosting is the answer. But remuneration of some kind, particularly to those who were really negatively impacted by this financially or in terms of downtime, is at a minimum what I’d expect from a *responsible* company.

Well, clearly the problem has *not* been corrected because just two minutes ago saying I’d been billed $765. Twice, for the same damn hosting plan, for the same period of time.

This, coupled with Comcast refusing email from Dreamhost servers, is enough to get me looking for a new hosting company.

Angie

I agree I was billed $9000 and was looking for a phone number to call only to find none.

A charge for $958.80 was attempted. This is unbelieveable. I thank God that I had moved all funds out of that cc into another, so the charge was declined. I expect a refund of any insufficient funds charges. I appreciate the wake-up call to not have my checking account linked to any on-line/automatic billing. It seems so obviously dangerous in hindsight.

You can’t imagine what a scare it was to receive an overdue bill for $500. Glad to know this is being resolved, but seriously guys, between the Gmail graylisting and this, I’m beginning to wonder if sticking with Dreamhost is worth it…

I am surprised I have not seen a follow up email from them explaining that they are working on a solution to this. Some sort of status update OTHER than poking around to find the status blog. I have had one client email me and ask about the rebill they received - initially, I thought it was spam, but when I checked my account panel I found that it was true. One thing I’d like to know from others, did they do a rebill ONLY on accounts which had “automatically rebill” option checked? Mine was, and you bet yer bippy I have removed that option.

And for the love of Zeus, there had better not be some cutesy, snarky newsletter about this.

Yes, robert, I have the same bill for 765, and I am quite concerned that this will take 7 days to be rectified.

I am sorry, but this is just flat out illegal and ridiculous.

therefore, as N-RON, I approve. But I don’t approve of getting caught. And therefore, Dreamhost, you should eat this and give out bonuses of service at the very least. Or better yet, deny the whole thing!

What’s going on with email!!!

Seems like the webpanel is down as well.. Crazy crazy crazy.

So, how about some suggestions on hosts that unhappy customers can switch to?

I’ve been with DreamHost for a long time, but for the first time, I’m seriously considering changing hosts.

How about it… if you’re changing hosts, where are you taking your business?

I’ve been charged $760.60. I have never before received a totally erroneous credit card charge of this magnitude from any vendor of any type. This goes well beyond a simple clerical error.

I think this is the end of my time with Dreamhost. This really is completely unbelievable, and a total betrayal of trust.

Can anyone enter the webpanel?

I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight if I get no new update from Dreamhost! The control panel isn’t even working now…Even though I haven’t been charged, who knows some other screw up might charge me later! And the recorded CC isn’t even mine.. so I”m scared it gets charged… DREAMHOST, WAKE THE HELL UP AND RESPOND TO US! Give us some fricken updates!

Yes the webpanel is down also … they are having all sorts of fun.

Well Im glad I was set to manual pay. Im cancelling my account as soon as I am able to. Right now it says I have to pay $120 in order to cancel.

The webpanel is down now for me as well — on top of the unexpected $483 bill I got this morning.

Alternatives hosting providers anyone?

Alternatives hosting providers anyone???

Are we sure it’s not a malicious attack on dreamhost billing system??

The panel is down for me as well (as is one of my sites).

“# holycrap Says:
January 15th, 2008 at 7:01 am

i hope dreamhost can survive this…”

I Don’t - in fact I hope the exact opposite.

Alternatives hosting providers anyone????

I’ve heard good things about mediatemple and slicehost. I’m gonna wait and see how this pans out though (it could be a malicious attack). Everyone will get their money refunded, but I think with overdraft fees, dreamhost will take a serious hit.

I only joined yesterday and don’t care if I have been double or triple billed as i’m sure ill get it back. It’s great news that so many people are leaving today as it will mean even better service for those of us who stay.

Guys, I know you don’t want to hear this, but when you give a company your CC number, and you authorize them to do automatic billing, then you just run the risk that you will be temporarily overbilled. If your credit rating or interest rate or bank balance or blood pressure can’t handle that risk, then don’t sign up for automatic billing!!

Yea mine is saying I owe $582.00 but thankfully I dont have my card on file. They have suspended my sites so I’m a little irrate about that.

And yea I cant get in the control panel either!

Yea, I’m suddenly glad I am strongly anti-autobill… cause I’ve been with DH for almost 3 years, and the “you owe money” emails I got said I had to pay up ~$670 bucks… if I’da autobilled that, I’da been pissed… but without autobill, they are just asking me to pay it…. which I won’t.

Matt

This was a very expensive error. I am set up to pay monthly, so when you guys overcharged me, you charged me 24 payments of $9.95. About 10 of those charges resulted in overdrafts from my bank to the tune of $33 per overdraft = $330 total in overdraft fees! Thanks DH.

“It’s great news that so many people are leaving today as it will mean even better service for those of us who stay.”

Well said!

“Alternatives hosting providers anyone???”

I’ve been researching this just now. Most promising so far is HostICan (http://www.hostican.com/), which offers similar prices to DreamHost at the low end and will also move all your files/databases for you — as well as buy out your old contract.

American Express is going to receive a call from me to deny all charges. Unfortunately, my domains are locked and I don’t know how to resolve that and transfer them to the company I’ll be switching too.

Sad.

Godaddy Promo code Geek5 saved me 15% on a order, their is a shared hosting account code Todd20 that will save you 20% on one year shared hosting accounts.

This is yet another f-up in a long line of f-ups for Dreamhost over the past few years. WHAT HAS HAPPENED?

I never thought that when I woke up today I would be looking for a new hosting service.

I demand a refund.

I was the first one to post in this thread, and last time I checked my bank account, there was still a $240+ charge. I called my bank to give them a heads up, then checked my email…..

…..4 unsolicited emails from register.com offering me new hosting deals…..what timing! Haha!

“Well said. Not only that, but until the charge posts to the credit card account, it has no effect on your account, credit history, or overdraft.”

This is patently not true Jake. There is a hold on my account for almost $600. If I needed those funds for something, I would not be able to access them.

I the email at 6:00am this morning, but checked my banking and don’t see anything. No panel access and this, I have yet to see any sort of email. Just a lame a$$ post about how you are having problems. DH you owe us all a real explanation NOW!!!

Don’t be sucked into Media Temples grid service - I have just left it due to poor performance and the site was only a test one that was hardly visited.

I’m glad DH are aware of this issue. I was a little shocked to see that I was billed again, when I was only billed (properly) a couple of days ago. I also noticed that the “bill” I received today charged me twice per month. Now my CC is in debit. Not happy. I hope this is fixed ASAP.

THANKFULLY my card had also expired, so this will bounce back and DH will lose me as a customer. Awesome job, guys. You Fail.

BTW, I called HostRocket to see if I could get a real person on the phone. 45 second hold time. FOURTY-FIVE SECOND, not some shitty message about how they don’t answer voicemail on their only phone line that you have to find by googling. I’m going to do some research before signing up, because I won’t be making this mistake again.

Ya’ll might be able to get temporary debit cards or something that will expire immediately if you continue with DH. I sure as hell wouldn’t let them have an active account now.

You know, I love these threads for the pure comedy they provide. Most of you should be shot for the websites you host here.

http://www.jokefactory.com is a really good example.

Damn, this explains why I owe them $1 241 215.99.

Haha, just kidding, but seriously, this scared the crap out of me.

Wow. This is just about inexcusable. This was NOT the way I wanted to start my morning.

Site’s down until payment can be made BUT CAN”T MAKE PAYMENT…..
Please reactive account until issue is resolved. Please. Invoice #38904
Thanks

I wish “no ETA” could be narrowed down just a LITTLE bit. Hours? Days?

$119 has been posted to my bank account already, and sure enough it has over drafted me.

I expect DH to compensate us for this!

Is this related to web admin panel being down or just great timing?

Come on, everyone needs to calm down here… shouting, arguing, cursing DreamHost… none of this is going to improve your situation - or theirs.

Yes, I’ve been impacted - charged $120 for a year’s hosting only a month after paying $120 is a pain, sure. I live in the UK, so I’ll also be charged a fee for foreign use of my card and I’ll suffer from a crappy exchange rate when I get my refund. I’m expecting this back and I’m pretty damned sure DreamHost will be compensating others too. After all, if they didn’t they will have even more explaining to do than they already have!

But like I said, we need to calm down here. The company I work for did this two years ago: we ran a quarterly batch job for charging our customers twice. We’re a global financial firm that makes over a billion Euros annually… and we fcuked it up! It can and will happen to anyone, and these things get sorted out - there’s a BIG legal requirement that they get sorted out.

Give it time, take the necessary financial precautions, and wait for more news.

Just wondering…

Does their bank do not place a limit in the amount of daily transactions they can do ?

I sell online and I am forced to limit my charges to a (relatively high) limit, but this makes that this kind of issues will never grow so much.

Every minute without control panel I am scaring more and more. Are you guys sure that this is an innocent mistake ?

What’s funny is all the low lifes that come here and complain that $200 put them into overdraft.

LOL.. LOLOLOL.. Etc.

I’m not happy. Very unhappy. It’s bad business.

This is outrageous. I woke up this morning to find out I owed $381.60 This is not acceptable. You can’t make a mistake like this and post a simple “SORRY” and everything is handy dandy again. I want compensation for the 30min stress you just put me through. You’ll hear from my lawyer!

WHAT DO YOU OWE MONEY FOR?

We have the last payment on this account to be $190.80 on 2006-04-05 07:49:08.

Since then the following charges have been made to the account:

2007-03-01 - $0.00 for “Domain Registrations” through 2008-04-04.

2008-04-05 - $190.80 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2010-04-04.

2008-04-05 - $190.80 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2010-04-04.

Thank god I used Paypal!

Scary Stuff, fortunately for me my credit card was declined. Remind me to turn auto billing off ,if and when webpanel is up and running.

Paypal just noticed some suspicious activity on my account! My e-Gold account has been compromised. But thank GOD I just won the UK lottery (3,500,000 pounds)

I’ll admit, seeing the bill this morning when I woke up was a shock, but what immediately tipped me off to it being an error was the fact that it was “past due” as of 11/2008, which hasn’t happened yet. When I first signed up for dreamhost, I told them not to charge my card more than $100/day, and so thankfully, nothing more than $100 was charged. Then, I was able to log into billing and I saw that I owed Zero, so…I’m willing to chalk this down as a major error. Anything billed to your cards overnight will only place that money on hold and it will NOT be processed until Midnight the following day. (so Midnight tonight (Tuesday)). As long as Dreamhost manages to reverse everyone’s charges today, your money will stop being held. However, if you attempt to make purchases/clear cheques while this money is on hold, your bank WILL fee you for overdrawing. A quick call or trip to the bank to prove that the money actually is in your account and didn’t go anywhere should clear up the fees and your bank should refund any overdrafts you received.

I’m sure the panel is down right now because it has been flooded with people trying to log in to check their accounts.

I also don’t think it’s a good idea to make demands of a company at 3 in the morning. Even if there WAS someone present trying to work through the error, they wouldn’t be able to check all the emails.

Currently, it is 7:45PST, and the rest of the staff is probably just now arriving, and many may only just be being made aware of the problem.

Is it really that hard to give them until Noon PST to work out a solution? I realize that Noon PST doesn’t help people who are overseas very much, but you also have to realize that you are dealing with a US based, west coast company. They simply aren’t in their offices 24 hours a day.

Anyway, it sucks that this has happened, but I’m sure Dreamhost will sort it all out ASAP.

…and think of how many people just pressed “reply” on the email like it said to and flooded the billing department with email?

Jake (and others defending Dreamhost): would you mind going to the people I’ve referred to Dreamhost and explaining your stance to them, please? And, hey, while you’re at it, maybe you could explain to some of the people who have posted here talking about the problems this has already caused them, how it’s really *not* a problem? People like Alkivar? Or maybe the people who have already had problems due to this are just lying…

Dreamhost should probably tell their people to STFU for now. you’re only making things worse.

This is *not* a “woopsie we goofed” problem. This has spilled over in to seriously effecting people financially on several levels. I can’t wait to get the emails from my friends lambasting me for ever having them sign up with you.

This really bites, how can you assure us that this won’t happen in the future?

Matt: You are probably wrong, how they can refund money people lost due money conversion from GBP to USD?

OMG!!!
I live in a country where you pay taxes for sleeping without pillow…can you imagine how much I’ll be charged for this DH bug?
I hope and demand for total refund ..including bank fees

For all of you people who are overdrafting you have greater issues to deal with and probably shouldn’t have a website (And if that is for your business, you probably should find a new line of work). I got the e-mail and my only reaction was, these numbers aren’t right, and these dates aren’t right, must be a glitch

i feel bad for those that got overdrawn as a result of this. but seriously, why put your checking/ATM card into their system? that’s a big no no for me personally.. i use a real credit card so nothing ever touches my bank account. . just a recommendation !

I got the billing email, but I don’t (yet) see any issue in my bank account. I don’t know if that means I’m safe or not.

I recommend switching to an office recurring billing solution dreamhost… One where your not in charge of either keeping the credit cards or making sure they get billed monthly… Take a look at Authorize.net’s ARB solution. That should prevent any screwups by single persons in the office.

Also, ever considered running your transactions in test mode and looking to see if the numbers make sense before doing this?

Ryan said: For all of you people who are overdrafting you have greater issues to deal with and probably shouldn’t have a website (And if that is for your business, you probably should find a new line of work)

DING DING we have a winner!

You complainers need to get a clue. If your life is ruined over a $300 charge to your card (which will be inevitably reversed), then you have serious issues. Go get a job.

“Just a question for the poorest among you, if you’ve got so little cashflow is a personal website really what you need to be spending your money on? Just out of interest.”

I pay $10 a month. I know this charge is coming each month, and is less than 50c a day to “save up” for. A $200+ charge that I am not expecting, as it shouldn’t have happened, however, is not something I “save up” for. Why should I be “saving up” for something that shouldn’t have even happened? *rolls eyes*

Enough! That’s it! I’m out!

They’ve updated this blog, yet have not even sent an email to affected customers. That I already KNEW to look here for issues is moot — not all their customers know to look here and their Control Panel is still down, so those poor people are completely in the dark.

COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS, DREAMHOST! AND GET A CUSTOMER SERVICE CONSULTANT TO COME IN AND GIVE YOUR STAFF SOME EDUCATION ON KEEPING YOUR CLIENTELE INFORMED BY ALL MEANS AVAILABLE AND NOT IN THE DARK! IT’S THE MOST BASIC TENANT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE!

(this, alas, will also be ignored. In spite of the screaming >.

Ohhh jesus… i want my money back!!!

“I pay $10 a month. I know this charge is coming each month, and is less than 50c a day to “save up” for.”

You have to “save up” for a $10/month charge?

Get a credit card & use that for your purchases, pay the balance in full each month and build some credit.

Yeah, I think it’s time to stop using a hosting service that’s run by stoners. Nothing against stoners, but front-page pictures of employees chugging beer apparently provide an accurate representation of the corporate culture.

I’m sure glad my stuff’s not really critical.

Mike, I HAVE a job, it’s called living to survive… and if I could AFFORD the freakin’ $300 a month charge, I WOULD HAVE BEEN WITH A DIFFERENT DAMN HOST. Why don’t YOU take a clue that an error like this is massive and if people could afford it to begin with, we wouldn’t be “complainers”.

If they install mod_mono, and pay me back the money, I won’t complain.

Looks like mail to billing@dreamhost.com is fubar.

support_dm@mailproc.dreamhost.com
# #SMTP#

Re: Dreamhost Billing Sucks,

Sadly, that’s the owner — not just a ‘programmer’. :/

I was going to get upset, but then I remembered, “Shit, I’m made the conscious decision not to sacrifice control over MY MONEY for convenience and don’t have direct debit setup for anything other than my mortgage payment.”

Seriously people, letting companies ( private, utility, etc ) have unfettered access to make whatever withdrawals from your account is just setting yourself up to get fucked over at some point. Sure, Dreamhost buggered this up and it’s inexcusable, but what if some douche ended up charging hundreds of dollars of long distance to your phone bill? Or some one has been charging pay per view to you cable bill? Or your water line in your house springs a leak that you don’t notice and your water bill is tripled? It is always easier to arrange for (partial/reduced) payment or correct the situation before money has changed hands, if they can just scoop the money out of your account, you’ve lost your biggest bargaining chip.

For people complaining that those who can’t afford a sudden extra unexpected $400 taken from their checking accounts are “lowlifes” and shouldn’t be web hosting or running a business, I ask, have you ever RUN a small business and tried to deal with cash flow?? God, what a bunch of mean-spirited people post here.

For myself, it’s not the billing, but the f-ing downtime. I have Code Monster service, and so therefore I pay more than merely the basic. I expect to get what I pay for - which is, more business-level reliable hosting. My clients are calling me off the hook today. I can deal with occasional downtime but my sites have been down, along with email, etc, all morning, with no end in sight.

As much as I hate to say it (I love Dreamhost and you can’t find a status page like this at most hosts, DH prides itself on its transparency) if I have clients who are screaming at me, I have to do for my business and leave DH.

Here are all the hosts I could find that I have so far been recommend by other dreamhosters in this thread:

MediaTemple: http://www.mediatemple.com
Westhost: http://affiliates.westhost.com/z/14/CD970/
Aplus: http://www.aplus.net

For the record, I have a seperate account that I use for my webhosting related costs. So don’t knock it, okay? I keep around $150 in the account at all times. So don’t be so damn judgmental.

Can someone help me here - one of my sites is down and it’s unrelated to this issue yet I can’t contact support because the panel is down. When I send an email to support@dreamhost.com it bounces back saying it don’t have an open ticket!? How can they say contact support via the panel at the top of the post yet the panel is down!?

They’ve updated this blog, yet have not even sent an email to affected customers. That I already KNEW to look here for issues. — not all their customers know to look here and their Control Panel is still down, so those poor people are completely in the dark.

And even though this isn’t the official place to report problems … my Webmail isn’t working and I can’t sign into the Web panel to report problems. Arrghh.

Really, a picture of some shirtless dude is supposed to make me feel *better*?

This billing issue has completely borked the web panel which I desperately need to access right now. This is not good, and even if I decide to stay with Dreamhost, I wonder if this won’t be the final nail in the DH coffin that forces me to find another host when this company goes belly-up.

“That Guy” needs to be fired and a helluva much better system of checks and balances needs to be put in place immediately.

I appreciate you guys trying to bring some levity to the situation but the fact is, this is in no way even remotely a laughing matter. Your error will potentially throw peoples credit cards ( and my business bank account ) into over drawn and over limit status causing tremendous fees, possibly negatively impacting credit ratings.

I currently have a business line of credit application pending. Now that my account is sitting overdrawn I’m left guessing as to whether or not this is going to affect me.

I come from the IT world so I know things happen. I also know, certain things are NEVER allowed to happen. For someone to simply be able to run a script that then runs amuck, billing at will, is incredibly unacceptable and quite frankly, incredibly stupid and speaks volumes about your current billing infrastructure and whoever designed it.

The only thing saving you right now with me is the quick responses and past performance from your tech support guys with any issues I’ve ever had.

This issue is 1000 times more important and critical to me than any sort of down time I may have ever experienced.

I dont envy you one bit right now.

“Get that man a shirt.”

He’s getting ready for the ritual lashing he’s about to receive. One strike of the cane for every mortgage defaulted on by an overbilled customer.

@adam
Was your card renewed? If it was then you may still get charged. If not or they had changed your card number on renewal then you are safe…

$382.80 + $52 from rewards for me. I didn’t remember DH being over $18 a month for code monster when yo upaid 24 months at a time…

And now the panel is down… so I can’t even put in a ticket.

Let’s just say I’m not thrilled….

Don’t you guys realize that there is an option in the automatic billing section to set a maximum daily charge? I used to have the Code Monster package ($19.95/mo) so I set my max daily charge to $20… they tried to bill me today for $40 but couldn’t… they do say that I owe $119 (due on 1/1/09) but I’m just going to wait for them to sort this out.

I highly suggest to you all, if you are using auto billing, to set a max just above your monthly bill amount so that you can’t be charged for more than that at one time… that way if something like this happens again (which I hope it *won’t*), you won’t get a huge charge on your CC or drafted from your bank account.

“You complainers need to get a clue. If your life is ruined over a $300 charge to your card (which will be inevitably reversed), then you have serious issues. Go get a job.”

Go to hell, Mike. What do you know about the situation of any of these people?

I also like how your system totally ignores account credits. How do we get rid of account credit?

Funny story. The other day I was entering data into a laboratory database (in Access, yuck!) for some December results. When I was entering dates, I noticed that my “12/21″ entries became “12/21/08″ not “12/21/07″. Luckily some form validation alerted me to the error. Mayeb something similar occurred here? Might I suggest that some similar contigency checks and validation be implemented by Dreamhost esp. when money is involved.

Also I understand everyone’s frustration, but I for one do not want “free” service for a year while putting DH out of business in doing so.

But I would accept a muffin basket! Or maybe some flowers?

A Script did this? Are you familiar with the now() function?

Oops. I usually have the problem of typing in last years’ date for most of the new year, but he doesn’t have this problem!

I attempted to send an email to billing, but I’ll assume that it’s full because it bounced back. I feel bad for whomever has to go through all those emails… I just wanted to say that the pending transaction for DreamHost has been cancelled and it didn’t cost me anything!

**
***If anyone is worried about getting charged, just contact your bank/credit card company and let them know what’s up. They probably won’t charge you for the pending transaction and your money will be back in case you need it.***
**

Also, does anyone else think that *maybe* we deserve a free month or two of hosting because of this?

This is a good lesson that Dreamhost needs to get a life and grow up and be more professional. Sending out those stupid monthly newsletters that are just plain dumb. Maybe they should concentrate on what is important. TAKING CARE OF THEIR CUSTOMERS.

Now we are loosing money as we paying employees that are not getting anything done as our email, some websites, and corporate intranet is down and we can’t even access the WebPanel to report the problem.

We were overbilled by $4672.50 which is not that big of deal as long as they take care of it.

I would love to be a fly on the wall at DH HQ right now. You guys really screwed the pooch this time. Fortunately the card I have on file has expired and I wasn’t charged. Honestly though, an email should have been sent out to ALL customers immediately acknowledging the problem and explaining what you’re doing to remedy the situation. This is egregious. You need to find a new billing system and fire the moron who’s responsible for this.

@Jane”BTW, you irate people demanding refunds . . . isn’t that what the message says? For those of you wanting a response right now, doesn’t the message say this afternoon? ”

Where does anything say “this afternoon?”

Wow, over $900 charge!! Good thing I just took off automatic payment the other day! It took forever to access this status page and I can’t connect to my panel either. Crazy. At least all my sites seem to be running still…

Seriously, hosting guys.
A buddy of me tried to order really cheap hosting, but i told him he should go with the “real deal”, with yours. (happened yesterday).
When his father was about to input his credit card number, he asked me for confirmation; “is this a reliable company”? I said yes. I think it’s really a big bail, and you owe all your customers 1 month of free hosting for this very serious issue.

Not only did it affect my buddy’s project, it also destroyed my rep by giving an advice to go with you.

How bout an update from those who’ve had charges reversed… anyone?

Just skimming the previous comments (there’s NO WAY I’m going to read 464 comments!) I see several points I must agree with:

1) There should be some system of checks and balances so that one person can’t screw things up that badly. Perhaps even something as simple as a billing program that compares the billing date to the system clock and throws up an error message.

2) You need to either send updates by email or make certain that each and every customer knows about this blog and that they should check here before writing nasty emails to your support people. I found this blog by ACCIDENT after my wife sent a nasty email.

3) If you’re going to post pictures of your employees, please make sure they have had a chance to put on some clothes, brush their hair, and shave before taking the picture. Not only does Josh look like he just crawled out from under a rock, that picture gives me the impression that DreamHost’s servers are located in some misfit’s basement, right next to his collection of Sarah Michelle Gellar pictures… not exactly the kind of outfit I feel comfortable handing credit card info to.

I’m mad, but I am looking forward to their explanation. My bank is cool and is taking care of the issue. A simple phone call and it’s like: we’ve seen a lot of these charges today and we’re investigating. (Me thinks Dreamhost is going to having to answer to several banking institutions.)

But anyways, as for a free month: it’d be nice to get at least 1 month of free hosting. But I’m not holding my breath.

I got an email about billing today too, kind of odd, even though I’m not due to rebill until March:

You also have $90.65 past due (owed since 2008-11-27), and if
by 2009-01-27 you do not pay at least the $90.65 part, your
account will be automatically suspended until payment is received.

Apparently I’m past due on money that’s 10 months from now?

i’m just glad you guys found the problem… hopefully it doesn’t happen again.

that’s it, i’m dropping dreamhost. any recommendations on new hosting companies?

Good job fuck ups

Is this issue related to the dreamhost panel? I am unable to check my email and log into my panel.

I wonder how many folks that are threatening to quit DH will be first in line to bitch and moan the next time someone makes a mistake. If you are going to quit, then quit, just stop pissing about a mistake that could and does happen to other businesses.

John M:

“Unfortunately, the biller was ran 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.”

I think pretty much everyone has been billed in error.

hi. like Umesh above, i too am unable to check email and log into panel. what’s going on?!

Come work at DreamHost… the Benefits include:

.Full health/vision/dental
.401(k) plan
.Profit sharing
.Generous time-off (up to 5 weeks after 3 years!)
.Flex time (work from home up to every other day!)
.Upward mobility (typically all other jobs in the company are promoted from tech support!)
.Laid-back atmosphere
. *** No Bosses watching what you do! Do as you please, with no consiquences. ***
.Free snacks and soft drinks
.Free web hosting!
.And more!

What about those of us who are happy to pay that far in advance? Can we leave it?

Please tell me you fired Josh.

Wow, yeah, I’m glad I wasn’t using automatic payment, this sucks. This is absurd.

“If you are experiencing a problem not reported here, check our :web panel: for more information.”

I would if it was ACCESSIBLE…

I’m glad they think its “funny” enough to post a “funny” picture of the “guy”.. What a bunch of sheep…

Beautiful email explaining charges already refunded -though when I take credit cards I run the credit card for the amount and get an approval. I then have to “settle the batch” or “perform end of day” before it is a real transaction. Prior to that I can reverse, void, delete it. It is always a 2 step process.

I wonder what my processor would say if I did this ..heck I’m not afraid of what they would say ..I’m afraid of what they would do to me through fee’s, chargebacks, surcharges.

I actually read the whole email and saw that it was for ‘future’ charges that were past due. I laughed… yes, at first glance my eyes just about bugged out, but after reading it I thought there might be a glitch. And sure enough, I come to check the status blog and there’s an issue.

Seriously though, you guys need to be more careful… there’s a lot of pissed off folks out there. I think we deserve some free goodies for the mix-up. I know that would make me happy

I can’t even access the panel to cancel my account, it’s down.

See, I accepted many server downtimes, slowness, etc… I *almost forgave them* by not moving all my sites to another server… but this is a huge issue, this was global and too unprofessional… today money was involved, and a hosting provider should never play with client’s money, never.

I’ve been here for more than 2 years already, and only 2 months were a dream, the others were nightmares.

Today I will have to backup sites, upload them to another server, and change domain’s nameserver while explaining my clients why their sites are down.

Just let me into the panel, and it looks like it killed any built up rewards, too.

Buh Bye Dreamhost - Hello Media Temple

I too will be moving… This is ridiculous! How do you not check for that type of discrepancy? Why are you using “scripts” to clean up your billing/accounts receivable?

I hope you are able to rebound from this DH. Best of luck…

The billing error did a few things in my case. I pay by credit card but it doesn’t auto bill to it thank goodness. It did send me an invoce. On the invoice I was charged two times. My account isn’t due to be paid until March but the billing listed as of Nov/07. So it showed the wrong billing cycle time for me, double billed me, and I didn’t notice if it added some sort of pass due charge but it warned me my account was pass due. Then as mentioned wanted me to pay for 2 yrs when I only should be billed for one and only be billed this coming March $119 not over $200.

Also the server seems slow lately and speed of page loads is odd. Is everyone else on manchester server dealing with this?(slow load speed) I also had problems reaching panel earlier.

Condolences to the tech team… problem shooting things is a pain in the butt. (so says me from Programming class)

I’m curious just how much money they posted last night alone from this mistake. With a good portion of the posts here quoting between the 200-1000 range, it has to be a LOT. I would have been down just under 200, but THANKFULLY my CC was expired on here.

Not that we’d EVER be told anything CLOSE to the truth from DH, I still wonder how much impact this actually had (even without the overdraw fees and other associated bank costs).

How the hell does this happen? I mean seriously? You guys need to stop growing and fix your shit. A lot of us use you guys because we don’t have much money in our bank accounts, the same ones you just sucked money out of. Probably overdrafted a lot of people too, which means extra charges. Sorry, I can overlook occasional technical bullshit but this just continues to make me think that Dreamhost is run by a bunch of hacks.

Stop joking around in your fucking annoying newsletters and fix your shit. I don’t want free stuff, excuses, or please no more jokes, just fix your shit.

I got charged for TWO DOMAIN PLANS and a Domain Renewal. A crazy $248.75 — I already paid for my hosting and domain renewals back in December. This is a serious problem. I’m lucky I didn’t Overdraft. I hope you guys get this fixed son, And I Wished you would have sent out a mass e-mail instead of my coworker having to direct me to the blog….

I wonder if someone will consider a CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT if dreamhost doesn’t coverall of the overdraft fees they’ve caused.

Thank God this is just a mistake… that was one scary email…

I have been with Dreamhost 7+ years now. I am one of the lucky ones I guess, I didn’t have my CC set to autobill, otherwise the 481.00 charge would have screwed me. I feel for the folks that actually got charged.

I am pulling for you guys, I hope DH gets this thing out of the ditch and back on the road. I have had experiences building sites on with other Hosts, and still prefer DH warts and all. The one click-install engine is a great value to those that use apps like Joomla. With many other hosts, you have to do those installs and updates manually which can be a pain.

Good luck to all!

Dear Dreamhost,

I’m sorry to say but with this recent issue I’m considering pulling my hosting out entirely from your services. When I initially signed up for an account with you guys I was recommended highly by a few friends, and at the time it was great service and great support when I needed it. Yet lately, I’ve encountered problem after problem, and downtimes are just to frequent, most of which seem to be caused by employee mistakes.

Recently I moved a website off my dreamhost account because after 3 days of talking to support who said they could not replicate my problem of my site loading incredibly slow and I had no other choice. Since moving the site to the newer hosting I have not had a single problem and with their hosting comes cpanel, which is far superior than the customized panel you provide, in which it takes over 30 minutes for most requests as simple as creating an email or creating a database.

Even today of all days a client wanted a new email account created, and now I can’t create it because your custom panel is constantly unavailable due to this billing issue. Granted I don’t seem to be one of the many affected by the billing portion of it, but it has made me incapable of providing the necessary support to my customers.

At this point the only service you still provide that I like is the massive disk space and bandwidth. Granted there are many other hosting companies out there that offer near as much if not more for near the same price, I believe at this point I’m pulling all of my web hosting and going to use you as a FTP account until I find a better solution or a better reason to leave entirely.

This is obviously a series error by DH, but I think everyone needs to take a deep breath. In all likelihood this will be completely resolved today, with no real negative consequences except the panel being down because everyone is freaking out & checking their billing (which isn’t directly DH’s fault). Also, if they have any clue, they are going to reverse all the transactions and work with their bank to make sure none of the debit transactions are actually settled.

So, your CC company and/or bank is going to see a charge that was reversed, or a charge and then an almost immediate credit. Any sane bank will realize that this happened because of a billing error, and if you call them will fix things for you. DH will probably give you a phone number if you ask them for your bank to verify that it was an error, or work out something similar.

Bottom line:

1) don’t panic, or I should say, stop panicking

2) don’t use a debit card online or for any automatic billing, EVER. NO MATTER WHAT. Why risk having important bills, checks, etc. bounce because of an issue like this? DH isn’t the only place who has made a mistake. If you can’t get a credit card then get a pre-paid debit card, or see 2.b.

2.b) If you don’t have really bad credit, get an overdraft line on your checking account. HSBC for example offers an overdraft line (of several thousand $), and if you are overdrawn, the they pay the transaction out of your credit line, send you a nice reminder in the mail, and if you work out the problem and pay back the credit line within 30 days, you get charged a grand total of $0.00. Seriously, why risk ever having to pay some insane overdraft fee?

3) if your bank and/or CC company won’t help you and they are being jerks, time to look for another bank/credit card company. If they give you a hard time, tell them (nicely) you want to speak with a manager, ask them for their full name (write it down, and ask how to spell it so they know you are), and explain that it is DH’s fault (give them this URL if you need proof) and that if they don’t fix it without any fees you are going to go to another bank and never come back. Then, if they don’t help you, close your account, and write them a nice letter saying that they have lost a customer over manager X’s poor customer service.

…on the other hand, this is a good way to boost site traffic and hits.

I’m out.

DAMMIT. My account has been suspended. I can’t get my mail. I can’t get to my domains. I can’t get into the webpanel. THIS SUCKS BEYOND ALL BELIEF.

My sites are BUSINESS SITES. I can’t have them just randomly go down especially for bullshit reasons that don’t have anything to do with me.

I once worked at small web-hosting / ISP back in early 2000 to 2001 (I wont mention its name..) and I was responsible for the billing system / credit card processing.. Being a small operation that took credit cards we had a few incidents identical to what the staff of Dreamhost is going through right at this moment.. And it is NOT fun.. AT ALL..

If anyone from the Dreamhost Billing Staff is reading this comment- there is something I did that you might want to implement.

We had a scripted credit card charging system probably not unlike yours.. Here is what I did:

In the database that holds each account, add a field (NOT a variable calculated field!) that holds the MAXIMUM amount that account can be charged at any given single billing cycle (or month) or single transaction. Whichever you feel is best.

And only allow that database field to be modified when a new service is added or a service is subtracted..

So basically- when a script gets run that starts processing invoices, BEFORE it actually charges the card via the processor, it checks the high-water mark for that customer and halts the transaction if it exceeds….

This seemed to work pretty well for me.

Just a suggestion!

This would have been a good one for April 1. That email scared the crap out of me. Sorry to here about all of you guys dealing with overdrafts. I am sure Dreamhost will take care of them or just ask your bank to drop them. (They can do that)

The billing email made me giggle.. it said my account has been past due since November 15th 2008..
oddly (or luckily) my cc was declined.. I’ve had no service issues though.. all my sites/email are still active..

Well, dreamhost, you have done it to me once again. I have a new client that was supposed to pay today, but since we have been sitting here for 3 hours looking at
“Site Temporarily Unavailable
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.

error id: “bad_httpd_conf” ”

The now former client moved on down the road. This will have made it the 3rd time I have lost a client due to your random dependability over the past 3 years. Now it is your turn to receive a crazy invoice for a whole bunch of money, not hundreds, but thousands, well when the emails work again, prepare for an email about all 20 sites, and invoices for downtime. Maybe this will help you get someone over 21 to be in charge of the billing.

very displeased man, very unhappy. Thanx for adding injury to insult by showing a party picture of your problem. - nice myspace pic josh

Wow. Normally I like reading thru the comments here when DH problems surface; usually they don’t, and I’m unaffected by most of the tech issues. This time, as with all money problems, the best and the worst of people is brought to light.

It’s people. That’s what is behind all these machines. Seriously, if a bank post a charge dated in the future and then ruins your life for an error it makes sense to change more than your web host. There is no forgiveness when it comes to money, eh?

The control panel is down. No surprise. I feel for the DH people, I feel for the bank people, and I feel for the customers, all who live in a 24/7 world-wide support me world that must have been immediately hit with a flood of button pushing and phone calls and panic. But ask yourself….

Do you want to yell at someone, or allow space to correct the mistake?

I think the main thing Dreamhost could have done better here (other than being a bit more careful with the almighty billing button, of course) is sending out an email to everyone to notify them of the billing error, rather than waiting for them to migrate here and figure things out for themselves. Because even though something is clearly a mistake (nobody saw the dates in those billing emails and thought, “hmm, maybe this is a bug?” I mean… really?), people are going to flip out and take drastic measures. (And yes, I got one of those emails too stating that I owed hundreds of dollars… and yes, my account is tied to a funds source that really could not handle that kind of unexpected charge… but I still managed to remain calm until I could figure out what was going on.)

I’ve been with Dreamhost for almost 6 years and am extremely loyal to them — host 2 sites with them and everything — and this is the first time I’ve seen something like this happen. They’ve always been very responsive about fixing problems as soon as they possibly can, including problems that were 100% my fault, so I have no doubt that they’ll get this one sorted out as well. It’s not like they’re just going to go, “oh, sorry customers, we overcharged you by a bazillion bucks — you’re on your own with that one.”

Everyone take a deep breath and give this some more time to see how it plays out. I’m not saying this isn’t potentially a big deal, but wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen this much hysteria.

Wow that was scary.

Anyway, I didn’t bother reading the other 500 posts, since I’m sure 80% of them were people complaining about Dreamhost. While I bet this will be the straw in the camel’s back, we don’t really need to hear your crap. Thanks.

I believe, the hardship a bunch of people have been having should lead to some compensation for their problems.

I understand that these things happen, but for some businesses this could shut down some short-term operations until it is resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. It is not unreasonable to ask that dreamhost compensate to everyone who was incorrectly charged with some form of minor recomp. That way they will at very least assuage a few of their customers and not lose as many as they could due to this billing mixup.

There should be some type of discount for the amount of downtime that is caused to everyone. All I can think of though is that Dreamhost lost out on this fiasco both monetarily(since they did do have to pay a credit card fee to process things) and secondly customer service wise (I wonder how many new customers they’ll have as this spreads across the various blogs).

this explains about half of my issue… Most people were charged for another year — I’ve been charged double for another year (that’s 4 times what I should owe — $765! — for one active domain)

I’m still a little confused. I understand that the charge was a mistake and I would assume that everyone billed will not only be reimbursed but also offered some sort of complimentary services to try to make up for this rather large error (especially people who now have overdrawn bank accounts). Part of what confuses me is that Dreamhost sent me a confirmation pay email that billed a credit card that doesn’t even exist anymore.

DH better resurrect Johnny Cochran, for legal representation. LOL!!!!

one of my clients was just billed $358.20

We have the last payment on this account to be $119.40 on 2007-10-01 16:08:57.
Since then the following charges have been made to the account, which you have just paid for:

2008-09-23 - $119.40 for “My Crazy Domain Insane (re-started)” through 2009-09-22.

2008-09-23 - $119.40 for “My Crazy Domain Insane (re-started)” through 2009-09-22.

2008-09-23 - $119.40 for “My Crazy Domain Insane (re-started)” through 2009-09-22.

way to charge the same thing, erroneously, THREE EFFING TIMES.
EPIC FAIL

my sites have been suspended due to there error and nothing works to contact them except of course the damn payment system i had an invoice due for $9.95 which i paid with paypal yesterday today i wake up and see emails thanking me for my payment

6 hours later i get email saying i owe some outrageous amount then an hour later i get a suspended message

can’t even contact them because the damn webpanel don’t work hell i even clicked the button to fix it and have paid them again but the sites are still down

so a big f’ you

I’m hanging tight and not jumping ship. DH is still the BEST host around with the BEST customer service. This is a major problem that will take some time to repair, and jumping ship is the worst thing I could do right now! Did I freak this morning when I got “THE” email, YES! But after finding out that it was an error, I have no doubt it will be fixed! As someone stated above, it was a human error, it was nothing that was done on purpose nor was it done with malice, it was simply a mistake. So I’m not going anywhere! Just chill people!

FYI, THESE ATTEMPTS TO REBILL YOUR CREDIT CARD(S) FAILED

Amount: $200.00
Credit card: ******
There was an error while charging your credit card. The processor returned: Declined (err code 12)

Thank goodness I just had enough money for only the EXPECTED charges.

I hate to say this… but some kick down of some sort may be in order to appease some of the people.

Hello Dreamhost,
here is one of your happy Dreamhost costumers from Germany. The first time i read my Mails this morning i could die. Since i read the anouncement in the control panel, my life continues as usual.

A German proverb says:
Nothing is eaten as hot as it is cooked

Dont be to harry, dont forget to eat and drink something between the work.

We are all just humans?!?

The happy german Dreamhost customer

LOL!!!

We were hit for $1860…ouch!

I knew it had to be a problem, but damn! I hope DH pays the overdraft fees!

So my tinfoil-hat stance of not allowing anyone anywhere to autobill me has paid off.
Still, will be going through my charges with a fine-tooth comb to check all is kosher.

Incidentally, it doesn’t personally bother me, but posting half-naked Josh in your apology for a screwup doesn’t project the professional image you might need to get past some people’s annoyance/worries about this. I suspect that picture just lost you quite a few accounts.

ANYONE have any ideas what a top-notch host would be for ONE important site?

Alright I’m new to the web hosting scene and have no issues whats so ever with small problems here or there, downtime and the like…it happens I get that. This changes dramatically when money is involved and taken without authorization. Every member of dream hosts services trusts the staff to properly handle the information in your hands, and that means not damaging credit and finances especially this close to an economic recession! I should hope this entire ordeal is corrected and fast, and proper compensation dealt out to those affected. This will be a true test of how much you care about your customers and I’ll wait to see how this plays out.

If the company can’t compensate customers properly maybe you should offer a free transfer of services over to another host with similar offered services that would mirror the plan already in existence. Apologies are great but I’d like to see something to win back trust.

Yeah, I was a little concerned when I got the email - to tell you the truth, I’ve been neglecting my site and didn’t even know when the billing cycle ended. I thought the numbers on the email looked funny though - what are these guys doing, are they billing me in advance?

Thankfully I came and saw the status page. Now I know when my billing cycle ends and can terminate my account by then - not because of any dislike of dreamhost, cos I’ve never had a problem with you, but just because I don’t really need the humungous space here anymore.

Well, I mean it’s nice to have, but not really part of my life or anything.

Oh well, it’ll all be resolved. It’s too bad that some people ended up with overdrafts and such because of this, but then again, maybe they’ll keep a few hundred in their bank account in the future. I mean, it’s not safe to set up auto-billing to bank accounts that don’t have money in them. And it’s not safe to have a bank account with no money in it generally, you know, things happen, you may need $200 to fix your car and then what?

Tsk.

By the way, if you are posting comments here about this ridiculous mistake, dreamhost will delete the comment and add you to the spam filter so that you’ll never be able to post here again.

This is just craziness. This is not a company you want to do business with..

“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!”

Is this supposed to be some flippant joke? you have people talking about being overdrawn in their bank accounts and you basically are telling them, “don’t get your panties in a bunch, it’s a silly silly error!” Lots of money to some people here will probably have them overdrawn by hundreds of dollars……

You just solidified me finding a new host when this is all said and done.

AGREE with Kathy. TURN THE WEB PANEL BACK ON!

JM, most people here have stated the charges never went through, I am one of them. I use referrals to pay my accounts.

i hate to say it, but it looks like its time for a new hosing company.

I cant even log into my account now that they’re being flooded. We NEEDED an email from them notifying us of the problem as soon as they found out. We shouldnt be expected to just find this page.

everyone i’ve referred to dreamhost are pissed at me and i understand why.

Accidents happen…..You guys did the right thing letting everyone know.

Keep up the great work.

This is a huge black eye for DH. I’ve been with them since 7/05 and when I saw this today, I was about to cancel right then and there. This is unacceptable for there to be a script that runs and bills its customers $400 erroneously. Luckily today is payday so that broke the fall a little bit but I think the DH needs to get this fixed soon and do something for the crap that was caused. Until this morning, I would have had no problem referring DH to anyone. Today not so much. Make this better DH please.

Run a script to credit everyone back. Don’t worry about it. They work BEAUTIFULLY.

One thing that you guys *must* do is inform everyone by email *now*. When I saw the charges (I had just payed the bill for one of my accounts the other month; fortunately, my other personal account was not up for renewal by the end of the year) I probably spent about 20 minutes trying to go between the DH Panel and the Status page. Neither of them loaded. The Status page took me a long time to get to (presumably because of the sudden traffic to it?) and I would have not known *any* reason why my plans were charged if it had not.

So, get an email out now before you have people going INSANE and posting more comments here. And turn the Panel back on, please - preferably with a message that informs users of the billing error.

Aside from that, no other complaints. Just get this thing fixed.

Lets all swtich to Mediatemple!! http://www.mediatemple.net

Oh boy this really is a mess you have got yourself into, I think you are in for a shock if you imagine you can just ‘undo’ this and every one will be happy, I expect you’ll lose a lot of customers and a lot of money in compensation (I assume you’ll be paying peoples overdrawn fees etc!) over this.

All of my accounts have been rectified. Good going! I just read the blog, then checked my billing…whew *wipes sweat off my brow*

Come on, folks…I know internet pile-ons are fun and all, but let these guys catch their breath and get this resolved. They are obviously in a fire drill, so wat until they are done before you decide their solution is bogus.

I personally got dinged twice for $514–on a debit card that is tied to a checking account with about $220 in it right at the moment. That will be interesting.

But what was more “fun” was emailing our customers, to whom we previously paraded the virtues of Dreamhost, explaining the situation. I am usually known to be the chill person when email goes down for an hour or our site dingles along at sub-dialup speeds. But this chagrins me and makes me fume.

What floors me is that the only way I found out about this is googling for it. I can’t think of a strong, plausible reason that Dreamhost didn’t immediately send a follow-up email to all of its customers (yes, all of them, if they can’t figure out which customers were affected) with the explanation given here. It seems like a relatively simple gesture that would have saved thousands of panic-hours for those customers still quite likely not in the know. Not to mention it would save Dreamhost labor time–a timely email would have prevented what I imagine can only be thousands of emails or phone calls to Dreamhost support. It’s a strange business decision that I would like to understand.

Long story short (too late), we’ve been evaluating Dreamhost in parallel with another leading ISP for a few months, trying to decide which to recommend to customers. I think we’ve been able to make our decision now. I have in the past enjoyed DH’s laid-back, non-corporate-sounding approach, and the support and features have been good. But I can’t be exposing our clients to snafus such as this.

Two words: BLANKET. PARTY.

SUMMARY OF PAYMENT

Amount: $238.80
Credit card: ****
Payment code: ****

Please give me my money back.

Epic, epic, epic, epic, epic, epic fail.

I did NOT Set up for automatic payments and my account was charged TWICE!!! $238! WTH??
Shame on you for not sending out an email about this! I found out when I checked my bank account balance this morning and couldn’t figure it out!
I know mistakes happen but this is a HUGE one.

SUMMARY OF PAYMENT

Amount: $482.03

So far no refund… I have more than 15 clients ive also brought to dreamhost…. im sure they are all pissed also… Dreamhost might have just pulled the last string for me.

Why don’t you guys send out a mass email to your users so they know immediately why they were billed? Outages and slowness were one thing, billing mistakes another. When I couldn’t convince my friend to host his business web sites on DH I was sad. Now I’m thankful. Time for a new host.

Josh is a co-founder of DH, so it is unlikely that he’d be fired (though it would be the smarmy thing to do). To the DH folks, I’ll stick around ’til the dust settles and see what shakes out, but I think that some positives could come out of this, once everyone is taken care of.

My CC was billed $418 last night. I normally pay under $20 a month, by month . According to my Visa company It is a pending authorization which now will tie up that amount on my CC for up to 5 days. And as a result other preauthorized charges were bounced.

Way to go Dreamhost!

Weirdly, the charge is showing up as having gone through here, but it’s not showing on my statement, even as a pending charge. Thank God for small favors.

And you snotty how-can-you-afford-a-site commenters can go fuck yourselves. I’ve lived in an emergency family shelter with my wife and daughters, but I’m currently the lead programmer for a large medical practice — and I still live paycheck to paycheck. I don’t want your snide remarks, I don’t want your sympathy, I just want you to turn your fucking brains on for 30 seconds and realize that not everyone is you, not everyone should be you, and most sane people don’t want to be you.

My checking account is WIPED OUT! I’ve contacted my bank and it is dismal. With no phone number for my back to call they said this is a hard situation to correct. I hope someone from DH contacts us all and gets it corrected. This is really unfortunate!!

Well my bank account WAS charged. I’ve already talked with my bank and am in the process of getting a provisional credit, which can take up to 10 days!!! This doesn’t help with a mortgage due tomorrow!

Question is just not about refunding the charged they took… Question is what happens with the Credit Card fees ?? Like Forgien ammount transation fee, Credit Card Transaction fee ?? Who will pay me those and thats not a small ammount niether and nor DreamHost has a good track record that I could forgive them…

complete and total bullshit—and epically unprofessional.

I am going to find a new hosting service.

Ohhh, I hadn’t noticed that the damage extended past the amount you erroneously charged me. I see that you have suspended my site. I wonder how you quantify what THAT will cost me?

So, Media Temple, can they handle the influx of business? Will we be able to access the DH control panel to make the transfer? What a colossal F up…

Lord have mercy, tell that poor guy in the picture to put some clothes on!

WTF is happening now

Can we start the “Josh needs a T-shirt Foundation”?

I now have hundreds of dollars in overdraft charges a result of this error. Is DH going to issue a credit to me for these third party charges that resulted from the error as well?

I WILL BE CANCELING MY ACCOUNT AS SOON AS THIS ERROR IS CORRECTED - due to a complete lack of a professionalism in the midst of this HUGE mistake. I had to search the web for 2 hours before I was able to find the information on this error. Dreamhost being aware of the problem on their end should have been responsible enough to contact me directly and immediately letting me know the error was being fixed. They should have sent an email to every customer about this if they couldn’t determine which accounts were billed incorrectly. That would be professional…. whereas the staff making jokes, trying to make light of things with funny pictures, and other nonsense to your newsletters (where I actually found them enjoyable). WHEN YOU MAKE AN ALMOST 8 MILLION DOLLAR ERROR YOU SHOULD DO A LITTLE MORE THAN MAKE A BLOG ENTRY ENTITLED ‘WHOOPSIE’.

There is now way DH could make up for the time and money I have lost trying to deal with this issue. Not only do I have to now contact my mortgage company and explain why dreamhost will be unable to make my mortgage payment on time this month… but now I am the one responsible for compensating my own clients regarding this matter, along being unable to regain the time and money spent this morning when trying to deal with the mess this whole situation created.

I will do everything in my power to ensure than some additional form of compensation is given to me as a result of the damage it has done to my credit, my wallet, and my schedule. I DEFINITELY FEEL A CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT IS IN ORDER and I plan to contact my lawyer about this ASAP.

This is an unfortunate situation but the guys at Dreamhost are on it from what I can see. It might be better if people would just chill until it’s resolved. Wait for the dust to settle, so to speak. Then, if there are still glitches and problems, then contact them.

This is a huge problem, no doubt, but I give them a lot of credit for getting on it fast. Thanks, guys.

I hate to tell you this folks but if you put your information into their auto-bill system, every charge was authorized. I can understand freaking out if your bank account is overdrawn but a charge on your credit card can (and will) be erased like it was never there in the first place. You are just stressing yourself out if you are upset about your credit card being charged. I can understand if in 5 business days they haven’t fixed it you are mad, but a few hours after they realize what is going on is hardly the time to be ranting and raving and demanding explanations, butt pats, freebies and programmers’ heads. Let them explain AFTER they have returned all the funds, especially to those who need the money back for living expenses. Whining and moaning on the site and demanding they spend time responding to you is only going to take up time that could be spent contacting banks.

This should be a lesson to everyone involved, do not put your information into auto-bill systems. Not only does stuff like this happen occasionally, but information saved on a server is just hacker bait. This should be obvious to anyone who owns a website but apparently not.

They have acknowledged the problem, they have (and still are) apologized profusely and they are working on it. After 3 years of great service I am going to give them a chance to fix the situation before I start huffing and puffing my way to another company.

And honestly, who doesn’t keep a few hundred in their bank account? I am a broke college kid/artist and I always have a few hundred at least. Learn to save your money for emergencies and mistakes like this. I thought that was bank accounts 101 for slow 16 year olds??? Good grief.

to: No lLonger A customer, piss off get a life

I sure hope the charge doesn’t go through, it’ll overdraw this starving artist’s bank account and slam him with all sorts of nasty charges. ;O

For all DH webmasters looking for an escape, Lunarpages has created a coupon code just for you! Use code DHRefugees to receive $40 off hosting with Lunarpages and we will also buy out the remainder of your contract with DreamHost! (Up to 9 months!) If you have several months left on your contract with DH, sign up for Lunarpages and email us your billing receipt (not the triple billing ones.. lol) and we will add that extra time to your account with us!

I’m certainly going there.

Well, I guess that’s one way to improve performance - so, do you think with all of these angry foot stomping *I’m taking my toys and leaving the sandbox* people leaving - it’ll make my sites faster? Hehe =)

Guys - it happens. Fat fingers or not…no one is above making a mistake - and we sadly live in an environment in which everyone thinks they are perfect so they expect perfection from everyone else…Unrealistic expectations lead to unhappy consumers who will never be happy.

I was (over)billed - and while it’s gonna suck not having my morning Venti 5 shot WCM at Starbucks for the next few days…I didn’t really need it anyway - so thanks =)

I hope your day gets better…and Josh finds a shirt…=P

If anyone get evicted for having one semi-late (you do have grace period you know?) mortgage payment - I have an extra room (and a couch for couch surfers).

I’ll have another 12 months free please!!

Proxy Guy, when you put in your financial information to be auto-billed and your account comes up as overdue and you get billed, it is always authorized, even if it is a mistake. I have never seen a payment agreement for the auto-billing system on this site, only a box to check if you want it or not.

HAHAH the other webhosters are already issueing discounts… The funny thing is, the jumpers will see what it’s like elsewhere, and they’ll be back… I made the same move after that nasty power issue a long time back…

Trust me, you’ll see…

to: Mick

I’m the one who needs to get a life? I wasn’t even talking to or about you - therefore maybe you should take your own advice….DOUCHEBAG.

When my overdraft fees are returned to me - I’ll be more than happy to get back to my life.

I suppose I’d be more concerned if I had been setup with autobilling… but I despise autobilling (for just this reason) and never use it. (I had to make a special deal with Toyota to get them to just send me a damn bill I pay every month manually, while still over the internet.)

I suppose even if I were charged the ~$670 the misguided emails told me I owed, it wouldn’t have mattered to me to much, because I don’t keep a low level of money in my account… so they would have just been holding a bit of my cash for a few days, which would have been annoying, but tolerable.

So all in all, assuming DH doesn’t go under in light of this problem, I will remain at DH if the promise to run through ALL of their scripting and get some damn “insanity checking” in there. The last time “insanity checking” wasn’t used at DH they deleted all of the Domain Records on the Name Servers…. Insanity Checking!

Matt

I would just like to say that DH has been good to me, and frankly, the only way this is going to affect my opinion of them is if they don’t fix it. They’re trying to fix it, and until that doesn’t happen, that’s good enough for me. I think some of us need to calm the hell down, seriously. No this is not a joking matter, and it IS a colossal screw up… But feces occur.

>I was (over)billed - and while it’s gonna suck not having my morning Venti 5 shot WCM at Starbucks for the next few days…I didn’t really need it anyway - so thanks =)

It’s great (for you) that you weren’t hit hard by this OUTRAGEOUS error, but that doesn’t diminish the plight of the people who have been. When you fire a gun into a crowded city street, you don’t get to blame the victims for standing in the wrong spot.

TK, with all due respect, I am not five years old. I do get it. When people can’t eat because of a website billing error, it bites, and it bites hard. I said a couple hundred bucks, don’t put words in my mouth or blow what I said out of proportion, that’s childish. I can understand being mad when the mistake is in the thousands.

Have you ever been charged twice for something at a grocery store? Did you stop shopping there because it was “more than you should be expected to bear”? I seriously doubt it. I feel worse for the DH employees who have to fix this than I do for anyone who complains with the same voice and attitude to their writing as you do.

Completely unprofessional response to an illegal action. I’ve spoken with my lawyer and we will pursue fraud charges if I do not recieve a credit today.

A smart ass apology is insufficient. I have no idea how you can run a company this way.

How come everyone has a lawyer at their disposal…. can I have one too? I think I’ve caused serious injury to my index finger from refreshing this page so often.. i want to sue you ALL!

ALL OF YOU!

As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Sadly, this time they’ve asked us to pay for a lot more than we got. lol

I understand errors happen, but in addition to a refund I would think they’d comp a month or something. I mean,they put everyone through discomfort, shouldn’t that be addressed?

When the DH servers are down or slow as hell, we stick it out… I think a free month or something is in need here.

Seriously, this mess up is getting more coverage than MacWorld on a lot of sites.

My god - I just read Josh’s blog at:

http://blog.dreamhost.com/

Talk about someone who just doesn’t get it. This is totally UNACCEPTABLE. This clown should have his butt kicked to the curb. NOW. IMMEDIATELY.

I can’t believe he seems to think this is some kind of joke - or that Dreamhost seem to agree with him by allowing this sort of flippant crap to appear under their company masthead.

THIS IS NOT FUNNY, PEOPLE.

“2008-04-03 - $119.40 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2009-04-02.”. Luckily it’s not a huge amount of money compared to some but it’s still completely unacceptable. I’m outa here.

The only question is where to? We’ve had a few votes for Media Temple but a couple of complains of poor performance. Has anyone had any experience with WebFaction (www.webfaction.com)? They look like they might be a good match for my needs.

I, like Choto Cheeta (10:14am) am an international customer.

Fortunately the UK bank declined the request for funds. But what if they hadn’t. Like Choto I’d be facing two different exchange rates and two ‘conversion’ fees.

I’m sure many international customers would like to know what will happen in their cases.
I’m going to turn OFF automatic billing here so there can’t be a repeat on my account, and will probably also decide to leave although the price was nice while it lasted.

>Proxy Guy, when you put in your financial information to be auto-billed and your account comes up as overdue and you get billed, it is always authorized, even if it is a mistake. I have never seen a payment agreement for the auto-billing system on this site, only a box to check if you want it or not.

Bzzzzt. You can check whether you’d like to be rebilled monthly, yearly, etc, and for what period. Billing me into the future with no prior authorization is not authorized. Just like if I give my credit card to the doughnut shop down the street, they’re not authorized to charge me for the manager’s Mercedes.

okay alexander… it’s really no one’s business how much money any one particular person keeps in their bank account. The fact is that DH took money they weren’t supposed to take and that’s simply fucked up, unprofessional, and calls into question the legitimacy of the business they’re running. Managing your money shouldn’t involve taking into account possible screw-ups on the part of others. Should we all be keeping 2 years worth of service payments for EVERY thing we’re paying for?

and BTW, this incident didn’t overdraw MY account.. but I just thing it’s messed up that people like you are coming down on others (that you don’t know–and know nothing about their individual situations) for not having enough money in their account to cover a GROSS mistake on the part of these hacks.

I was supposed to close on a new house this morning. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t get a cashiers check to fund the escrow account because my account was short due to unknown charges that totaled $720! We couldn’t close today. I’m screwed.

Sean - Uhhh yeah, that is kind of the point of keeping extra money in your account. Charges sometimes are processed twice, someone might make the mistake of slashing your tires and then you need $500 to buy a new set of them, etc. You are human, you live with and interact with humans, expect and make room for human error. Duuuuuh?

If you read the informative and rather amusing blog, you will know that not only will DH refund the charges, but they will also make good on the fees some of you poor saps without a penny to your name have incurred. I find it refreshing to find a company that is honest and holds their hands up when they have made a mistake - especially one of this magnitude. In my opinion that makes them more trustworty than other hosts I have used. The bottom line is they are working to fix it and I trust them to do just that - I don’t need to get all pissy about it and start demanding a personal apology this second or free hosting for the next year. The best thing people can do right now is contact their bank, explain the situation, and then let DH get on with issuing the refunds.

A developer friend of mine just raised a good point. The bigger issue is this - if this is how easy it is to make such a colossal billing mistake, what does it say about the security of their billing system? Seems like a pretty flimsy system, if this kind of thing is possible.

indeed Alli, like I said, the mishap didn’t screw me, but I really don’t think this is the forum for chastising those who got really screwed by this fuck-up. You can’t plan for every eventuality… I mean, should I keep an extra $20K in my account just in case the company handling my student loans suddenly charges me for 2 years of payments because they don’t follow any sort of QA process when they try to find a shortcut around their accounting?

Cricket has just made the best analogy ever.

At least I have something entertaining to read…

This is why I have auto bill turned off.

Many folks have the autobilling coming directly from their accounts - as soon as the bill hits, the money is gone - real money that was probably there to pay other bills, OR an instant overdraft of their account.

This is more serious to the customers than a laugh it off, gee isn’t that funny, ha ha blog post will cover.

In many cases you may have actually damaged the customer and caused serious problems.

Josh, a professional response to this would help you a lot, as would a proper public plan on how to handle the fallout.

At the very least you probably need to be ready to cover overdraft charges or overlimit charges is a customer is able to present you with simple proof that your billing error caused it.

Secondly, it would be a good idea for your to have your lawyers whip up a standard letter for your customers to use in explaining that YOU caused the problems with their accounts, not poor planning on the customer’s part.

Lastly, you need to reconsider the flippant way you tend to blow off problems, especially ones this seriously affecting your customers.

(Now I need to head for my account control panel and turn OFF auto billing…)

Tom

Who didn’t flip out when they saw this. I was livid searching all over for an 800 number to call and complain. this scared the shit out of me. Especially because 400 bucks would have totally wiped out my checking account.

As someone who spent 5+ years as the communication manager for a 1600+ person IT group, I’m pretty impressed with their blog post - their explanation seems clear, concise, and completely understandable. Sure, it could have been faster. It could have been more self-flagelating. It could have been less “cutesy”, but that would be out of character for DH. I’m not happy it happened, and I feel for those who are negatively impacted, but I also feel that it’s a mistake that can/will/has happened to any number of service providers, and I believe that DH will do the right thing to fix it.

Brian said stated it perfectly!!!

You trust the system and if a small bug occurs you go apeshit. At least they’re fixing it and not trying to keep it quiet and hope you don’t notice.

Alot of people don’t get the whole “programming magic” thing. Remember, humans write the code… Just think how solid the billing system will be after this ordeal.

Rock over London, ROCK ON DREAMHOST!

So all of you who are wasting your money by keeping it in current accounts are mocking those of us who keep our money in high interest savings accounts. Hmm….

Michael, log in to the control panel, go to Domains, then to manage domains, select edit DNS, don’t change anything, just then select change fully hosted domain now. it should clear up your httpd error

This is a serious F*UP. I am going to be switching. Trust is EVERYTHING in the hosting business. I can’t risk my clients, or my, data with a company that screws up this bad.

First, I find it incredible the number of people closing on a new house today, AND having exactly the right amount in the bank (and no more). Do these people not have reserve funds or people/credit cards to get loans from? Something as expensive as a home needs contingency funds: Do these buyers really think a house, with all the various charges are really going to come in under 0.2% of projected cost? ($700/$300,000) HA! HA!

Dear DH: Shit happens, including bad shit. It did not impact me, and your service is wonderful.

Some Suggestions:
1) Undoubtedly some people learned a lesson: Keep them, because they will not make that mistake again.
2) Put all proposed transactions into a database, and run a suite of rationality checks against them before submitting to the bank. To start, may I suggest making sure the batch does not bill 20 times the usual aggregate amount?

Alli said,
> Bill - They don’t care? This is a 7 MILLION + dollar mix-up. That is more money than the average person
> makes in their life twofold.

I’m sure that Dreamhost cares about the costs to them.

I didn’t see a word here or in Josh’s post that shows Dreamhost understands that their screwup might cause trouble and have costs for their customers beyond the amount incorrectly billed.

> I think they care, they are just trying to get everyone to calm down and realize this is NOT
> the end of the world, and no one is going to die from it.

When you make a mistake that causes your customers trouble and expense, you have no right to make light of the situation. You need to be serious and sincere about acknowledging the mistake and demonstrating that you intend to make things right. Nobody wants to be told that their problem is not serious.

Josh described the mistake as a programming error. This was primarily an operational failure. Nobody checked the result of the billijng run for reasonableness before it went into effect. And the control panel / support infrastructure needs beefing up. Sending an email to each customer acknowledging the problem and describing what they were doing about it is essential in this situation.

The initial description of the problem as “billing inaccuracies” without a forthright explanation was less than honest. Josh’s post also failed to be candid. This isn’t a new problem. Dreamhost always responds this way when they screw up.

If you feel you’ve been a victim of fraud, and your lawyer hasn’t already done this for you… You should probably file a report with the FTC:

https://rn.ftc.gov/pls/dod/wsolcq$.startup

Just remember, just because you apologize (poorly I might add), doesn’t absolve you from the crime.

Where is VO when you need him!!

Wake up to see my rewards are still missing and I still owe you guys $148…
checked thenfirst post and happily ran over to email, nothing…
dang. Work faster!! :p

Jayme — my best guess is that accounts that were not signed up for automatic billing have been disabled.

I don’t have hundred of dollars of unexpected charges to any of my accounts, but all my dreamhost sites are down, e-mail is bouncing…

i love the way people are screaming at DH GET MY SITE BACK UP etc etc..

doesnt anyone read the notice before submitting a comment.. if you dont here you go it goes something like this;

Leave a Reply
Comments posted here may not be viewed by DreamHost staff at all. This is not a way to contact DreamHost.

stop moaning.. it isnt going to resolve anything any quicker

As someone who left Dreamhost last year, I can’t say I’m surprised this kind of thing happened.

I’m using AN Hosting now, and I’ve found them to be far superior. If you want to check them out, here’s my affiliate link:

http://blamcast.net/anhosting

And here’s the straight URL:

http://anhosting.com/

If you like what you see, do me a favor and sign up via the affiliate link, I’d do the same for you

- John

Who’s going to pay my overdraft fees? and finance charges or late fees for my other payments that didnt clear as a result of this?

I’m not moaning idiot. I just asked a question about my sites being down because I CANNOT submit a trouble ticket in my web panel. Duh.

It was a mistake, not something maliciously done. A big, scary mistake. I’m glad DH is fixing it promptly. I’m also very, very glad for the limit that can be set for the amount automatically billed. Better a small temporary ouch than the couple hundred dollar one it could have been. I can see how this would affect things like house and school payments for many people. Hopefully customers will stick around after this though, since it isn’t likely to happen again.

@ Pissed: lol, wow. Just wow.

so…. anyone have suggestions for another host that supports subversion as easily as DH? So far, their subversion support is the ONLY thing keeping me here… and to be honest, I’m not so sure even that is worth sticking around.

Hmm…i use DH for my personal hobby websites and for a SINGLE company site that is supplementary and internal. When my boss asked me why we had a billing notice for late 2008, and i responded with this URL we both had a laugh. “This is why i refuse to host customer sites with Dreamhost.” was how i phrased it in the email and i continue to do that. This isn’t 1*1, this isn’t GoD*ddy. I have been web designing and dealing with hosts since 1997 and i have to say that you get crap like this wherever you go…the difference is that with DH they are such a great company that when stuff like this happens its WAY worse than when, say, N*trillium does it (to name crappy hosts).

Mind you, i think this is a typographical programming error that only happened because of someone rushing and not double checking their code. It happens but when money is involved it should NEVER happen. I really hope the guy who made what was suppose to be a *7* into an *8* gets fired on the spot because as a programmer and a web designer would be fired for it. But i am not going to bail on them as a host because of it because the good and bad outweigh each other.

If you want consistent uptime with bland hosting, no features, tons of restrictions and usless customer service that you can make profit off of, go to GoD*ddy. If you want a great hosting company that cares about their customers and what they do but is still trying to figure everything out, stick with Dreamhost.

I don’t understand why you couldn’t send a followup email telling us you screwed up, so that I would know to disregard your demand for extra money before even reading it. You manage to send me a crappy newsletter every month, how is that more important than notifying me I’ve been overcharged? I can’t understand why you want to freak people out any more than absolutely necessary.

I just hate all of you DreamHost Yes Men and Yes Women … I just love it when people like you feel the need to voice your opinion about those of us who have had something major happen to our checking accounts. You have a lot of nerve trying to make us feel bad for being upset about the havoc this has caused!!! I equate you with seedy defense attorneys who defend child molesters and drunk drivers and try to blame the victims. Why don’t you all just shut up and let us voice our anger for what DreamHost has done.

WHAT THE FU@% IS GOING ON? EVEN DH WEBPANEL IS DOWN, NOT TO MENTION MY FRIGGING BUSINESS” WEBSITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DH BETTER GET ON THE PHONE WITH VISA AND MAKE SURE NO ONE IS GOING TO BE CHARGED OVERDRAFT CHARGES, ETC

THIS IS REALLY BAD

i don’t see why you get to have an opinion and voice it and i don’t. Seems to be a bit one-sided.

It might be worth noting that it’s never a good idea to allow websites to automatically charge your card. My account’s set up to notify me, and I pay manually. As a result, other than a weird e-mail or two, nothing happened to my account. Of course, this doesn’t excuse DreamHost’s error.

Well, I’ll say this:

There’s nothing like a minor crisis to bring out the nutjobs!

A few dollars from my checking account is almost worth the entertainment!

“This is just a notice that your DreamHost Account (deets deleted) has a balance of $418.95 (including any charges not
due until 2009-01-29), with $418.95 due (since 2008-12-29). You also have $379.05 past due (owed since 2008-11-29), and if
by 2009-01-29 you do not pay at least the $379.05 part, your account will be automatically suspended until payment is received.”

O RLY? It’s a good thing you guys only host our podcasts Please fix asap and all will be forgiven.

Have fun paying everyone’s overdraft fees.

My shopping for a new host starts….now.

You guys may have just put yourselves on the road to being out of business, just refunding the money and making smartass blog posts where you say “very very very very sorry” will not be enough, I think.

I got the apology emal and I can accept that crap happens. I didnt get dinged on my bank account and if I had I would probably be more upset. I can’t get hosting for my non profit site this cheap anywhere else so I will be staying but turning off auto payment for sure!

Although not as serious as I would have liked it I did like the fact the issue was explained truthfully and the mistake was owned up to even if some of the blame was mistakenly pushed off on the coders.

Panel is down and mah DB. Sux

Dino-

Get a life.

This is absolutly terrible! not only did you guys take $238.80 directly out of my bank acct which I’ve never authorized in my preferences, but this has cause my bank account to be overdrawn and therefore accrue a fee!!! If this situation is fixed properly and my troubles compensated for, there will be a great deal of action ensuing. oh and by the way, GET A PHONE SERVICE ASSHOLES!

That’s great… they had the time to add captcha to the blog but still haven’t had time to send me EVEN an email about the error.

Yet still people are posting in their defense. WOWWWW. I’d rather pay an outrageous amount for a comparable hosting plan (which I won’t have to do because of how much competition there is) but I would do it rather than deal with this ridiculous unprofessionism.

Let’s get a few things straight.

Yes, this was a mistake.
Yes, mistakes are inevitable whenever humans are involved.

This was a mistake on the order of [b]$7,500,000.00[/b] !!!! plus the costs of fixing things.
This is not about the money that may or may not have been debited from your account.

This is about the manner in which DH communicated the situation to its customers.

If you’re flipping burgers, make a mistake and give a customer fries with salt instead of fries without salt, it’s an easy fix, that, in most cases, can be smoothed over quickly with a touch of appropriate levity.

It’s completely inappropriate in such a situation as DH has dug itself into. It’s offensive and highly insulting.

Personally, I was not financially affected (I had turned off the auto-billing years before due to a similar incident) and I am still reeling over the insult done, to the entire client base.

I was fired from a company in ‘94 because of a screw-up of mine that cost the company ONE client. For the amount of clients & income DH will lose, I sincerely hope this Josh person suffers excruciating pain for the rest of his life.

Jake, I don’t have a laywer on retainer but I do have the extra money to hire one to deal with this BS. Even if I didn’t I’d borrow it, or hook to get it because all finances aside this is a matter of principal.

and a matter of getting my overdraft charges refunded… but nonetheless - don’t be smug about people who are willing to stand up and hire a lawyer simply because of this. Plus, there are plenty of options for legal representation that will require no payment up front from me — so yeah ultimately I’m planning to have DH pay my legal fees - but either way.

Don’t be so smug because if there is a class action law suit bet me you won’t be signing away to be a part of it. You people are so worried about what everyone else is doing —- that you’re not nearly concerned enough about what the ppl with ur credit card info are doing!!!!

DUHHHHH. Anyone paying attention out there??

and they still have time to change the coding in the blog to paginate the responses…. yet STILL NO EMAIL??? I cant wait for the cute response explaining why it was too much work to let customers know a problem had occurred.

Soo…. can someone please explain why emails still havent been sent out???

:@ Can’t get in the damn panel

If you would like to CLOSE your account with DreamHost, just visit:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=billing.accounts

:@ Work Work Work

Pissed whines, “and a matter of getting my overdraft charges refunded…”

Screenshots or I don’t believe it. You actually have overdraft charges applied to your account? Or did your mom not give you her login details?

@pandrake: Well apparently they forgot to hand out points for honesty or humor when they forgot to hand out professionalism, integrity, and competence.

I got an email; subject: Accidental Multiple Billings.

Dunno why others did not.

Perhaps it’s that “ping” thing, or the fact that email is not reliable, or that DH is scrambling to do many things at once, or that individual ISPs have different delivery schedules, or that a spam filter sometimes gets it wrong, or that it takes time for a mass email to cycle thru all those recipients and then actually be transmitted….

@jake:

I’ll give any required screenshots to the parties who will be fixing my account. Beyond that I don’t need to prove anything to you - you’re just mad because I called you out for being smug about the people seeking legal representation.

If you work for DH and would like the screenshots by all means send me an email. If you’re just being antagonistic because you enjoy feeding others frustrations…. than I suggest you try and find something USEFUL to do with yourself.

hahaha it is funny that you would be so presumtious as to think I needed to prove how seriously this has impacted my personal finances after 17 pages of people complaining about how they were adversly affected by this.

In closing, you’re a moron.

Can you suggest a couple places to host an important website please

Hey folks.

I understand most of your concerns and I really want to do what I can to address things from the support side of things. We’re trying to get emails out as quickly as possible letting customers know what is going on and what we are doing to fix things. As we’re sort of buried under a crush of emails from a bunch of understandably upset customers, it’s hard to deal with everything all at once. We are not taking our time on this at all tho.

Trust me, there are loads of messages queued appraising folks of the situation and we’re making sure that refunds are being processed thru as quickly as possible. I’m sure our card processing firm is amongst the list of people that aren’t part of our fan base right now, but everything that can be done is.

The pagination of comments was something I’ve done to alleviate stress on the server so you folks could keep getting updates here. A lot of comments on a single entry — that has been Dugg no less — can make almost any dynamic blogging engine churn when everyone is loading that entry over and over again. So while it might not have seemed initially important, we want to make sure you keep getting the news you need wherever you decide to look for it.

Maybe next time we will get a refund without even been charge, no many in here complaining then, mommyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

I don’t have an account here, but if people’s accounts were overdrawn, you should either speak with the bank or pay the bank the fee’s because you can’t say that they were going to be overdrawn in the “near” future

Oops, dyslexia.

Should we take it on faith that the LAUSD sold you their billing system?

Well, not auto-pay for me, so all I got was a bill.
don’t know how many customers, but is the 7.5 million what they charged the banks, or is that the amount their billing turned up. (difference there).
Grand-ma’s life support wasn’t turned off because of a bounced check, and the house I was purchasing didn’t fail to close.
Either way, I think I’ll check with my lawyers “Dewey, Cheatem & Howe” for the heck of it.

Why am I only now just finding out about this through a link on Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) instead of, say, directly by e-mail?

yeah, i’m getting out, if anyone stays you must be out of your mind. Definitely thinking about MediaTemple

I agree that everyone should calm down.

It’s not smart to have your set up to automatically draw money from your bank account to pay for DH or anything online. That’s a perfect way to lose a lot of money.

DH is great and I’m going to stay with them.

@pandrake:

Main Entry:
pro·fes·sion·al·ism Listen to the pronunciation of professionalism
Pronunciation:
1 : the CONDUCT, AIMS, or QUALITIES that characterize or mark a profession or a professional person

Conduct like making jokes about serious mistakes - is certainly something I consider to lack professionalism.

Integrity of being responsible enough to respond to the matter in a serious way. Integrity to own up to their mistakes by: leaving the control panels open so people can cancel their accounts. Integrity by taking responsibility for their problem by immediately sending out a mass email. I don’t care what the story is with their servers - they have taken an extra 8 million dollars from their customers so I KNOW they have the money to afford some sort of additional help, support, or server support to help assist in getting this cleared up.

Competence like having an analyst position and a system in place to prevent these sort of errors with their new billing system that ever per Josh’s explanation wasn’t working according to direction because my account was charged multiple times for something Josh explained was entered ONCE with the WRONG DATE. There is evidence in my reciept alone that this is either untrue, or just not the whole story. When people’s finances are involved they deserve the whole story. Anyway ultimately they should have been competent enough to prevent this from happening, to test their new billing software, or to have an analyst proofreading the programming codes to ensure one typo doesn’t cost their customers millions of dollars.

Thanks for trying to help though! Luckily I am very clear on what professionalism, integrity, and competence mean.

“I don’t have an account here, but if people’s accounts were overdrawn, you should either speak with the bank or pay the bank the fee’s because you can’t say that they were(sic) going to be overdrawn in the “near” future”

You know this how exactly? Some people got charged quite a large amount, and it could have been a lot worse, say if there was a slightly different brain fart of only paying attention to the last digit and they had hit 2017, for example.

This is a simple “computer” error. Even major banks make such errors and to larger scales; I’ve seen it happen. As for major credit and debit amounts being charged… you could have simply avoided that completely by setting your credit/debit amounts to a limited amount. I have mine set for just a few dollars above my normal monthly fees so when the program tried to bill my card it couldn’t take out the whole amount.. just $20.

Good luck with fixing the error. I’m sure the initial “Medium” status was just to avoid panic and some of the claws that have come out.

All of my domains, HTTP and FTP are down but I can still log into webmail. I hope they fix THAT problem along with the others mounting up sooner than later.

Like, Jason, my domains are 404ing and have been for the past 12 hours. I put in a support ticket 10 hours ago and didn’t even receive an automated “received” confirmation. I’ve been unable to access the panel to find out what’s up…sounds like pretty major chaos there today and I’m pretty frustrated that, though billing updates are here, there’s no mention of other outages at least some of us are experiencing. Is it possible DreamHost isn’t aware??!!

I love you, DreamHost, but I can still feel pretty frustrated with those I love…

Glad this is being fixed, though the news is already out. However, this person doesn’t seem too mad.. http://www.fleetwagon.com/2008/01/15/dreamhost-screws-1000s/

I can understand the situation this has left loads of people in, what i can’t understand is all the comments from people saying this has f***ed up my credit rating etc etc, in the UK at least you can request such things to be removed if you can provide evidence of foul play / errorenous charges etc. so i can’t understand what the huge fuss is about?

Just phone the morgage company for crists sake explain that another direct debitor has had a technical hitch that resulted in an un-expected charge, im sure they have enough common sense and dignity to say okay we will put you payment on hold for x days?

moral of the story, don’t put your trust in automattic payments

now they are moderating their comments…

so much for leaving this open so people can post their opinions!!! Pages are going by and my perfectly legimate, cuss-free posts are still ‘waiting to be moderated’

That’s cute.

I’ll just keep posting them. Apparently they have nothing better to do than to set bans on peoples comments.

I’ll just hop over to a proxy and make it easy for both of us. How’s that?!

Okay let’s do some math here. If they have to manually go through and figure out your refunds that will take 5 to 10 minutes each.

I am not sure how many customers DH has but if it’s 50,000 then some basic math says it will take 174-347 days to get everything fixed.

If they have more clients then it can take even longer. I hope they have a quicker way to fix it. My suggestion for a faster solution is to call your Credit Card company and do a chargeback now.

InfoWorld story on the matter: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/15/Billing-nightmare-for-DreamHost-customers_1.html
“Billing nightmare for DreamHost customers”

The Register covers it, too: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/15/dreamhost_bills_customers_years_worth_of_trouble/
“Dreamhost accidently bills customers a year in advance”

Well now my website isn’t even up because my registrar sees that some company (who shall remain nameless) shut our site down or is having technical difficulties and switching around server ip addresses. DNS is not working for our domain presently and something funny was going on yesterday before this huge mistake was made (probably not the only mistake made by nameless company this week).

The bottom line is now my website is down and my customers can’t get to their information because the domain isn’t pointing to the web server ip address.

This is ridiculous…I will be shopping when my account is really set to expire…not by some manufacutred date by a shirtless boy who looks like he just fell out of bed. Boys and girls it is time to grow up and act mature…this is business and a lot of people’s livelihoods are on the line.

I’m one of the fortunate ones who didn’t have automatic payments on at all. It’s all good if you’re a more computer literate type and know the caveats that apply even to established companies on the web and know your way around a hosting control panel and all, but a lot of people on DreamHost are pretty much entry-level in those respects.

yeah, hi. So, when can I get my money back? Soonish, right? Like by the end of the day? THANKS.

ANYONE ELSE NOT PUTTING UP WITH THIS SHIT AND SWITCHING TO A DIFFERENT HOST? I HAVE WEBSITES WITH ADSENSE AND AM LOSING SERIOUS $$. BYE BYE DH