Yikes

Posted on January 15, 2008 by Scott Jennings| 12 Comments

I was hit by this. When I got the bill for over $500 in my email, the first words in my response to billing were  “Holy CRAP.”

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  • Soulflame

    It’s because that bill is from the future. The ritual that summoned He Who Must Not Be Named has doomed your blog to be the battleground of a never ending war between him and his eternal foes.

  • http://www.eq2-daily.com Cyanbane

    I guess I am on Lum’s side of the war then, I got one for $250 + another $200 it said I was past due on, then of course when trying to see what the hell went on dreamhost’s site was down.

    What a suck of a way to start the morning.

    Glad to see it is being fixed.

  • Lounge

    What i thought was funny about the whole thing is that they called out the guy who did it on their status page.

    http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2008/01/15/billing-issues

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    I checked mine, seems to be all nice and clean. I’ve never asked my hosting company to be perfect (even though they’re pretty damned good), I just ask that they fix what’s broken asap and drop me a note ‘splaining what’s what.

    In that regard, DreamHost is pretty freaking spectacular.

  • http://www.cesspit.net Abalieno

    I think the panel page is being hammered, because I can’t even log-in to check.

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    Yeah, as the day goes on the news is spreading. I had no problems before noon. Now even the green.cgi page is futzed.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    Ever try 1&1 as a provider?

    Just asking.

  • Naladini

    Dreamhost can sure make some blunders (probably a few too many). However, I have yet to see any other organization handle their blunders with such style.

  • http://www.worldiv.com Tachevert

    I was bitten by that as well. Kudos to them for finding it, posting notice immediately, and fixing it that day — without my having to call / ticket / email / etc. Part of me wishes they’d been a little more “serious, businesslike, and sorry” about the issue — but then again, their constantly chipper and humorous tone is part of their business culture, I imagine.

    Reading their blog, I hope they make a special effort to make good to folks who really got burned by this (such as the fellow whose mortgage check bounced as a result, harming his chances for a refinance…). But then, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. Their customer service folks have always been polite, helpful, and responsive to me — even when my my ticket was a result of my own ineptitude.

  • Ginger

    I love how, as the first script screwed everything up, they employed a SECOND script to issue refunds, which had its own errors. Don’t humans still work at DH?

    Love ‘em but sometimes, they need much more quality control, and to stop allowing top-level people to take work home to apply server-wide scripts without testing the darned things.

  • http://www.w00tstudios.net Jester

    Of course Humans still work at DH, thats why the errors were there. ;)

  • Wanderer

    The worst my host ever did was take a bunch of us off the air for a couple of hours for a hardware upgrade without announcing it ahead of time, which led to some minor panic. I hope DreamHost is going to do something to compensate the people whose credit cards are over-limit, whose bank accounts have been emptied, whose checks are bouncing, etc. This is more than just an “oops” situation. Scott, if I were you, I’d be looking for somewhere … safer.