Complaint Review: eHostSource Web Hosting

Recently, my web-hosting services by eHostSource for 2 of my websites were unaplogetically terminated. No recourse allowed, no monies refunded for unused portion of services.

I was sited (after an auditing by eHostSource of the files contained in my webspace) in violation of the Terms of Service agreement.

After a closer examination of the eHostSource TOS, I found some very interesting entries:

http://www.ehostsource.com/termsofservice.htm

The one entry that most concerned me is: "eHostSource.com (Intelligent Web Marketing, Inc.) reserves the right to change these Policies without prior notice or warning". Therefore, even if I were to be following the rules at one time, EHostSource could change them without notification, and then terminate my service without any recourse.

I was originally attracted to eEHostSource by their offering of 500mb of storage space. However, it appears that eHostSource has no real intention of being able to offer up to that amount of space to any customer of theirs. Again from their TOS:

"Glutting of servers: Oversized storage of any files that would be unreasonably large: ie. having hundreds of JPGS (such as fan or celebrity sites or photo galleries) are not allowed. Also, there can be no applications stored in your web space, including but not limited to zip files for .exe files. You may also not have any single file that is over 25 megabytes in size. There can be no live video or audio feeds on your site...i.e. webcams. Your web space is not for data back up. It is only for hosting real sites"

"Music Files: Customer may not with out permission have sound/video files in any format (MP3, ASX, ASF, RA, RAM , QTV etc.) due to the high rate of illegal transfer of copy written material. Even with permission, there is a 5 file maximum on all audio and video files and each file must be smaller than 5 MB due to the demands they place on the server."

The latter issue is what I got caught on, though I was serving files that I either held the copyright to or had complete permission from the copyright holder. However, that particular entry may not even have been in the original TOS when I first signed up, and they could have changed it to that (or anything else they wanted to) and terminated my service.

Actually, the most damning entry in the eHostSource TOS is actually the "warning" at the very top of their TOS page: "Agreeing to eHostSource Acceptable Use Policy and Terms of Service is mandatory for Hosting signing up or using our services. Please make sure you read everything." Of course, this seems like it could be a normal warning. However, I believe the second sentence is actually an admission by eHostSource that they are knowledgable that their TOS are unfair, because if you actually read everything, you would probably never agree to it in the first place.

eHostSource is a company not deserving of any customers.

Chris
San Francisco, California