FreeServers.com, A Division Of United Online Web Services, billing dept rips off by overcharging and disconnecting service at will Orem Utah

FreeServers.com billing department is filled with penny-pinchers who are rude and who do not have any common sense of conducting business.

I was using FreeServers.com for my web hosting, which included an annual hosting package and a few domains, from September 2004 to April 2006. In the summer of 2005, I notified freeservers.com customer service that I intended to renew the annual hosting package and but decided not to renew one of the domains which was due for renewal - I wanted to discard one of the domains while keeping all the rest of the domains with the same hosting package. Their customer service rep told me that it was all taken care of.

Everything was fine until that I noticed in January 2006 that my credit card was charged for $9.95 from Web Services Inc in November 2005. Without realizing that Web Services Inc was the same entity as FreeServers.com, I tried to call the number of Web Services Inc indicated on the credit-card invoice to figure out who the merchant was and why I was charged $9.95. However, I was not able to reach any live person except an automated menu asking for extensions.

Unable to recognize the charge, I eventually called my credit card company to dispute the charge.

A few weeks later, I found my Web site was disconnected. I contacted FreeServers.com customer services and learned that a woman named Chelsea from its billing dept ordered them to suspend my account because of a credit-card chargeback. My further conversation with the customer service rep indicated that the $9.95 charge was a mistake from its billing dept, but my account couldn't be restored without the billing dept's approval.

I couldn't reach anyone from their small billing dept on that afternoon. I was able to talk to someone named Harrod from FreeServers.com billing dept the next morning (Chelsea was off the next day). Although Harrod admited that the $9.95 charge in November 2005 was a mistake, he insisted that he would only restore my account if I could pay an extra $50 to cover the charge-back fee from the credit-card bank.

So, basically, I was penalized for their own mistake just because they could hold my hosting and other domains as hostages.

I paid the extra $50 to restore my account (although some files were still missing after the restoration). A couple months later, I switched to another hosting company for web hosting and called my credit-card bank to dispute the $50 charge that I had to pay to restore the account in February 2006.

In the end, although I lost some months of hosting for the annual package that I had paid, I was much happier because I didn't have to deal with those arrogant penny-pinchers who thought they could do anything against you just because they had your credit card number and could hold your hosting-service hostages.

For FreeServers.com, it lost $100 from the two credit-card charge-backs, and the arrogant penny-pinchers in its billing dept continue to make FreeServers.com lose customers.

Ben
Sunnyvale, California
U.S.A.