I just can't seem to get well. Maybe by spring I'll finally lick this crap that just lingers and keeps getting passed around at work. I really have stuff and I want/need/have to do and right now I'm absolutely freezing and get a little dizzy when I stand up. So not cool.
I'm using the time today to catch up on a little Internet reading and found a cute little quiz thingy at my friend
Julie's blog -->:
Pft, I'm only an 8. Stupid 1 point letters.
In other news, I'm almost done with the design for my template here, so I expect to have Domesticgeek.com live by the end of the month. I'm also doing some work on my other sites (since I had to move them all from Dreamhost), so eventually I'll link them up, too.
That reminds me that I never wrote about why I had to get all of my stuff off of Dreamhost's servers. Oh, back on Jan. 15th, I got this neat little email from Dreamhost saying they had autobilled my debit card $119.40. Um, my hosting wasn't set to renew until March and I didn't have that much money in my checking account. I immediately sent a response off to support that they were in error. See, I had no intention of renewing for another year. They've sucked. Many times I've gone to work on templates or to make posts only to have their servers lagging or down. I fretted all day long about that charge and finally got an email from someone later that day:
Hi LaDonna!
Ack. Through a COMPLETE bumbling on our part, we've accidentally attempted to charge you for the ENTIRE year of 2008 (and probably 2009!) ALREADY (it was all due to a fat finger)!
I'm really really realllly embarassed about this, but you have nothing to worry about. Please ignore any confusing billing messages you may have received recently; I've already removed all those bum future charges on your account (#292017) and already refunded the $119.4 charge on your credit card.
You should get the money back on almost immediately, within a day or two max, and there's no need to contact your credit card company or bank for the refund.
Again, I feel terrible about this whole thing.. there will be a blog post soon at blog.dreamhost.com fully explaining how this bug was even allowed to happen..
Thank you very very much for your patience with this.. we PROMISE this won't happen again. There's no need to reply to this message unless of course you have any other questions at all!
Sorry again,
Josh!
So, everything is cool, I think. I go home and read the promised post on the blog:
Um, Whoops. I was a little miffed at the tone of the post, but I was willing to let it slip because mistakes happen and the guy was probably dealing with his stupidity the only way he knew how.
I kept checking both their blog and my bank (to see if a charge ever posted) and since I saw nothing, I figured all was good. Well, after I get home from dinner Friday night, I see a friend of mine from a message board complaining on Twitter that she actually got charged by Dreamhost. I go and check, and damned if I didn't get charged also. The resulting charge also got me two overdraft charges. I was soooooo pissed.
Turns out they
only "thought" they had refunded the money. They really hadn't and the original charges went through. Well, this was MLK weekend and the banks were going to be closed on Monday. Maybe you'll see a refund by Tuesday, they said. Well, it was late in the day Tuesday before they finally posted a refund. In the mean time, the comments on their blog got downright ugly and the Dreamhost team all but disappeared. I never did get any
emails back from support in response to my inquiry as to what they were going to do about my overdrafts. To make matters worse for them in my eyes, a bunch of their servers went down on the 23rd. Time to leave now.
Another thing about this whole thing that ticked me off was my bank. I called them on Monday (it was a holiday, but they promise 24-hour telephone banking) and the woman I spoke to said it would be no problem for them to reverse the overdrafts when Dreamhost sent the refund through. When I called back Wednesday, that woman tried telling me it wasn't the bank's problem and they shouldn't have to reverse them. I was ticked and she eventually did reverse them. This is not the first time I have gotten the runaround from them. I'm seriously going to try to find a better bank.
Anywho, once I got my cash back, I transfered the one domain I had registered through them to my normal registrar, moved all my data to my home server and closed my account. Marcus found me a free
DNS at a place called
EveryDNS.net. It seems to be working pretty well. I'm going to have to send those guys a donation.
I've got one more story about the frustrating experience I had with the IRS, but this post is getting a bit long, so perhaps that one will wait for another day.
I'm off to knit for a bit.
Name: LaDonna
