I was caught completely off guard on last Thursday when I attempted to go to The 6th Floor and noticed it was a parked domain. Fearing my account had been hacked or taken off line for whatever reason I contacted my host, ipower. In the past 5 years I have had nothing but props for my hosting company. Unfortunately the information and lack of support I received the last 5 days has been quite disappointing.

It seems on March 16 they received a noticed that hosting should not be renewed and the web site was being canceled. Their files show that I made this request. They claim they have documentation to back this up. At any rate I had not changed my default yearly renewal since I had been hosted, so that leads to the question, why was I canceled?

I still don’t know, guess I have to go with their answer, while I don’t believe what they say getting my site back online, as I had it before it was canceled has been challenging, to say the least. Aside from having to sign up with ipower again, after being hosted for 5 years. I lost everything. For inquiring minds, no I had nothing backed up that was the responsibility of ipower since I was paying them to do that as well.

I have been in numerous online support chat sessions with sales and tech support. Neither have been all that helpful. I guess that could be the result of outsourcing, who knows and I can only speculate. After repeated conversations, another yearly hosting fee and $30 set up fee, which they would not wave I have my site back online.

Today was a reach bitch to say the least. I will be the first to admit, I know nothing about SQL. Yet ipower wanted $75 (I was quoted $50 by sales) to set everything back up, including my SQL databases. After some nasty responses back to them, telling them I wanted my site returned to the status it was prior to them deleting it and I refuse to pay any additional fees, some tech support individual converted and imported the main database. Yet some 24 other databases remain. To be honest I might just let it go at this point.

I was not done though. I sent a scathing e-mail to a ‘Contact Us’ link explaining everything that transpired. While I don’t expect an answer or any apology I don’t believe I will be recommending ipower to friends who want to get a web site online. Everything was all find and dandy when they were getting my money, but when I really needed help, they more less said sorry, nothing we can do.

Sorry ipower, while I might continue hosting for 12 months, you have lost me as a real supporter to your company. It’s really sad to see companies shitting on their clients when they need them most. I did learn a few lessons, one of which I already knew. Even though I pay ipower to back up my site, I will have to start the task on a weekly basis, for fear they will silence my word or cancel my site.