Green Geeks Web Hosting Review
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In my journey of building my website and my ecommerce store, I have had tried to find my way through trial and error. Finding a good web host (and ecommerce solution) has been no exception. I apologize in advance to my regular readers because this post is sort of long and sort of technical but my tale must be told.
Yahoo's Customer Service (Nobody is there)
The best part of Yahoo was the uptime. They say 99%, I say 100%. They are always up and they are always fast. No worries there. You simply do not have to worry about uptime with Yahoo.
The drawback to Yahoo hosting? You get very little site control and zero customer service. I mean NONE. They are great if you do not have any questions, problems or issues. If you do, you will get a cut and pasted response from someone in another country who speaks English as a second language. Forget about getting help. You wont get it. I used to joke that I would consult my cat Blackie when I needed support for Yahoo hosting because he was more helpful. (He would at least meow at me). If you don’t have a cat and you use Yahoo, you could try consulting your spice rack if you have a problem.
After Yahoo, I switched to Media Temple. I pay about 3 times what a normal hosting package will cost, but they are the holy grail of customer service. They are educated, intelligent, friendly, helpful, wonderful guys in LA who speak English as a first language and are ready and eager to help. I usually wait less than 2 minutes to speak to a live, helpful human being.
Buuuuuut…..Media Temple’s uptime sucks. OK, their uptime is probably reasonable, but their load times are totally unacceptable. While I don’t pretend to know exactly what is going on over there, apparently they have some sort of a cluster, grid server going on. That means that I share space with other domains. That means (if I understand correctly) that when someone types in a URL to my site, they are sort of queued up in line behind everyone else trying to pull up a site on the same grid.
Sometimes when I go to my site, there are one, two or even three minute load times. Internet surfers might wait three seconds before hitting the back button on their browser. I wont even wait three minutes to go to my own site. In their defense, it is not always that bad. Sometimes it loads fine and it seems to be totally random whether or not my site will load quickly or not.
Blazing fast for Starbucks, smoldering for me
A few months ago my entire site was infiltrated by the WordPress worm (which was sort of my fault for not being on the latest version) and I spent a great deal of time totally rebuilding my site to entirely new WordPress installations. Then…..tons of Media Temple accounts were infiltrated because apparently they had our database passwords stored in plain English. Mine was included in the hack attack.
Between the load times and the careless password storage I finally (reluctantly) decided to switch to a new host. I really wanted a “green” host that ran on either solar or wind since I talk the natural living talk, I should be walking the walk. I decided on Green Geeks based on the fact that they run on wind power and almost as importantly, they offered free site migration when you pay for a year of hosting in advance.
I want to repeat that. I could have paid month to month but I decided to pay a year in advance for the free site migration. I also could have gone with a number of other eco-hosting companies, but I chose Green Geeks for the site migration.
JANUARY 25
I signed up on January 25 and paid for a full year.
JANUARY 30
I followed the instructions to initiate the site migration. This is the reply I received:
“I am going to have to escalate this to our level 2 technicians to investigate the issue. One of our level 2 technicians will get back to you as soon as possible and will update you as updates are made available.”
Ummm. OK. Don’t do this much? All I can figure is that they only know how to migrate CPanel to CPanel and Media Temple is not CPanel so they got all confused and had to “escalate it” to a Level 2 technician to migrate my site.
The next day I got an email saying they had initiated the transfer. I went into the account a week or so later and nothing was transferred. I decided to do it myself rather than dealing with them. I had begun to figure that they did not know what they were doing but that was sort of OK with me if my site would start loading super fast.
FEBRUARY 14
I emailed support to let them know that I transferred all my own files via FTP because I couldn see that they had not migrated my site AT ALL. I then asked for help with the temporary domain.
I got a cut and paste reply that had nothing to do with my question. After a bit of digging, I figured it out myself.
In the next two weeks I had a couple of problems with the transfer and was hitting limits on my php.ini file. With Media Temple I was able to go in and change the file myself to increase my transfer limit. I emailed Green Geeks and asked them how to increase it and never heard back.
FEBRUARY 26 (31 days after I started service)
I sent this email to billing:
“Can you tell me if it is possible to cancel my hosting package and get a prorated refund for the rest of the year? I thought the free site migration would make it easy but as it turns out I am doing most of it myself and I do not have the time.”
Let me just stop here to say that I am not an idiot. I know how to transfer a freaking domain name and that was not the problem. That takes two minutes. I am transferring an entire website and databases and files. I don’t know why this woman was yammering about transferring a domain name or sending me links to their “knowledgebase” article. The problem was the site transfer, not domain name.
For those who have no clue what I am talking about, imagine you are living in a kick ass SOHO loft apartment. It is luxurious, modern and wonderful. The only problem is that you share a phone line with the entire building so nobody can reach you half the time. You finally get sick of it and find an apartment out in Brooklyn somewhere that offers free movers if you pay six months rent in advance (on a month to month apartment with no lease). You pay six months rent and the movers never show. Now you are paying double rent so you start to box the stuff up yourself. You finally realize that you don’t have the resources to move yourself so you contact the Brooklyn landlord and ask for a refund for the remaining months rent.
They say “You don’t deserve any money but the good news is, you can still move! Here is a change of address form!”
You say…”Why do I need a change of address form? I haven’t set foot in the apartment yet?”
They say “We will give you a credit IF you move in…..and because you are having trouble moving, here is a change of address form.”
You say “I can get that at the post office or online. You promised movers and never sent them and I never moved in. I want my money back.”
They say “Screw you. If you are stupid enough to pay us in advance then we deserve to keep your money.”
FEBRUARY 28
I paid for an entire year upfront and only used 31 days. I am asking for a prorated refund for the unused hosting.
…I need to transfer my hosting but I simply cannot right now. I am single mother with two young girls and I am trying to run a bustling ecommerce store and build a website and manage the social media and blog and customer service and all other issues at night when my daughters are asleep. I seriously just don’t have time to transfer my site right now.
I contacted you regarding how to change the php.ini file upload limit and never heard back. I am getting error messages on the WP blogs about exceeding file limits. I just DO NOT have the time to research this stuff to figure out how to make it work. I just don’t.
As an alternative, I would be happy to let you freeze my hosting plan and resume when I have the time to take care of these issues in the transfer or I have the cash to pay someone to transfer my site properly. I honestly do not see why I should be forced to pay for a full year when I only used 30 days and realized it was not going to work at this time.
I also do not see why you would refuse to prorate a refund for people who build websites and write on the internet when your business is web hosting. Don’t you think people will blog/write/twitter about this sort of service? Just saying.
Please let me know if you are willing to accommodate me in a more customer service friendly manner. “
MARCH 2,
I can NOT refund you the full of amount of your account and I can NOT give you a prorated refund. But what I can and will do is BUY you some free time. Here is my offer. You paid $95.40 for a year of hosting. I will give you a refund for 2 months of service. This will give you “free time” to get your account up and running…and you don’t have to do it alone, a Green Geeks rep will work with you on transferring your account……I will refund the $15.90 to your account and move your ticket to our support department so a Green Geeks rep can work with you to transfer your domain name and address any other questions/concerns you may have.”
She spent the first 2/3 of the email yelling at me because I sent a fresh email instead of hitting “reply” when responding to her initial email and that forced her to (gasp) send me an email asking me for the reference number.
Most companies who give a damn about their customers/reputation/referrals/repeat business would say something like “Wow..sorry it hasn’t worked out. Anything we can do? Sure here is your refund. Please come back to us when you are ready”. Instead they are keeping my money for web hosting for time in the future that has not happened yet. I am 100% convinced that they spend their revenue the second they get it.
MARCH 5
I had been mulling over what I wanted to do. I want a website that loads. When my site loads fast, my income from the site literally quadruples. It is not just income, it is about visitors not getting to read the content they came to read. It is lost traffic, lost interest and lost reputation. Then again, are load times worth dealing with a company with an unethical mission statement and a worthless tech department?
As I stated earlier, I HAVE to move from Media Temple because their customer service is spectacular but the hosting sucks and that is really what I am paying for.
Since the transfer to GG is already mostly complete, I am half inclined just to use your service for the remainder of the year and then find another new host and do it again. If I decide I want to go ahead and use your services, I will let you know when I have time to work with your tech dept to finish transferring my files and databases.”
MARCH 6
I am now going to move this ticket to our technical support queue and a Green Geeks rep will contact you shortly to help you with your domain name transfer. Additionally, I have just e-mail a copy of the Green Geeks knowledge base article, “Domain Name Transfer Instructions (Primary Domain Names)” to sheryl@amuchbetterstore.com. I know you are busy but I hope you will take a moment to read through this article and let us work with you to get your web site up and running and to give Green Geeks a chance to show you how great our web hosting services and support department are!”
OK…what is wrong with this woman? Does she not speak English or does she just not care? Is she just ignoring me or is she stupid? We will never know. I figured if she was either to stupid or ignorant to read my emails then I could not bother attempting a transfer. Her stupidity and inflexibility was a terrible omen.
MARCH 11
The fact that you either do not understand what I said or simply don’t care is enough to finalize it for me. I DO NOT want to use your hosting or your service. I am happy to pay for the 30 days I used but I asked for a refund on the 31st day of service so I am still kindly requesting a prorated refund for 11/12ths of the annual hosting fee.
I deleted all my files and I will not be logging in or transferring anything else to you. I hope this email was clear enough.”
MARCH 11
Additionally, as I originally pointed out you are not due a refund. Our web site clearly states that we give money back when a client cancels within 30 days of registering. You signed up with Green Geeks on 01/25/2010 and you did not submit an e-mail requesting to cancel your account by 2/24/2010. Therefore you do NOT qualify for a refund.
At your request, your account will be terminated and all of your files deleted.“
Didn’t I just tell this lady that I already deleted all my own files? She is 100% illiterate. To top it off, they went back to my VISA (without my authorization) and charged me $15.40 for the refund they gave me. 
Green Geeks (short term) Business Plan
These people are NUTS.
Anyway, I reported them to the Better Business Bureau, Complaints Board.com and My3cents.com. One of the commenters suggested I contact VISA to report the dispute. I am going to take that advice on Monday.
I cannot believe that their business policy is essentially to rob people. I see they have other complaints on BBB for the same thing. If you are stupid enough to pay in advance to Green Geeks, I guess you deserve to lose your money. What gets me more than the fact that I got no products or services for my money is that I paid for time that hasn’t even happened yet. It is clearly bad business but my question is; “Is it even legal?”.
I could have at least kept the $15 credit if I kept my hosting open and just didn’t use it. I should have uploaded a ton of stuff to their servers and forced them to use another windmill.
Image Credits:
Green Geeks Gravatar: ohhh! by hamron, on Flickr
Yahoo’s Customer Service Ghost town: JohnB49 on Flickr.com
Media Temple’s smoldering load times: Ben Sutherland on Flickr.com
Green Geeks Extremely Shortsighted Business Plan: Thirteen of Clubs on Flickr.com
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31 Responses to “Green Geeks Web Hosting Review”
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Tags: ecommerce, green geeks, media temple, Product Reviews, web hosting
March 14th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
[...] Finding a good web host (and ecommerce solution) has been no exception. I apologize in advance to my regular readers because this post is sort of long and sort of technical but my tale must be told. … See the original post here: A Much Better Blog » Blog Archive » Green Geeks Web Hosting Review [...]
March 28th, 2010 at 8:46 am
What a learning experience. That is the reason why I hate using new hosts. I like to read reviews about it. You had to go through this headache to get your money back, that is annoying. At least people can learn from this post.
Zack´s last blog ..White Background
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:27 am
You should submit a review to this website, it seems to actually be unbiased. I’m not associated with it, I’ve just found it frustrating that something like this is so hard to find.
http://www.checkwebhosting.com/
April 9th, 2010 at 2:52 am
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April 11th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Jeez sounds like an ordeal.
Like zack said in the other post, at least people can learn from your experience.
Thanks!
office cleaning services´s last blog ..Online Cleaning Quotes, Why Get Them?
April 19th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
http://xhostia.com
Get a free Website. Create your own Blog or Community
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April 20th, 2010 at 8:38 am
@Sam, thanks for the recommendation.
@Sheryl, thanks for writing a review on our site. What is the follow-up so far? We actually have a section called Web Host Dispute, which we actually want to publish all the disputes on our website to force the scamming web host come clean in this. If you are interested to make your story our first case study, please contact me.
April 21st, 2010 at 9:20 am
Yea, definitely a learning experience. Funny that you mentioned Yahoo’s hosting. I also started there when I started and then moved on to better support.
April 22nd, 2010 at 2:45 am
http://pinkcabi.net
we are proud to announce an unbelievable fast free web hosting service!
Use the navigation links at the top to find out more information about our services and to sign up for a free account.
April 25th, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Great content posted!
May 16th, 2010 at 10:12 am
So who are you hosting with now?
May 16th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
I stuck with Media Temple. As I was writing this post I had a customer service issue and had to contact them. I had to wait all of 30 seconds to talk to a native English speaking, super helpful and super courteous gentleman. I was sold all over again. In fact, I felt rather guilty for ever thinking of leaving them.
May 18th, 2010 at 10:28 am
I am sorry you had such a horrible experience with all the hosting companies. I would like to recommend a hosting company that I think puts customer service, and price into their top priority. Ix Web Hosting has 24 hour customer service. I mean, I called them at 1 am and they answered, sound unheard of, right, but they did… Secondly, they have web hosting for $7.95 a month and that gives me 16 dedicated ip addresses, for as many sites as I can dream of creating… most hosting companies give you one dedicated Ip… I would recommend looking at a non-green company if you are looking for value and reliability… wishing you all the best in your future!!
May 22nd, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Good. Ini luar biasa.Ternyata pesan error 404 bisa dimanfaatkan untuk make money
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:05 am
Cool, great share,great article,very usefull for me…thank
May 24th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Does anyone know of a cheap but reliable web hosting company?,-’
June 3rd, 2010 at 7:27 am
I hope this isnt too spammy but….
@Tyler, Bluelighthost are awesome….
Great post btw, its a shame that some companies are dishonest and steal money.
June 3rd, 2010 at 10:07 am
Hi Tyler,
You may not have seen my post, 3 above yours… Anyway, I have been using them for over a year now and they are wonderful!! Every time I call the support people are sooo friendly.. I am amazed! Usually tech support people make you feel soo stupid you feel like an idiot. but not IX web hosting, they just solve my problem and move on to the next customer. they are also quite inexpensive… good luck to you…
June 11th, 2010 at 10:30 am
A good read. Thanks for the post. I’ve had my share of problems with the Yahoo hosting services. But now I have a much better host server.. Thanks for this post.. It’s a good read.
June 12th, 2010 at 10:18 am
5 Steps To Choose A Great Free Hosting Service…
My blog is about free hosting domains…
June 18th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Well, it looks like they are still up and running, and still ripping people off.. I hate dishonest people!
@Tyler, you could check out000webhost, they have a free service which is amazing and also a paid for like $5 a month.
Zach
Zach@ZachsHealthBlog´s last blog ..What Is Blood Pressure?
July 5th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
dishonest people are everywhere in the cyber world. If we are not careful, we are an easy prey for these unscrupulous people. they ain’t got a heart. simply devilish. better be careful than sorry. charge it to experience and better luck next time.
July 28th, 2010 at 1:24 am
does anyone know what provider has the highest inode limit?
JKS´s last blog ..Informative on Dedicated Servers – Web Hosting
July 28th, 2010 at 7:18 am
it is recommended when choosing new web hosting company to read user reviews, you can avoid many problems. I think it is better not to choose cheapest web hosting service, because the quality of web hosting is not very high
August 1st, 2010 at 5:24 pm
There are better solutions out there than Yahoo… but you took the first steps of getting that far, which many people will not do!
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:05 am
there are many webhosting companies these days and most of them are overselling their products”,,
August 5th, 2010 at 6:39 am
This type of things happen all over the world, but every time you feel the same bitter taste.
August 5th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
What a story! Interesting experience. It is true that we have to be carefull when we change hosting, oh yes.
August 10th, 2010 at 9:53 am
I have had problems with my hosting provider. There servers are going down all the time. I have quite a few websites hosted with them and it will be a nightmare to start moving them over to a new server. They claim there uptime is 99.9% which is bull. Could I do something about false claims on there website?
Mike@web design surrey´s last blog ..Personal Trainer Website
August 25th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
@ Mike
Some host can help you move your files for free to their servers without recording any downtime. Just find the right host that’s all that mattters.
August 29th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
When you are building a website or putting up a business online or even offline you will go through trial and error until you gain the success. I haven’t tried yahoo hosting but I hear some from friends that yahoo hosting is good with its features.