beware of ultimatehostings.com

[easyhostmedia]

Hi

I have just been with ultimatehostings.com for 1 month as i took of of their n$2.73 VPS out and installed Cpanel DNS only, so i could cluster al my servers.
on 12/4/2012 got this emailed message at 5.35am

CUrrently we regret to inform everyone about the unexpected downtime of our US node due to fauly hardware issues, we are workin as fast as we can to have the server back online. During the same time we are provisioning another node and would move your accounts to the same. We will also credit your next invoices with 50% discount. Please note that during this process no data will be lost as we've already ensured the same.

Please do accept our sincere apologies for this unexpected incident.

no problem hardware issues can happen

at 12 pm i sent them a ticket for an update as their was nothing on their site about this issue and got this

Hello,

We are still working on the same and it is under maintenance, once it will done we will update you ASAP.

Regards,
Shaun.
Support Department,
Ultimatehosting.com

when i did read their network status reports although their was nothing about this, but their was a resolved issue from last year with the same issue on the same node (strange)

at 1 am on 13/4/2012 i asked for any updays as still nothing from them or nothing on their site. i got this reply at 2.03am

Hello,

Sorry for the any inconvenience caused to you. We just need some more time to do it.
We will keep update to you about the status.

Regards,
Sam.
Support Department,
Ultimatehosting.com

by this time as i was using this as a dns system my emails client was beiong bombarded with failed dns messages as the other saervers could not communicate and this crashed my system several times, so i have enoiugh ands requested a refund and my account cancelled.

not they sent me this

Nick M || Staff
Terry,

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenice caused to you, however we're having some legal issues with our DC and we've already decided to switch providers, we are only waiting for the data to be backedup.

Regards,
Nick
Senior System Administrator

so from a hardware issue to a legal issue in 2 days.

 

[HC-Ro]

I wonder if those are fake support staff names. I cant find allot on them.

 

[easyhostmedia]

I wonder if those are fake support staff names. I cant find allot on them.

could be. the way i read inbetween the lines is that i think they have failed to pay server fees to their supplier so have to look around to start again.

 

[easyhostmedia]

their recurring subscription has taken a second payment from me, and they now will not reply to tickets.

 

[ultimatewebhost]

their recurring subscription has taken a second payment from me, and they now will not reply to tickets.

We have refunded both the payments, however let me tell you issues do happen and all we care is about the data of our clients.

Usually we do not provide refunds due to the nature of the service and it's clearly mentioned in our TOS,

http://ultimatehostings.com/tos.php

 

[easyhostmedia]

We have refunded both the payments, however let me tell you issues do happen and all we care is about the data of our clients.

Usually we do not provide refunds due to the nature of the service and it's clearly mentioned in our TOS,

http://ultimatehostings.com/tos.php

your TOS means nothing in the eyes of the law if you do not provide the service paid for i am entitled to a FULL refund which for some reason you dont know how to work paypal as you never used the refund function so i ended up paying paypal fees so never got the full refund.

 

[handsonhosting]

Ouch - refund is probably the easiest feature in PayPal too!

 

[easyhostmedia]

Ouch - refund is probably the easiest feature in PayPal too!

true and i like what they say

however let me tell you issues do happen and all we care is about the data of our clients

when my ticket replies give different stories. i know it was only $2.63 a month and only basic to run cpanel DNS only, but when it went down my email client crashed several times with the amount of emails from all my other servers as they could not communicate with the main DNS server.

they still dont know how to use paypal

just got this from them

We've sent you more than what you've paid us.

 

[Artashes]

Usually we do not provide refunds due to the nature of the service and it's clearly mentioned in our TOS,

http://ultimatehostings.com/tos.php

And what nature would that be that would not qualify your customers for a refund?

From your TOS:

3.2. Refunds Policy.
Except as specified elsewhere in this agreement, all payments to Ultimatehostings.com are final and non-refundable. This includes the one-time setup fee and all subsequent charges or fees regardless of usage. Refunds will be made where we are legally obligated to do so. We may also provide refunds at our discretion. If you believe you have been overcharged or falsely billed, you must communicate these concerns to our Billing Department within twenty-eight (28) days of such overcharge or false billing.

For your information there is a book out there that is called Civil Code. It is public order, it outlines the law. It means that no matter what you write in your terms regarding refunds, or whatever else, you cannot contract against public order and such will be disqualified by any judge.

You do in fact mention that "Refunds will be made where we are legally obligated to do so". This is one of those moments, so you didn't even have state that "usually we do not provide refunds". Of course you are.

just got this from them

We've sent you more than what you've paid us.

To be honest, this was also not necessary to refund more than what is owed, which makes for bad business practice. Why refund more? You owe the client the service. If you don't provide the service, you refund the fees. Why pay extra? You don't owe the client more than what he/she paid. :rolleyes2

I do, however, give them credit for owning up to their mistake and for crediting the client.

 

[easyhostmedia]

And what nature would that be that would not qualify your customers for a refund?

From your TOS:


For your information there is a book out there that is called Civil Code. It is public order, it outlines the law. It means that no matter what you write in your terms regarding refunds, or whatever else, you cannot contract against public order and such will be disqualified by any judge.

You do in fact mention that "Refunds will be made where we are legally obligated to do so". This is one of those moments, so you didn't even have state that "usually we do not provide refunds". Of course you are.




To be honest, this was also not necessary to refund more than what is owed, which makes for bad business practice. Why refund more? You owe the client the service. If you don't provide the service, you refund the fees. Why pay extra? You don't owe the client more than what he/she paid. :rolleyes2

I do, however, give them credit for owning up to their mistake and for crediting the client.

i did message them back to say that i did not want more than what i paid all they had to do was search the transaction and cli9ck refund and their reply was

Yes I'm aware of the same however PayPal puts some restrictions due to which we were not able to process a refund as expected.

i gave then the conversion rates paypal used for payment and the refund and their reply was

So what's the outcome you require more money from us?

which i replied no i just wasnted exactly what i paid and i suggested they contact paypal if they are unable to use refund function as giving more than what was paid will not do them anygood

 

[Artashes]

Oh, boy... "So what's the outcome you require more money from us" sounds like an oxymoron to their previous "We've sent you more than what you've paid us."

As far as I know, refunds work automatically in PayPal. All you have to do is find a subscription transaction and hit refund. PayPal will do the rest, restore all fees, etc.

I wonder if PayPal policies/functionalities are different for India-based accounts?

 

[easyhostmedia]

Oh, boy... "So what's the outcome you require more money from us" sounds like an oxymoron to their previous "We've sent you more than what you've paid us."

As far as I know, refunds work automatically in PayPal. All you have to do is find a subscription transaction and hit refund. PayPal will do the rest, restore all fees, etc.

I wonder if PayPal policies/functionalities are different for India-based accounts?

thats how paypal works. the way they have done this is i paid them $2.73 which as i use GBP £1.71 was taken. if then used refund then this would have just been reversed, but instead they eventually sent $3 but because of paypal fees i only received $2.55 which converted to £1.56. not worth arguing over a few pence

 

[RandyTHQ]

the host would actually have to refund or credit them, i would issue a refund to the customer if that happens of a hardware failure that is that serious :smash::smash: or credit them, sorry for your bad exp with them
:shaky:

that is my point of view, pleas dont be mad :smash:

 

[FRCorey]

I'd contact paypal, refunds should be one at the same exchange rate it was purchased at. Sounds shady that they're probably using it as an excuse to pocket a few cents per international transaction.

 

[easyhostmedia]

the host would actually have to refund or credit them, i would issue a refund to the customer if that happens of a hardware failure that is that serious :smash::smash: or credit them, sorry for your bad exp with them
:shaky:

that is my point of view, pleas dont be mad :smash:

this is exactly how i would have handled the situation with any of my clients.

an example was that the supplier of my main VPS co loates and several months ago they informed us that they were going to move their hardware to a new DC but leave the current hardware/sites etc in place until everything is migrated to new DC and the DNS is all set to new IPS, this would give no downtime during the migration, but during the migration of our server the container kept failing on the old DC which produced downtime for a few hours. the first thing i did was give all clients a months credit and if any active invoices applied the credit to these invoices. i did this as i was told their would be no downtime of which this was the info i relayed to my clients. this is all part of good customer service

 

[easyhostmedia]

opps my true account of ultimatehosting's business practices and they way they have treat me seems to have upset them they are demanding i have this removed.

Terry,

The post that you made on HD is creating a lot of problems for us, we request you to contact HD and have it removed.

Regards,
Nick
Senior System Administrator

----------------------------------------------
Ticket ID: #413380
Subject: unauthorised payment
Status: Answered

 

[Artashes]

Uh-oh.

Our answer to such requests is always the same: HostingDiscussion does not remove content that is not illegal and/or does not break the terms of service of our website.

 

[ultimatewebhost]

We were unable to process the refund as expected by the OP due to the restrictions put on us by PayPal, we're an Indian company and according to PayPal terms all the funds in any Indian account are automatically withdrawn into a bank account associated with the account, so in case where we have to send funds or issue refunds we either need to have funds in our PayPal account or we have to use a credit card.

And by stating "So what's the outcome, do you need more money?" We just wanted to make sure that the OP received the refund in full, maybe the response seemed to be inappropriate.

We never denied refund to the OP, we were waiting for things to be sorted, maybe the OP started thinking that he might not get a refund. The Op signed up on 14/03/2012 and got a full month service and the service was interrupted since 14/04/2012 which we already informed the OP.

So in short we refunded the OP even for the service that he received.

I hope this clears all the confusion.

 

[easyhostmedia]

what confusion, this is the first message received, regardless i paid for a service that you never provided

From: Ultimatehostings
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 5:34 AM
To: Terry Robertson
Subject: Server2.ultimatehostings.com Down


CUrrently we regret to inform everyone about the unexpected downtime of our US node due to fauly hardware issues, we are workin as fast as we can to have the server back online. During the same time we are provisioning another node and would move your accounts to the same. We will also credit your next invoices with 50% discount. Please note that during this process no data will be lost as we've already ensured the same.

Please do accept our sincere apologies for this unexpected incident.

this problem seems to repeat itself with you

http://www.secure.ultimatehostings.com/serverstatus.php?view=resolved

server3.ultimatehostings.com Down (Resolved)

Affecting Server - server2.ultimatehostings.com | Priority - Critical

We're facing a network defect on the server3.ultimatehostings.com node, we're working hard to get it resolved.

Date - 27/02/2012 16:14 - 29/02/2012 09:42

Last Updated - 27/02/2012 16:41

Server3 drive issues (Resolved)

Affecting Server - server2.ultimatehostings.com | Priority - Critical

It's an unfortunate event that the main hard drive of the node has crashed and we're working on recovering the data on it, please be rest assured that all your data is safe and will not be lost. At this moment we do not have any ETA for the restoration of services, but as soon as everything is resolved we'll update everyone affected. Please accept our sincere apologies regarding the same.

Date - 28/02/2012 02:49 - 29/02/2012 09:42

Last Updated - 28/02/2012 02:49

this latest problem has not even been listed on your site, maybe that because it will make it look bad as 3 hardware failures on the same node or is it legal issues as i have been told different stories.

Anyway i have been refunded the service cancelled and as this is a legitamite review of your services then i will not request it be removed.

 

[handsonhosting]

we're an Indian company

This really should be disclosed on your site. I checked the site and while you had not listed that you were an Indian Company, you also did not list that you were US based - so bonus points for not trying to deceive anyone.

There are some inconsistencies within the site which lists some areas in GMT and others in CST, and then the Terms of Service stating that the laws of California will govern the results of any arbitration etc. You do realize that if someone takes you to court, that you will need to appear in California in order to resolve the case right?

Definitely full disclosure should be posted to your visitors and customers. Let this be a warning to all those that are seeking hosting - check the actual address of where the hosting company operates from.