- Report: #1107151
Complaint Review: LunarPages - Internet Internet
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Author Confirmed
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LunarPages
Internet, Internet, USA
Web:
http://lunarpages.com
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LunarPages Service constraints conflict with my needs, yet company won't refund prepaid service Internet
Short version: I signed up for several years of domain hosting with LunarPages, and paid extra for scripting capabilities. The company's internal constraints on scripting make it totally unfit for my purposes; yet, the company refuses to provide a refund.
Complete version:
I signed up for web hosting with LunarPages many years ago. Generally, the hosting service was fine - a little unreliable at times, but overall acceptable.
Recently, I developed a need to run a simple Python script through my account. I paid extra to upgrade my service for the ability to access the server hosting my files via ssh - several hundred dollars, for several years' worth of such service.
Almost immediately, I discovered that the service was unsuitable for my needs, for rather surprising reasons:
1) The server was running a version a version of Python that was *years* out of date - like, a version last released in 2006 - and lacked some basic Python resources. Working with tech support to address those issues was kind of a nightmare; after several messages, their tech support people finally installed an updated version of Python, but in a non-standard location.
2) The terminal access that I was provided has a heavily restricted shell (JailShell) that doesn't support many basic shell functions. Obviously, installing a local copy of Python for my own needs is out of the question.
3) The service wasn't entirely reliable. The server was occasionally rebooted without notice, and the Python script that I was running on the server at the time (which was just passively waiting for a connection) was, naturally, killed without notice and not restarted.
4) Here's the worst part: LunarPages runs some security software that blacklists IP addresses for performing completely innocuous functions. In my case, I found that establishing connections to my LunarPages account through two ports within a short span of time - e.g., connecting to my script at one port (let's say, port 5000), and then requesting a single resource from the domain via HTTP (standard port 80) - instantly caused that IP address to be permanently blacklisted.
This ridiculously paranoid, overaggressive security policy rendered the service totally unfit for my purposes. There was no way to discover this security policy before signing up for the service, as it is not documented. LunarPages has totally refused to adjust their security policy for my domain. And yet, LunarPages has also refused to provide a refund for the service, simply citing their "no refunds" contract policy.
