The $95 Free Hosting Account That I Didn’t Need
There are things in life that you should stay away from. There are businesses in this world that you’d better find out about as much as possible before joining some program there…
That being said, let me tell you a story about a hosting company and a free account that I have received.
Well, one year ago I have purchased a template from TemplateMonster.com, a site that I appreciate and use a lot.
At one moment they joined their forces with a hosting company, Globat.com that would give you a free hosting account when you purchase a template from TemplateMonster. OK, great, I thought at that moment, nice deal, I buy a template and I also get the hosting account for free for 1 year.
So I also signed up for the free account at that moment and I started a site there. When I signed up, I was asked for my credit card number. Aaa….OK, but I don’t want to buy anything, you said it is free! Yes, it is free, we just need to know you are eligible and not a scam. Something like this. OK, I said, let’s see. So I added my credit card there. Actually I had 2 sites started there at that moment, both using a free package.
The hosting package proved to be bad, the access time was long, the site slow and a lot of times it was just down. I tried a lot of times to access it and a lot of times it was just stopped. Damn! So I took one of the sites and moved it to another hosting provider, Hostgator.com. I usually work with a Romanian hosting provider since 5-6 years and I stick to them because they are OK but sometimes I want a hosting outside. So, since moving to the new host, it was OK and never had any issue with them. The second site, being a test, at that moment, I left it there and stopped worrying about it.
Now comes the facts: newsletters that proved to be annoying, came quite often and one for each site, so twice every time. I didn’t want the newsletter so I wanted to opt out. It was a link in the bottom of the email saying if you want to opt out, click this link. I did, I opted out, but the emails kept on coming. I discussed with a support representative and they told me to log in and stop the mails from there, if I well remember.
At that moment I lost the password, I was already angry, so I didn’t make too much efforts to retrieve my password, especially I was not interested anymore in those hosting accounts, so I marked that mails as spam. There! Go to spam and forget all about it! Maybe not very nice from my side, but I was already pissed off.
Then at one moment I received a special email saying that one of my accounts will be renewed and if I want to cancel it, I should do it 1 month before expiring otherwise my card will be billed for the year to come, $95.95 or something. What?! Damn!
I went to my account, I generated a new password, I logged in after a few tries and tried to cancel my account. I reached a page saying if you want to cancel your account, please call the following number. I am not from US so I didn’t want to call their number. Instead, I contacted the support team, using a live chat on their site asking them to cancel both my accounts.
OK, give me your last digits from your credit card, for identification purposes, nothing will be billed. OK, now your accounts are marked for canceling. What does this means? They will still be online until the time will be up, at the end of the first year, then they will be deleted. OK, pretty fair.
But, being a bit aware of how things go in this world, I wanted to be sure I won’t need to pay anything for canceling my account: is there any hidden fee for canceling my account? Well, no! Of course not…OK! And I went to bed.
The next morning I get an email telling me $95 were billed from my account. I look into my credit card online reports, indeed, $95 were billed and out from my account. Damn!
I contacted the guys at Globat.com , nobody was online, but I received an email saying something like don’t worry, you are scheduled for a refund on the second half of April. WHAT?!! You take my money on 20 January and give them back after 15 April? Why? WTF?
I stopped getting angry and promised myself to write this post here in order to tell people about it. You should just know. I don’t say it is not a good company, I don’t say they trick people, I just tell my personal experience with Globat.com hosting service. I have a very bad feeling about it, it is the first time something like this happens to me.
I use a lot of hosting providers, I now go with Hostgator.com, I have 4 sites there, they work fine and never had any problem so far. The price is good and you can host as many sites as you want on one single account. It is good from my point of view.
Did you have any similar experience with other hosting providers? We should all find out about it, really!
Let me hear about it here!
PS: If a Globat.com representative will contact me, he or she will receive the right to say their point of view regarding this.
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