web hosting | bluehost.com | irritated/warning

[macpro88]

Sorry, don't know where to put this!



Anyways, anyone have issues with bluehost.com when looking at hosting a site?

Well, here is my issue, and fair warning to those looking as well.

I was looking at doing a WordPress Blog/Gallery for my photos. Bluehost was recommended from WordPress' site, so I figured I would check them out.

SO, I started to price out the package they offer. No biggie. Got to a point where it asked for my bank card, it never said I was going to get charged so I figured I had to see what my final end cost would be. After putting my bank card, the next page allowed me to choose more options. At the bottom was a "Finish" button. Sweet, my next page will tell me my cost and give me a break down of the costs and what monthly payments will be etc...

WRONG. $200 charged to my bank card.

No confirmation page. No breakdown of costs page. NOTHING. Not even telling me if I would pay all upfront or monthly.

I was not happy, still not happy, cause now I have to call my bank because at the moment there isn't enough to cover this and my car payment from my checking account. Everything is in savings, and the way my savings account works, is I can't withdraw till every 6 months (super cool high interest account [well for savings at least])

PAIN IN THE BUTT.

Anyways, fair warning to those looking.

EDIT: Forgot to add, as soon as this happened and I realized what happened, I got a hold of bluehost and they are refunding the transaction, 3-5 business days though...

Also, here is my email to their feedback system:

I am getting ready, but not ready, to start my own WordPress site. From the WordPress site was a link to bluthost to host my site. I figured I would check bluehost out and see what the cost was going to be.

I started to go through the options of the package to see what the end cost would be and what options bluehost offers. I go the the point of putting in my credit card info, options were not finished yet so I though this was kinda of odd but other sited do the same, and I saw no indicators of my card being charged at that moment.

So the selecting of the options continued. Finished selecting the options and then at the bottom was a "Next" button or something to the effect. Next thing I know, I just completed my purchase, and my credit card gets charged $200. Are you kidding me? You have got to be kidding me.

Here is whats wrong:
-There was NO confirmation page stating bluehost was going to charge my card!
-Aside from no confirmation page, there was NO total tallied up anywhere!
-On top of that, there was indication of being charged monthly or a total cost up front.

This information needs to be clear and up front with customers! I simply wanted an final start-up cost so I can shop around and compare prices, but instead I get charged $200.

Whats even more irritating about this is my car payment, $200, comes out before I get paid again next week. I now no longer have enough in my account to make my car payment because of your system. So I know have to call my bank and explain the situation to them.

The cheap monthly price was appealing to me, I can do that. But an upfront charge of $200? NO. And don't pull that crap of "Its on our site! Right here at the bottom of the page in the small fine print that is light grey in color and hard to see and its there because we know EVERYONE ignores!"

When I am ready to launch my site, I will NOT be choosing bluehost.

 

[sm4him]

Really sorry to hear that; perhaps you could call them and explain the situation and see if they will cancel the charge.

Personally, I never, EVER enter my card information unless I am ready and willing to be charged. Even if it looks like that's the only way to get pricing info--because honestly, if a site doesn't even want to tell me what I'm gonna pay until I've given them a means by which to pay it? I'm not interested.

Lessons learned the hard way are never fun.

 

[macpro88]

Really sorry to hear that; perhaps you could call them and explain the situation and see if they will cancel the charge.

Personally, I never, EVER enter my card information unless I am ready and willing to be charged. Even if it looks like that's the only way to get pricing info--because honestly, if a site doesn't even want to tell me what I'm gonna pay until I've given them a means by which to pay it? I'm not interested.

Lessons learned the hard way are never fun.

O, forgot to add that, they are reversing the charge, I got that taken care of, just gonna take 3-5 days...

And yup... lessons are fun to learn in real life...

 

[macpro88]

WOW. That was fast. The purchase AND the refund are now pending activity on my account. Cool, faster than I thought haha.

Anyways, lesson learned, and hopefully I can reach a few out there and share this experience.

 

[amolitor]

It might have just been a short glitch on the web site. That sounds like a bug, not a design feature, to me. Someone probably pushed out a change to the billing/pricing code and managed to botch it up completely.

If you want to be generous, you might go back in 24 hours and see if it makes more sense.

 

[mjhoward]

I use Arvixe for hosting. It's was VERY cheap at only $67.20 for 2 years when I first signed up. You can get the same 2 years now for $86 with a Coupon code. Those plans also include 1 Free Domain for life.

 

[macpro88]

It might have just been a short glitch on the web site. That sounds like a bug, not a design feature, to me. Someone probably pushed out a change to the billing/pricing code and managed to botch it up completely.

If you want to be generous, you might go back in 24 hours and see if it makes more sense.

Highly doubt its a glitch, nothing at all indicated the site was having "issues" which would be present had someone on their team pushed out "changes" and there is no way that would have been done anyways without approval and testing.

Its how it was designed and is a crappy design, intentional? I don't know, but I don't like it either way.

 

[macpro88]

I use Arvixe for hosting. It's was VERY cheap at only $67.20 for 2 years when I first signed up. You can get the same 2 years now for $86 with a Coupon code. Those plans also include 1 Free Domain for life.

For wordpress, I mean like one click install? I know wordpress works everywhere cause its php but some add that nice one click install for wordpress I might bookmark them and visit them later. Thanks

 

[sapper6fd]

I use Arvixe for hosting. It's was VERY cheap at only $67.20 for 2 years when I first signed up. You can get the same 2 years now for $86 with a Coupon code. Those plans also include 1 Free Domain for life.

For wordpress, I mean like one click install? I know wordpress works everywhere cause its php but some add that nice one click install for wordpress I might bookmark them and visit them later. Thanks

Any webhost that uses cPanel provides one click installs for Wordpress and around 30 other free scripts / forums / blogs / help desks. Since around 90% of the servers out there run on Linux, most of them run cPanel. I've used CynProWeb for my hosting since 2006 with no issues at $3.49 per month. Most hosting companies will also give a discount if you pay quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly.

 

[norwegian]

You'll have to pay for a minimum of 12 months up front at Bluehost when ordering, and it is done in a pretty sneaky way as they don't tell you how much this will be total. They will only tell you the monthly price which at 12 months will be approx. 7 $ per month, 24 months equals 6 $ per month, and 36 months at 5 $ per month.

i wouldn't recommend most of the hosts selling "unlimited" space and bandwidth as it's not really "unlimited". Read the TOS and you'll find out they tend to restrict you on the use of resources (cpu, memory (RAM), inodes, a few others).

Another reason I wouldn't recommend Bluehost is the difficulties that would pop up if you would like to move to another host. Normally when you're using cPanel moving to another is pretty easy, but not when you're moving from Bluehost as they have deactivated the full backup of you account in cPanel (you'll have to buy the SitebackupPro package to get "normal" cPanel backup.) So most hosts won't move your account as this would take too much work.

You should go for the cheapest ones as they tend to be overselling their servers. If a host pay 300 $ per month for the server and 1500 $ per month in additional expenses, and the price per account is 3$, they'll need a minimum of 600 customers per server just to break even. (These numbers will probably be higher in real life.)

If you would be paying 9$ per month they would only need 200 accounts to break even for the same specs. (Even though more expensive hosts will often use better specs on servers, and the servers will therefor be faster.)

WordPress can be pretty resource demanding if you're using the wrong plugins.

The reason WordPress recommend Bluehost could simply be because WordPress receive donations from Bluehost? The page with recommended hosts clearly say they receive donations from some of the listed hosts, and there are only three hosts listed.

Personally I do my own hosting on dedicated servers, but there are some pretty good hosts out there. Hawkhost.com (froghost.com would be hawkhosts "unlimited" brand) and stablehost.com would be two of the better ones.