Netfirms Web Hosting Fraud ripoff Ontario Internet

Was duped into using netfirms service because they offered low price domains and supposedly "easy as pie" clustered web-hosting solutions. Registered 10 domains with their company and then signed up for their web hosting solution. The fee was 9.95 a month but required to be payed annually. Paid the fee, and entered their "web control panel" to start using the site and found that what they had are doing is just providing a bunch of "open software" which is software developed for free under the open software foundation license, as their interfaces, and a extremely limited "unix/linux" shell interface into a "shared cluster server environment" which is really just an overloaded service on a single computer running linux.

The interfaces were extremely buggy, complicated, and did not work at all like the saleman "jonathon" claimed. Moreover, there servers are extremely slow, and reports from Alexis also report their service as very slow with numerous complaints.

I assume they are using a few linux servers on a small internet pipe and advertising it as a complete hosting solution. The service is supposedly 30 day guarantee or your money back, but when I contacted them by email, they responded several days later and said that all cancellations had to be done by phone according to their "new policy".

In trying to contact them by the numbers on their website no one ever answered, so in searching the web records in ICANN I came up with a phone number that rang through and they actually answered. The person that answered transfered me to another department, and would you know it, it was the same sales person "jonathon" that sold me the service to start with. I told him the service was not what he claimed at all, he said that a tech support person would call, and work out the problems, as I had sent an email explaining the problems and the only suggestion was that I "upgrade" to a more expensive service and all problems would be solve ($45 dollars a month). I told him that this was not acceptable and the service he sold me needs to work as advertised.

I agreed to wait until their techs contacted me, which never happened. I then told Jonathon to please cancel the service and he agreed, but nothing happened. So after numerous emails and several days into weeks,

I finally got a response, that "the cancellation process takes 3 or 4 days to show up on my visa". I said well, its been over 12 days and nothing, and then followed several emails from at least 4 different people saying the same form letter "we are sorry you have decided to cancel netfirms service, but all cancellations must be done by phone.." etc..

Been going through this process now for almost a month, which my theory is they will continue to delay until their "30 day free trial period" elapses playing their circle game, and then will now say that it is too late to cancel my service since 30 days have expired. Its really sad that ICANN offers domain resaler licenses to companies like this, that have no intention of providing the services they claim, and choose to play countless games in order to rob money from their clients. The internet is full of bad reports over netfirms, let this report be another to forwarn people to not fall for the same trap I did.

Brandt
Pinedale, Wyoming
U.S.A.