We’ve all heard the horror stories; cancelled accounts without any warning, leaving your websites in a state of Purgatory. Most hosting companies will give you the opportunity to correct what’s wrong with your account, whether it be excessive CPU cycles or causing a heavy load on their oversold servers. Bluehost, on the other hand, is known for their arbitrary and capricious applications of their Terms and Services.
If you’ve ever had your websites taken down without a warning or a notice, or had your sites disappear, leaving you struggling to find a new host – this is the place to post your story. Let everyone know the risks they take when entrusting their valuable sites to Bluehost’s whims.
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Guys, they are committing a crime!
We should organize ourselves and do something.
Agree, let’s work together to suit them…not just be a victims
Start with Better Business Bureau
http://www.bbb.org/us/
Consumer’s Original Complaint :
BlueHost.Com offer “unlimited” services for web hosting, but when my data grew after 3 years, they force me to reduce size, deactivate my account.
1. They set the rules any way they want AFTER you had hooked up by their service…
BlueHost.Com employs complex mechanisms to protect its Subscribers and systems from abuse. BlueHost.Com’s offering of “unlimited” services is not intended to allow the actions of a single or few Subscribers to unfairly or adversely impact the experience of other Subscribers. … However, in order to ensure a consistent and quality experience for all Subscribers, BlueHost.Com does place automated safeguards to protect against any one site growing too quickly and adversely impacting the system until BlueHost.Com can evaluate said sites resource needs.
2. Even I had reduced from
Total MySQL Database Size: 2416.98 MB
Total MySQL Tables: 6060
to
Total MySQL Database Size: 436.72 MB,
Total MySQL Tables: 4638
They still deactivate my account, and, while deactivating, they still want to charge me…
I am very sorry but no compensation will be given for the de-activation. Your files are still hosted on our servers, and we can get your account re-activated once you have brought the database within the bounds mentioned in the email you received about the de-activation.
Consumer’s Desired Resolution:
This is the second time they request me…First time, the number of file count. Now the 2nd time.
It costs a lot of time to delete the data without making mistake. (Actually I had deleted a customer data, and spent 3 nights to recover)The value of data stored is not easy to estimate, but at least the hour rate for the time is minimum.
BBB Processing
11/06/2010 web BBB Complaint Received by BBB
Thank you for contacting the Better Business Bureau regarding your complaint against a Utah business.
The complaint was received by the BBB on November 8, 2010 and has been assigned case# 22104585 in our files. Please make a note of this number.
Your complaint has been applied to the following business:
Bluehost
1958 S 950 E
Provo, UT 84606
The case has been reviewed by one of our Complaint Specialists and has now been forwarded to the business for their response.
To view the ongoing status of this case, we encourage you to visit the following site:
https://utah.app.bbb.org/complaintreply/c
Use the following to login:
Case ID: 22104585
Password: *******
Please notify the BBB if any of the information above is incorrect.
Sincerely,
Stacie Nieves
Dispute Counselor
snieves@utah.bbb.org
I totally agree lets take a class action against them.
tracy-ann@mail.com
I have an hosting contract with bluehost.com and I’ve hosted 7 blogs based on wordpress with them:
antoniomoro.com
itomizer.com
incautoacquisto.com
impredentbuy.com
incautoviaggio.com
itomicreative.com
roomfactor.com
This morning a friend of mine advised me that all my websites were reporting a “Account Suspended” message from Bluehost.com with something like “contact the supporst asap” and nothing else.
So I contacted bluehost.com with their online 24/7 support chat and chatted with an operator (operator 1) that told me that during the last days it seems that my WP MySQL databases got something wrong and flooded the server with DB requests.. slowing down the other websites hosted (it’s not a dedicated one) so they were forced to disable my web, cPanel and FTP access.
I replied something like ok, I’m sorry.. re-enable my web so I can access my WP admins and disable some plugins/etc to fix it.
Operator 1 said something like ok, here it is, you’re reactivated.
So I started to find and fix the problem.. I was thinking that maybe ine aggregator and twitter plugins were causing the problem and I ws going to disable them and test again when my account went “suspended” again.
So there it started the WTF with Operator 2, aka “mbautista”.
mbautista [3:55:03 AM]: Thank you for contacting Live Chat.
Antonio Moro [3:55:03 AM]: account suspended.. itomizer.com
I’m trying to solve/understand the DB problems, but I can’t if I cant access my sites..
mbautista [3:56:07 AM]: Before we can proceed I need to make sure you are an authorized user on the account. I need you to provide me with the either the full cPanel password OR the last four digits of the credit card on the account. If you paid with PayPal, I will need the original invoice number from your purchase.
This chat is secure (https) and all data transfer is encrypted.
Antonio Moro [3:56:22 AM]: my password is ****
[3:56:30 AM]: my password is ****
mbautista [4:01:07 AM]: `it seems your mysql queries are still pounding our server
Antonio Moro [4:01:30 AM]: wich dbs are affected the most? I have many
[4:01:51 AM]: can you help me in adjusting this problem? I have just Wordpress installations with some plugins
[4:02:05 AM]: it’s maybe some plugin?? I’m using an aggregator plugin
mbautista [4:03:30 AM]: possibly a plugin
[4:03:52 AM]: itomizer_itomi was the one last time the admin did not specify this time
Antonio Moro [4:04:03 AM]: I can’t manage plugins or adjust anything if you suspend my host..
mbautista [4:05:11 AM]: you have cpanel and ftp access now
Antonio Moro [4:05:31 AM]: I need web access to access WP Admin..
mbautista [4:05:46 AM]: that we can not do sorry
Antonio Moro [4:06:10 AM]: how I am supposed to solve this? deleting my sites?? comon, this is no sense guys
mbautista [4:08:21 AM]: you will have to remove the database or updated the scripts for it so it will not pound our servers
Antonio Moro [4:08:53 AM]: I have to disable the plugins on Wordpress, I can’t delete my database.
[4:09:19 AM]: let me access my Wordpress admin so I can at least disable the plugins and let’s see if it’s ok then
mbautista [4:10:09 AM]: you can try contacting our abuse department to see if they can do that but they will not be in until 6am
Antonio Moro [4:11:17 AM]: just enable my web access for 10 minutes and I’ll afjust the plugins.. then re check if it’s ok to don’t suspend me again
[4:11:40 AM]: I have 7 wordpress installations, just give me 10 minutes to work on it.. comon
[4:12:22 AM]: the database access flood is caused maybe from my aggregator plugin, I’ll just kill it
[4:13:09 AM]: ok?
chat closed
WTF??
Ok I can maybe just access my MySQL and access the WP tables if each installation by hand and modify the fucking Wp-Options table.. but WTF I asked to re-enable my account for 10 minutes so I can also verify WHAT EXACTLY was..
But no. In other two chats I asked for 10 minutes, but no, they can’t.
Not only they can’t but the operator also told me that I have JUST ONE MORE CHANCE.. if they de-suspend the account again and for some reason I don’t find the solution in like 1 minute and the site continues to flood the server.. I’m out, I will lost my “account status” and my hosting.. Read the fucking “Terms of Service” and that’s it moron, go fuck yourself back to Italy..
Ok.. I understand that my problem slows down (just slows donw, and not “not accessible”..) the others sites hosted by the same server.. but if I can’t even check what’s happening what I’m supposed to do? just delete my databases and put an image on my sites with a “I’m screwed” message?
and then a fantastic new e-mail from Bluehost.com:
Your web hosting account for itomizer.com has been deactivated (reason: site causing performance problems).
Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for
up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted.
If you feel this deactivation is in error, please contact customer support as
soon as possible.
Thank you,
BlueHost.Com Support%CODEBREAK http://www.bluehost.com
For support go to http://helpdesk.bluehost.com/
Toll-Free: (888) 401-4678
OH WOW THEY KEEP MY FILES FOR 15 DAYS BEFORE TO DELETE THEM!! THANKS DUDES!
WTF?!?
I’m paying for the service dudes this is not geocities.com, at least help me find the problem or advice me.. I’m now just in the nightmare to loose everything because I will maybe not find the problem in 10 minutes..
So I deleted all my plugins via FTP and put a new index.html on my websites with the “under maintenance” message.. so no more DB access OK?
I then contacted the support chat to ask to reactivate my sites..
Antonio Moro [5:04:46 AM]: Account suspended / itomizer.com
I have deleted all my WP plugins and uploaded a “site under maintenance” index.html on all my websites so there’s no more DB access.
Can you re enable my web access so I can double check every WP installation and put back online my websites as soon as I’ve solved the plugins problems?
Anthony [5:05:36 AM]: you’ll need to contact our abuse team. To contact them, you can e-mailabuse@bluehost.com or create a ticket at? http://helpdesk.bluehost.com in addition they are available from 6 am to 10 pm -7 GMT by phone.
Antonio Moro [5:06:30 AM]: oh comon
[5:06:46 AM]: you can reactivate my online access, there’s nothing wrong now
Anthony [5:07:23 AM]: please read what I just wrote
Antonio Moro [5:07:50 AM]: ok.. THANKS.
So they can’t reactivate me.. even if I disabled my sites with a new index.html!?!?
NO: I have to contect the ABUSE TEAM to ask if please they can de-suspend me.
So I sent an e-mail to the Abuse Team explaining what’s happened and what I’ve done to fix the problems.
After 6 hours here’s the reply:
Thank you for complying with the Terms of Service. Your account has been reactivated and should be fully functional.
If this continues you could risk your account status with us.
If you have any questions, you may refer to our Terms of Service located at:
%CODEBREAK http://www.bluehost.com/terms.html
Abuse Department
1958 South 950 East
Provo, UT 84606
P: 888.401.4678 | F: 801.765.1992
So finally I have my sites back.. and now they have the “under maintenance” message that I’ve placed to block them..
So now I have to find the problem, disable the plugins that MIGHT cause it and test the luck again reactivating the websites..
But I have to be carefull.. if I miss something and new floods will come.. I will lost my “account status” and fuck you moron, you’re out!
happend to me too. I had to call fro freakin sweden which is damn expensive. Turns out the suspended me beacuse I had a woman with breasts on my site and I’m not talking about porn here. I’m talking about art. I hade many sites so they all went down. I didn’t get a warning. I got nothing.
Blue Host deleted my account last night. They admitted it was their fault and by mistake, but that doesn’t change the fact that my entire company disappeared with a mouse click. Now I’m losing thousands of dollars in revenue plus costs to my webmaster and other expenses to make up for their incompetency. They even deleted all of my back up files. And their response? “We’re really sorry.” Sorry doesn’t pay my bills.
A friend of mine says “sorry is just another way of saying f*** you. You couldn’t care less, you get your paycheck no matter what happens to me. If you were sorry, you’d do something to fix my problem.”
Yep, that’s bluehost. Same story here. I’ll spare you the details because I’ve posted them on other blogs but bottom line is that these people are dishonest cheats!!! Went to Lunar Pages and have been happy for two years. In my experience, they are a model of what a hosting company should be.
Bruce Decker´s last blog ..Welcome to Blue Prairie
They must do this to everyone and have been for years, I have the same experience here in the UK 4 years ago. I got so mad I left them with a cloned porn site running, ha ha hope they choked on their milk!!!
guyz ima transfer my wordpress site,i was planing to go with bluehost then saw this n totally heart broken
.can u tell me a good hosting provider pls( my site deals with large quantity of data )
I have a similar story as the ones above. We accidentally flooded their servers and they canceled all our accounts, refused to turn them back on and were complete assholes about the whole situation. I had been with them for 4 years and we made one mistake and they completely shut down all our business sites costing us thousands of dollars.
Their chicken shit executives refused to get on the phone to explain why they would not reinstate our account after we fixed the problem, they just told the account service person to tell me that “a executive flagged all of our accounts for non reinstatement” What a load of crap. I go to a lot of internet conferences, and if I run into one of these bluehost “executives” at one, I am going to sucker punch them in the face, the same way they did me.
Similar story to lots of other people here. I had been a customer for several years with no problem… then one morning, out of nowhere, I got the ol’ “Account Suspended” email from Bluehost. None of my sites have ever had a bunch of traffic, so if there *was* some sort of giant spike in traffic and/or wordpress flooding, it might’ve have been nice for them to do something else besides turn off all of my websites overnight. I was so mad I didn’t even bother to check into what the problem really was (honestly, I suspect there was no real problem). Instead, I found a new host right away, being that the email I got said I had *maybe* 10 days to access my files. Whatever. Life is too short to deal with insanely bad service when there are lots of other options out there.
But wait… two months later I get an email from the Bluehost auto-renew department telling me that my credit card on file had been declined. Are you kidding me?
Not only did they try to charge me for another year of a completely unusable service that THEY had canceled, but then attempted to defend themselves when I (not so nicely) pointed out how absurd (and potentially criminal) this was. Really? How about getting your head out of your collective arses and just apologize for being a bunch of morons, okay?
All I can say is thank god I was issued a new credit card over the past year, or I can’t even imagine how ballistic I would’ve gone at seeing an actual charge for this.
Bluehost has shut me down several times without warning. Their excuse was simply— “We just don’t have time to contact every person, about it.”
Once it was because I had music files parked on one of my directories. Since I create videos/commercials, I sometimes have sample songs for clients to review. The client eventually purchases the music rights, and it’s used in the spot.
Bluehost didn’t like that and shut my entire site down.
So I learned two things:
Bluehost scans for audio files.
They will shut you down for having them on your server.
I was on vacation and didn’t know what was going on. I was down for two days because of that one.
And the flippant little fucks you have to deal with are basically children — asshole kids. Zero customer service skills.
I just got the infamous “Account Suspended” email from Bluehost. I’ve struggled with their pitifully unreliable service for years and I’ve finally reached my personal limit. I’m generally a very patient person.
I wholeheartedly agree that Bluehost is engaging in unethical business practices.
BH is a bunch of crooks! Unlimited storage…. that’s a joke. They upped the # of file limit to 200,000 from 50,000 most likely because they saw a rapid exodus of most of their long time customers. There was no # of file limit in the TOS until long after the unlimited ad’s started going out. Now they are putting database size limits. A maximum 2GB per database with 3GB max per site. Unlimited storage my a**. The support claims this is to ensure fast reliable service especially in the case of needing to restore a server. We all know large files and large number of files will slow a restore… but the kicker is that they don’t backup any site more than 2GB. When their support deleted my files and I asked them to be restored….. response was tough…we do not backup sites that large. I wished I had complained to the BBB back then. Now I’m looking for a reasonable hosting service……
Bluehost used to be good, I was happy with their hosting until later years, since 2008 they started with all kind of crap which forced me to end up moving elsewhere. Honestly the worst hosting company out there. This is typically the problem when a company grows fast and has not made enough planning to prepare for it. Their technical staff sucks. They really suck overall.
Bluehost has a bunch of bullshit problems such as you can’t put your own mailinglist address in BCC. they limit your emails per hour to 250, with a possible upgrade to 750, on demand….
They shut down my 5 domains automatically, even though according to their tech people, it was only 1 of the websites that was causing their infamous database CPU throttling issue.
matt heaton, BH CEO, is a crook, and the fact that he was the ernst & young entrepreneur of the year award a few years back, is laughable. this guy is a crook, a business man first and foremost, with no ethical basis.
my site is currently down, and I can’t work until I rewrite my php script, (actually written automatically by joomla!), so I have no idea what to do. now I have to hire a developer.
good news is though, i heard that BlueHost are changing their name…ya, that’s right folks, to BULLSHIT.
enjoy the rest of your day!
OK, my story is a lot older, but a friend was going to set up some hosting for a client and was going to use bluehost. Luckily he mentioned it to me first and I told him to stop. I was looking for proof other than my own and found this website, so I thought i would add my story as well.
So, back in 2001, I was a developer on a Counter Strike clan/Server website. When the game patches came out back then, downloading was REALLY slow due to slower internet connections, and the huge amount of people who were downloading the same file at the same time (this was well before the Steam days.) — Anyways, to solve the issue a lot of clan/server websites would host the patch to distribute the load. We did that. We were popular enough that it apparently warranted killing our account, and not letting us even download all the fan submitted art, or backing up the latest version of our database. Just boom. Gone. No refunds, nothing. Plea as we may, we were given no warning, nor were we given any attention after the fact.
That is enough for me to never consider using this service again. It looks like nothing has changed.
I should add, my new host, when all of a sudden my site started using roughly 160 GB of data transfer per day while I was away on vacation (a video went viral) simply disabled access to the one file causing the issue. This I was fine with. I do not pay for that kind of bandwidth and I appreciated that they we able to find a way to solve the problem without any threats or anything.
Bluehost Account Verification is so bad, i submit my passport and credit card(sign up credit card was cancelled with bank for security by my self, i send the other credit card) with scanning image. Bluehost still requirement sign up credit card. So sad experience for me to continue using BH althoughs i was using Bluehost 3 years ago!!!
I signed up to bluehost as a platform for wordpress,now they have added a simple script shop and it seems that unless i pay for this crappy shop thing and several other things my posts don’t get posted.I paid £107.00 for a years hosting have been trying since march to get a refund but they just blank me and im really annoyed,as far as im concerned they are no more than thieves as they will not give me my money back,and will also not even acknowledge me,i wouldn’t recommend this shower of crap to no-one.Tracy-ann Davies still waiting for refund!!!!
Tracy-Ann Davies´s last blog ..Perfect Relaxation.
Hello guys, blue host is bad got 2nd strike, why the hell they bother about getting complain from contains owners, they can simply contact me and ask me to remove them. just imagine the traffic that i lose per day untill i get the site back.. i will never go for bluehost better find a hosting from Europe.
guys please let me know if there is any hosting provider without all these bull shit..
Thank you
jeaant@eim.ae
Had hosted with bluehost for years without problems, and paid way more than I should have given I was really only using email. Hadn’t logged in for a while since I’d moved my primary email, and realized my payment had lapsed by several months. Called in to customer service. Computer keyboard clicking in background … Yeah, that account got deactivated. Ok, I’d like to reactivate it. More clicking … yeah, do you have a backup of that account. Why no, I don’t, it was just email. More clicking … Yeah, its been deleted. More clicking .. and the archive was good for about 30 days …. thats gone too. And oh, your domains, we released them back into the public. Well, I guess my business with bluehost is done. Customer service ….. well that would be one f*ck you now wouldn’t it… click, click, click. I’d suggest you skip the free deals and find a real hosting company rather than this penny ante stuff
They suck, just suspend an account without warning….
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