Ultra Website Hosting ain’t what it used to be

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This web hosting review was started by larryg on 2009-08-05 00:01:23:

I had been using Ultra since 2004. In the minds of most people, that would make me a long time customer, perhaps deserving of a bit of extra respect and consideration.

I’m not looking for a pity party, but the fact is I had a dog that was sick with cancer over the holidays, and she eventually had to be put down on March 23, 2009. I had been neglecting my websites around that time, although I did check my email.

Recently, I tried to log into to my cpanel control to check an email account, and I couldn’t do that. My service was suspended, or so I was told.

To try to make a long story short, I ended up making a ticket, and someone did respond to me. We had several back and forth communications, and I can tell you the average response time was closer to 12 hours than to 12 minutes!

I paid $119 on 1/11 for a year’s worth of hosting service. An email entitled Excessive Server Processor Load was sent to me on 3/12. This was during a time they were upgrading their servers and sending out all sorts of emails, and the title didn’t grab my attention.

As it turns out, that email was a warning that I was exceeding the CPU usage allotted to my account. It also mentioned that someone had posted pornography on a forum I was running (that I hadn’t been keeping up with unfortunately.) It said my service was suspended. I never opened the email based on the title.

What has happened now is that because it has been more than 60 days since the account was suspended, I have forfeited my entire year’s worth of service. Mr. Turner is keeping my $119 after giving less than two months’ service and that’s the end of it, as far as he’s concerned, because I should have read the fine print better.

Speaking of the fine print in the terms, here’s one you shouldn’t overlook….

Upon termination by Flux Services under Sections 7(B)(ii), (iii) or (iv), Flux Services may immediately remove all of Customer�s data and information from Flux Services facilities and Customer shall have no right to copy or download such data or information, and, in such event, all such information and data, including all copyrighted or copyrightable material therein, shall then become the property of Flux Services.

Surely they don’t think they are going to seize the rights to copyrighted material because they decide to cancel someone’s account, and said materials happen to have been uploaded? I hope not (for their sake.)

When I first started dealing with them, they had a phone number that actually worked. Now it is impossible to speak to someone on the phone.

As far as the online help, I pointed out that the title of such an important email was in no way helpful. It didn’t say "Immediate Attention Required - Service Suspended" or anything else to draw attention. One "Excessive Server Processor Load" email, my account is shut off, and I continued to receive update emails from them about other stuff as though nothing had happened. Mr. Turner failed to address this point about the title of the email being inadequate for such an important email.

Sorry, but I am not satisfied, and I do feel Mr. Turner - since he is personally handling all of this afterall - could have offered me some free service or at least service through the end of the year, which I had paid $119 for.

Like I said to him or whomever I was really communicating with, I feel like I was treated badly, especially considering I was one of his original customers. I was not running a porn site - someone posted porn on my dog-related forum. It was probably being attacked by bots or hackers, as far as the Excessive Server Processor Load issue.

In my opinion, Ultra Website Hosting / Flux Services should have made more of an effort to send out emails that would get my attention with their titles. And they shouldn’t have continued to send more emails after that, as though everything was normal and I was just another customers (after my service had been canceled.)

I am not asking for something for free, and I think it’s bad enough that my service was shut off from March 12 through the end of July without me knowing about it. I am a student of Tom Peters, total quality management, etc., and this just doesn’t cut the mustard in my book, regardless of what the contract says. It’s sh-tty, if I can say that.

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