Nice to see they're sorry, instead of taking it seriously!

Let this be a lesson to you:

This is why you should use credit cards not debit cards for these sorts of charges. And always turn off the "feature" where they will charge you a fee if you go over your credit limit. One could simply report the charge as fraud and never pay a dime. And if you were nearing your credit limit, the charge would just fail.

I saw the attempted charge for my DreamHost account for 2009 this morning (fortunately for me, I had an expired credit card listed on my account), and was about to contact them when I got this email:

"Hi [me]!

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)!

We're really really realllly embarassed about this, but you have nothing
to worry about. Please ignore any confusing billing messages you may have
received recently; we've already removed all those bum future charges on
your account (#XXXXXXXXXX) and fixed everything up.

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!

Sincerely,
The Foolish DreamHost Billing Team!"

I do really like their service; they're quick to respond to support inquiries and outage notifications. Good on them for fixing this one right away.

@weakdome: I was just going to say, 'they're not taking it seriously!'

Dreamhost is officially a goner.
Once A giant hosting company, now a giant turd.

Stuff your sorrys in a sack!

You can always move to westhost! They are my favorite hosting company... and i've tried dreamhost, bluehost, total choice, visi, hostik, and more i cant even remember.

I'm glad I manually pay my hosting bill with them each month via Paypal. That snafu would not have broken me financially if I had been paying right out of my bank account, but I still would not have been a happy camper about that.

I learned a major lesson on how to conduct business today. If you screw your customers, make a blog with stupid jokes and a Simpson's picture and all will be well.

Apparently it didn't affect everyone, because I have gotten no such charge. Yet.

I also received an email this morning along those lines. Thank goodness that the card I used to pay last year is no longer in service.

I like how they implied they would cover the costs you incurred from the bank if their error causes an overdraft.

@asscore:

Sitelutions FTW!

It's nice to see that they have such a serious tone. My mortgage payment gets taken out of my account on the 15th of every month. Hopefully that doesn't get denied because Dreamhost overdrafted my account.

I'm sure GMAC will understand that my payment was late because I needed a web server for my blog.

Ehh, got one of those bills this morning. That explains it. I feel sorry for the poor guy whose credit card *was* billed (the account was issued to a non-profit I used to work with.)

I just checked again and I actually had an active card on the account. Argh, now to make sure that it's refunded

I use USM Hosting, they are AWESOME, this would never happen with there. I have never had any kind of problem there with them.

I understand the comments about their tone, but that's the way all of their communications are. That's the character of the company. At least the acknowledge the problem openly and explained what went wrong and how it's being fixed. That's a lot more than a lot of companies do.

in defense of Dreamhost, they are really great and are the epitome of great customer service! they have ALWAYS been the most responsive, helpful and humorous group of real people ive had to deal with. i have hosted with them for almost 10 years and they have grown larger and larger every year and not lost a single ounce of their great customer service.

my gf got billed $300 today and they were VERY quick to respond to her inquiry and they credited her card. this has never happened before and i think we should not be so quick to jump the gun on this one.

my experience with them has been great for many many years.

I'm a small portion of their $7.5 million screw-up. I'm usually pretty tolerant of these small aggravations, and this is no exception. I received the e-mails at 3:39 AM, and forwarded them to billing@dreamhost.com at 7:21 AM asking for an explanation. My account is rebilled yearly, and was paid in full until December 2008. I was re-billed my annual charges twice - once again for 2008, and for 2009 (which would have billed in 12/08).

A quick check at dreamhoststatus.com let me know there was a larger issue, and I had a personal e-mail response by 2:00 PM today. The charges still haven't hit my card, but they have promised to credit back anything billed ASAP.

I think some dude named Josh screwed up, and they are definitely ribbing him about it quite a bit, while making him fix his mistake. If they don't have this straightened out within a few days, then my frustration level will rise a bit, but it's a wash right now.

I don't understand people who allow auto-draft from cash accounts that house their critical funds. Online billpay is nearly free at every bank these days, set it up and then use it when the bill comes in. It gives the opportunity to review the bill for accuracy, log in, type the amount, click Pay, shred bill. Done. It's automated enough to not be a time/money waster, and not so automated to completely FSCK you because somebody else decided to be a tool today. If it's a bill you can't use bill-pay on, then have 2 accounts - one for critical and one for other spending/cash withdrawals/etc. This is not only smart management to keep a lock down on crucial funds, but also helps with budgeting.

This situation should never happen, but it's going to - understand it and make your situation be resilient to it. If it never does, you have expended little effort for lots of peace of mind... if it does, you saw it coming, worked around it in advance, and continue to expend very little effort for lots of peace of mind.

Yeah, got a bill this morning. Thank goodness I didn't have things set up to automatically deduct.

I don't expect Dreamhost to disappear overnight. They're huge. That said... I'll be backing up everything I have hosted there tonight.

why do people use debit cards?? or auto-deduct any non-serious payments from checking accounts??

credit cards people. credit cards.

My Credit card also got billed, and as they promised, will be credited. I bet I see the charge and the credit processed on the same day in a few. Everyone makes mistakes, and they have been very open and transparent as to what happened. Plus, everyone who has a site hosted with dreamhost knows from their newsletters that they aren't the most serious bunch when it comes to PR. They however, are the most serious bunch when it comes to stuff like this. I bet at dreamhost offices the shit hit the fan hard.

I guess I got off lucky seeing as the credit card they had on file for me was the remains of a Visa Travel Card left over from a vacation and the transaction failed.

The thing is that if I had not gone to the DreamHost site to figure out how I was able to receive a bill from the future I probably wouldn't have had know what the heck was going on. Still haven't received any info officially from them notifying me of any problems.

@boxjockey68: Why would this never happen there?

I got one of the "bills from the future" and send it right back with a WTF note. I only pay a tiny amount and it's on my CC, and when I looked at the billing page, it showed the right info, so I wasn't too worried.

I do hope a bunch of the "OMGWTF!1!one!11! TEH SKY IS FALLING!!" people who are always bitching in the comments finally leave and reduce the load on my shared server, though.

While I'm not thrilled $340+ got charged to my credit card, I know better than to put a debit card on an account with an auto-renew option. Think about it. What did tick me off was they were making jokes about it. "Oops, my bad." People are not amused.

I don't think I could be any angrier than I am right now. I'm basically a starving artist, so the $280 they tagged me for this morning is a lot. But I'm not angry at Dreamhost. Not even a little bit. Feces occur.

I am angry at all the self-righteous assholes who are MONUMENTALLY cunt-hurt over this. Is it a huge and terrible fuckup that is going to cost people money? YES. Is Dreamhost doing everything they can to fix the problem? YES. What more is there?

The Dreamhost Status blog post is full of comments threatening legal action, or saying they're leaving Dreamhost... For what? You're not going to find a better host for THREE TIMES THE MONEY. Companies are run by people, and occasionally people make mistakes. There was no malice involved. Shit happens. Even the banks and creditcard companies make mistakes sometimes.

Every single argument these assholes make is ridiculous. Bottomline: Shit happens. Unlike a large chunk of Corporate America, DH is doing their best to fix things, and they say they'll make it right, whatever it takes.

And to the people complaining about the nature and tone of the blog posts... I guess you never read your fucking Dreamhost newsletters. These guys couldn't be serious at a FUNERAL if it were THEIRS.

Complain when they don't fix it. Until then, I still stand by my choice to host with DH for the past three years, and it pains me to think that DH is going to take a massive hit no matter what just because people think they live in a goddamn bubble where nothing can happen to them.

Hell, I always pay with a Paypal one-time-use virtual card number, the only reason this got me is because it hadn't expired yet after I paid for a new domain.

Bakachan: I'm willing to bet that the majority of those making the most noise are just trying to get a month or two of free hosting as an apology.

Actually, what I first thought when I got the bill was, "Guess I shouldn't have posted those large jpegs of the snorg tees girl to Fark." As it turns out, that resulted in only about 8GB of traffic for the past weekend.

@forever_knight:

Actually, some people were put over their credit limits, lost their rewards points, and had their rates raised. Will they get these back? If they're lucky.

As it is, I don't trust anyone with automatic billing. This was pure human error (annoying, dumb human error which hasn't been dealt with too well) and I'm sure it could happen at other companies too.

at least they said that they were sorry. No company does that, not even microsoft for their messups (im looking at you vista).

@Bakachan: Precisely. It was a major screwup and they are doing everything they can do fix the problem as fast as possible. What would have happened if this was a major corporation? I would bet you that the response would be that your account would be credited back in X days/weeks. DH instead (appears to have) credit things back immediately. What more can you ask for?

And for those that had their mortgage payment fail because of this or went over their limit, I have no sympathy. You always need to plan on mistakes happening. Sh*t happens, deal with it.

I'm very happy with Dreamhost, even with this problem. I'm definitely not worried that they're going to do it again. Far from it. I know I wouldn't want to be Josh right now though...

How does today's bounced mortgage check push the guy into 30-day-late territory? Did he just wait until 29 days after his payment was due to send in the check?

I'm not sure I have sympathy.

I went to WestHost from DreamHost... best decision ever on web hosting.

I use DreamHost -- even with the automatic payment feature (which I use -- all my bill paying is automated, if I can help it) you can set a cap of how much you are billed. My cap is one month's payment for just this reason. Checked my credit card this morning and just now, and knock on wood, all is well.

As someone who makes mistakes all the time, I can throw no stones. +1 for them at least not having a faceless, emotionless corporate-speak BS reply about it.

(And anyone who doesn't have enough money in their account to cover the mortgage payment and some rainy-day money should seriously re-think either having an expensive mortgage or having an internet site.)

I gotta say, what a HUGE mistake... but it really seems like they're doing everything they can to make it right. What more can you ask? Sometimes mistakes happen it's nice to see that they're making a good PR push through the blog to try and fix everything.

@c.bartlett:
More like let this be a lesson to stop relying on companys to automatically debit your life. Seriously, I'm part of generation y. I get it. Everything's a rush. Everything's streamlined. Take two minutes, log on and press send. Doing mundane boring tasks is part of being an adult damn it.

ps- I personally think Dreamhost handled this disaster beautifully. Other companies take note.

Hey, come on you guys. They IMMEDIATELY replied to my email and refunded the money with a sincere apology.

I'm honestly amazed at all the hate here. They screwed up, they publically admitted it, they're going to refund any fees/etc it caused...

This is the perfect reaction to this kind of screw up and yet they're still getting shit on for it?

Good God, the Consumerist commenters can't decide which half of the problem to blame!

Well, it's nice to know HERE WTF happened. All I got was that it was an isolate error. I never realized it was a massive issue. By the time I woke up and got on the PC, my business CC had been charged, and refunded.

Even if it takes a few days, no big deal the refund will be on my card before the billing cycle is over.

I was planning on taking the card off the site, not because of this, but because the website isn't working out for what I needed it for. Unless things change by the next time I'm billed, I'm just going to let it laps.

Ugh I can't believe people are getting so riled up at this, as if a billing error never happens.

And honestly, if a Web host bill has the same priority as your mortgage bill, something isn't right on your own behalf as it is.

DreamHost has always had my backing thanks to their transparent operations and quick support. Move or suggest a host that "would NEVER have an error" as you may, I still think that this has been handled as well as it should be.

Even the tone of their posting told me they were taking it seriously, and fixing it as fast as they could. When I read it, I knew how they felt (and what they were thinking when they wrote it, the oh crap thought, I work in IT, I know it well). Anyone can make mistakes, proactively fixing it and apologizing is about as good as you can get, especially if they really do everything they can to make it right (pay fees people incur, etc).

On the automatic payment thing, if you can't afford/take a bit of an overcharge, then you should be doing an automatic payment. If things are that tight for you, you should be managing your money tightly to make sure problems don't happen. Personally I use automatic payments for everything if I can, but I also scrutinize my accounts (usually multiple times per month) to reconcile against my PDA's record of purchases, and if I get hit with a false charge (even one that is in the $10,000+ range), it's not going to cause any problems on my credit card.

Oh my god, what a bunch of fucking highchair pounders. A mistake was made, acknowledged, and corrected. Get over it, or perhaps you'd like some Tucks Pads for your unrelenting butthurt?

I like dreamhost. They have always treated me nice. They made a mistake and are correcting the mistake. Many people thought the dreamhost response was flippant, and I am sure they will lose a few customers over that. I thought the dreamhost response was much better than the 'We are taking this very seriously...' boilerplate. Also, much better than ignoring the problem until the problem snowballs. I haven't seen a recall for webhost providers, but I have seen plenty of companies refuse to warn consumer until forced to do so, or issue a recall until forced to do so.

For those whose accounts were ruined by this, I would recommend an American Express One account. Good perks, and no pre-set spending limit.

A response to a mistake like this makes me MORE likely to use dreamhost. A mistake was made, quickly corrected, and an apology issued. Really, what more do you want? Sounds like good business practice to me, even if the communications are "unprofessional".

I like the "oh s*&@* we messed up big time. We're so sorry. We're correcting the issue as quickly and if you had other problems as a result of our error, contact us and we'll work to fix that too. Again, this was totally our fault. We completely messed up. You have no idea how sorry we are. This will NEVER happen again." types of apologies. To me it gives you a human face, makes it seem that you are truly sorry and understand the gravity of the mistake and not just issuing a cover your ass apology.

i had this happen to my acccount too...and upon emailing them, got the "im sorry" email back. i appreciate the fact that they let everyone know their mistakes, and were honest about what happened. A+ for them.

I got one of these billing notices. The first thing I saw was that I was "past due" since a future date. Then I noticed that the dreamhost status page said that they were working on a billing error.

I feel bad for anyone who had checks bounce, but honestly, why set up an autopayment on a checking account for webhosting? Leave that for the critical stuff -- like the mortgage -- and if you must autopay your webhost, do it through a credit card.