Problems with Webmasters.com
by Arthur
Posted on Friday, October 6th, 2006 at 8:04 pm CET
In the last year I’ve had quite a few problems with Webmasters.com. Luckily I am not using their services anymore for quite a while, but I am still waiting to receive a refund, and they refuse to answer my emails.
It all started about a year ago when I added some domains to my existing account. I had a basic $14.95/month hosting account on a shared server, and one of the account features was ‘Addon domains’. This is what it still says on their website regarding addon domains:
Addon domains can be pointed to any subdirectory, page or external URL, and appear as separate websites, without the need to purchase additional hosting accounts. Each account can host up to 20 Addon domains in addition to the primary domain. Each Addon domain includes real time traffic statistics, and up to 100 separate mailboxes with autoresponders which can be forwarded to any single or multiple email addresses.
What I found out was that this doesn’t work properly at all. The domains I added to my account were actually being forwarded to the subdirectory. For instance www.addondomain.com would automatically redirect to www.addondomain.com/subdir/ with the subdir being a subdirectory on the primary domain. This had as a result that www.primarydomain.com/something.html was the same as www.addondomain.com/something.html. The redirects were also not done with proper 301 redirects, so the sites were poorly indexed by Google.
After many emails with the support desk they told me I should get the ‘Unique IP address’ option for an additional $5 per month to solve the problem. This, however, didn’t make the slightest difference. I had many conversations with the support desk, and they kept promising to solve the issue, but kept postponing it. They let me wait for about 2 months; every time they’d wrote things like:
We are actually on the brink of releasing the updated forwarding system. It will approach forwarding from the Apache configuration not a script. This will allow proper search engine categorization as well as no pesky framing or needing an IP.
They kept writing that they were ‘on the brink’ of releasing the new system, but it never happened. After two months they suddenly wrote:
We plan on upgrading our forwarding system within the next 60 days. There has been an unforseen delay in implementation of fully hosted forwarding domains.
That’s when I decided to leave Webmasters and move my sites to another host. I cancelled my account at the beginning of 2006.
According to their own rules I would be refunded the remainder of the year that I had prepaid, which was until August 2006. They also promised to refund me the costs for the Unique IP address. Altogether I was expecting a refund of over US$ 100.
By April I still hadn’t received the refund, so I wrote their billing department but never received an answer. I wrote more emails a month later, and again later in the summer, but never received a response.
This week they sent me the following:
Please be advised that your hosting account for ****.com expired on 08/14/2006 and has been disabled. To re-activate your account, and continue service for another year, please remit your payment as soon as possible by using the following link: […]
First of all, why tell me to renew my account almost 2 months after it expired?! And secondly, I cancelled the account myself over 6 months ago, so why send me this at all?!
Five days ago I replied to this email and copied their billing email address, asking again why they never gave me the refund on the hosting costs and unique IP costs, but so far I still haven’t received an answer back.
Does anyone else have these problems with Webmasters.com? I was a happy customer with them for about 5 years until the problems started with the add-on domains. I was really disappointed by their poor implementation of add-on domains, the support desk that kept stringing me along, and the billing department who declined to answer my emails and refund my money. 🙁
In the last year I’ve had quite a few problems with Webmasters.com. Luckily I am not using their services anymore for quite a while, but I am still waiting to receive a refund, and they refuse to answer my emails.
It all started about a year ago when I added some domains to my existing account. I had a basic $14.95/month hosting account on a shared server, and one of the account features was ‘Addon domains’. This is what it still says on their website regarding addon domains:
Addon domains can be pointed to any subdirectory, page or external URL, and appear as separate websites, without the need to purchase additional hosting accounts. Each account can host up to 20 Addon domains in addition to the primary domain. Each Addon domain includes real time traffic statistics, and up to 100 separate mailboxes with autoresponders which can be forwarded to any single or multiple email addresses.
What I found out was that this doesn’t work properly at all. The domains I added to my account were actually being forwarded to the subdirectory. For instance www.addondomain.com would automatically redirect to www.addondomain.com/subdir/ with the subdir being a subdirectory on the primary domain. This had as a result that www.primarydomain.com/something.html was the same as www.addondomain.com/something.html. The redirects were also not done with proper 301 redirects, so the sites were poorly indexed by Google.
After many emails with the support desk they told me I should get the ‘Unique IP address’ option for an additional $5 per month to solve the problem. This, however, didn’t make the slightest difference. I had many conversations with the support desk, and they kept promising to solve the issue, but kept postponing it. They let me wait for about 2 months; every time they’d wrote things like:
We are actually on the brink of releasing the updated forwarding system. It will approach forwarding from the Apache configuration not a script. This will allow proper search engine categorization as well as no pesky framing or needing an IP.
They kept writing that they were ‘on the brink’ of releasing the new system, but it never happened. After two months they suddenly wrote:
We plan on upgrading our forwarding system within the next 60 days. There has been an unforseen delay in implementation of fully hosted forwarding domains.
That’s when I decided to leave Webmasters and move my sites to another host. I cancelled my account at the beginning of 2006.
According to their own rules I would be refunded the remainder of the year that I had prepaid, which was until August 2006. They also promised to refund me the costs for the Unique IP address. Altogether I was expecting a refund of over US$ 100.
By April I still hadn’t received the refund, so I wrote their billing department but never received an answer. I wrote more emails a month later, and again later in the summer, but never received a response.
This week they sent me the following:
Please be advised that your hosting account for ****.com expired on 08/14/2006 and has been disabled. To re-activate your account, and continue service for another year, please remit your payment as soon as possible by using the following link: […]
First of all, why tell me to renew my account almost 2 months after it expired?! And secondly, I cancelled the account myself over 6 months ago, so why send me this at all?!
Five days ago I replied to this email and copied their billing email address, asking again why they never gave me the refund on the hosting costs and unique IP costs, but so far I still haven’t received an answer back.
Does anyone else have these problems with Webmasters.com? I was a happy customer with them for about 5 years until the problems started with the add-on domains. I was really disappointed by their poor implementation of add-on domains, the support desk that kept stringing me along, and the billing department who declined to answer my emails and refund my money. 🙁
11:54 am
I’m curious if you know if this has been resolved? I’m looking at webmasters.com but having my addon domains be indexed properly by search engines and working correctly in general is extremely important. If webmasters.com isn’t better, would you recommend another site?