Just a heads up. As many of you know, GoDaddy's CEO shot an elephant for fun this year. This caused quite a stir amoung animal rights movements and others who think this sort of behavior is outlandish. Elephants are so smart and social. And this guy really had a hard on about doing it. He filmed it, posted it on the tubes bragging. Their business has been slammed because of it.
Here's a link if you want to read of this horrendous act. MSNBC
So I wanted to move hosting companies, but because I was on the road last month I thought I'd renew for one month and then migrate the site when I got home this week. So I called GoDaddy CS and tried to pay my bill. Evidently, I had to have my secret number or THEY WOULD NOT TAKE MY MONEY! I spent over half an hour on the phone with them. I told them I wasn't going to be back home to look for this pin for weeks. No way, they wouldn't budge. Now, I could understand having to have this pin if I were going to say, shut down my service. But how insane is it that you can't pay them without it?
So here I was, interviewing for writing positions, and saying I had this website to show off my work... and they shut it down. That looks great, eh?
So I get back in town last weekend, and I called them today. We finally figure out my pin... they not only shut my site down they deleted all the information! Now, they want 150 dollars to 'find' my site. That's just blackmail and I won't pay it.
In addition, the guy tries to tell me that if I hadn't paid the electric company they would shut off my service. I said, "Yes, but if I called the electric company with my credit card in hand, they wouldn't refuse to take my money if I couldn't remember the secret word." But more, even if they had shut off my electricity, they wouldn't have come to the house, ripped out all the wiring then demanded I pay them to put it back in before they turned my service back on.
It was a stupid analogy on the salesman's part. They tried to call requiring a pin a secuity measure, let me just say, if anyone wants to pay any of my bills at any time FOR me, they should be allowed to. No matter what the reason. What if I were in the hospital? What if I was deployed? What if I ran off to Africa to save more elephants from their blood thirsty CEO?
I am both desastated and furious at losing 2 years worth of work, looking bad to people I interviewed with and having to start all over from scratch. While I have some of my articles backed up, I considered the hosting service safer than my computer. Lesson learned, if ever someone you do business with is such a jerk as to kill an elephant for fun, don't wait till the service runs out to switch. You just have to know, it's not going to end well.
I'm going with Blue Host I think. They allow you to have multiple domains under the one hosting plan and they don't outsource. I asked them what happens if I forget my secret pin while on the road, they said they work with you to make things right. They also have a great CS rating. Anyone have any other recommendations? Any experiences with Blue Host?