[GiftEconomy] Consumer Alert: My bad experience with 000WebHost.com

Wed Aug 24 13:06:40 PDT 2011

As people who believe in demonetization, we would naturally gravitate to
free web hosts and recommend such to our friends and colleagues. I am
writing to let you know of a bad experience I have had with
000webhost.comwhich was hosting my The End Of Money website. My
husband is now setting up
my name servers on another site, but due to the actions of 000webhost.com I
have no access to my files and will have to reconstruct the site manually
from what we have on our home computers and the articles that I have posted
to my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/TheEndOfMoney/

First of all, my husband's web site was suspended several weeks ago for
review, on the basis that the host reviews all sites to make sure they are
legal. Here is the notice that appears on screen when that happens.

Website Under Review

You are seeing this page because the system administrator of
000webhost.comis currently checking this website for malicious
content. This redirect page
will be removed once we finish manually checking all files on this account.
Since we check over 100 websites per day, it can take about 2-4 hours to
complete. If you are the owner of this website, you will get an email
confirmation once it's done. If you are a visitor, please come back later.

*www.000webhost.com* is the most popular free web hosting provider, and as
such, suffers from abusers. Around 5% of users sign up here just to start
hacking or phishing websites or causing other problems. So, in order to
survive, we must monitor what our users are hosting.

We are sorry for the inconvenience, but checking all content manually is the
only way to provide you with the most secure and reliable service. If you
find any illegal websites on our network, you can report it
*here*<http://www.000webhost.com/report-abuse>.

------
Two to four hours?   My husband's site disappeared for 5 days before he put
in the ticket asking for faster review. (How long does it take to look at a
site to determine that it is not a spam bot, warez distributor or the like?)

Several users on their forums complained that these reviews were taking too
long and that although the review is supposed to be a one-time matter, they
had had more than one review. Then today someone wrote a note to the forum

*!!URGENT!! Admin, please look at this - *
 ------------------------------
 I am supposed to demo my site in 40 minutes and it has been taken down for
review.

I submitted a ticket #557271, if there are any admins online, please, please
sort this out and review it some other time please.

Thank you,

The reply this user got, from a senior forum member --they use volunteers
for forum moderation--was this:

1. Bad thread title
2. It's free hosting, you get what you pay for, and in this case, a lot more
than what you pay for.

------------------------------
------------------------------------------

Going through their forums, you see that theme repeated. It's free so quit
complaining if it doesn't work right or you don't like what we are doing.

However, the site itself brags about how wonderful their free services are:

000webhost.com (*$0.00 webhost*), is an industry leader in providing top
class free web hosting services without advertising! There are no hidden
costs, no adverts, and no restrictive terms. Lighting fast speeds, maximum
reliability and fanatical user support are just a few of the features you'll
receive with our service.

We are probably *the only* free web hosting company that has *proof* for
"99% uptime guarantee". Check our uptime
stats<http://www.serviceuptime.com/users/monitoring.php?S=6c8ef11fcca35bab3d971cdce3d7179b>.
We managed to reach even 99.9% uptime for most of the servers. Can your
current hosting provider show you any proof for that "99.9% uptime" they
guarantee?

________________________________

My research on them turned up numerous complaints about their affiliate
program. You are supposed to get $5 for every new people you get to sign up
with them and can cash out at $100. I found complaints going back to 2007
that affiliate program members had not been paid. It seemed that the MO of
000webhost was to send notices saying they had to extend the time before
payment was made and then to suspend the accounts of people who asked for
payment.

http://marketingadvertise.blogspot.com/2007/10/free-domain-and-earn-at-000webhost.html
As to my situation: Yesterday, my husband, who acts as my webmaster, wanted
to review my site for span, as he does several times a week. He found the
site suspended! We were accused of violating terms of service. Problem: What
they claimed we had done,violated an alleged 20% CPU usage limit, we could
not have possibly done, and this alleged limit wasn't mentioned in the TOS
anyway.

We demanded proof of what they claimed was over 1,000 violations of an
alleged 20% CPU usage limit and proof that if this had indeed occurred, they
had eliminated the possibility that it had been caused by a Denial of
Service (DOS) attack.

Their reply:

Reply
|

Hello,

If your account was suspended due to terms of service violation, it could be
unsuspended only after upgrade.

Please upgrade your account and submit new support ticket requesting to
unsuspend your free account. Please note that if your account was suspended
and you upgraded it, you could NOT ask for money back in case you decide to
cancel your new upgraded account.

Kind Regards,
Thorsten | http://www.free-installations.info

Volunteer Staff
www.000webhost.com

We put our heads together on this response:

You said, "If your account was suspended due to terms of service violation,
it could be unsuspended only after upgrade."

I'm curious to know just how an alleged Terms of Service violation all goes
away if I throw money at you. I would think that a Terms of Service
violation is grounds for suspension at least, or deletion of services at
most, yet you say that I can give you money and everything is fine. This
sounds like extortion. You're holding my account hostage and you expect me
to pay the ransom.

Incidentally, there is nothing whatsoever in your Terms of Service that
states that free accounts are limited to under 20% CPU usage. Furthermore,
you have provided absolutely no way whatever that would enable a user to
monitor this activity. Lastly, you have never once notified me of any of
those alleged 1,000 times that I went over this supposed limit.

The fact of the matter is that there never was a ToS violation. Based upon
the numerous complaints in your own forums and elsewhere, this is a standard
tactic that you employ to get rid of free websites to free up room or get
paying customers. How do I know this? Simple: my website doesn't have the
traffic for your allegations. Further, I don't have any CRON jobs running.
Yet you say I went over my CPU usage more than 1,000 times? I find this
charge ludicrous and impossible to believe.

That you are now demanding money from me to release my account is extortion,
pure and simple. I demand to know what evidence you have to back your claim
that I violated terms of service and how you eliminated the possibility that
this problem was a DOS or other issue that is your responsibility. You have
three business days to comply or else I, as an internationally-known
investigative reporter, begin reporting my side of this story on every venue
I can get my hands on!

---------------------------------------------

Their reaction was to close the ticket, which to me is a signal to go public
before the three days are up.

UPDATES:

I see these people as luring customers with free accounts and then trying
various underhanded means to get them to convert to paid accounts and
getting rid of them if they are disinclined to do so. Due to the size
limitations every free webhost has, my husband and I expect to reluctantly
move our web sites to paid accounts when our traffic warrants it, unless we
can find a satisfactory non-monetary alternative. But we want no part of a
web host who who treats free account holders in such an appalling and
unethical manner and we urge others to stay away from them or to put their
accounts elsewhere.

This experience also brings up again an issue I raised when I first joined
this list: The idea that what is free is inferior to what is paid for. "You
get what you pay for" said the moderator. People who are accepting free
services should be content with whatever if given. He might as well have
said "beggars can't be choosers". Despite all of 000Webhost;s bragging about
being "an industry leader in providing top class free web hosting services
without advertising!" they clearly put most of their resources into the paid
areas and think that free accounts and their owners are a nuisance. Free
should be a step toward paid to these people. Given how computing resources,
such as storage space, keep getting cheaper, prices should be allowed to
decline to zero eventually for everyone.

Posted by Customer, on August 24, 2011, 13:04:53
  Nowhere in the Terms of Service is there any mention of CPU usage for free
accounts. Therefore, I have not violated your Terms of Service, yet you have
suspended my account and am now demanding that I pay.

I was never once informed of any CPU overage, yet you claim I went over it
more than 1,000 times. Can you provide proof of this? Can you back it up
with any rules or regulations?

All I want is to back up my site. I can't do that because you have locked me
out of it with bogus claims of violations. Give me access to my site for one
day and I'll get everything off of it, you can then delete it and you'll
never hear from me again.
    Posted by Staff Member, on August 24, 2011, 14:11:17
  Hello,

Sorry, but your account can be unsuspended only if you upgrade, the reason
is:

Suspended for violating 20%+ CPU usage limit for more than 1000 times.
Please upgrade to our premium UNLIMITED hosting at www.hosting24.com to get
your account reactivated.

Regards,
Alexandr |

Volunteer Staff
www.000webhost.com
     Posted by Customer, on August 24, 2011, 14:20:06
  As stated (please actually read it instead of posting a canned response,
thank you),

Nowhere in the Terms of Service is there any mention of CPU usage for free
accounts. Therefore, I have not violated your Terms of Service, yet you have
suspended my account and am now demanding that I pay.

I was never once informed of any CPU overage, yet you claim I went over it
more than 1,000 times. Can you provide proof of this? Can you back it up
with any rules or regulations?
    Posted by Staff Member, on August 24, 2011, 14:26:33
  Hello,

Sorry, but we don't provide our customers with any proofs.

Thank You,
Alexandr |

Volunteer Staff
www.000webhost.com

I see these people as luring customers with free accounts and then trying
various underhanded means to get them to convert to paid accounts and
getting rid of them if they are disinclined to do so. Due to the size
limitations every free webhost has, my husband and I expect to relunctantly
move our web sites to paid accounts when our traffic warrants it, unless we
can find a satisfactory non-monetary alternative. But we want no part of a
web host who who treats free account holders in such an appalling and
unethical manner and we urge others to stay away from them or to put their
accounts elsewhere.

This experience also brings up again an issue I raised when I first joined
this list: The idea that what is free is inferior to what is paid for. "You
get what you pay for" said the moderator. People who are accepting free
services should be content with whatever if given. He might as well have
said "beggars can't be choosers". Despite all of 000Webhost;s bragging about
being "an industry leader in providing top class free web hosting services
without advertising!" they clearly put ,ost of their resources into the paid
areas and think that free accounts and their owners are a nuisance. Free
should be a step toward paid to these people. Given how computing resources,
such as storage space, keep getting cheaper, prices should be allowed to
decline to zero eventually for everyone.

-- 
Kellia Ramares-Watson
Oakland, CA
Web Site : http://endmoney.info/
Facebook: TheEndOfMoney
Twitter: EndofMoney

Why must we pay to live on a planet we're born on?
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