Over an Email, Host.net in Boca Raton abruptly cuts off service to long-term client

For fear that Host.net will attempt to sue us for putting up our opinion of their service, I make this disclaimer that this is our opinion of the service we received from the company.  It is not intended to stop you from using their services.  It is intended to express our experiences so you can make wise business decisions.

  A few days ago I told you of another incident we had with Host.net.  I think this is one that is definitely worthy of sharing.  This relates to their President, Jeffrey Davis. Three times over three months, we received spam mail from host.net.  Each time, it included an email list of all their customers.  We emailed them notifying them that someone in their company was sending out emails with their entire customer list.  We thought telling them was the right thing to do.  We received no response to our efforts to notify them. About six months later we decided to contact their clients about our web development services, a service Host.net does not provide.  I made absolutely sure the email was written so there would be no conflict of interest.  I read and re-read the email for over 4 hours.  We had, what I thought, was a long and mutually respectful relationship with Host.net, and I had no intention of taking any business from them.  I writing the email, I wanted to be perfectly clear that we had our servers on the same network, and that it would be easy for us to work with them should they want us to do some web development.  We also said that if they were ever thinking of leaving Host.net, for whatever reason, we indicated in one simple sentence that we could provide them with services on the same network, to avoid any disruption, and that Host.net would not lose the bandwidth, a win-win situation.  I send out only 100 emails of the 1,100 or so that were on the list, just to make sure all was OK.

 Two things happened.  While sending the first 100 emails,  I quickly received two emails from disgruntled Host.net client where one told me that he was told that as a small client, they were not going to give him the level of service he needed, and that he found another company.  And, ten minutes after the test mailing was done, a Mr. Jeffrey Davis, the President of Host.net, called our company and instantly went ballistic.  It appeared he had his own client list seeded with in-house email addresses.   Jeffrey Davis began our business conversation, literally screaming at me on the telephone.  As unprofessional as that sounds, and taken by total surprise, it really happened.  I tried to calm him down and assure him that there was absolutely no intention of taking any business from Host.net, but he would have none of my words, mumbling at times in what appeared to me as a man who was angry and out of control.

 He began his ranting by informing me that he instructed the Host.net security department to take all of our servers offline.  This was verified by our Systems Administrator walking into my office during the conversation to inform me that we were offline.  Jeffrey Davis said “You are now out of business, and if you want to be online again, deal with our attorney”.   As abruptly as the conversation began with his screaming, it ended the same way.  The conversation lasted 45 seconds.  Now, how is that for putting their long-term client, AdultChamber and Online Technologies, into to frenzy?  We sweated and scrambled.  Called their attorney and explained, in detail, how we had no intention of harming Host.net in any way whatsoever.  We called Mr. Lenny Chasal, Executive Vice President, who told us he could not talk to us about this matter.  Well, it was back and forth with their Attorney, who told me that “Jeffrey can lose his cool and over-react”.  Well, it took until 9:00pm for the attorney to get us paperwork to sign.  Every time we anxiously called, we were told my his secretary that he was with a client and that he would get to our matter just as soon as he could.  Clearly at that point we would have signed anything to get our clients back online.  One would have to assume that Host.net [and their attorney] knew it.

 Then we called the company after,  under duress, the papers were signed, we immediately called support and their technician on duty told us he was not authorized to bring us back online, and that his Supervisor went home.  I told him I was driving over there, now, since all of our clients were offline, including a huge Neurological organization , which we maintain their web server and all their associated email accounts.  The technician had his Supervisor call me from his home, and we were online at 10:00pm.

  A week later, we needed to address a hard drive issue on a server and needed to be at the machine at the network center.  Guess what happened when get arrived?  Our door security keys no longer worked! This forced us to drive 20 minutes to their main office at 3500 NW Boca Raton Blvd, Boca Raton, Florida 33431, from their network center in Delray Beach, and have it re-coded.

  To add insult to injury, when we finally got back to the network center and opened the secure door with our re-coded Host.net pass key, the combination to the door of our rack cage was also reset, causing us even more frustration.  We shrugged it off as additional punishment, but the distaste for Host.net never left.

  Like I said in my last post, if you are interested in doing business with Host.net in Boca Raton,  Ft. Lauderdale, Delray Beach,  or wherever, our personal opinion is to keep shopping.  I guarantee you that even if you do not have any of the horror events we experienced, you will be paying thousands of dollars if you do not notify them MORE THAN 60 days prior to the anniversary of your contract, that you are leaving.  And, you better be able to do something no one I know if capable of, moving multiple servers just a few days prior to the end of the contract year.  If not, YOU PAY thousands of dollars for not adhering to the letter of the contract.

  Working with Host.net was an amazing and expensive adventure.  It was very painful at times and worst of all, massively time consuming from a labor standpoint.  If I get a chance, I will talk about another Host.net event.  It’s about overbilling by thousands upon thousands of dollars, following their refusal to help us mitigate a server attack by simply giving us the affected server’s IP address.  And, if we were not careful when we initially entered into the contract with them, they would have had the opportunity to force us to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars; an amount they billed us, then threatened to turn us off again, until we went into our files and proved to them that they agreed to a clause in the agreement.

 I end this post with this thought.  Never once did we feel that Host.net cared for one second if our business succeeded.  They are the first hosting facility we used since 1993 that only cared about one thing, getting as much money out of us as they could, whenever they could.  That is how we felt!

 Next episode to follow shortly…

Marc Laffer,
President
Online Technologies