I'm trying to get something started on this sort of thing. It's a crusade I guess you could say but I watch (I've been in WHT a long time but I'm new here) and see all these people getting scammed. I've even been a victim myself actually but that was a long time ago.
It's not done (nor even really public) at this point but hopefully, well, I'll share the idea...
There are a number of people who are real hosts. They're not scammers. They say what they do and do what they say and could, in my opinion, find some sort of ISO standardization that they could fall under. Unfortunately I don't know of one specifically for the web hosting industry.
So, I figured I'd buy a domain and get working on it as a spare time project. It's going to be screwedbyyourhosting.info (oh please - really - don't look yet... I was mucking about with a CMS and I really am NOT good at that) and there will be offers to let people support the site in exchange for advertising with the logic being that they're probably NOT going to scam customers and be spending money on advertising really. That was one part of it but that's just the financial method to keep it running.
Beyond that there would be a forum (and there is already and I've been playing in it) where people can help as well as get help. Not too many people know that they can follow ICANN's rules and get their domain name back should they have been silly enough to register it through a scamming company. It's possible and even do-able. There's more than that and an "independent" third party who'd contact the scam hosts and make public the dialog between them would go a long ways as well as people advocating on behalf of the scammed client.
There are, at times, non-intentional hosting companies who (for what ever reason) end up going down and rather then being listed as scammers this would provide a means for them to communicate their problems and schedules or, alternatively, perhaps to even broker their current clients to existing hosting companies. There are a lot of potential benefits and (I'm sure I'll ping here when it's time to ask for help) the ideas are just beginning to work in my head.
I think I got the idea from Dan's honest hosts list. That's a nice list to have but - equally important - is a list of scam-hosts and things that go along with it. For instance today I came across a listing in WHT about a designer who... Well you can read the forum but it's not just hosting but rather the hosting industry. So it's like the opposite and I hope, at some point, to have enough people to fill the sponsor section so that I can actually remove my own link. I don't want (I'm not in it for the money believe it or not - I resell [and that's all that we do] because we can then provide support for a limited number of people and get hosted for free with our own sites and projects) to make it seem like it's intentions are to specifically make me any income because, well, it's not? It just seemed like a hole that needed filling that isn't really filled at this point. So this week will be spent designing that and tweaking it a bit more. I might have to commission a banner or anything similar but that's fine I suppose.
There's a limit to realistic overselling. Can it be done? Sure but it needs to, in my humble opinion, be done properly by people who are willing to take the time to watch and see the results and by people who are willing and able to upgrade the very instant that they reach the rational threshold.
How about a TB of storage and 1 TB of bandwidth for $6.95?
http://www.lypha.com/hosting_plans.shtml
*chuckles* It's only $4.95 if you want to sign up for the 2 year agreement.
Anyhow, it's crap like this and like that giving the hosting industry a reputation only slightly lower than a used car salesman. Something should be done to expose and oust the scammers.
Sheesh...
/end rant
KGIII
