And listen while I tell you a tale of fancy and whim! Or something like that.
As many of you are surely aware, I experienced a HUGE outage the other day for everything I run outside of the extralife site, and that was because it was all hosted separately and apart from MyExtraLife.com. This worked fine for quite a long time, but the end came swift, and the repercussions were brain crushing. Rather than try to explain what literally happened, I would rather tell this story in a metaphor, if you’ll allow me.
Imagine that you decide to go to Sizzler for their all you can eat steak and shrimp offer, as you are definitely in the market for some good steak and shrimp. As you walk into the restaurant, you see signs everywhere selling patrons on the idea that they can eat as much steak and shrimp as they want, no limits, no boundaries, no catch. You think, “wow, this is the place for me!”, and dig into your first big plate of surf and turf.
The waiter comes back after a while and says, “Can I fill you back up?”, to which you reply, “Absolutely! Keep it coming!” The evening goes on, you continue to eat more and more, but you begin to notice that the waiter seems a little less exuberant to refill your plate, and you get the feeling that this promotion was not counting on you showing up on a Friday night. But regardless, you figure I’m here, I’m hungry, and this sign says I can eat all I want for what I am paying.
Here is where the story takes a bit of a turn. Let’s say, 3 hours later, the manager of Sizzler comes to your table, hits you over the head with a club, steals your shoes, and he and the dishwasher throw your limp body in a dumpster in the alley, and walk away. No warning, no admonition that you’ve taken the all-you-can-eat promo too far, nothing. This is the gastrointestinal equivalent of what happened to me with Bluehost. (Not linking to them…I have no desire to send even accidental business their way.)
In a very real way, I am that guy at Sizzler. In July alone, I had used over 10 terabytes of transfered data, and if I were them, I would want me off their network too. I have no disagreement with that. One guy should not be allowed ultimately to eat all the shrimp you make in a day! And no one should be able to use 85% of your bandwidth in a day either. Other people gotta eat, other people gotta run their servers. I get that.
The way it went down was this: Bluehost sent an email out of the blue that said, “You’re using too much of your unlimited bandwidth. All of your 13 sites have been shut down as of this moment. You have 14 days to get your files out.” No warning, no, “hey, sorry about this but we can’t sustain your usage at this rate…we can give you a few days to move your files, but we won’t shut down your sites until that happens, sorry it didn’t work out, etc.” Nope. None of that. Hundreds of thousands of podcast listeners and site viewers could not get to my stuff for a day, which hurts my livelihood in a significant way. I still have a ton to do before things are normal, but HUGE thanks to ZeHosting, who already hosts this site, for swooping in and saving the day, and personally moving everything over and getting us back in shape. Much love their direction.
So again, I am not bugged about the reason they had to cut me off, I’m bothered by the utter lack of humanity in their methods of doing so. We are not all robots. Wait. Maybe they’re robots? That would explain things.
Anyway, just had to get that little thing off my chest. For a great alternate look at what this caused, Randy did a great post on his blog the day this all went down as well.
Let the good times roll.
UPDATE: I am getting a lot of people telling me I should sue, or do other legal stuff. Not interested in any of that. We’ve kicked up a bunch of dust, and got their attention, and that is good enough for me if it means that someone in future does not get treated that way. I got a phone call from them today apologizing for what happened, and offering to keep servers up, etc. (No need to now since it’s too late for that.) That would have NEVER happened if you guys did not collectively let them know that what happened is not cool. So Thanks.
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I’m not really commenting on this. It is what it is. Bluehost will forever stick in my mind as giving those who need a host, the blues. Dumb business move by them. That’s all I have.
I was so angry at how they treated Scott. I’m just glad ZeHosting was kind and awesome enough to save the day. Keep the good work going Scott Johnson. You’re a big inspiration to many of us! =)
I read Randy’s blog yesterday, and getting your side helps clear things up immensely. I agree with you that it was completely wrong how they handled everything, but I’m glad that ZeHosting came in and helped you out.
This really sucks that this happened to you. Just shows how many fans you have if you can use up the unlimited bandwidth they claimed to be giving you. Happy that everything has worked out in the end but it still sucks that it happened. You told them to Fear Steve I bet.
You know my thoughts on them… Screw’Em. You are better off, and Karma will deal with them. Good to hear things are working out.
With that much traffic, you’d think they’d want to work out an advertising deal with you.
Idiots!
My brother (who I’m convinced had a hollow leg) was once kicked out of an all-you-can-eat buffet after staying for over 3 hours and continuing to eat. I kid you not.
It’s a shame that the host-that-shall-not-be-named treats their customers with such a lack of courtesy or respect. Glad you’re back up and running on a more reliable host.
I’m on BlueHost, and had problems in the past. A month or so ago, BlueHost reset my password without telling me, even though it is a fairly complex non-dictionary word based password. It took me two calls and a signed fax statement to get it reset.
Sometimes a lack of professionalism is the achilles heel of tech-y companies. They will not be in business for long if they are going to pull stunts like the one they pulled on you. Not a good business move to do something like that to someone who has a fairly high profile.
“You’re using too much of your unlimited bandwidth”, lol….wut?”
Are you sure it was actually bandwidth? We use HostMonster, which is BlueHost’s sister site. In our ToS it clearly states that at no one time can we use 25% of the CPU on the server. The reason for this is as you stated. It is a shared server, so we have to share it. We have tools on the server to check our CPU usage and it is our responsibility to make sure we are good according to the ToS… I’ll be frank and say I’m amazed all of your stuff isn’t on a dedicated server some where, but us piddly shows know where the bar is at.
Now, I’m not saying what BlueHost was correct and I will agree they are turds. While my little rinky dink operation is no where near yours, I did “sign” an agreement to monitor myself. Not sure how BlueHost’s ToS is set up though.
ZeHosting FTW! Glad it was all straightened out.
In AppSlappy #54 Scott was talking about his love of Apple not simply because of their product, but because of their ‘customer service’. Better customer service is a something that will keep me as a customer over cheaper alternatives every time. Well Bluehost, you have certainly proven to many potential customers…you are no Apple! Nice business model you have their.
Power to the Derp Lord.
Is there anything we readers should do to not overuse your bandwidth?
Good news is… your getting your content back out to everyone. Second good thing is how well you handle it, this post is proof of that. No name calling, no bad mouthing, you have great character my man, good on ya!
Props to Randy and ZeHosting as well!!
I havent seen a Sizzler in 15 years. Are they still around?
Well said. Completely rational expectation on your part to at least receive a warning if cutting you off was what needed to be done. Sad how one little email could have saved BlueHost a ton of bad publicity.
At least they you got all that steak and shrimp without paying, all it cost you was a pair of shoes and that craps expensive.
Almost signed up on Bluehost a few months ago for my personal site. So glad that I went with ZeHosting instead!
You’re the bigger man and you have shown that through your words. Know that, from this day on, every time that Bluehost is mentioned favorably in my presence (electronically or verbally), it will proudly be followed by a *feeeeeeeeert*… Viva la Frogpants!
As Randy said there are over 100,000 people affected by this in terms of getting shows content etc. All it takes is for each of those 100,000 people to tell 10 people and there will be 1,000,000 people who will know about this. Rather shocking that you were treated like this Scott, completely laughable customer service. As someone on Randy’s site said they could have turned this to their advantage and maybe done some advertising deal with you similar to what Leo Laporte does on his network. All in all a rather poor show on their part.
There is no such thing as unlimited anything when it comes to webhosting. The difference between “Unlimited bandwidth” and “1TB bandwidth” is that with 1TB bandwidth, you know where the limit is. You know when you’re approaching it and you can plan for it.
Your analogy made me want to scream “Oh yeah? Well, the JERK STORE called, and they’re running out of YOU!” to Bluehost. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpNPw4H6_tU
Arrr – he was a beast more stomach than man……
Bluehost can suck a big one.
Bluehost is not run by robots. Robots are smarter than that; they would have made you think that they were really, really sorry to have to ask you to leave, and they would have offered to help you move all your stuff to a new host, because robots are smart enough to know that even ex-customers can generate good will for your business.
On the other hand, Bluehost is run by people who are not the least bit interested in getting or keeping new business. My guess is they make all their “real” income from “affiliate programs” (aka “spamming”) and people who run real Web sites would just get in the way of that. It would be interesting to know if Bluehost is somehow connected to Scott Richter (big time spammer, and conviicted heavy equipment thief, of Denver, CO).
There may be some weight to your assertion about them hosting fraudulent websites spam etc. I have done a bit of checking and it appears that their company blog has been rated by Mcafee as fraudulent. Check it out here: http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/mattheaton.com (Site is CEO’s Personal blog and company blog). There are also comments from other users that Blue Host actually steals credit card details and activly deploys/allows fraudulent phishing websites and distributes malware on their networks. Either way is is certainly rather suspicious.
Their business is build on people spending $7/mo to store 20MB on their site and generate 10GB of traffic but they advertise it as “unlimited”.
If you’re doing 10TB/mo get a serious web host
There is plenty of evidence – posted by the CEO of Bluehost himself – that they generate the bulk of their revenue through affiliate programs.
But I agree, Bluehost is not a serious Web host. GoDaddy charges about the same, and has serious support and gets serious traffic.
What cracks me up is the quote ‘you’ve used too much of your unlimited bandwith.’ Now I’m not a math major but that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Keep plugging away Scott, I’ll follow you and your podcasts even if you have to engrave them on sandstone and have to mail them to me.
Scott,
I have been following your work for years and this is what? The 3rd time a hosting company has shafted you? I think it is time to look into your own servers and such. Seeing as you are expanding and trying to do a “network” It may be time to move up with the big boys. Protect your own data. Determine your own fate. Stop leaving it to these stupid web hosting services. Its time to play with the big boys Scott. I think you are ready. I believe this “incident” is a big wake up call.
Glad that everything worked out in the end.
Wow, this makes me wonder what might happen if my band’s website were to become too popular for my webhost to keep me on the bottom tier. Their procedure for warning and upgrading seem reasonable, but a major spike in traffic (like “going Mahir”) would bring out the bad side of seemingly-good hosting companies.
It’s good to see your situation worked out, and they even made an attempt to woo you back. Too bad they didn’t treat you well, so they get what they deserve. Maybe Bigfoot will fight a Bear in their server room.
At first when I saw the headline I was terrified that it was ZeHosting that was the culprit, because I started hosting there thanks to Scott’s recommendations. Luckily it wasn’t. ZeHosting has been awesome and really helpful when I set up and transferred over. Much faster than where I was, too… which was the ultimate goal.
Scott thanks for letting everyone know about Blue (get out of the blue) and the troubles you had. I hope that it will make them a better company so customers don’t get screwed again. Personally they won’t get the chance with me.
now i’m hungry
I’d probably get upset, too, if I wasn’t intelligent enough to understand that it’s not a good idea to abuse a shared hosting service, or know when I’m big enough to stop being a cheapskate and get at least a VPS.
Are they obligated to notify you before they shut you down? What difference would it have made if they did?
“Hey, we’re going to shutoff your site in 24 hours if you don’t stop abusing our servers.”
Give me a break. That’s a fantastic idea, let other customers (shared hosting) suffer while you suck them dry. I’d bet money that you’d notice your site was shut down and you’d wind up contacting Bluehost and asking why before you even bothered to have checked your email, had they notified you ahead of time.
Have you actually read the terms of service that you agreed to when you signed up? Probably not until now, I’d imagine. That’s your fault.
And rather than the rest of you tools with your “LOL UNLIMITED NOT RLY LOL” comments, you do realize that it is also in their terms of service that, not only can they do whatever they want, whenever they want, but they can also do whatever needs to be done to make sure that hundreds of other accounts aren’t being screwed over because one jackass is killing the CPU and bandwidth.
You have no grounds to sue. The fact that you’re this upset is hilarious. Get a real hosting account, moron.
Oh, and I should mention that I am chicken shit that won’t use his real name, or a real address, or anything that might lead to someone holding me and my words accountable. You might even call me a dick. I would. And do for that matter. Plus I didn’t read the post anyway. Had I done so, I would see how dumb my comments are. But that’s ok. I like my world. Eff you guys!
Obvious troll is obvious
heh…didn’t read my post. Oh well.
I do agree with his last paragraph though.
How…why…how can his last paragraph be so insightful and his…you’re a lazy smart person, that’s what you are! Get some sleep, people will like you better. Or ignore my advice, as you probably should, since we don’t even know each other.
Hmmmm…. seems that site also has two ‘actual testimonials’ on their site you can click on and read… I wonder if this was Scott’s original testimonial and they went in and edited his last name… THOUGHT?
I have been a Bluehost customer for over 3 years, and have hosted over 15 websites with Bluehost. I have been very impressed with the knowledgeable support staff that I have spoken to. It is also refreshing to know that when I have a question I can quickly contact them anytime day or night and speak to someone that does not speak broken English located somewhere across the world. Huge plus! Compared to other web hosting server services that I have used, including a dedicated server service, Bluehost has hands down been the most reliable company I have worked with. In addition, the amount of services that they include with their affordable monthly service fee has been wonderful! I have referred several of my friends to Bluehost and will continue to refer more as a result of their competitive price, superior support staff and reliable service.
Scott Jensen
In an unrelated but apropos issue about poor hosting, it seems Liberated Syndication has dropped the ball with the old ELR archives. Currently trying to access the MP3 will redirect loop you into oblivion, this has been happening for a week or more (I know servers have problems, believe me, but a week is ridiculous). I don’t know if you’re aware of this issue, and if there’s anything you can (or want to) do about it, Scott, but I quite miss the old ELRs (especially since iTunes only seem to list the 46 most recent episodes).
Yeah, for some reason my iTunes has always been glitched and I never could download any ELR episode before the 30s
I think you handled it quite well Scott.. They where right to drop you… what they did poorly was how they did it. You reacted properly.. let the community speak… they did.. yikes.. their twitter feed speaks for itself.