Letshost.ie suspended my hosting without notice.

di11on

jor el wrote: »

Hadn't seen his sig when I posted, should have gone to Specsavers I guess...

You didn't see my sig because the image is hosted remotely... or, rather, wasn't hosted when you didn't see it :-)

Cabaal

I honestly can't believe this, looking at letshost.ie...when it eventually loaded, it looks very amateur and its extremely slow!

To the op I'd suggest somebody like godaddy.com, sure its hosted in the states but its no where near as slow as your old host.

As for suspending your account, seek legal advice

The above comments are my personal view and do not reflect those of my employer or boards.ie,

Cabaal

di11on, nice selection of stuff on your website..must mention it to my sister as she likes getting wooden toys for her kid,

I see you have a noitice up regarding the move, sooner you've moved from letshost.ie then better if thats how the treat customers.

I'd have to agree fully with jor el's comments, for them to suspend your account based on your sig alone without actually having solid proof you were also on the owner of the site is extremely bad form and they could be in for abit of fun for acting so childishly.

I wouldn't be surprised if this story makes it to digg.com or slashdot "Webhost suspends customer account for saying service was slow!"...

themadchef

An awful thing to happen especially when youre entire business is ran through this site. On the positive i bet your site is now getting tonnes more clicks . Every cloud........

mcaul

I recommend you move to blacknight solutions. Very good and very quick when there's a problem with the servers. - They even responded to an e-mail at 2am on a Sunday morning to let me know they were working on a server problem and that it would be fixed within an hour.

MOH

Well, the story's spreading already. Just googled letshost.ie, ninth hit

This reminds me of the whole "sky handling partners" thing last year. That's still killing them on google.
[edit]
(Bit ambiguous. By them I mean sky handling, nothing to do with letshost)

miju

indeed it's been popping up on blogs all day, and proper order too to be honest

Cabaal wrote: »

To the op I'd suggest somebody like godaddy.com, sure its hosted in the states but its no where near as slow as your old host.

i'd personally avoid godaddy for hosting a website. they are good for domain name management but for hosting they suck in my opinion

Kimbot

As said before thats poor, and they haven't even bothered defending themselves on here.
OP have they gotten onto you since??

jhegarty

If you google letshost the feedback thread make the front page

Mylow

I was just looking at registering 2 Irish domains, one for residents association...its 900 house's, we currently use a .info domain. As .ie domains are now at more reasonable price I was looking at registering the .ie variant. After behaviour of a certain host (you can figure it out from previous posts) I certainly won't even consider them.

MOH

miju wrote: »

i'd personally avoid godaddy for hosting a website. they are good for domain name management but for hosting they suck in my opinion

Any threatening phone calls from them yet for daring to voice an opinion?

miju

MOH wrote: »

Any threatening phone calls from them yet for daring to voice an opinion?

no none yet but there has been this strange black helicopter hovering above my house for the last few minutes :p:p:p

stepbar

Can someone put up the T&C's so we can go through them.

Cabaal

I see a few blogs have made the front page google results

mickoneill30

Google is very quick. On Google.ie there's lots of info about this thread and the service from letshost. Not so much on google.co.uk. It only appears as number 10 there. I think they've done themselves waaaay more damage than if they'd just left the OP alone.

AARRRGH

I don't want sound like a letshost.ie bitch, but technically their t&c do cover this issue.

As I posted in another thread, H365 rang me asking me to remove a post I made here on boards, so letshost are not the only ones who do this.

Taking the site offline is a bit extreme, but again, technically, they were correct as per their t&c.

MOH

dublindude wrote: »

I don't want sound like a letshost.ie bitch, but technically their t&c do cover this issue.

As I posted in another thread, H365 rang me asking me to remove a post I made here on boards, so letshost are not the only ones who do this.

Taking the site offline is a bit extreme, but again, technically, they were correct as per their t&c.

Is that a common thing among ISPs then?

Surely stating your genuine opinion in response to a request for same, clearly indicated as such, of how you perceive a service you receieve can't be classed as defamation/undermining/whatever?

Cabaal

if ISP's did the same most people in the broadband forum would have had there connection killed by Vodafone, O2, Three, NTL, BT, Clearwire, IBB, Eircom etc for there comments

jimmycrackcorm

I've four hosts to set up this weekend. I've used them before and had no problems with them, but after reading the astonishing OP, I'll definitely stay away.

WhiteWashMan

dublindude wrote: »

I don't want sound like a letshost.ie bitch, but technically their t&c do cover this issue.

As I posted in another thread, H365 rang me asking me to remove a post I made here on boards, so letshost are not the only ones who do this.

Taking the site offline is a bit extreme, but again, technically, they were correct as per their t&c.

yes, but surely youd think that this sort of action would be a last resort effort against someone who was posing a serious threat to the well being of the company?

an opinion that their connectivity isnt the best in the world due to their servers being in the US is hardly going to bring about their downfall.

Unless they blow it out of proportion, terminate his service, and then dont account for the fact that this is Irelands biggest bullitan boards, and we dont particularly like bullies.

Yes, they are technically correct.
No, their actions were wrong.
No, they didnt use common sense.
No, It appears they have Zero customer service abaility.
Yes, it appears they are going to lose a lot of business, not from the actions or the words of the OP, but from their own follow up actions. WE are all grown ups here and we are free to make our own opinions. The fact that this company would use duch strong arm and bully boy tactics means I will never ever use them.
Shame on them for not just coming on here, discussing the issue and finding a resolution. Actions which could have gained them kudos in the community for being pro-active towards their users, addressing their short comings, and make an effort to fix them.

Shame on them.

Boggles

Obviously the good people on boards.ie do not tolerate Bullies. Good to see.

miju

Boggles wrote: »

Obviously the good people on boards.ie do not tolerate Bullies. Good to see.

have the good people of boards every tolerated bullies ;);)

watty

I have two sites and find my US one much much slower than my Dublin hosted one.

But it doesn't bother me as I don't run a business and have few visitors. Most of my content is thus still on the US one.

watty

Cabaal wrote: »

if ISP's did the same most people in the broadband forum would have had there connection killed by Vodafone, O2, Three, NTL, BT, Clearwire, IBB, Eircom etc for there comments

ROFL I think you left out a few. (I suppose etc covers the other 30 ISPs!).

di11on

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for their kind comments and offers of help - it has been greatly appreciated.

Yoda

I have never had any problems with LetsHost. I find their technical staff very helpful and responsive. In particular I find the response time to be very fast, both after the first contact and in follow-up. For my part, I am a happy LetsHost customer.

jonski

Yoda wrote: »

I have never had any problems with LetsHost. I find their technical staff very helpful and responsive. In particular I find the response time to be very fast, both after the first contact and in follow-up. For my part, I am a happy LetsHost customer.

Interesting , and are you happy with the way they would treat you if you weren't happy ?

LetsHost

It is our informed opinion that the original poster of this thread has misled the entire Boards.ie community, by posting a different “original post” quote from the actual original post, in an effort to damage LetsHost. The meaning and implication of the actual original message was completely different to the one published here by the original poster.

The quotation currently posted is an opinion, and I accept and welcome such opinions. The actual original quote was a specific statement instructing people not to host with us, as our services offer low performance – I strongly disagree with that statement, and find it offensive and defamatory. Fortunately, we have screen captures and email transcripts between LetsHost and the publisher that can prove this.

The statement made did not in any way relate to the posters question on where to obtain low cost domains, but was a specific attack on the levels of service offered by LetsHost, and is not the first such post from this publisher.

In view of the actual text in the original post, which in my opinion was defamatory, we were within our rights to suspend the account pending further discussion with the account owner. The terms and conditions of service provided by LetsHost clearly allow us to do this, and these were accepted by the original poster at time of purchase (historical site caches confirming this are available elsewhere on the internet).

We welcome and encourage any customer to express opinions about our services, and indeed we depend on these to develop our services and offerings. We do not, however, welcome defamatory statements published on public forums that may damage our business. Further, we do not welcome quotes that contain modified and altered copies of previous messages, that we feel are composed specifically to mislead the Boards.ie community and its wider internet audiences. I am confident the management of Boards.ie will not condone this behaviour either.

In addition to this, the original poster published his text at 11:05pm – at 11:07pm we received an email from him “greatly appreciating” us putting his site back online – why did he not immediately update his post to reflect this fact, as the information in the post he had just submitted was clearly wrong (stating his account is offline and terminated)?. In fact the site was reactivated exactly 25 minutes prior to this thread being initially published.

The original poster stated that his account had been terminated – this is wrong, and the account was never terminated.

Regarding our contact with the poster, the original posted had a direct link from his website to his website (now removed) – this was a publicly available link, leading to a contact us page with a telephone number. As this was publicly available information, it is my opinion that no beach of privacy was made. As the link goes to a web page hosted by us, and the comment on the post stated that people should not host with us, I felt a sufficient link between the two existed to allow me to connect them. The author of this thread agreed he was the publisher on the telephone call.

It is not and never has been the intention to remove or suspend any hosting accounts that are on our servers, that comply with our terms and conditions / acceptable use policy. We are in the web hosting business and it we take the responsibility of hosting our customers sites extremely seriously. I took the decision to reactivate the account 25 minutes before this post was published, and I stand by my decision to suspend in the first place.

I trust this goes some way to explaining our actions and believe that now the Lets Host side of the story has been aired that it allows you to make a more informed decision about us, our services and offerings. We considered this necessary as disappointingly many industry professionals and boards users had formed opinions without hearing the full story. We would hope people in the industry specifically would know better.

In order to respond appropriately, we had to seek outside advice on this matter. I was advised not to respond any earlier until all the facts were clear and understood, and that explains why I have not responded until now. We will always learn from constructive feedback, and I am a firm believer in openly talking to anyone about any issues they may have with us to successful resolution. We host a large number of customer websites, and were the second largest .ie registrar in the country in 2007. With that comes certain responsibilities, to provide reliable services, support Irish jobs, etc., and these responsibilities are undertaken by me and everyone at LetsHost very seriously.

Graeme Conkie
Director
LetsHost

di11on

I would just like to clearly state that I at no point attempted to deliberately damage letshost.ie. The original post I posted here was my honest recollection of my original post in the thread concerned. I can't remember it verbatim becuase I edited it at the request of letshost.ie to directly address the concerns they had. My account was terminated anyway, despite me editing the original post at the request, by phone, of letshost.ie

If someone has a copy of my original post I would be happy for them to post it.

I never had a problem with letshost.ie or their staff and I agree with previous posters that they are very helpful and prompt in dealing with any queries I've had. I was merely trying to inform anyone thinking of hosting that if performance is an issue for their website, it has been my experience that a service with servers based in the us may not be the way to go.

The sudden termination of my website on which my business depends has caused me and my family considerable anxiety and stress.

So to summarise, there was no intent to mislead or damage. If someone has the original post, please post it.

Edit: Just to address the issues of timing. I was indeed very grateful to letshost for reinstating my site. However, I was not refreshing my site every couple of seconds to see if it was back online. Becuase of this and DNS updates etc, there may well have been a period of time where it had been reinstated but to the best of my knowledge, my site was suspended.

Yoda

Jonski,

In my personal opinion, if my own account had been suspended before the host had entered into a discussion of the problem with me, I would very probably consider the suspension to be precipitous. I am sure I would be fairly annoyed.

I see that Graeme -- who has been one of the people who has responded to me in the past with technical support -- has responded, and I think his comments are measured and sensible. I know myself that LetsHost does learn from constructive feedback. Last year a number of IP addresses were changed without warning, causing a short period of downtime. I was alarmed, and contacted LetsHost. They took my feedback on board and said that in future they would advise people in advance of such changes.

I have been a customer of LetsHost since 30 December 2005, when I registered with one domain. I now manage a number of domains with them, and stand by what I said. I find them to be a good company to deal with, and have and will recommend them to others.