Shortly: some years ago I started to use the Dreamhost web hosting service and now, after they closed my accounts without a reason, they refuse to charge back my money and to get me access to the domain names I registered with them.

It was ok at the beginning, some years ago. Cheap and almost unlimited space. After a while, they told me that my web sites need a dedicated server, because they consume too many resources. I bought a dedicated server at Dreamhost, but it was a very poor service, even after I bought more memory. So I had to close the dedicated server and went back to the sharing web hosting, buying several web hosting packages. Starting with 2 or 3 years ago, the web hosting service was from lower to lower, and from more to more frequently problems.

When I wanted to help them and I told them some time ago that through my phpMyAdmin I have access to other user databases and that they have to resolve this bug, they repaired it than sent me a message denying that it was a bug and telling me that I use too many resources of the server. I closed a lot of my web sites in order to comply with them.

Some months ago they received a complaint about using the expression “farm insurance” within one of my web site related on insurance and asked me to remove this expression from the metatags, warning me that they will close my accounts (I had 5 web hosting package with them) if I will not comply with their request.

I removed it.

About one month ago, they charged me a lot of money for a problem with their online billing software, I understood that it was a general problem (see here and here). I asked to be charged back, and so it started my big problems with Dreamhost. On February 5th in the morning I saw that all my web sites were down and, when I entered within the Control Panel, I saw the warning “This account is currently disabled!” on all my 5 accounts, and a message about closing my accounts.

I am absolutely sure that I never intended to violate their terms, but with more than 400 web sites it is almost impossible to not make some small errors that they can claim. So I moved to another web hosting service and I wrote to them asking to give me FTP access in order to make backup of my files, asking them if they will charge me back for the remaining days because I paid for some accounts for a whole year and I used 2 or 3 months only, and asking to give me access to the domain names that I registered through them or to give me the authorization code needed to transfer the domain names to another registrar.

Unfortunately, after almost a week I received no answer yet from them although I sent them several requests, so, it seems that I lost my money. Even more important for me, the domain names I registered with them will be lost, included the work, money and time I spent to promote these domain names and web sites all these years.

Because I don’t care too much for the money that I paid to them and they did not charge it back, but I care a lot for the domain names, I filled an online complaint at the Federal Trade Commission in order to get back my domain names. I hope this will help me.

Besides, I wanted to send a complaint to ICANN about the domain names registered with Dreamhost and for which I have no more access. ICANN sent me to Internic for such problems. On Internic, the most appropriate sample of domain name dispute is “If your complaint concerns a failure to answer phones or respond to email messages”, but they write for this kind of problems that “it is not within ICANN’s mission to address any customer-service related matters that fall outside of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA).”

So, it seems that if a registrar wants to take your domain name, it is enough to give you no more access to the administration of that domain name and to answer no more to your messages because, for a physical person or a small company, there is no way or not enough money to constraint the registrar to respect your rights and your ownership for a given domain name.

My problem and their problem is that I do not intend to let them my domain names, so I will fight for my rights till I will get it back.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 2:07 am and is filed under Business, Companies, Computer security, Domain Names, Dreamhost, IT, Internet, Justice, Legislation, Web hosting, Webmasters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.