Tech

Dreamhost Billing Screw Up

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I went into a bit of a panic earlier when I received an email from Dreamhost saying I owed them a large wad of cash, and that I should deliver it to their offices in a brown paper bag full of small unmarked bills, or they’d send the boys ’round and “do me”.

Well, ok, maybe it wasn’t quite so strongly worded, but it might as well have been. Having a significant amount of cash demanded from you when you’re not expecting it is slightly disconcerting. Particularly when that cash is for a fairly unreliable webhost, and the very, very cheap account you opened has never been used.

I sent their accounting monkeys a snotty email reply, and looked into my account details a bit closer. The email said something along the lines of “right, seeing as it’s now April 2008, you owe us lots of cash”. “Hang on,” thinks I, “it’s not April yet!”, and off I go in search of evidence that this is a balls up. And, as luck would have it, Dreamhost’s own status page has a post on the problem. And a long line of ranty customers leaving comments.

So, if you’ve had an email from Dreamhost, don’t panic. Unless, of course, you had your billing set to “automatic” in which cash you’ve been charged quite a lot of money out of the blue. Oh, and don’t think you’re safe if your account was closed - according some comments left on their page, they’ve been charged too!

Not good, Dreamhost. Expect numerous cancellations. Server downtime on a cheap host is one thing, but messing with peoples’ hard earned is a good way to become extremely unpopular, very quickly.

© 2008 Is there food?.