I’ve been questioned several times in the past why I use an American webhost rather than one more local such as a British one.
When I signed up it was a package deal I couldn’t refuse. It was an anniversary deal where I could get a years hosting for less than $10, this offered:

• 1TB Bandwidth per Month
• 20GB Webspace
• Unlimited MySQL
• 3000 POP/Mail accounts
• 75 Shell accounts
• Domain Registration
• FTP Access
• Webcontrol Panel
• Real/Quicktime Streaming

So as I said, it was a deal I couldn’t refuse. I took the gamble in the second year at full price which offered practically the same, but with more bandwidth and more space and again, it’s been great.I’ve used Dreamhost now for 2 years and they’ve been faultless for 99% of the time, however, earlier this week on Monday 14th January I recieved a billing e-mail from Dreamhost:

Account: nokkon’s Account (######)

    today’s date: 2008-12-26

 amount due now: $0.00

current balance: $0.00  (including charges not due until 2009-01-18)

     

Hello Karl Moon,

 

This is an electronic receipt to let you know we just rebilled your web hosting account with DreamHost.

Your account is now current and completely paid up.

 Remember, we automatically rebill your account on the 18th of the month (when there is an amount due).

We have the last payment on this account to be $9.95 on 2007-08-10

Since then the following charges have been made to the account, which you have just paid for:

 

        2008-02-18 – $119.40 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2009-02-17.                    

        2008-02-18 – $119.40 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2009-02-17

For full information on your previous balance please visit:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tab=billing&subtab=invoice

SUMMARY OF PAYMENT

Amount: $228.85

Credit card: *600#

Payment code: #######

 Charges on your credit card bill will be from “DreamHost.com”.

Now this was a shock on two levels, firstly, I only have one hosting account with four domains, so to be billed for two wasn’t a nice surprise. Secondly my account shouldn’t be automatically billed, especially not to my old card which is currently in dispute, so to have $228.85 was gonna cause issues. I immediately e-mailed back the billing section of Dreamhost (one of the best things about Dreamhost is they have many e-mailable departments.) I fired off an e-mail (below) and was awarded with an automatic response promising a reply within 24 hours which is always nice… if it’s true. My e-mail:

 

Hello Dreamhost,

I just received the following e-mail in regards to my billing. I am at a loss as how to understand it though:

[e-mail above]

Firstly, I only have one “My Crazy Domain Insane” which surely should only result in 1 billing amount of $119.40 as opposed to two. I have one hosting account and several domains linked to it such as “Nokkonwud.com”, “catdixon.com”, “maffew.com” and “thenokkoneffect.com”. 

Secondly, the account should never be billed to a card especially as I’ve been having problems with the card issuer for well over 12 months and the last thing I need is anything billing to it. My last payment in February 2007 was via paypal, not my card as a result of this. I was also informed in an e-mail less than 24 hours ago that I had until February to pay for the account and that it would not be billed automatically until I clicked a button in the web panel. 

I am thoroughly unimpressed if this is the case and would request a full re-issue of my “bill” to whatever card it was taken from, and I will then pay the account off via PayPal which is linked directly to my bank as opposed to a card issuer. Could we please look in to why I have been billed for 2 packages despite only ever purchasing one?

 Thankyou,
Karl ‘NokkonWud‘ Moon

 I admit, it wasn’t the most polite e-mail I’ve ever written, but when it comes to billing matters sometimes the direct approach works best as well as not being nasty (I try to never be nasty as it’s not in my nature believe it or not), anyway, as promised, I was e-mailed within a few hours:

 

Hi Karl!

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 (#######) and already refunded the $228.85 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 there you have it, what they say about American businesses seems to be true, their customer services are untouchable and that was the second reason for taking on an American host. I’ve had a bad time with a couple of UK hosts, notably freeola back in the day which was an absolute nightmare. However not only have Dreamhost helped whenever I’ve posted on their wiki, or e-mailed them, they’ve responded back within 24 hours or a major mess up in typical casual (but professional) manner. Every month they send out newsletters and run a blog which is always an entertaining read…. in fact, this was taken from one of the latest posts from Dreamhosts Newsletter:

Dreamhost – December 2007

4. New Office!

Another important thing I’ve been doing instead of writing newsletters
is looking out the window of our NEW OFFICE:

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2007/12/21/were-so-high-right-now-you-dont-even-know

If your next web hosting bill from us is mysteriously tripled, now you
know why.

Ouch, the irony.

The blog reply:

I hope it’s been a little better than mine.

We had a teensy eensy weensy little billing error last night… my first clue something was up when I saw this morning’s daily billing report (so far): $7,500,000.

It turns out due to my excessively fat fingers, nearly every one of our customers has been seriously over-billed in the last 12 hours.

.. you thought it was a joke!

You can read the full story here: http://blog.dreamhost.com/ 

Sorry for babbling on now, it’s been quite an interesting few days regarding my excellent host.
Karl.