Dealing with WebCity support
Sun 25 Mar 2007This blog (mike.brisgeek.com) is (or was) hosted by Webcity.
Last Friday evening at about 19:00, my account was suddenly suspended WITHOUT ANY NOTICE. All any visitors saw was a message that said “This Account Has Been Suspended. Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.” They offer NO telephone support at all outside 8:30am to 6pm Mon-Fri.
Our account payment is up-to-date. We had no idea what had gone wrong and no way of contacting anybody to get it fixed.
It has been a struggle, but Webcity support have now enabled my blog’s home page but it appears no other pages (including comments pages) are working. Please stand by…
———————
Update: 13:50 Sunday
Looks like we are back up again. The hosting is cheap. We got what we paid for.
———————
Update: Monday
Apparently I was bumped off because my WordPress installation was using 90% of the CPU. Unfortunately, I’ve got no idea what caused it. Even worse, I’ve got no idea what I apparently did to fix it and be allowed back on. And finally, in a mammoth display of excellent customer service, I’ve been threatened with eviction if I do “it” again, whatever “it” is/was. I feel so reassured.
———————
Update: Thursday
All’s well that ends well. See the comments below from WebCity Guy.
March 25th, 2007 at 19:21
eeek! I hope all is okay in webland!
March 26th, 2007 at 9:47
That’s not good
I’m thinking these days with so many automated scripting capabilities and how easy they can be to put together, that web hosting companies really have no excuse any more on poor customer service.
A simple automated email prior to the suspension would of been ample to give warning signals that either you hadn’t paid or if there was a billing error and terminiation wasn’t warranted.
Glad to see it’s back up though
-
Scott / Microsoft.
March 26th, 2007 at 13:44
I had that happen to me when I owned a forum. Very frustrating indeed.
March 26th, 2007 at 18:18
M: Thanks for your thoughts. For a while there I was becoming quite an expert on alternative web hosts.
Scott: Yeah It’s the NO NOTICE part that hurt the most when we both know how easy it would have been.
Steph: Welcome to a geek’s blog. I’m honoured to be visited by someone so famous. And as we all know, that’s half-way to “rich and famous”.
March 26th, 2007 at 23:36
Mike - you can always go to Quadrahosting if you get fed up enough.
I’m on USA based server - no one of the more expensive plans, but a basic plan is about $100 / year, or for the mathematically minded, a tad under $0.30 / day. Pretty cheap, and they seem to be good guys to boot!
March 27th, 2007 at 14:45
Mike we appologise for pulling your website, and would like to remind that these are shared servers with 100s of other customers per server and that programs that run amock and cause disruption to other customers can not be allowed to continue.
Webcity has an obligation to keep everyones sites runing as effectively as posssible. We can’t allow one user to disrupt the performance of 100s of other customers.
We do ask customers to be mindful of others on shared servers and I ask that you put yourself in the shoes of our other customers sharing that server and what your response would have been had we not pulled down the run away program.
I also like to point out that our staff did work on there own time from home to bring your site back.
Again webcity does apologise for its actions but the polices are there to ensure that all customers are protected on shared servers.
March 28th, 2007 at 1:03
Thanks WebCity Guy. There’s no need to “appologise” for pulling my website. I can see where you are coming from and as one of those 100s of customers on the server, I appreciate your efforts to keep the server going.
What might be appropriate though, would be an apology for pulling my website WITHOUT ANY NOTICE, and without giving me any clue as to how it magically fixed itself. Clearly we need to work together here because I have no reason to believe that this whole scenario will not repeat itself next weekend.
Also, did you know that every e-mail to your support e-mail address (support@webcity.com.au) results in an “Undeliverable, Return to Sender” message about two minutes later? Clearly you do actually receive the e-mails, but this “Undeliverable” response just makes a stressful situation worse.
March 29th, 2007 at 14:24
Mike I agree entirely and the take down policy is now under review.
In regards to your specific issue, I am informed the program at fault was wordpress, and as I said, we don’t and won’t touch customer content.
I am also informed the problem stopped when you reinstalled it.
It would appear to be a bug in wordpress.
There are numerous other installations of wordpress on the system none have had a problem. You may want to take it up with the wordpress people.
In regard to the bounce to support, it appears to be a problem with a spam filter, mail still gets through but the filter is doing something strange. A priority internal ticket has been issued and it should be fixed fairly shortly.
March 29th, 2007 at 16:43
Thanks WebCity Guy.
It’s serendipitous that reinstalling WordPress fixed the problem. The decision to do so was derived using Guessometric methods.
April 13th, 2007 at 18:38
Mike, I had EXACTLY the same problem with WebCity. I will not renew my contract with them again after this year.
I’m living in London at the moment, oringally from Oz, and use my site to host a WordPress blog of my travels. When WebCity have pulled my site down, on two occasions, without any notice to me, I have been well outside their support hours and their email support is atrocious.
The reason they pulled down my site; because I was using a timer to retrieve email posts by running a single script every 15 minutes. Apparently, according to their support staff in their extremely rude and dismissive replies, this was causing a MASSIVE load on their servers and I was risking taking down 100 other websites. I didn’t realise WordPress was such a powerful virus!
They’re full of crap, I’m in IT and I know that there’s no way that script, running 4 times an hour, could place any load on their servers.
And you know the hilarious thing, WebCity are the ones who provide WordPress as an auto install.
I’m actively recommending people not to go through these guys. They’re cheap and great when everything’s working fine, but imagine I was hosting a business site? All of a sudden my business’ customers could be seeing a message implying that my account is suspended and I would not have been informed earlier. How embarrassing would that be?
WebCity have a professional obligation to warn of such things, not just take your site (that you’re paying for) down without notice. Absolutely the most unprofessional treatment I’ve had in a long time.
I would provide my site details, but I fear they may take it down again to pay me back for defamation.
I wish you luck with them in the future and hope this never happens to you again.
April 13th, 2007 at 18:42
The first reply, before it went down AGAIN:
Hello Andrew
Im sorry that your site was suspended.
Looking at your account I can’t see why your account was suspended.
I have unsuspended you account for you now and your site is
operational.
Is https://ctl.webcity.net.au/ now available for you?
Once again I would like to apologize for any inconvenience.
Thanks
Brad
Details:
—————————————
Let me start by saying that I am absolutely furious to find that my account has been suspended with no prior advice or warning to myself.
I am in London at the moment on holiday and have just visited my web site to find that it’s been suspended. I cannot believe Web
City’s sheer unprofessionalism to suspend an account, not advise the owner, and display a page to the public saying that the account
has been suspended.
I received an email over a week ago reminding me to pay my next
year’s invoice. I paid this a week ago now, via credit card on your online system, and your system at https://ctl.webcity.net.au/ said that the invoice had been registered as paid. I have heard
nothing further from you advising that there are any problems with my account.
When I just logged onto https://ctl.webcity.net.au/ now I receive the following server error on your system.
“Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@webcity.com.au and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server
error log.”
I want my web site re-enabled immediately, after which I am more than happy to discuss any issues for which you feel it necessary to suspend my account. I cannot believe that a web host, who should know how important a web presence is, would put a public message
on a customer’s site claiming that they have not paid their accounts. I would now have to reconsider business hosting with you, imagine
I had customers read that notice.
I hope this issue can be resolved promptly.
Sincerely,
Andrew
April 13th, 2007 at 18:44
Hi Andrew,
We do not have any more information that we can provide you with. You
would have to investigate this yourself.
Regards,
Dave McKenzie
Hi David,
>
The script has been disabled. Thank you for enabling my account.
>
I would like more information to avoid something like this happening again in the future. The script polled an email account, every 5 minutes, for new email blog posts. How was this placing a strain on the servers? And why was it just that script, when I had several similar ones running?
>
I also check my email via POP every 2 minutes when my computer is running at home. How does this differ? And why has the script suddenly become a problem after I’ve been running it for 9 months without any problems for you. Also, why did you feel the need to disable my account without even advising me earlier? Surely if it has been running for 9 months you had time in this period to inform me that it was causing your server problems.
>
I have suffered significant inconvenience, not only having my blog off line (not SO important) but also not being able to access many files which I store on my site.
>
Can I assume no guarantee that this will not happen again? I am also wanting to host my business site with you when I return home. But do I risk my customers seeing account suspension notices if you feel a script is crippling your servers?
>
I can understand your position, and if something that I am doing is putting strain on your servers I can understand you wanting that stopped. Is there no way that you can ask for this to be resolved without disabling the account though? I think it would have been a far easier solution all
round, and have avoided problems for both of us.
>
I would like a reply to this email, if support cannot answer my questions I would like it answered at a higher level. I pay to have hosting up 24 / 7 and it is not acceptable for me when I have no guarantee that my hosting won’t be disabled at the drop of a hat.
>
Regards,
>
Andrew
>
On 1/11/07, David via RT wrote:
>
Hi Andrew,
>
You will not need to contact us for us to look at the script, as we will
not. I suggest contacting the makers of Wordpress for support on this.
We do not need to give you warning when the script you are running
disadvantages many of our customers - we must provide an equal service
to all of our customers, and if a customer infringes on it, we are
required to take immediate action.
>
I will unsuspend your account and you will disable that script
immediately.
>
Regards,
Dave McKenzie
>
Hi David,
>
The script in question does no such thing. It is a script provided as part of YOUR Fantastico Wordpress package which polls a mail account to check for incoming email blog posts. It does not send mail, and it does not run regularly, I can’t imagine a script checking a mail account every 5 minutes would really place this great strain on your servers, as you claim.
>
Regardless, I cannot disable it when I cannot access my account. I cannot log into control panel as you have locked me out. I am outraged that you have suspended my account with no prior warning.
>
I demand my account is re-enabled now. I am working from London and am 11 hours behind you. Therefore I cannot contact you during your limited support hours to try to discuss this more amicably.
>
I would love to know which ridiculous clause in your contract allows you to disable my account with no prior warning, over something like this. If I were displaying pornography or something illegal I would understand. But I have done nothing outside of hosting a basic blog and photo gallery during my travels. Should you have emailed me earlier I could have dealt with this with no hassle. How dare you simply suspend my account like this. If you can’t tell, I’m furious, and your support staff should feel somewhat relieved that I cannot ring.
>
When you have re-enabled my account, I will disable the script and then I will find some time to call during your support hours and your support staff can look at the nature of the script, which you provide, and tell me what is wrong.
>
Regards,
>
Andrew
>
>
On 1/11/07, David via RT wrote:
> Hi Andrew,
> Your suspension was not due to an overdue invoice, but rather regarding a script running in your account.
> I have resuspended your account temporarily as this is causing major stress on the servers.
> The script in question is http://MY SITE/wp-mail.php, it looks to be sending out mail to a large number of recipients, which is the cause of this stress. I can unsuspend this account again under the premise that you will stop this mailout and in future use alternative methods that do not cause stress on the machine.
> Regards, Dave McKenzie
April 13th, 2007 at 18:45
The second, less friendly, reply:
Hi Andrew,
We do not have any more information that we can provide you with. You
would have to investigate this yourself.
Regards,
Dave McKenzie
Hi David,
The script has been disabled. Thank you for enabling my account.
I would like more information to avoid something like this happening again in the future. The script polled an email account, every 5 minutes, for new email blog posts. How was this placing a strain on the servers? And why was it just that script, when I had several similar ones running?
I also check my email via POP every 2 minutes when my computer is running at home. How does this differ? And why has the script suddenly become a problem after I’ve been running it for 9 months without any problems for you. Also, why did you feel the need to disable my account without even advising me earlier? Surely if it has been running for 9 months you had time in this period to inform me that it was causing your server problems.
I have suffered significant inconvenience, not only having my blog off line (not SO important) but also not being able to access many files which I store on my site.
Can I assume no guarantee that this will not happen again? I am also wanting to host my business site with you when I return home. But do I risk my customers seeing account suspension notices if you feel a script is crippling your servers?
I can understand your position, and if something that I am doing is putting strain on your servers I can understand you wanting that stopped. Is there no way that you can ask for this to be resolved without disabling the account though? I think it would have been a far easier solution all round, and have avoided problems for both of us.
I would like a reply to this email, if support cannot answer my questions I would like it answered at a higher level. I pay to have hosting up 24 / 7 and it is not acceptable for me when I have no guarantee that my hosting won’t be disabled at the drop of a hat.
Regards,
Andrew
On 1/11/07, David via RT wrote:
Hi Andrew,
You will not need to contact us for us to look at the script, as we will
not. I suggest contacting the makers of Wordpress for support on this.
We do not need to give you warning when the script you are running
disadvantages many of our customers - we must provide an equal service
to all of our customers, and if a customer infringes on it, we are
required to take immediate action.
I will unsuspend your account and you will disable that script
immediately.
Regards,
Dave McKenzie
Hi David,
The script in question does no such thing. It is a script provided as part of YOUR Fantastico Wordpress package which polls a mail account to check for incoming email blog posts. It does not send mail, and it does not run regularly, I can’t imagine a script checking a mail account every 5 minutes would really place this great strain on your servers, as you claim.
Regardless, I cannot disable it when I cannot access my account. I cannot log into control panel as you have locked me out. I am outraged that you have suspended my account with no prior warning.
I demand my account is re-enabled now. I am working from London and am 11 hours behind you. Therefore I cannot contact you during your limited support hours to try to discuss this more amicably.
I would love to know which ridiculous clause in your contract allows you to disable my account with no prior warning, over something like this. If I were displaying pornography or something illegal I would understand. But I have done nothing outside of hosting a basic blog and photo gallery during my travels. Should you have emailed me earlier I could have dealt with this with no hassle. How dare you simply suspend my account like this. If you can’t tell, I’m furious, and your support staff should feel somewhat relieved that I cannot ring.
When you have re-enabled my account, I will disable the script and then I will find some time to call during your support hours and your support staff can look at the nature of the script, which you provide, and tell me what is wrong.
Regards,
Andrew
On 1/11/07, David via RT wrote:
Hi Andrew,
Your suspension was not due to an overdue invoice, but rather regarding
a script running in your account.
I have resuspended your account temporarily as this is causing major
stress on the servers.
The script in question is
http://MY SITE/wp-mail.php, it looks to be
sending out mail to a large number of recipients, which is the cause of
this stress. I can unsuspend this account again under the premise that
you will stop this mailout and in future use alternative methods that do
not cause stress on the machine.
Regards,
Dave McKenzie
May 9th, 2007 at 17:34
Webcity are cheap and they’re fine until you need something. It then becomes clear that support don’t know too much and don’t really care. I was ok until I asked them to install an ssl cert. They charged me but failed to install it properly. After a while, they just ignored by emails.
I won’t be using them again.
May 13th, 2007 at 19:44
I’m with them - this all scares me a bit as I’m runnning a number of client’s websites through them, including cron jobs (once a day).
Alan I also had the same sort of SSL issue with them, eventually sorted it out, but yes, emails often ‘disappear’ which is why I email, then ring an hr later whether I’ve heard back from the email or not (you can’t wait around for your ticket - it often never arrives). Once on the phone though, I’ve found the people OK, but the SSL bit was maddening.
June 5th, 2007 at 14:03
So, is there a hosting provider that you would recommend?
June 6th, 2007 at 7:43
G’day Harley,
For many years, I have had a number of websites with Webstrike. Cheap, technically competent, very responsive when changes are required, excellent support ticket system.
Web Central are also very good, hosted in Australia, but not cheap.
September 1st, 2007 at 15:51
This just happened to me this morning. It’s a horrible way to wake up. And I can’t believe that Googling it now shows the issue has been ongoing this year.
All Webcity would have to do is change that nasty “SUSPENDED” notice to something less threatening like “Under Construction” or “Temporarily Unavailable”. I dread to think what impression people visiting my site now have of me and the other person whose site I host on my domain.
Next renewal, I’m looking elsewhere. This is a thoughtless and reckless way to treat customers and Webcity would do well to rectify it.
Thanks for letting me vent
November 17th, 2007 at 22:42
Nothing changes with these guys. I’ve had more problems over the year (since my barrage of e-mails at the top) and e-mails are simply ignored. Trying to contact their customer support from London is pointless, I’d spend more in one phone call than hosting for a year.
Thanks for the suggestions RE which other hosts are good. My renewal is coming up soon and I’ll be leaving Webcity.
If you’re hosting anything of importance, I would STRONGLY recommend you do not host with Webcity. Nothing will turn your clients away faster than an ‘ACCOUNT SUSPENDED’ notice on your website!
March 19th, 2008 at 13:55
webcity SUCKS! TZook them 2 days to respond to the first email I sent them, and then once I repied to the questions they askes has (So far) taken them over 3 days (and counting) to respond back. Do not use them!!!! I will be taking (or at least trying to take) advantage of the money back policy asap. Will see if that works (although I’m wondering now after reading other’s issues with this ‘company’).
July 1st, 2008 at 9:57
They offer NO telephone support at all outside 8:30am to 6pm Mon-Fri. you say they offer no support out side of them hours but they are open till 10:00 pm and they have email support on sat and sunday???
tell me that???
July 1st, 2008 at 11:02
Hi Chris, It appears they have recently increased their support hours. They would have noticed their customers leaving in droves.
Back in March 07, their support hours were 8:30am to 6pm Mon-Fri. My website was taken down some time on a Friday. I noticed this at 19:00 on a Friday evening. I immediately filled out both their online support form and their “Urgent” form. After six hours of no response, I sent a fax to their fax number. My first response from them was on Sunday about 48 hours after the original “take-down”.
And even then, it wasn’t actually a help, just a threat! (see post above)
July 14th, 2008 at 12:03
I have also run into problems with Webcity support. Once again my experience is that they are fine until something goes wrong, then nothing is their fault.
I have had an error dealing with MYSQL timeouts that every piece of documentation on the web (even MYSQL themselves) says is a hosting issue and needs the timeouts to be increased.
Webcity however is intimating that it is not their problem and that it is mine - somehow.
I have had 2 other problems that did not get fixed (as their support told me it was nothing to do with them) but magically went away after I contacted support.
If my current problem is not fixed quickly I will be looking elsewhere and I would recommend that anyone reading this not go with Webcity. They just lack integrity and in a field where many of their uses know little of the internal workings, this is completely unacceptable.
July 26th, 2008 at 10:19
I am also having poblems with Webcity, I signed up with them many months ago and had problems getting access to sites up to 4 days after delegation. On contacting them eventually by phone as emails did not work, was told there must have been problems with the dns entries and could I send an email with all my domain names and they would manually add them for me. I did this and all worked great but when I tried to add subdomains I had the same problems. I did not want to continue to do this so I arranged an account with Servage, although a lot slower acces than Webcity at least I was able to set up my domains, add subdomains and was normally on line within 12 hours. As I still kept my Webcity account for one site that only directs people to my other sites I decided I would try again to add a domain that I recently aquired, but it looks again that I cannot add a domain without sending them an email and getting them to do it as it has now been over 48 hours since delegation to them and over 24 hours since sending the first email to them and of course I have not received any reply other than the automated reply with my ticket number, so I would also say that Webcity is not a great hosting company. Unfortunatley in Australia there are no “cheap” hosting companies that give you a good service, even Servage at least reply to emails very quickly and resolve problems much much quicker that Webcity.
Well thats my say on the subject.
Ian
September 11th, 2008 at 18:05
Before taking out hosting with Webcity, I would strongly recommend reading their Terms and Conditions which they take very seriously and implement very literally.
For example:
This has happened to me, while hosting a very basic site, and no reason has been given.
I suppose, ultimately, it all comes down to “you get what you pay for”. With Webcity you get basic online storage and web hosting but no customer service. Their technical staff are unskilled and incompetent and you risk your website being brought offline, with no reason and without notice. If you’re happy to take this risk then Webcity are appropriate for your needs. Otherwise, I would recommend you review Mike and others’ recommendations for other hosts.
October 19th, 2008 at 15:07
We operate a small online store via webcity and recently received an email telling us our cpu usage is too high and that they will terminate our account if we dont upgrade our account to a package that is 10 times the price.
We have the Pro1 package which includes 15gb space, 100gb of traffic, 100 mailboxes, 50sql db’s ect.
Now we use 300mb of space, 15gb of traffic, 5 mailboxes, 1 x 4mb SQL database…
Some one please explain to me how we are overloading their server? …
May 2nd, 2009 at 20:17
Well, I can tell you that if webcity did review their policy of suspending sites without notice, they certainly haven’t changed anything. Our site was suspended twice this week without notice, and no explanation about what the problem was other than “php abuse”, which apparently means our site was using up too much cpu. We have no issue with suspenstion of our site if there is an issue with it - all we ask is that we are notified. And we are given assistance in identifying what in our site is overloading their server. Only they know what is affecting their server, but they provide no details. Without support, attempting to identify what (in a fairly vanilla joomla site, using the latest versions of everything) is overloading their server is like hunting in the dark.
We moved to webcity with an established site and a good reputation - that reputation is being shot - and we simply can’t afford to remain with this mob knowing that our site can be suspended at any time without warning or notification. It is intolerable and extremely unprofessional and their attitude toward their users demonstrates complete contempt. Yes, they are cheap but you definitely get what you pay for.
Biggest mistake we made with our site was moving to webcity and I’d recommend looking elsewhere for a host.
June 15th, 2009 at 22:19
I had my hosting with WebCity for 3 years (June 2006 to June 2009) and only two weeks ago changed hosts due to the cost getting slightly dearer each renewal. I never noticed any problems with WebCity, but my site is very, very basic. I changed to SmartyHost to save money - wortst thin I ever did! Try 5 days!! (and still waiting) to get an answer for a problem I have with my email. Emails can take 45 minutes to arrive, or even longer! NOT HAPPY! I don’t think SmartyHost have a money back period either.