Gawker: valleywag, dreamhost

DreamHost still overcharging customers

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:20:55 EST

Web host DreamHost continues to overcharge customers, some of whose credit cards were already maxed out by the error, one of them tells us. And if DreamHost's initial apologies were bad, the company's communications are worse now. As of two days ago, they stopped altogether. Meanwhile, irate customers are piling on in the comments.

Friday morning. The $399 charge went through last night, and is no longer "pending". No sign of a refund/reversal aside from an "I'm sorry" mail from billing. I was a bit upset, but understanding that accidents do happen, and until the charge left the "pending" state, no harm had been done. Now that it's gone through, I'm *not* happy. I don't want you to be "sorry", I want that charge reversed, and my money back. Now.

DreamHost maxes out broke customers' credit cards

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:30:05 EST

Web hosting firm DreamHost accidentally overcharged its customers by $7.5 million. Then it sent this email as an apology. Like with its apology blog post, written in "lulzy hipster prose," some customers didn't take the email's tone well. But most are just upset to have their credit cards inadvertently maxed out, according to one customer who contacted Valleywag.

"Don't be surprised if there are mass defections," our tipster wrote:

I got billed for two years by accident, someone i know got billed for three. I have heard rumblings and lots of asking around about different hosting services. They cater to a large 'broke kids who have personal sites' contingent. i wouldn't be surprised if you found a lot of complaints about overdrafts, since the billing error affected accounts that used credit cards and bank accounts.

Hosting service overcharges by $7.5 million

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:20:26 EST

Running tests on its billing software, Los Angeles-based Web-hosting company DreamHost accidentally charged customers for an extra year's worth of services. A $7.5 million mistake, according to the company's official blog post titled "Um, Whoops."

Hello.. how's your morning going? I hope it's been a little better than mine. We had a teensy eensy weensy little billing error last night... my first clue something was up when I saw this morning's daily billing report (so far): $7,500,000.

Some customers didn't take kindly to the post's tone, one describing it as "a picture of Homer Simpson and some lulzy hipster prose." Another wrote: "Thanks for the jokes. I'm out of here." (Photo by Topato)

Is Google Now Too Big To Handle Anything?

Choire — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:30:08 EST

Google, the world's most wonderful or evil company, has greylisted popular web host company Dreamhost, even while it claims that levels of spam are dropping overall. (Dreamhost is a ten-year-old company that hosts more than half a million websites on more than 1500 servers.) The greylist (which means that mail sent through Dreamhost to Gmail is delayed by hours or days while it is assessed for mass-spamming) was imposed more than two weeks ago by Gmail; it was triggered because so many Dreamhost users forward their mail to Gmail, which made Dreamhost look like a spammer. Dreamhost announced the problem on November 17, and has talked with Google support, and yet it's still not resolved. This seems like evidence that Google's infrastructure has major trouble—how is it possible that it takes more than two weeks to remove a legitimate source of mail from a greylist?