Lunarpages Lies About DreamHost’s Billing Fiasco
I’m sure that most folks that know of either of these two hosting companies also know there isn’t any love lost between them. That’s plainly evident from this latest scenario about DreamHost making a serious goof with their billing and overcharged their customers way over what they were normally billed. Not all of them mind you but a heck of a lot of them.
The first posting on DreamHost’s blog is not what I’d call very professional but considering that they conduct themselves on a day to day basis in such a light-hearted manner, what would one expect from them? However, after hundreds of customers complained loud and long about it, they returned and posted again with a follow-up in a more courteous manner and tone with more information. Plus a third one with a final update.
What’s my point? Honesty!
You see, DreamHost could have taken the “Low Road“ here and just denied everything while they frantically worked behind the scenes to correct things. They could have censored the comments on their blog and forums.
No. What they did do was to take the heat in an open, honest manner by accepting the blame and criticisms from all the commentors on their blog and who knows where else. In other words, they Manned Up to everything while working to get their customers refunded as soon as possible.
Will they lose some customers over this? Quite obviously, yes. Will they recover later on down the road? Most definitely yes! Why? Because of the Honesty they’re displaying throughout this whole ordeal. They didn’t hide. They didn’t censor (well, except for maybe this one guy who seemed to have camped out on their virtual doorstep). They didn’t ban customers for voicing their outrage and opinions.
They took the heat like a responsible, honest company!
Enter Lunarpages
Lunarpages (a place I used to work for as well as volunteered my time as a Forum Mod last year) wasted no time in trying to beat Dream Host while they were down by jumping on the first blog post with comment #20 in which an employee offers Dream Host’s customers a $40 off hosting coupon (hmm, last year when LP screwed up, Dream Host offered one year free) plus buying out up to 9 months of their remaining contract if they’d just come on over to LP.
Also in the meantime, a post appeared on LP’s blog with the initial heading of Dream Host Robbing from their Customers! This is my best recollection seeing as they’ve done their usual and edited the blog post. Anyway, how does one get Robbing from their Customers out of a Billing Mistake? Oh, I get it! LP lied!
As people were taking all of this in yet another LP employee (who has their own blog) took it upon themselves to post a topic about this billing mistake and also initially tagged it with stealing and fraud. Damn! Where the hell do you get that from a mistake? The propaganda machines must be running in overtime! Only after getting called out for it on webhostingtalk, did this employee go back and edit his post’s tags.
On this very same web site (Web Hosting Talk) where people go to talk about web hosts and all things that go along with them, there is a thread about the Dream Host snafu where a good many of the users already know that this was indeed a mistake and were somewhat stunned by LP’s immediate play of acting like they were all that high and mighty by downing Dream Host for their error. I think they must have forgotten about the issue they tried to ram down their customers throats last year with the 404 error page fiasco.
I’m going to include a few comments from webhostingtalk from some of the users there who know LP as well as I do for reference:
HOWEVER. While the rest of the internet cracks at DH for the fiasco, Lunarpages decides it would be a good idea to be a bunch of bastards and post a lovely blog post about the whole incident. http://blog.lunarpages.com Enjoy. After reading that I want to seriously choke the person who wrote that…
Yeah, shame on Lunar Pages. Where are ethics and consciousness?
They look like vultures.
It’s quite low of Lunarpages to have Amy Armitage & Mitch Keeler out in full swing!
Oh, I understand that it wasn’t completely unwarranted — Josh can be a nasty little brat sometimes.. but on the other hand, Lunarpages had the opportunity to take the ‘high road’.
The comments above give a good idea of what I’m trying to show here. One thing to note here is that the above comments are unedited and straight from the Forum in which they were posted. Below is one from an employee of Dream Host:
Full disclosure: I believe they made that post in response to DreamHost offering ‘refugee codes’ and blog posts about their company like this one: http://blog.dreamhost.com/2007/10/10…our-customers/
They finally had an opportunity to strike back.
The commentary from the ‘Renown Web Development Technician and Software Development Lead’ did make for some funny reading, though. What’s a ‘portal infrastructure’ anyway?!
The Truth Will Set You Free
Dream Host made a hell of a mistake. Agreed. However, they’ve owned up to it right from the beginning and worked diligently to get things worked out for all of their customers who were affected by it. This is a company that values honesty and integrity when dealing with their customers. Yes, they’re a bunch of jokers. But they came to the table ready and willing to get their customers accounts refunded and take any heat aimed their way. They still are today. Take a look at many of the comments on their blog and you’ll see that there is an appreciation for their honesty.
Moral of the Story
Lunarpages tries to take Dream Host to task over a billing mistake by acting like they were so superior when in fact, LP did everything in their power to cover up their most recent issue up to and including banning customers, censoring them in their forums and deleting any posts they deemed to be bad PR. They even are suspected of getting some other sites that were carrying the story to either delete posts or lock them entirely to prevent the further spread of their fiasco.
A Final Look
It’s actually quite plain to see once you stand back and take a good look at things. Dream Host took the High Road by accepting blame and is working to correct their mistake. Lunarpages on the other hand, took the Low Road by trying to conceal the truth, censoring their customers and even banning some of them. In essence, they lied to cover their butt. They’re doing it again by outright lying about Dream Host’s mistake.
If these two were the only two left to go with for web hosting? My choice would be easy! Dream Host all the way! I’ll take light-hearted honesty over low-browed deceit any time. Wouldn’t you?
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Here’s an excellent post by another blogger about this story: DreamHost made a mistake and fixed it; Lunarpages spreads lies
Seems there are more folks out there that have some knowledge of LP’s practices. Check out this post by someone in the know: DreamHost and Lunarpages
Yet more information is becoming available lately. DreamHost, Lunarpages, $$$ and Integrity
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If you have some more information on this topic and would like to share it, please feel free to leave a comment. The more we all learn the wiser our choices will be in the future.
Update: I’d like to take this opportunity to point something out that I was just made aware of. This post is in no way intended to assist me in “making something of myself” nor to “promote this blog in any way, form or fashion“. This blog is a hobby and nothing more, nothing less. I’d just as soon not learned of LP’s part in all of this. But I did and from past experiences with them, I saw fit to write this piece. Life moves on and so am I.
2nd Update: Call this update: Some people never learn! I boot up the ‘ol machine this morning, hit my email and Thunderbird drops one from a thread on WHT where some moron claiming to work for Lunarpages calls me out over this post. WTF!? Say it ain’t so, Joe! There couldn’t be the smallest of chances that LP would stoop this low again! Again you ask? Check this comment out from last year’s post (I’ll wait for you to get back before I continue )
Well, it seems that the leaf doesn’t fall very far from the tree. This idiot calling themselves “sometruth”, calls me out and attempts to take me to the woodshed over this post and apparently the one from last year. Guess what? Didn’t happen. Read it here!
LP, if you’re going to continue to run business as usual in this fashion, I’d suggest getting a real good Public Relations Manager because you aren’t doing yourself any favors with this type of behavior.
Just in case that post gets edited before any of you get to read it…I have a screen shot of it right here for you.
Final Update: The thread over at WHT was closed yesterday (1/22/2008) because the user calling them selves sometruth made it personal by openly attacking me over getting dressed down by both other users familiar with the thread and by (his/her words) his employer. This was pretty much uncalled for but not totally unexpected. My reply is here.
Seeing as Lunarpages (this idiot claims to be in their employ thus making my following statements directed towards them valid) saw fit to make this a personal attack towards me now, I’ll see to it personally that every shred of this entire event (both last year’s and the one you’ve been reading about) will be documented and put up on a website that I’ve reserved a domain name for just yesterday. There, anyone that runs a search for Lunarpages will be able to find out for themselves just what type of company they are and hopefully keep them from signing up and regretting it. I have no illusions that it will keep everyone from signing up but for those who actually search for information about them, it will provide them with the information they’d want to know before they made a costly mistake by signing up with them.
The domain I registered is lunarpages101.org. It won’t be too long before I have it uploaded with pages and ready for traffic. Nice part of this is that if you type it into your search engine of choice…Lunarpages web site’s link is right below it. SEO should be a piece of cake.
You want personal Lunarpages? I can accommodate that.
This post was intended to be informational and has done that in my judgement. LP turned things personal and that won’t occur on this blog. However, I will see to it that the new site becomes a repository of information directly relating to Lunarpages.
Have a great day people! 
Comments are closed due to the foul language used by self-professed LP employees. Vulgar commentary gets the Delete Button here.
[...] Here’s a well written detailed post about this story: Lunarpages Lies About DreamHost’s Billing Fiasco [...]
Dreamhost and Lunarpages…
There’s been quit the scandal in the web hosting world lately. Dreamhost, a rather large web hosting provider and the company that happens to be my web host, had a major billing snafu. In a nutshell, during a manual update of their billings they…
Great post, Merlin.. and very true.
Whatever, Dreamhost deserves whatever bullshit is coming their way. They made a series of idiotic and unexcusable mistakes, and their moronic apologies are worthless, because they are full of lies.
@ Newt: I’m sure DH is going to get their awakening over this. Time will tell just how much damage they’ve done to themselves but still, them keeping this whole thing out in the open and willing to take all the heat that’s been directed their way says a lot about their character to me. Right or wrong…they kept it honest.
Apparently they are not working to resolve the issue, in my opinion. I got billed for an additional $120 (on January 17th), two days after they said, via an email dated January 15th, that they would refund the initial $120 they billed me. Move two days forward, and there you go again, another charge for $120. Is that working to resolve the issue, by charging me once again, two days after they supposedly were going to refund my money?!! So now, I have $240 owed me.
They also told me not to worry, not to contact my credit card company, blah, blah. I’d be foolish if I hadn’t done that. And, to boot, all this is left hanging over a long holiday weekend, when most banks are closed on Monday.
Of course they don’t want you doing that, as it only adds more problems for them (if there isn’t a full refund Tuesday morning, my bank is initiating a fraud investigation).
If you go to their blog, you will see I’m not the only one this happened to (being charged again). And, I did not have auto-bill/auto pay on, it was disabled. So, they managed to charge me twice, even though auto bill/pay is not enabled. Hmmmm. I also am not the only one that happened to, according to their blog.
“Apparently Dreamhost is working to resolve the issue and have assured customers that there is no need to contact their credit card companies or banks about the billing errors”.
@ still being charged again,
Sounds like they’re “trying” to work it out but aren’t doing it very well. I feel for all of the customers who are still waiting on their refunds. I’m sure it’s an agonizingly slow process and the 2nd and 3rd charges sure don’t help to instill any confidence that this matter is going to get cleared up anytime real soon.
However, there ARE customers who’ve reported refunds being made. Even that one (MW) who was so vocal and persistent even reported that he finally got his.
I’m not defending WHAT they did but HOW they handled it from the beginning. Things could’ve been a lot different if they had kept everyone in the dark about the what’s, why’s and how come’s.
I sincerely hope that you and the others get your refunds as soon as possible.
Interesting read!
Have you checked out this blog post about Lunarpages and Dreamhost from another ex-employee of lunarpages?
http://spacytracie.com/dreamhost-and-lunarpages/391/
Seems the ex-employees of lunarpages sure have a lot to say
Just finished reading the WHT thread about it, from start to finish. Entertaining, perversely speaking.
@ Madferret,
Yes, I’ve read that post. Tracie was my boss when I worked for LP last year. If anyone would know what was going on at LP, she would.
@ Dave,
Yeah, it got ugly there towards the end with sometruth turning it into a personal attack. I knew then the thread was destined for closure because they don’t allow that type of thing there. Maybe that was their plan. Who knows?
At least the idiot proved that LP was behind the personal attacks. That email I sent to Amy was all I needed and that idiot brought it up all by him/herself.
Glad you re-opened the comments. Since that thread over on that other forum, I’ve been more aware of just what Lunarpages was/is capable of. I hauled tail out of there last year when they tried that error page trick on all of us.
Now after reading all of this from the various blogs and forums and the knee jerk reaction from LP’s employee…all I gotta say is: when the hell will the Lunarpages owners put a stop to all this garbage? Their reputation is just that now too…garbage!
Glad I’m with HostGator now! They rock!
Just sign me another ex-LP customer (and glad of it!)
@ another ex-LP customer,
Thanks and I also wonder why the owner(s) of LP haven’t stepped in to put an end to this garbage. Quite obviously, their reputation is in the crapper. Adding more stink to an already building stench of lies and deception was the only outcome that sometruth wound up with.
I wanted to really ask: “Hey! Why are you wanting to keep giving LP’s reputation another black-eye?”
Oh and good luck with HostGator. I have some friends hosted over there and they seem to like it.