Midphase Blows Goats —
Update in 2008: I was sent this letter in June of 2008.
Back in 2004, I knew that if my BBS Documentary got a lot of attention or press, it would quickly overwhelm my net connection (a T-1) and that there were a large amount of hosting companies out there, who could give me simple hosting for a cheap price. I arbitrarily chose Midphase, and created a subsite, media.bbsdocumentary.com, that hosted the trailers, photographs, and other such get-it-to-the-people stuff related to the project. Anyone can tell you that nothing says “this isn’t worth purchasing” than clicking on a site and it makes you wait 10 minutes to see what the heck it is.
Everything was fine. They hosted that portion, I hosted my portion, and things were good.
I was Slashdotted in October of 2004. I got many, many visitors.
Within a short time, people on Slashdot started complaining about my site not actually providing images and photos. I got a lot of “it’s hosted on a modem” jokes, just what I didn’t want to see. I had specifically paid money for Midphase to prevent this.
I called Midphase, and submitted a ticket, desperately trying to get the site to return, to find out what the problem was. The website explained that I was out of bandwidth. I called and said I would like to buy more bandwidth, 50 gigabytes, to ensure my site came back. They told me this was $197, and I happily paid it, to get the site back.
The site did not come back.
I called and wrote again (it was now hours later, and the Slashdot effect was lost), and eventually, I had this explained to me:
Sorry, but bandwidth is not the reason why your account is blocked. Your
account overloaded the server by creating too many simultaneous HTTP requests
so the load jumped high and the web server crashed. We hads to suspend your
account to make the server working.
Attached file list.txt contains a list of simultaneous requests to your site.
There were almost 100 users downloading different fieles.
It’s too much for a shared server. You need to order a dedicated to host this
account.
To make your account active now you have to disable the download section.
Please advise.
—
Alexander – Customer Service & Technical
Now, just so we’re clear. They took $197 of my money, and then explained to me a few hours later that in fact they didn’t need to take $197 of my money and that in fact I was so popular, that I couldn’t be hosted on their site anymore.
I sent a very angry letter. Here is the text of that letter.
On Monday, October 14th, I was woken around noon by a friend on the phone
telling me I’d had my BBS Documentary site listed on Slashdot. I was
absolutely delighted. I’d spent 3 hard years travelling the country and
many months editing and refining my work to prepare it for sale.
In anticipation of sale, I listed my trailers, photographs and other works
with a third-party hosting company, so that people weren’t reliant on my
T-1 that comes into my home. I chose midphase.com for this work, and was
pleased with both the quick registration and the controls at my disposal.
So imagine my surprise when I found out that my account had been
“suspended for billing”. I assumed, naturally, that my site had been
popular enough that I’d outrun the 50 gigabyte limit I have per month.
This would be great news, because as I am selling a product, it means
there was a lot of interest in my product.
I called your support department, said that I apparently overran my
bandwidth and, with your support person’s help, paid for 50 more gigabytes
of bandwidth, a nearly $200 charge. I was told my system would have more
bandwidth in “15 minutes”.
An hour later, I became concerned there were other issues. This became a
major concern because, as I was selling a product that helps with my
livelihood as a documentary filmmaker, people being unable to reach this
data represents monetary damages at the rate of $50 a product. I called
back, but was unable to get a person on the phone. I left a voice mail,
and then checked the online support system. I explained my concern that I
was unable to get the bandwidth back.
Eventually, at least a couple hours after my shutoff occurred, a support
person explained in the ticket that I had too many hits; that because my
site experienced actual traffic in the form of attention from the world,
that my account had been shut off and I would be required to purchase a
“dedicated server”. They also said that I would have to delete my
trailers, my demonstrative examples of my saleable product, to continue to
be hosted.
Meanwhile, I watched as message boards filled with derisive comments from
folks, indicating that my bandwidth shutoff told them I was not reputable,
and that my product would be potentially shoddy. My reputation has been
distinctly damaged by your actions.
I am no longer interested in doing business with your company. Please
refund the ~$197 charge that was obtained from me fraudulently by your
support team, and please issue me a pro-rated refund, from the end of
October onward, for the cost of the hosting I purchased with you.
Please reply today. I will hold any other further actions until I hear
back from your team.
– Jason Scott
This got me a phone call from someone at Midphase. He cancelled the $197 from the company, and he told me he hoped they could do something to make things better. I told him that I hoped he and his entire staff would die of suffocation within a horse. I made it clear I would never do business with them again, and that I was done with them, as anyone would be to be treated so poorly.
I switched to another company, Dreamhost. Dreamhost got a very annoyed guy (that would be me) calling them, demanding to know what they would do in the event of a slashdotting, and the response, I am pleased to say, was quick and attentive. Not only did they say they would do their best, they knew about my film and talked about the details and how much they liked it. I immediately signed up.
They have survived multiple slashdottings, boingboings, and waxys over the years hence.
Why do I bring this all up?
Because Midphase just contacted me, to tell me that they were having trouble re-billing me for my account.
Bear in mind I not only wrote them and said “cancel my account”, but was on the phone with someone using multple variations of the phrase “cancel my account” and “please jump in front of a hummer with MIDPHASE SUCKS painted all over your body”.
I wrote back three simple words: “Go to Hell”
And got this:
Dear Jason,
Is there anything at all that I can help you with? If you’re having technical problems, I will be happy to have someone give you a call or email to walk you through them. But before we can help we need to know what problem(s) you are having. So please let us know, that’s what we’re here for!
If you have to cancel, the only place to do that is through our cancellation form, so please make sure to get that in so we can properly cancel your account. The cancellation form is located at cancel.midphase.com. If this form is not filled out, your account will stay open and we’ll continue to bill you.
Thanks, and again, let me know what we can do to help you.
—
Sincerely,
Brian Harmatuk
midPhase Services, Inc.
Billing Representative
billing@midphase.com
The fact is, I hope a billion search engines pick this up, and the phrase “Midphase” returns “Blows Goats” when people “feel lucky”. I was quite prepared to walk away from this sort of net-wankery, but something tells me that somewhere, someone’s hand is wavering between Midphase and another choice (like Dreamhost, and I just wanted to say “Don’t go with Midphase”. That’s midphase at 223 W. Jackson Blvd. #600, Chicago, IL 60606 USA.
Thanks.
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/!\ The hosting provider you are looking for blows goats.
– If you are looking for a hosting provider, please make sure you typed the name correctly. (DREAMHOST)
– If this is your current hosting provider, please describe the nature of your problem in the box below. Next, open your e-mail program and tell them to go to hell.
By the by, did you have to fill out their form or will you just ignore them?
I intend to ignore them and never visit their site again.
Or you could send them a bill for any additional time spent: reading their email/talking to them/dealing with them in any way, shape or form… >:-}
Hi Jason,
I just came across your listing, and wanted to see if there was anything that we could do here. To explain, and as you know, Slashdot gets some serious traffic, and on a shared account, when a site is slashdotted there really is no way of us keeping it up on a shared server. It severely affects the servers performance, and from our experience, it’s always necessary for a slashdotted site to be on it’s own dedicated server.
Regardless of that, I understand that this was a serious inconvenience for you. In exchange for removing your post, I’ll be happy to refund your entire payment to us, and move on from this.
Thanks, let me know.
Zak
Dreamhost rocks. But if you’re going to send them business you might want to either add an affiliate code to the link or provide a discount code if you don’t want the affiliate commission.
I give my friends “GREG97”. Gives them $97 off a one or two year prepaid plan (my entire affiliate commission). With the new upgrades (unlimited domain hosting, quadrupled disk space, and octupled bandwidth) that has allowed a number of my friends to sign up for a one-year of their $9.95 a month plan for $22.40 (119.40 – 97 = 22.40 or $1.87 a month). That plan provides 20 gigs of disk space and a TERABYTE of bandwidth.
Since you’re recommending Dreamhost in this blog article, I hope you don’t mind me evangelizing the amazing deal they’re offering right now. I don’t make any money off of it.
And regarding that Zak guy.. “In exchange for removing your post, I’ll be happy to refund your entire payment to us, and move on from this.” Tell him to go blow goats.
Cheers,
Greg
Uhm, Zak, that is a load of crap. Slashdot does NOT mean the death of a shared account/server. There are several things that can be done to mitigate the overload: things the site’s owner can do to prepare ahead of time (tight code, minimal DB calls, etc) and things the server admins can do.
I love how two comments are from paid shills, one for each company you’ve done business with. The world of webhosting is ridiculous.
Patrick,
DB requests, and what not played no part in this. Jason was receiving enough simultaneous HTTP requests (as is *always* done when a site is slashdotted) to kill his server.
Zak
Zac:
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Or, more correctly, you and your guys have no idea how to configure a web server.
I’ve had two different websites on two different servers (one shared, one dedicated which I admin myself) featured on Slashdot 5 times between them. One site has been on Fark’s main page 4 times, the other twice (fark.com, if anyone cares, generates more traffic than Slashdot). One site is on a shared server with 300+ other accounts.
Both sites came through fine. One site (the one that I take care of myself) even had a DB connection.
The problem with your hosting is that you haven’t set up your servers properly. You either have inadequate hardware, too many accounts per box, or you’ve dorked your httpd config. Or perhaps all three.
I know what slashdotting does. I’ve watched mrtg graphs in real time as it happens. I’ve seen the number of simultaneous http requests climb and then taper off. My sites were fine because they were hosted properly. They were configured properly. In other words, there was no need to spuriously suspend either account.
To put this in perspective: I’m not a sysadmin. I’m just a software geek who likes to play with Linux in his spare time. The box I admin has survived multiple slashdottings and farkings. If *I* can properly admin a web server through such events why can’t Midphase?
The only conclusion I can draw is that Midphase has no real expertise in the web hosting field. Jason was right to move his business elsewhere. Frankly, I’m surprised that you haven’t been sued by him yet. He was right when he said that you materially damaged his reputation. Hell, if he does go to court, I’d be more than happy to be a witness on his behalf. I’ve got the logs to prove that even an admitted amateur sysadmin can do better than Midphase.
Let me see. You purchase an obvious under-powered account because you want to sell a film via the net. Then you complain when the service you bought doesn’t provide exactly what you want. Sounds like you fucked up dude and that midphase could sue you for exactly what you claim they did. I know I would sue you if you did the same thing.
You should really take this shit down, send a note of apology to midphase explaining why you were wrong and that you weren’t up front with what you were doing and then you should send them back the $197.00 and ask that they not sue your arse.
Next time you want to sell something on the net you should purchase a dedicated server and enough band-width to survive a /.’ing. If not you are nothing but a 2-bit film-maker.
“You should really take this shit down, send a note of apology to midphase explaining why you were wrong and that you weren’t up front with what you were doing and then you should send them back the $197.00 and ask that they not sue your arse.”
Your reading comprehension isn’t too good is it?
The $197 was money they charged him to fix a problem that _didn’t exist_.
They happily charged him $197 to buy more bandwidth he didn’t need, and didn’t use. He doesn’t owe them anything for it.
Their crappy server probably keeled over before he hit 1G let alone 50.
Horrible experience with billing and quality of services. Avoid!!
I filed a complaint with the Illinois state attorney general and suggest others do the same. It’s the only way we can hold businesses like midphase accountable.
http://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/about/email_consumers.jsp
“You should really take this shit down, send a note of apology to midphase explaining why you were wrong and that you weren’t up front with what you were doing and then you should send them back the $197.00 and ask that they not sue your arse.”
This is the funniest thing I’ve read for a while…
I can’t believe this loser…
This is all I’m going to say, as a host myself, Slashdot does get an enormous amount of traffic and so do the people that are listed on it, you sir do not know what your talking about, your just an incoherent child trying to get your little films on the internet, I applaud you for trying to further your life, but you went the wrong way buddy. So enjoy making your little films knowing people who make shows like “the wiggles” or “Blues Clues” have had more success with there Childs play then you will ever have. I to say you should send that $197 back to MidPhase or do them a favor and buy a really big blunt object and beat yourself to death because you’re already dead to me.
Aw, that’s sweet.
Well, it’s certainly good to hear from the cream of the web hosting crop; towards that end, along with some pretty spiffy and impressive “improvisational spelling”.
Since you’ve decided to tell me to go kill myself, I see no point in hiding your IP address, which is 12.180.241.4.
A quick Google search shows a post by a “Jose Landorez” on a cached Google site here:
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:K3x1ambgEhUJ:www.jessejames.co.uk/txtfilter.php%3Fhost%3Dwww.ratemyhost.com%26page%3D/view_ratings.php+%2212.180.241.4%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=8&client=firefox-a
Should I go further? Yes, yes I should.
This review, from the same IP address, continues on this page:
http://www.jessejames.co.uk/txtfilter.php?host=www.ratemyhost.com&page=/ratings/rating1957.html
On it, a very poor spelling Jose Landorez gives full 10s (“There support is da best I have ever cn!”) to a company called IntegraHost:
http://www.integrahost.com
Now, the thing with IntegraHost, if you visit the http://www.integrahost.com website, is how poorly this hosting firm can spell, with phrases like “Were so sure that you will like our service”. In fact, they spell as badly as Jose Landorez. Who spells as badly as you do, in your post from the same IP address.
Looking out elsewhere for reviews of Integrahost, I see that there’s a review on this website:
http://www.webhostingstuff.com/comments/IntegraHost-1135.html
This review is also riddled with such grammatical whoppers as “since IntegraHost is my Hosting Provider I did forgot what a problem is, they are always ready to help in everything”. This is posted by a Jose Antonio.
Now, if we look at Integrahost’s WHOIS record, we see:
IntegraHost .com
784 Covington
Bowling Green, Kentucky 42101
US
+1.8887806856
99047@whois.gkg.net
Bowling Green, Kentucky. Funny that. If I do an ARIN lookup on your IP you posted your letter from, 12.180.241.4, it comes up as:
BOWLING GREEN MUNICIPAL GENERAL BOWLING-84-240 (NET-12-180-240-0-1)
12.180.240.0 – 12.180.241.255
Huh. Well, you know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that you are the provider of IntegraHost, an illiterate anklebiter located in Kentucky running a sub-par host who can barely put two words together without smooshing them all up into a misunderstandable paste.
Perhaps along with “Midphase Blows Goats”, we should also add “IntegraHost Is Run By Anklebiters”.
“Regardless of that, I understand that this was a serious inconvenience for you. In exchange for removing your post, I’ll be happy to refund your entire payment to us, and move on from this.
Thanks, let me know.
Zak
Posted by: Zak Boca at January 6, 2006 05:59 PM”
Shit, I’ll pay you to leave the comment up, Jason. Set me up with monthly billing so I can budget it.
-steve
Hi, can anyone tell me a good independent site that does comparisons on hosting services? I’m struggling to get through the bullsh!t.
thanks.
This made for fascinating reading for me today. I had – shall we call it a strange experience? – with Midphase yesterday. Sadly, I signed up for a full year’s hosting in advance back in January 2006 after deciding to move from Blogger. I had no complaints until yesterday.
I emailed for some technical support and advice. I was threatened by return email with the immediate suspension of my site for ‘hacked software’ – in fact, the email was sent yesterday afternoon UK time with a countdown to compliance of 20 minutes.
Now, I don’t know about you, but my backside is not glued to my office desk and so I didn’t get the email until several hours after it was sent. I still don’t know if my site was ever suspended.
I found the email rude, arrogant, over-the-top, completely wrong and aggressive. I’ve had an apology from one person, not the one who sent it in the first place – who referred me back to my original email. I wrote and told him to show me where I referenced ‘hacked software’ but have had no response to that.
See, even though many people in the WordPress community reference ‘hacked plugins’ and use the term ‘hack’ and all its derivatives to denote tweaking, or amending, or deleting code in HTML and PHP files, some fool at Midphase decided my reference to hacking the code Flickr provides to display photos on a blog was, in fact, a software hack. And acted like a tin god in accordance with either his own ego or company directives, which are presumably to threaten customers if you misconstrue or are too stupid to realise what the term ‘hack’ is used for these days, which is considerably more than it was used for back in the early days of computing. The guy clearly had no ability to contextualise, or to email me to ask for clarification – clearly, like the Scarecrow in Oz, he’s on the look-out for a brain but decided in the meantime to pick a fight with me.
My reason for emailing and asking for technical support was clear and not at all unusual. I’ve had no end of trouble lately trying to install any and all Flickr third-party WordPress plugins on my blog. The use of the Flickr code is what I see as a temporary creative fix. I asked, as a complete PHP and SQL newbie, how to check my SQL database for errors and what to do to fix any that might come up.
I also said in response to the vicious email that I’ve got a paid-for Flickr Pro account and can display my photos howsoever I bloody well like.
I also took the time to help out the poorly educated by explaining the wider use of the word ‘hack’ and its derivatives in today’s online world, but any cursory check of the wordpress.org pages, for starters, would show many, many references to this or that plugin being ‘hacked’ but there you go. Midphase technical support guy mustn’t do much surfing or have much by way of knowledge of the lingo in use today.
I don’t like being bullied and threatened by anyone. The attempt yesterday really pissed me off. I never expected to be approached like a criminal for making a perfectly innocent technical enquiry, asking for help and advice. We shall see if they get nasty or show some real repentance in response to the post I wrote today, highly critical of Midphase, which you can access if you’re interested on the front page of my blog today – April 11 2006 – or by searching on my blog for the title, ‘to hack or not to hack’.
I think, come January 2007, I will switch to Dreamhost or another provider. I definitely won’t stick with Midphase.
I think you all are idiots. If you don’t want problems, buy yourself a 1/2 cabinet in a colo and a server, and shut the fuck up. Don’t be bitching and whining when you pay $7 bucks a month, you cheap shits.
I have issues with Integrahost because they claim to offer a 14 day guarantee and don’t follow through. Here’s my story with them…
The Support staff are very friendly but unable to actually help anyone. I chose this company because of their Sales staff via a chat box and their 14 day guarantee. I paid instantly by Paypal. The company did everything it could to set me up with a working hosting account, but placed my overly large account on a small and overcrowded server. They then decided to move my account to a new server (which meant more downtime). When they had completed the transfer they had lost half of my files. (This was a substantial amount of information, over a gig’s worth). My fourteen day guarantee passed very quickly as we struggled to correct the constant errors that continued to occur. The database would suddenly no longer work. Support were quick to fix it, but couldn’t explain why it had happened and why it continued to happen. I was promised an extension of my guarantee time until the account was fully working. Finally, during my third week, I realised they just couldn’t get their act together. I applied for a refund based on their promise of an extended guarantee. They informed me it was approved and would take 2 weeks because I had paid by Visa card. I explained I had paid via Paypal and suggested I do a dispute resolution thru Paypal. No response. I contacted them via this support ticket every day for the two weeks and no reply. Whenever I contacted the Live chat, support told me to speak to Kyle and would not help me. They even closed the chat on me. I began to panic because there is only a 45 day window with Paypal to do a dispute resolution. Alex in support told me via live chat that he would personally speak to Kyle and request he respond to my tickets. So I did not submit the Paypal complaint and gave them good faith. They did not reply, and continued to ignore my tickets. The system automatically closes the tickets after 24 hours, so every 24 hours I would be back there, adding to my ticket. Each time they continued to ignore me. Now another 3 weeks have passed. I cannot request a refund from Paypal and I do not know how to maintain my ‘pleasantness’ when they will not assist me in any way to receive a refund. I have also attempted email (no reply), they have a 1-800 number on their website but I live overseas and cannot use it. When I requested a phone number I could call, I was told they don’t do phone support.
This is my last communication – it gives you a good idea of the type of ‘service’ Integrahost will give you…
Steve Barnes: Welcome to integrahost Live chat. How can I assist you?
december – dedicated2digital.com: Hello Steve, how are you tonight?
december – dedicated2digital.com: I am hoping you can help me. I have been trying in vain to speak with Kyle or to get him to answer my support tickets since April 25, and had no luck…
december – dedicated2digital.com: what do you suggest I do? He promised me a refund of my account, but now is ignoring my support tickets. Is there another way to ensure you follow thru with the refund?
december – dedicated2digital.com: hello?
Steve Barnes: Currently Kyle is not available
Steve Barnes: He will come within 2 hours
december – dedicated2digital.com: Yes Steve, I am aware of that. he is always unavailable since I requested a refund. I am asking what i can do to get my refund, seeing as kyle is not available.
december – dedicated2digital.com: can you tell me who is available?
december – dedicated2digital.com: or a phone number I can ring that is not ‘toll-free’ as i am in australia and cannot call that number.
Steve Barnes: we do not phone support
december – dedicated2digital.com: but you have a toll free number advertised on your website, so you do have phone support.
december – dedicated2digital.com: who is kyle’s supervisor?
december – dedicated2digital.com: or yours please
december – dedicated2digital.com: you are not replying. is there an email address to your supervisor?
december – dedicated2digital.com: it has been 15 minutes since we started this conversation. Why are you not responding? Is there a problem?
december – dedicated2digital.com: Can you tell me why noone has replied to my support tickets for over 2 weeks?
Steve Barnes has left the chat conversation
Click Here to Leave a Message
I had several accounts under Mid-Phase. I just cancelled them today because they automatically charge your account for renewal if you don’t fill out the “cancellation form on their website”. They give you NO WARNING that your checking account is being billed, which caused several ovedraft fees. I called and complained with their billing department, which was less than friendly with me, even though I was calm. He said that a link to the agreement should have been emailed to me when I signed up for the account. I went back and clicked the link, and the agreement was not at the URL they sent me when I activated the account. Granted the agreement is plainly at the bottom of their homepage nowadays, but how do I know it hasn’t changed? They charged my account $53, and will not refund it. I design several websites a year, and will never use them, nor will I recommend them again.
Midphase is the worst…..in three weeks we’ve had two down times including now for hours. business killer.
i will post how bad whenever i can.
Horrible. Read about it here.
Thanks for the info. I was just going to sign up as an affiliate with MidPhase and direct a few dozen of my consulting clients there. I decided to do a bit more research and stumbled across “blows goats”.
I decided to switch to Midphase because my members continuously are receiving messages that the site has exceeded it CPU usage. Even though, i hate to switch from hostmoster.com but they do not offer VPS or dedicated server. Therefore, I moved over to midphase.com and it was nightmare, my site was down for 4 days. I was told by Dan and John, the owners that they were doing maintenance and this should be expected.
I was never informed about this maintenance until 8 hours after my site had been down and I had sent 10 emails asking what was going on but no answer. In addition, my site was previously down for about 2 days. They never replied back. When i called during the day time i was told that they will call me back and when i called during the night time no one answered the phone.
I challenge anyone to call midphase.com around 9 PST TIME and see if your call is answered. When I asked the owners why do they fraudulently offer 24×7 , he did not have an answer.
Basically, this company promotes 24×7 supports on their site and on their answering message and 24 hours to create new account. This is BS and fraud. THEY DO NOT OFFER 24X7. Staffs are incompetent of their job descriptions, Midphase has a standard of recklessly mishandling customer’s accounts, fraudulent claim of 24×7, and misused of customers account.
If you are skeptic about this posting please request the chain of communication i had with midphase managers, support team and owner. I basically I lost 300 members during this down time with midphase. I had to revert my account to hostmonster.com
Another Midphase horror story:
http://www.bryanboy.com/bryanboy_le_superstar_fab/2007/01/buyer_beware_do.html
” SUMMARY
I signed up for an account with Midphase on August 30, 2006. They suspended my account because of their internal policy that I wasn’t CLEARLY made aware of when I originally signed up because I was misled to believe one thing. After many, many emails to various people in their organization and much mucho bullshit from their staff in a span of 5 months, I still haven’t received my refund. I know around $150 ain’t that much but I’m not gonna give $150 to someone I’m not getting anything back. What am I, a cash machine? ”
For the whole story go here: http://www.bryanboy.com/bryanboy_le_superstar_fab/2007/01/buyer_beware_do.html#more
I signed up for an account with Midphase on August 30, 2006. They suspended my account because of their internal policy that I wasn’t CLEARLY made aware of when I originally signed up because I was misled to believe one thing. After many, many emails to various people in their organization and MUCH MUCHO BULLSHIT FROM THEIR STAFF IN A SPAN OF 5 MONTHS, I STILL HAVEN’T RECEIVED MY REFUND.
Click on my name for a full account (with e-mail screenshots!) of my HORRIBLE experience with MIDPHASE.
midphase presents itself like a reputable company, but in the end, it behaves like a basement operation. They refuse to refund my year’s worth of web hosting service fees, because I requested a cancellation through the wrong channels. I emailed a customer service rep instead of going to their cancellation page at first. A normal, reputable SERVICE company would have honored the date of my request to a customer rep, after all, that is why there are customer reps.
BUT You guys want to hide behind your little technicalities…go ahead. Keep my 160 bucks. I will make sure you’re turned away tens of thousands of dollars in business. You keep this up, you will be out of biz within 2 years, and then we will all be laughing.
Some of the posters above are right, you expected too much for too little dosh. Irrespective of the additional payment (which rightly you should have had refunded) you chose the wrong kind of hosting for something you knew would be popular!
There will always be unhappy customers with ANY hosting company or ANY company of any kind – you can’t please all the people all of the time but you can bet your bottom dollar that there are more ‘happy and content’ customers than unhappy ones.
Rather than bleat about your misfortune on the internet why not do what professional people do and file a small claim?
Peace and love,
Soulgirl x
Soulgirl,
The beauty of the Internet is that normal people who get screwed over by big companies that think they’re hot shots can reach a lot of people with the story.
I’m sure this blog post is doing more damage to MidPhase than filing for a small claim would have done.
If MidPhase were smart, they would realize that and treat their customers better.
Thanks for this post Jason. I’ve been a MidPhase member for 19 days and I’ve already had a few minor upsets with them. This post has inspired me to cancel and get a refund before the 30 days are up (sure hope they don’t give me problems about that) because I don’t trust that I’ll be happy with them for 11 more months.
I registered with MidPhase because the popular and otherwise reputable CopyBlogger.com is recommending them (for pay). I encourage you all to share your MidPhase horror stories with CopyBlogger and ask him to stop promoting them.
Notice:
MidPhase = ANHosting
Like BlueHost and HostMonster, they are one company pretending to be separate companies.
I found that out yesterday (in both cases) while researching where to get my site hosted,,, anew.
Many similarities existed in their advertising. In one case, they had the exact same on-hold mechanism (“You are number 2..”).
Then, upon hearing the same guy (Alex) answer at BlueHost after speaking with Alex at HostMonster a few minutes earlier, I asked him outright. He sounded guilty and sheepish, but then agreed to being the same Alex.
Interestingly, all four (actually two) of the companies appear all over the place on Top 10 lists, which makes them Top 8 lists in reality.
Also, I previously used one of the Top 10 lists to choose InMotionHosting.com.
Within a few weeks of being there, they began sending me notices about CPU excesses, then switched me from $8/month to $50/month.
After CORRECTING the script that caused a CPU load, InMotion refused to return me to the shared server because of worrying that it could happen again. NO amount of polite reasoning with them produced anything more than inviting me move my site elsewhere if I didn’t like the new yearly fee of $600.00.
Therefore, I am still researching at this moment, and for that reason stumbled across this blog.
Randal
yes, midphase sucks. my website(s) are practically down 95% of the time, wow, way to go. i can’t wait to change hosting, far away from these jokers.
You hit the spot with your comments on the MIDPHASE.COM scam artists. I signed up with a company called ANHOSTING.com only to find out that i acutally signed up with MIDPHASE.com who supposedly owns this ANHOSTING.COM. They had me fill out a form and fax in my credit card details but still I have no account. My god, I’ve been trying to call their 24 hour hosting service and no one answers this damn phone. So i decided to do a search on these companies and I FIND TONS AND TONS of complaint websites just like this one. Try searching for MIDPHASE.COM or ANHOSTING with the words scam or bad service yourself. You will find what you are looking for. Obviously, this much complaints means that there is something terribly wrong with this company. DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE GETTING A WEBHOST! Atleast this post has saved you a lot of time avoid MIDHOST.COM and ANHOSTING.com at all costs!
Just want to echo your sentiments. I am now in Hour 11 of a 911 tech support ticket.
Until last month (August ’07) I worked at midPhase: first as a tech support representative and then as a systems administrator (level 2/3). During this period I saw some of the most irresponsible things I’ve ever seen at an organization. Rampant lying to customers about downtime (saying “network issues” were to blame rather than admitting there were problems with the electrical infrastructure at the datacenter). Drug use is all but ubiqutous among the staff and management and the needs of legitimate customers are put on the back-burner in favor of satiating affiliate checks.
Anyway, I’m about to write more so stay tuned. 🙂
B., Ry.
Midphase sucks because they only give you ONE Mysql database and then want another 30 bucks for additional ones. Ive moved to another host that provides much better service and better options..
Dont go with Dreamhost. Google search that shit.
I’ve used Dreamhost for 3 years now, the uptime ain’t too great, and it can be slow sometimes, but security is rock hard and they never mess with your billing.
Shii- How in the world can you say that Dreamhost “never mess with your billing”? Did you miss last January when they overbilled customers over $7 MILLION?
Google ‘dreamhost billing’ if you dont know
Dreamhost seems to have detoriated significantly since Jason first wrote this post. Reviews written in 2006 are glowing. Reviews written in the last year or so (late 2007/early 2008) tend to fall into the “blows goats” category.
But in case anyone was wondering, Midphase, in its many manifestations (such as ANHosting), still blows goats. There are better web hosts out there than Midphase. I’d recommend against both Midphase and Dreamhost.
And one more thing: I think it’s shameful that Midphase tried to bribe Jason to remove this post form the web. If Midphase doesn’t want people saying they blow goats, then they should provide better customer service the first time around.
After 15 years in the biz, I have to say midPhase is the worst web hosting company I’ve had to deal with. My sites have been down for four days and counting–they’re still not back up. Unacceptable performance; midPhase is run by a bunch of incompetent kids.
I’m not surprised about Midphase – my sites are always slow and/or down and I never get any clear answers when I put in tickets on these problems. Midphase is a company that should just eat their own fecal matter and die! The problem seems to be most of these hosting review sites are obviously operated by these same lousy providers. All you have to do is google “midphase +complaints” and there’s more than 4500 hits! I’m scrambling to find a replacement host but so far no such luck – sadly, DreamHost has 8 times the complaints today than Midphase – and Midphase is pretty damn crappy! I know, regrettably I am a current Midphase client. I hope I can move before all my accounts expire!
You are all ignorant if you think that you can host a website providing movies and large photographs on a shared server with 100+ simultaneous connections. That’s 100+ connections to your site alone, not to mention the 100’s of other sites hosted on the server.
This asshole really should have gotten a dedicated server.
Pro-tip : Learn apache, how it works, and what its limitations are. Then go fuck yourself.
– jared
You are all ignorant if you think that you can host a website providing movies and large photographs on a shared server with 100+ simultaneous connections. That’s 100+ connections to your site alone, not to mention the 100’s of other sites hosted on the server.
This asshole really should have gotten a dedicated server.
Pro-tip : Learn apache, how it works, and what its limitations are. Then go fuck yourself.
– jared
Hey “jared” — you’re a dumb cocksucker, and it gives me great pleasure to tell you that. Did you actually fire off a “pro-tip” blast in your terrible comment that you somehow posted twice? You really are a worthless faggot.
I found this post because midphase dropped forum posts on me for the third time in three months. And this is nothing like “100+ connections” or whatever else it was you were blathering on about up there.
MIDPHASE IS FUCKING TERRIBLE. Greasy, meme-regurgitating syncophants like yourself and midphase deserve each other.
Dude, all shared webhosting is shit, get over it. At a point like that, I’d assume you’d think to get a dedicated server, if you’re interested, please contact Bluehost.com. 😉 I mean srsly, you were paying like no money. I think Robb Sherwin said it best, “MIDPHASE IS FUCKING TERRIBLE. Greasy, meme-regurgitating syncophants like yourself and midphase deserve each other.”
Thanks for the info. I was just going to sign up as an affiliate with MidPhase and direct a few dozen of my consulting clients there. I decided to do a bit more research and stumbled across “blows goatsâ€.
[…] Find out how Midphase have not honored their agreement to refund signup fees, and many more horror stories – click here. Make sure you read the comments though – that’s where the real juice is, one of the MidPhase employees even turns up and tries to bribe the blogger to remove his post. […]