Complaint Review: Acenet Ace-Host

This company, Acehost Inc., which claims on its homepage to be "Hacker Safe: Tested Daily" allowed my site to be hit twice by Denial of Service Attacks then blamed me for the attacks and shut down my site both times. The company accused me of "abusing server resources," once for abusing PHP resources and the second time for abusing MySQL database resources.

Essentially, these were attacks on my blog by spam artists who programed robots to ping my site consistently, adding to my recent referrals list, and who programed robots that left an inordinate number of comments linking to their ad sites on my blog.

I made every effort to block these attacks, yet I was given no assistance by the company and I was blamed for "abusing server resources," which seems awfully arbitrary and inaccurate to me. The second time my site was knocked down, the company informed me that I would be forced to upgrade to a dedicated server, which I do not need for my Web site, or I would have to cancel my account and take my business elsewhere. Since I was essentially being forced to spend more money, I decided to request a pro-rated refund and take my business elsewhere.

I was then informed that I was not entitled to a refund since it was past the introductory period. I was told that Acehost is a fair company and that I can petition the CEO for a refund. I did so. It has been a month. I have not received a response to my inquiry. I feel that the company intentionally allowed these attacks on my site so it could accuse me of "abusing server resources" and get more money out of me for a dedicated server.

To its credit, the company did supply me with a copy of my database files, but I believe it did that to cover itself legally and that It truly has ripped me off in this case. The company owes me for two years of service that I paid for and did not use. I will change this post if I get the money.

Andrew
Brookilne, Massachusetts
U.S.A.