I have been with Vodahost for less than three months now, but wish I had never have chosen them or gone anywhere near them, they're absolutely useless.

They say they are absolutely fanatical about customer support - what a joke!! When you do submit a support ticket it can take days for them to respond and then when they do so, the support language used can be rather rude and abrupt.

So, drawing a blank there, you think to yourself, ok I'll post on the forum, see what joy I can receive there.

Word of advice, whatever you do, word your concern very very VERY VERY carefully, this company loves to maintain a squeeky clean image to get your money.

My first post ever on the forum was to my website designer thanking her publically for helping me out, very professional Lady, just superb to work with, nothing but high praise for her, lo and behold, the post was immediately jumped on by some guy telling me that self promotion and prefabricated praise was not allowed. I took exception to this, first pointing out that I was not self promoting myself, but another kind lady who had helped me out so much and that I thought it rather rude that he should be suggesting on my first post ever that I was some kind of liar by saying that the praise had been set up in advance, when in fact it had been given quite spontaneously.

In jump 3 VH supporters, each lamblasting me with their remarks completely derailing the thread and ridiculing my website designer. Again I thought this was very rude, for everyone likes to receive praise, and it is exceptionally rude of the admin to pile in, to take down someone who has just received high praise for a job well done. The thread disintegrated, I was rather forthright I admit and gave as good as I got, before too long however, despite sterenuously complaining about the actions of the admin, the thread was deleted. As were all my other subsequent threads aimed at helping others in the community with their concerns. I was then banned for 14 days from the forum.

What I do think is unfair is that these admin each self promote their own web site design services, and since right at the start I turned one of them down, choosing an 'ordinary' member instead, it seems this was the source of the problem I was having with them. I do not think it right that these admin can self promote their services which creates a conflict of interest which does not propagate a fair playing field for everyone else.

Upon getting back on the forum, I make a post of apology, thinking it better to smooth the waters, afterall I had been pretty forthright myself responding to these control freaks. I was told that my initial comments were not 'appropriate', to which I replied that I was terribly sorry, that I would make sure that in the future I did not heap positive praise on other members and that I would do my level headed best to reign such positivism in. Of course, not understanding the British sense of humour, the whole thread was immediately deleted in full.

Now to this evening and the past week.
Towards the end of the ban from the forum ONE OF VODAHOSTS SERVERS CRASHED, wiping out my website entirely, everything except for the front page, all the work, time and effort put in, it all vanished.

Rather than supporting a new ticket for customer support, knowing their track record, I made a post in the SEO section of the forum, extremely matter of factly and ever so polite, asking if there was a chance of some kind of compensation for the loss of business in the past week - even an apology would have been nice, and maybe some useful freebie thrown in, to let me know that they cared - nothing of the sort.

THE ENTIRE THREAD WAS IMMEDIATELY DELETED IN THREE MINUTES FLAT!!

I posted again straightaway asking where my thread had disappeared to, that was deleted straightaway too, I posted again, saying that if this kept on happening I would set up my own independent forum for other complainee's to have a true voice and that they the admin were welcome to respond out in the open there - the power of the internet and freedom of speech - obviously deleted straightaway, hence I came here to make this rather lengthy thread.

What annoys me is that I/we spent hours upon hours upon hours designing the website and within 2 weeks of it being fully online, pretty much every page was lost, requiring all that work to be put in again.

This is a new business, I have invested everything I have pretty much to get this set up and running and previously was unemployed with no savings, so you can imagine how important it is to me to have a host who will truly look after me.

Vodahost has been nothing but a headache, all the effort put in to increase my SEO rankings, has gone down the drain, since most of the pages returned a Page Not Found - brilliant, this is all I need!! Where is the ultimate sarcasm emoticon when you need it?!!

My advice to anyone thinking of using Vodahost for your small business website is NOT TO TOUCH THEM WITH A BARGEPOLE!! They really are useless, customer support is terrible and rude, the forum is an absolute joke, the only reason you cannot see any neative remarks is because I guess, ll those kind of posts have been deleted. What does that say to the rest of the world? What true image is represented when you can't see out of a community of 10,000, not even one complaint? You want to ask yourself, are they REALLY, I mean REALLY that good, or is something fishy fggoing on?

If anyone can point me in the direction of a decent host that understands true customer support, I'd be delighted to hear from you and whether it is feasible to transfer my website to another company, whilst too, still being able to maintain changes to my web pages every now and then using someone else.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY WITH VODAHOST IF YOU ARE A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER, if you do so, it will be a lesson learned and a terrible mistake!!