New Ownership Dishonest

I had been a customer of WH4L for four or five years--I had at least a dozen different accounts with them. They had a good collection of ASP components, and their control panel was well suited for accounts that needed to host multiple domains together. Like any host, they had a glitch every now and then, but they were pretty good and I was a fan.

However, at the beginning of this year, all that changed. We were told of a "migration" to a new platform, which really translated into their being bought. The new platform did not include all of the components that I had before and relied upon. I couldn't get statistics split out among multiple domains on one account. I couldn't get remote access to a MySQL database. Some of those ASP components weren't there.

After talking with the support team (and man, were they poor!), I found that there was no way around any of this. It was how things were going to have to be. I asked them to just leave me on the old platform until my subscriptions ended, but they said that was not an option.

For some of my smaller accounts, I'd be able to use their platform, so I worked on getting them migrated over. None of them ever got to the point where they were working on the new platform perfectly. Meanwhile, I found a different host for the other accounts. As I was moving sites either to my new host or the "new WH4L platform", WH4L would often just change my pointers to the new platform without warning, causing the site to go down immediately. They would change things back once I called them and asked, but this happened repeatedly. I couldn't get my sites to the new host fast enough!

So here is the kicker, and why I call them dishonest. We pay for their hosting a year in advance. When this occurred on the old system, we had to check a box that said we agreed to the terms and services. Those terms do say that we can cancel at any time and get a full pro-rated refund for time not used. I've spent several months trying to get my money out of WH4L with little success so far. They have refunded about a third of what they owe me, but they point to their "new" terms & conditions and try to charge me things like cancellation fees. They also renew accounts (and charge my card) after I cancel them.

The new owners are dishonest and should be avoided at all costs. Some of their documentation refers to them as being Readyhosting.com, so I think you should stay away from them too.