Billing Issues Update
We believe all of the billing errors to have been corrected as of the morning of Friday, January 18, 2008. If your credit card was wrongly charged, the charges have been refunded. We saw some reports that an expected refund did not appear, but upon investigation the refund had indeed been processed on our side and had just not yet made its way to the bank. We have not seen any cases where a refund has not been issued. It can take several days for refunds to appear back on your credit card or in your bank account and that is unfortunately entirely out of our hands.
And remember…
If this/these erroneous charge(s) by us resulted in you having any sort of overdraft/bounced check/nsf fee from your financial institution, please contact our support team from the web panel. We’d just like to request that you include a copy of your statement with the necessary info showing the fees. It can be either a paper statement or a print out of your online statement, or even a screenshot of your online statement and it can be scanned and attached to your support message via our support form or faxed to us at 714-990-2600. If you fax it, please be sure to write your domain name or DreamHost account number on the fax. When we get this, we will put money on your credit card equal to the amount your bank charged you, as well as give you a DreamHost account credit for the same amount on top of that.
We will do our best to correct any problems stemming from this error.
In case you have not seen it, we have posted information about this situation in three separate blog posts on our official blog…
http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/01/15/um-whoops/
http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/01/16/the-aftermath/
http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/01/17/the-final-update/
January 20th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Thank you for working to resolve this. I appreciate the work that and urgency that has gone into the recovery.
January 20th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Still no refund here. $359.10 out on 1/17 nothing back in yet, plenty of pending transactions including a Macys return from today but nothing from Dreamhost.
January 20th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Thanks for the update, but I’m still letting the dispute process continue until I he resolution from DH or from the bank.
January 20th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Thanks for the update!
http://spacytracie.com/dreamhost-and-lunarpages/391/
January 20th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Still no refund here, either. Account #96480. $218.90 out on 1/15, supposedly put back same day, still no indication of a refund. Guys, when I return a product to a store, I get a refund that appears by the time I get home. Five days is ridiculous. As you are the only people who refund money with this kind of lag time, I can only assume it’s NOT my bank.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Wishing everyone the best in getting things resolved quickly. Just a reminder that:
“(Please remember, posting in the comments here IS NOT an official way to contact DreamHost.)”
January 20th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
in regards to the response up above.. when you return something to a store, the credit does not show on your card until two to three days later. Most major retailers submit their credits at one time when the daily sales are released (usually the next morning..) then it takes a day or so to process at the bank.. I’m not taking sides.. I’m just stating fact..
January 20th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I hear you both (”just saying” and “Joe”). However, I have had no response from Dreamhost after repeated (five or six) attempts to contact them, so I’m doing the blanket-attack thing. And I know, Joe, that credits don’t clear immediately. However, even by your own numbers, I should have seen a pending refund two days ago. I just want my money back. And often they appear immediately, even if they don’t clear for a couple days. Neither has happened here.
If Dreamhost won’t respond to me along the conventional avenues, I’m going to post here, too. I don’t want to drag anyone through my own billing situation, but we’re running kind of tight these days and if Dreamhost won’t talk to me privately about the money they’ve taken from us, I’m going to pursue it publicly. Ignore me if you like, but please don’t try to tell me I shouldn’t be posting here, too. I’d love to have this solved by now, but if Dreamhost is going to ignore me, I’m going to pursue this wherever I can.
If someone tried to take $218 from me on the street, I would punch them. To expect me to wait patiently to see if Dreamhost knows how to refund me is silly.
One thing is for sure, there’s no more automatic billing in my world.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
TK: Good luck.
It just hit me that if any of you with slow refunds have a credit union, I know mine takes a little longer than banks to process things (and doesn’t do anything automated like that on weekends).
January 20th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
For some of you that still haven’t received your refund, you may not see it until Tuesday. I contacted my bank, and they told me that they are going to be posting business from the weekend on Tuesday due to the holiday. I also asked them to check to see if they had the refund pending. They did not see it in my account (I dumbly used a check card), but they managed to log into the Visa system and saw that there was a merchant refund pending. The associate explained to me that Visa just hadn’t sent it to them yet, and it would probably be sent before Tuesday, meaning it’ll post on Tuesday. It’s no guarantee, but the logical explanation is at least somewhat reassuring.
Take care,
Ben
January 21st, 2008 at 1:01 am
I have not been affected by this goofup as a result of which I have deactivated my auto renewal thru credit card but nothing I have read in the discussions so far gives me any reason to believe DH has acted less than honourably in this matter.
I can only hope that my dealings with the rest of the world could be settled as amicably.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:07 am
I’ve endured a few outages and hiccups in the past, but this is completely ridiculous and inexcusable.
The mistake and the fix are completely acceptable; the time it is taking to fix is completely inexcusable. I was charged > $350 on the 17th and have STILL not seen a refund. That’s more than $350 CASH from my debit account that I still haven’t seen back.
I’ll endure this once; if my money is not back in my account by the end of the week, I’m cancelling my account and taking my business elsewhere.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:14 am
I got credited for my referrals that were deducted and got the cash refund on my account within the past couple of hours.
I’m amazed that a screw-up this big happened, but I’m also impressed at the transparency DH showed. The problems with the fix-it script aren’t surprising. Engineers are never as good at foreseeing mistakes as people are at making them.
I’m still not sure how I want to respond to this, as far as using or recommending their services in the future. I’ve had significantly worse problems with some much larger hosts, which makes me wonder if there’s any of them that are “immune.”
Paul
January 21st, 2008 at 2:32 am
I m not affected because uses Paypal but i m very happy with the transparency of DH to inform and solve the problem.
For me, still the best hosting company !!!
Have a nice day!!
January 21st, 2008 at 2:49 am
The problem with most of you complaining here is that you will NOT move to another host. We all got here after worse headaches out there.
So stop whining and wait it out. I’m sure our refunds will arrive.
All the best, Dreamhost. My business with you stays.
January 21st, 2008 at 4:43 am
Just spoke to a rep from my bank and the refund has never been issued…
January 21st, 2008 at 4:43 am
just to clarify.. money came out of account on Jan. 18th and no sign of any type of refund pending.
January 21st, 2008 at 4:52 am
It’s still “in process”, but your refund is finally showing up now!!
Thanks for resolving this case quickly and all the updates throughout!
I wonder if other companies, like Verizon, would have handled it as well and as transparent as you all did. They probably wouldn’t have mentioned anything about it in the first place, there wouldn’t have been any blog, message-board or other channel to leave feedback & comments. It probably would have been up to the customer to dispute the wrong charge…and perhaps you may have gotten the money back after a few weeks and providing sufficient proof that the charge was wrong. I once had weeks and even months worth of trouble with companies like Verizon and Comcast after just making a move to our new address.
Mistakes happen, it was shocking to see over $700 disappear from my account and hard to remain patient last week, but I have to say it was handled exceptionally well. I hope DH will not suffer too many damages after this and stay around until I’m dead.. lol
Thanks.
With very best wishes,
Gerrit
January 21st, 2008 at 4:55 am
Finally my DH returned my money
January 21st, 2008 at 4:59 am
I’m glad you’re fixing the problem. I use PayPal so I wasn’t automatically billed.
It’s sad to see so many people are leaving DH over this. It’s a mistake any host could make. Wake up, no host is perfect.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:15 am
The charge for $399 “went live” on Friday - that money has actually been taken from me now.
It’s now Monday morning. My bank has no record of a refund being issued.
I’m glad some folks have seen their money return to them. I’m still out $399.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:45 am
Got my refund last week some time, got my NSF refund this morning. For people complaining, I know it sucks - I can empathize… just remember, banks aren’t the most efficient systems either. When I called my bank, there was never a sign of a refund, and within a few minutes, it just appeared on my account. Banks can’t always see transactions coming in until they’re actually ‘in’.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:46 am
I like the tone of this message, as if they had said *all along* that banks can take up to a week to process a refund, and you just have to be patient…
…oh wait no they said “Tomorrow for sure!” Can’t imagine why people are pissed.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:06 am
Is there any credit being issued for those of us who weren’t overdrawn? I’ve had to deal with a loss of my money as well, but I happened to have more in that account.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:28 am
Still no sign of a refund, but my bank has said I can cancel the dispute at any time if DH comes through with the refund before the investigation ends.
Either way, once my money comes back to me, we’re going elsewhere.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:32 am
Still no refund….. out 482.03$ for many days now.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:37 am
Refund is on my CC… transaction dates for both the charge and the credit are 1/18 and the posting dates are 1/18 and 1/20. Thanks guys… you’ve retained this customer!
Geoff
January 21st, 2008 at 6:50 am
Alright I can honestly say that I’ve been refunded the $119. Dates say I was refunded on the 18th, didn’t post until today.
Thanks for keeping it honest DreamHost.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:04 am
Oh and yes I’ve gotten my refund, but this was still handled so horribly that I’ve already moved my most important domains and will complete the exodus soon. Honesty is great, but this was still an immense screw up that impacts my ability to trust DH with my money and especially my CC number.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:13 am
Still no refund of my $438, its almost been a week of not having any money..nightmare, I need to go to the doctor for step throat, and I cant till I get my money back.. I hate you dreamhost.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:39 am
Yeah my bank (debit) goes to sleep over the weekends and holidays. Of course they aren’t asleep to take money out of an account! =P
January 21st, 2008 at 9:23 am
Interestingly the credit was posted before the debit in my case, for my credit card. There was a credit posted on January 17, followed by a matching debit on January 19.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:04 am
If all the the overcharing issues have been resolved, is there a reason why nobody is addressing the trouble tickets today? My website has been offline all morning due to the MySQL server being offline. Is someone planning to check service problems today?
Anyone? Please? Pretty please check service problems today???
January 21st, 2008 at 12:40 pm
titan is incredibly slow today. Please fix.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Overdraft fees faxed to them a 4th time. In 3 days, that’s four times. Still no reply on whether or not they have received my faxes, no credit to my DH account, and nothing done on my bank account either yet.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Here in New Zealand I’m wondering who’s gonna pay the EXCHANGE RATE difference from the date my credit card was charged to the date I got my refund (this morning — Tuesday 22 NZDT).
And yes, the values differ on my statement.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:50 pm
I’m starting to look forward to getting my money back the way I would be looking forward to my tax return.
January 21st, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I got charged for $120 (on January 17th), two days after they said, via an email dated January 15th, that they would refund the initial $120 they billed me.
They also told me not to worry, not to contact my credit card company, blah, blah. I’d be foolish if I hadn’t done that. How irresponsible that would have been. Of course they don’t want you doing that, as it only adds more problems for them (if there isn’t a full refund Tuesday morning, a fraud investigation will be automatically initiated by the card company).
Just so you all know, I had disabled auto-pay/auto-bill, it was turned off, and I was still charged. This is totally unacceptable, and not their CC to do with as they choose.
January 21st, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I feel so sad for all the people that had problems (luckily I had none.) I hope all of you can recover from this problem very soon.
I also feel sad for the DH staff, the situation inside must’ve been very difficult for everybody. They’ll get a hard time trying to recover from this.
I wish those leaving good luck with your new hosting company (unfortunately, no company is error free.)
And I hope this sort of unfortunate events never happen again and we can leave all of this behind very soon.
January 21st, 2008 at 4:05 pm
My bank shows no record of any attempt by dreamhost to reverse or cancel the charge, and put it thru today. I have reported it as unauthorized. Please stop posting claims of fixes, until you actually can confirm that you have done something.
January 21st, 2008 at 4:08 pm
What would really help is if someone from DH came down to West LA and bought me some damn groceries, I ran out of food yesterday and have no money until this is all cleared up.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I confirm orders so many days and faxed the same time but now, my account have been pending, i can not wait but i must wait :((, please if you receive this comment, please check for me,
my account (#386345) please check ASAP
January 21st, 2008 at 5:37 pm
we’ll see… I have very little faith left in dreamhost at this point.
@still being charged: It really worries me that you got charged despite having automatic payment turned off. I’d leave dreamhost if I were you… if that feature is turned off, they have absolutely no business storing your credit card information.
I can handle a little bit of downtime here and there, even a somewhat adolescent approach to customer service. But when my financial information is being dealt with in such an irresponsible manner… that’s where I draw the line.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:41 pm
If their records show that they submitted the refund… but it can take a few days for your debit/credit card handler to actually pass it on to your bank who can take a few days to actually pass it on to you… [and many of the financial institutions don’t process such things on weekends or holidays]… how exactly are they supposed to confirm it?
Also, they do show the issue as “High Priority” and unresolved. Its not like they’ve washed there hands of it and are calling you all liars.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Just a question for those of you saying you have no money for groceries… Why did you have autopay set up? I mean, if you are living hand to mouth, why would you set anything up to autopay? I’m in that situation, where money is extremely tight, and I just don’t ever allow anyone to take my money without my input into the process. So I’m curious why you would set up autopay. Were you in a better situation when you did that? Are you just really trusting? I mean, it makes utterly no sense to me to have anything on autopay if you barely have enough money to make it through a month. Am I just paranoid?
Also, those of you complaining about receiving word of a refund but no refund, you DID read the last note, right? The one where they noticed a bug that meant that only 1/4 of the folks who were told they were billed were actually billed, and then only 1/4 of those told they got a refund actually got one? Which means that some of those notes went out a couple of days ahead of the refund, which is another reason for the delay. Perhaps they didn’t explain it clearly enough for you.
I can’t say this whole thing reflects well on Dreamhost, but at least they are telling us what happened. I had a similar billing issue with Comcast and they never admitted to a problem, and I had to call them five times to get my refund. At least with Dreamhost if something gets screwed up, I can usually find out what happened by checking this status blog, even if it is often after the fact.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:15 pm
“Why did you have autopay set up?”
Luckily I didn’t get billed, but I have read a number of posts from people that they were billed even though they DIDN’T have autopay setup.
The one thing I have noticed from this mess is the amount of assumption that clouds people judgement. Please stop assuming people, just because you have one situation doesn’t mean that everyone else’s experience is the same. There is also a lot of shady tactics being employed by other hosting companies in relation to this to. LunarPages, I am looking at you.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:26 pm
those of you using check cards should know better.
no sympathy from me.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:44 pm
@Jax “those of you using check cards should know better.”
Like it’s our fault we decided against a credit card, and it’s our fault that DH took all our money.. wtf? what kind of asshole are you? Fuck you asshole. Sick of self-righteous motherfuckers like you. Man I soooo hope some fuck steals your car and burns down your house 1 day after you insurance accidentally lapses.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:47 pm
@Laura : apparently there were people charged that do not have autopay set up but do have their card details in DH database, so can you please stop laying blame on the victims, like so many other assholes here are doing. Gad wtf is wrong with you people? If someone mugged you and beat the living crap out of you, I guess that would be your fault for being born? Idiots.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:01 pm
those of you using check cards should know better. no sympathy from me.
We’re not here for your sympathy, asshole.