CWI Hosting Unauthorized debit card withdrawal; Exceptionally Poor and unresponsive service. El Paso, Texas

I had been a customer at CWI Hosting since sometime in 2003. They hosted my domain and e-mail accounts (2) and had no problems until sometime in mid 2009 when I began to loose several e-mails, whiles at the same time receiving over 2200 old e-mails (my wife received around 15,000 old e-mails).

We called CWI Hosting and the problem took well over a week to resolve. We never received or retrieved the lost e-mails. We continued to have intermittent e-mail "outages" and combining that with the difficulty of ever reaching technical support ( you could reach most personnel only through e-mail which is difficult to do when your e-mail account is down unless you have a second account hosted by someone else), I decided it was time to make the switch to a different web host.

With some difficulty, and time, I managed to amke the switch. I had paid for a year subscription, thought about asking for a refund since there was approximately half a year left, but thought considering the hassle it takes toeven reach an individual at CWI, it wouldn't be worth the effort.

I was very happy with my new web host, and was receiving e-mails with no outages whatsoever, customer service, technical support (you actually spoke with a human being and on the same day you called).

The "shock" came yesterday when I received an e-mail from CWI Hosting with an invoice attached, billing me for the next 12 months of service. I had not used their services for approximately 6 months, and had made it abundantly clear at the time of transferring my services, I wanted my account cancelled.

The second "shock" came some 30 minutes later, when I received a second e-mail showing my debit card had been debit the amount of $88.40 which included a $5 late fee.

I attempted to reach CWI Hosting and as expected got an answering service.

I tried to stop payment on the debit, but was told by the bank, they were unable to reverse the charges.

I sent CWI Hosting an e-mail and got the following response from them -

"

Hello Michael:

Thank you for your email. I have reviewed your account and have found that there was no cancellation submitted for this account through the My CWI portal nor via Fax. These are the only 2 methods which cancellations are allowed per the policy. Simply moving an account away does not constitute a cancellation as your files still reside on our server and utilize resources. In order to cancel your account you will need to submit a cancellation per the proper channels.

--
Jason A. Taylor
Chief Technical Officer
cto@cwihosting.com
www.cwihosting.com

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The "proper channels" was never explained. When one visits the CWI Hosting site, there is no clear or unclear area where you are instructed as to how to cancel an account. And you can usually never reach an actual human, to get clear instruction.

I spoke with someone from technical support this morning, and he could not find a number for the billing department and suggested reaching them by e-mail.

Always sounds fishy when a company makes it difficult to reached directly.

The gentleman from technical support could not find my account or domain in their system, yet I am being told I am being charged because of maintaining my account. An account that has been closed since mid 2009. An account that a technical support tech from CWI Hosting could not locate and couldn't tell existed.

And there is still no direct way of formally closing down the account whiles monies are being taken out of my account.

It stinks to high heaven. I wouldn't recommend CWI Hosting. Poor Service, poor product, impossible to reach when needed (which is often), questionable billing practices. I would definitely STAY AWAY!!