Fluid Hosting LLC Unauthorized charges on customer credit cards - Internet

We have been working with this customer since March 2005 and after 5 years, the first review that customer made about us is biased and misleading. While we always appreciate fair reviews, we find it necessary to jump and to rebut his posting due to all twisting, misinformation, and half-truth claims he has made.

First of all, customer's account has been suspended due to overdue balance. However, several things that needs to be pointed out:

1. It is not true that the reasons for the suspension, at least not the major reason, is due to traffic overusage. Rather, it was due to disk space over usage. We have made this clear to customer on several occasions, but it seems the customer has chosen to intentionally disregard this and intentionally make false representations of the nature of the problem. The hacker have injected garbage to customer's database, causing the database to grow and the account to exceed the disk space limitations. Please note that fixing the vulnerability on the application is necessary, but it will not remove the disk space overusage fees unless action is taken to clean up the database.
2. This issue first started on June of 2009. The excess disk space overusage, up to May 2010 billing totals $1988.93. No, the full amount was not charged to customer as tried to work with the customer (see below). In contrast, the bandwidth overusage, during this same period, totals only $119.7. Thus, total overusage fees for both disk space and traffic is $2108.63.
3. Out of this $2108.63, from July 2009, customer has only been charged a total of $347.53, with the last charge being made on November 2009. From November 2009 - May 2010 we let customer carries overdue balance because we appreciate their long term business, while at the same time trying to work a solution for him. See below.
4. After November 2009, customer's account has been suspended due to unpaid overdue balance. Please note that an account will only be suspended for overdue balance after the account is overdue for 30 days. During this 30-day period our billing system sends at least three notifications to customer indicating the overdue balance. But no action was taken by customer.
5. Since November 2009 - May 2010, customer's account has been suspended multiple times. Every time it was suspended, customer would contact us and we would resumed the account and increase the credit limit as a temporary solution.
6. On January 2010, we proposed a fee reduction for customer. We reduced the disk overusage fees by a factor of 5 and traffic overusage fees by a factor of 6. And suggested customer to fix the problem they are having. We will not be able to clean up customer's database; that's beyond our support scope. Customers agreed to this and on the basis that we trust customer will resolve the outstanding balance, we resumed the account and waived the account reactivation fees. Unfortunately, customer has chosen not to take any action to fix the issue nor pay us.
7. On March 14th, 2010 customer's account was renewed again for another year for the cost of $191.52. This puts customer in more debt and cause the account to be suspended again on April. Again, customer contacted us and out of a favor, we resumed the account and raised the credit limit again and waived the account reactivation fee.
8. On May 14th, 2010, customer account was yet suspended. This time, it is clear to me that customer has no intention to pay their overusage fees nor pay the renewal for the hosting fee and would rather drag payment as long as they can. At this time, we told customer that we would only resume the account after all outstanding balance had been paid. Customer start to blame us for the downtime. We simply pointed out that the reason that the account was suspended is due to lack of action on customer's part (note again that there are 30 days grace period before the account is suspended, and customer makes no effort to resolve this problem).

So on Monday, May 17th, we tried to contact customer. Yes, it was us who contacted customer rather than the other way around, despite the fact that the downtime was crucial for them. Our billing staff make several attempts to contact customers on different phone numbers, all to no avail. But at the end, communication was established. We agreed that the $2108.63 oversuage fee will be reduced to $417.74. With the $347.53 payment that customer had made from July - November 2009, that leaves only $70.2 balance to be paid for these overusage paid. On top of this, since we have never received any cancellation notication from customer, we rightly believe the $191.52 renewal is due as well. This gives a total of $261.73 to be paid.

Despite all the favors we have made to customer (reducing his overusage fees, waiving all interest accrued on the debt, waiving the account reactivation fees, and letting customer debt to float for 5+ months), customer refuses to make the payment and even threaten to report us to BBB. After customer confirm that he will not make the full payment, we decided that we have done enough for customer and terminate the account. This is in accordance to our Terms of Service (http://www.fluidhosting.com/tos.php ) which states that an account can be terminated after multiple delinquencies. Once the account is terminated, we are no longer responsible to maintain customer data nor provide customer with his data.

We paid almost $200 yearly for this host since 2005.

In Feb 2010, our website has been shut down from Fluidhosting. We contacted them and find out there are the Hacking scripts happened on our website which cause the growing in bandwidth. We requested the investigation and find out the hacking happening without our knowledge on the forum and we asked Fluidhost help to remove the hacking for us since we are not programmer guru here and dont know how to do this.

Fluid resumed our website next day and ask us to find someone who could remove the virus since they dont provide that support. We did have assumptions that the hacking was being taken care or quarantined by Fluid.

Up till May15,2010, they shut down our website again for non payment on the account. We contacted them and find out the hacking still there. Fluid did not do anything about it since the last time we talk. They just charged us on our Visas on file for the total amount of $350 for overbandwith and diskspace caused by the hacking since Feb.

After we take to the Sales person, they offer to reduce the total charged and adjustment down to $420 and want us to pay extra $70 so they will resume the account. They said that is our reponsibility for any hacking happen under our account even they know that is nothing to do with us. They did not monitor the activities on their end. And also did not have any solution but let the hacking growing till May15 and realized the issue. They said they waived most of the charged but still want us to pay $420 more on top of $200 yearly service we already paid.

We realized their service is unsafe and non-professional since they knowing the hacking happened since January but still did not do anything since then and still want us to pay for that damage from the hacking scripts.We dont few safe for our business website to be handled by this kind of service company. We agreed to pay of $420 over the yearly host fee and want to TAKE OUT BUSINESS SOMEWHERE ELSE.

However, they did not let us cancel the service with them. They hold all our copyright files, photos, video clips and not release until we paid of that amount and also agree to stay with their service.

We are currently dispute their service with BBB Better Business Bureaus and same time post here so every company will be awared of this scams.

They even threaten to send us to collection with total higher amount that caused from that hacking scripts. 

Down here is there original threat when we say will be go public on this issue.

====================================================================== Per our MSA, we are no longer responsible to provide you any data backup/archives once the account is terminated. In addition, please note that the discounts of all overages that we offered to you was offered assuming a good faith cooperation on your part, as our appreciation for your business, and assuming that you will continue being a customer. However, since it is proven that you have been trying to be difficult despite our favors for you, even attempting to cause slander and harm for our good favors towards you, please note that with this account termination I have instructed billing to forward your account debt, in its original non discounted amount of $1952.84 plus all interest fees accrued per our MSA. Please note that the collection agency may impose their own collection fees on top of this amount.