Hosting-unlimited hacked

[Vini]

see my post re: godaddy, dream-hosting & b-one.

if IMAP isnt something you need, go with GoDaddy, absolutely stupidly huge.

[Tom Scott]

I might email this thread to their support in a minute to see if we can get an "official" response to all these issues.

[DwainePipe]

Before replying, could Hexus please confirm that they share absolutely no user information with HU or any of its representatives (or even HU forum mods)?

tyvm.

[Tom Scott]

I'm 99.9% sure they don't matey, I wouldn't worry even if they did, I mean my username is my name - not hard for HU to find out who I am. I've not had any adverse effects because of my "comments".

[MD]

HEXUS will not release any details about you or share any information whatsoever about you with anyone other than official authorities (such as the police etc.) and even then only when backed up with the appropriate paperwork.

As per the statement at the bottom of all forums you are repsonsible for what you say - its up to you if you wish to say it but I can assure you that HEXUS will not share any information about you or any details subject to the above paragraph.

Thanks

Matt

[DwainePipe]

... other than official authorities (such as the police etc.) and even then only when backed up with the appropriate paperwork ....

Thanks, that was the important bit.

Just an opinion then, since its completely legal to have one -

Its very hard to disagree with the criticism of HU here, even despite the sometimes flagrant language. And its notable that only HU forum mods are being defensive, bar the one poster who is even then only tentatively defensive.

There's probably no precedent for any supplier of a consumer product being obliged to let the consumer know that they are full time policemen running a business in their spare time, but it could assure many consumers that their product was merchantable and the service open, honest and dealings moral. Since HU is run by two full time uniformed UK policemen (some intense googling revealed the owners' usual occupation - one having been commended for his community work, while the other being renowned for his failed attempt to buy a sausage roll at his local supermarket - denied by the letter of the law), it could be conceived that this would be the case, but it seems far from it. Their uptime claims in no way correlate with their uptime stats.

However the customer service, interaction and support is theoretically conducive with the approach of uniformed coppers - a kind of 'we are here to control and coerce you while we have the mutual backing of the law and unwitting general public to do it how we see fit' attitude. The reading of private emails and messages, if true, is unforgivable from even a merely moral concept.

It is poor, their product is poor, their service is poor and frankly their attitude is poor too. Whilst perhaps only a small percentage of HU customers have mentioned it here and elsewhere, its also completely likely that only a small percentage would take the trouble to do so.

Thankfully, this country has excellent consumer protection laws. If it does not do what it says on the packet, then it contravenes those laws, even if the supplier says something to the contrary or implies they are not responsible elsewhere, and even if you intially agree to them not being responsible. At the very least a consumer would be entitled to their nmoney back in full. The fact that they have built the business as a limited company leaves the consumer open to getting nothing though.

Frankly, I'd like to see a full restoration of any implied or actual intergrity in their business. On the surface it looks reputable, it should also do so much further down. If they cannot do this, maybe they should consider passing the business into more capable hands?

[BurningSnowman]

There's probably no precedent for any supplier of a consumer product being obliged to let the consumer know that they are full time policemen running a business in their spare time, but it could assure many consumers that their product was merchantable and the service open, honest and dealings moral. Since HU is run by two full time uniformed UK policemen (some intense googling revealed the owners' usual occupation - one having been commended for his community work, while the other being renowned for his failed attempt to buy a sausage roll at his local supermarket - denied by the letter of the law), it could be conceived that this would be the case, but it seems far from it.

Powerful though Google is, it seems to have led you astray. I think I've found the documents you refer to, and while the names may match, you've made a whole bunch of odd assumptions. For one thing, the little I know of the founders' ages and origins clearly shows that both those 'sources' refer to other people. I've found more convincing evidence that both are professional sportsmen, but I suspect that's not actually them either. There's often more than one person in this country with any given name.

Incidentally, from what I now gather, the claims about PMs are at best questionable. I'll opt not to go into more detail or draw conclusions publicly since I'm not even involved first hand, but pinches of salt would be sensible all round.

[DwainePipe]

Powerful though Google is, it seems to have led you astray. I think I've found the documents you refer to, and while the names may match, you've made a whole bunch of odd assumptions. For one thing, the little I know of the founders' ages and origins clearly shows that both those 'sources' refer to other people. I've found more convincing evidence that both are professional sportsmen, but I suspect that's not actually them either. There's often more than one person in this country with any given name.

Incidentally, from what I now gather, the claims about PMs are at best questionable. I'll opt not to go into more detail or draw conclusions publicly since I'm not even involved first hand, but pinches of salt would be sensible all round.

I'm in no way led astray and have made no assumptions, thank you very much.

If there were equal amounts of effort put into customer service and overall service as there were in HU's defense/arguments (such as this), it may be a far better operation. Why not consider doing something more constructive, like backing the client and pushing for change for once!?

[BoBo1972]

As i replied the same, in your pm to me, BS. Why don't you ask Dougie yourself if he infacts reads customers PM'S? He is bolshy enough to admit it to his customers so why not you?

If anyone has a way of validating emails, i will be happy to send them dougies email(s) to me. As i really do find it insulting that once again, my honesty is being questioned by you. I really do have far better things to do in my life,BS, than to sit on forums slagging off a company for no reason and making lies up.

I also find it interesting that HU have not contributed to this thread, its safe to presume they are aware of this thread.
As its full of customers, ex customers, potential customers, the general public and an HU forum Mod.
I think the general public deserve to know the *truth* about a company before they part with their hard earned cash don't you?

Now this thread could all be summed up very easily, if an official spokesman from HU could, confirm or deny a few factors from this thread. And then provide explanations to the raised questions, that have all been brought up through out this whole thread.

The excuse of they are busy with migrations simply won't do. They were going through a migration when they first provided hexus with an offical reply. So i can't see any other reason why they can't do it again.

[Tom Scott]

Just would like to say this has nothing to do with their personal lives matey. Business is business.

[unchuffed1]

Well, if it is true, it explains HU's attitude to customer service completely.
(not to mention freedom of speech and personal privacy)
Nuff said.
BTW the HU forums are up again - if anybody still cares.

[ex-hu]

I've avoided adding any comments about HU because i've used them for a number of years (before Dougie got involved).

But i've see things deteriorate with the service for a while. And i've been having to post support ticket after ticket recently regarding all the downtime.

Eventually i said if things didn't improved i'd move elsewhere and expect a pro-rata refund.

The next thing i knew, i had the refund, and had my account suspended with only access to a cpanel backup (which i had made early that afternoon).

They are an absolutely disgrace!!!

To simply suspend someone's service because they aren't happy with the service and are threatening to leave doesn't really constitute a reasonable excuse to use the 'The Company reserves the right to withdraw services at any time' clause of the contract!! But that's what you risk when you're dealing with them.

If anyone wants decent (or even half-decent) hosting and a professional service DO NOT go anywhere near Hosting-Unlimited.net. They simply cannot be relied upon!

[yogi]

Just would like to say this has nothing to do with their personal lives matey. Business is business.

I was merely demonstrating that Burningsnowman is totally incorrect again! And his faith in Hosting-Unlimited is very much ill-placed.

Well, if it is true, it explains HU's attitude to customer service completely.
(not to mention freedom of speech and personal privacy)
Nuff said.

I think you've hit the nail on the head!! It really does explain a lot about Dougie's attitude - an uncalled for and undeserved stubborn arrogance!! After everything it turns out he's a jumped up copper or a power trip!!!!

[scwuff]

I've always found that good customer service is simply a matter of common sense and manners (so ignoring their attitude to customers) this, to me, is the fundamental problem-

A service offered and (I assume in the most part) subsequently sold on the basis of:

"Hosting Unlimited use the services of Alertra (an independent third party) to monitor our server uptime. We publish uptime reports in the Hosting Unlimited Community (available to registered forum members). We consistently maintain an uptime average of 99.80% Downtime occurs typically in the middle of the night when we are upgrading our servers with new or more secure software which improves the overall smooth-running of your web site. "

Isn't this a tad misrepresentative of the actual?

UPTIME DATA
hu-delos.com/system
Uptime Monitoring
Since: 2005-09-02
Outages: 91
Uptime: 99.508%

Year Outages Uptime
2006 83 99.314%
2005 8 99.911%

Year Month Outages Downtime Uptime
2006 September 12 4 hrs, 37 mins, 24 secs 97.122%
2006 August 11 4 hrs, 26 mins, 33 secs 99.403%
2006 July 28 17 hrs, 6 mins, 30 secs 97.700%

- and 12 outages totalling 4 hrs, 37 mins of downtime so far this month is totally unacceptable, any reasonable person would understand that deserves an explanation, or at the very least an apology.

[DwainePipe]

If anyone had taken the time and trouble to average out their uptime across all of their 'servers' prior to the 'migration' (some stats have been removed), they would have found that they collectively failed to reach any where near the '99.8% guaranteed', coming in at just under 99.7%.

The new 'Sorry the requested site is presently unavailable' page instead of the usual 404 page (after the migration to the new 'server cluster') is likely to just be a way of getting higher uptime stats even though the actual uptime is just as poor (or potentially much poorer). With the 404 being replaced with a response from the server, uptime monitors (such as Alertra) wont show it as downtime if its being served a page during that downtime.

On the page in their site about their uptime (hosting-unlimited.net/uptime.php), it says ... "Between 30/10/2004 and 29/11/2004 our uptime averaged 99.884%" - that was a very long time ago, and it refers to only one month in almost the last 2 years. What kind of integrity is involved in that?

I believe that BurningSnowman's suggestion of me being 'led astray' and his following comments were meant to imply ignorance on his behalf. I firmly believe that he knew of their full time occupation well before this. The question is, why cover it up? Are they not supposed to be involved in such a business as full time police officers? Or are they keen to keep their work phone numbers out of the gaze of the discontented HU clientele? I couldn't be bothered to determine the answer, I merely mentioned it because I thought it would mean that their operation would be the epitome of integrity, not this BS operation we see now.

Where BurningSnowman is concerned, maybe he should consider his position carefully .. its clear that he contributes to a number of forums as an authority on some coding issues, but how can he show any integrity himself by being personally involved in such attempts to cover the truth? Ignorance has a short life time, the truth is eternal. And whether he wants to admit it or not, he is in the empoy of HU .. you don't have to be paid or even offered free product to be in someone's employ. The mere act of acting on their behalf is enough. I was trying to be helpful to him when I suggested that his efforts would be better placed by working towards change at HU, it seems the logical approach in his usually community/supportive roles in and out of HU.

[BurningSnowman]

Dwaine: Sigh. I don't care about covering up anything. But the page I assumed you to be referencing for info on Kevin mentioned 25 years of experience with the police, something unlikely for someone born in '79. I don't, honestly, care about "THE TRUTH" of the professions or former professions of HU staff, it's irrelevant.

Once again, I'm not staff and I'm not speaking on their behalf. I had just as much involvement in helping with coding stuff on the forums 1 year ago (as a happy client) as I do now (as a happy client plus forum mod).


BoBo: I have contacted Dougie. I have two conflicting claims from two people I don't know in person. My statement of my opinion on this ends there.


yogi: Whoop-ti-doo. At least one person in the company could (possibly) have police associations, based on that. This hardly justifies the claim that both are currently police-men working full time in that field, which is highly unlikely, from what I've seen.

Incidentally, you're aware that anecdotal evidence suggests there are roughly 600 people in the UK with that name, though you're certain you've found the right one? Not that you shouldn't constantly be accusing me of speculation.



In general: I don't think actual employees of HU getting involved in these 'debates' on a third party forum is going to get us anywhere. I would hope there will be an official statement to clients quite shortly but, to be clear, this is speculation. I agree that more communication lately would have been nice, to say the least.

I should also mention that there are other recent comments in this thread about HU which, at best, seem to demonstrate a mis-understanding of its history, but I'm a tad sick of this becoming a string of personal battles, so I'll 'leave it out'.