I’ve been a co-location customer with CI Host since January 2002, and used their shared hosting for some time before then. Their shared hosting really sucked… so I’m not sure why I thought their co-lo service would be any better, but to my defense I must note that at the time there were no local co-lo alternatives in the same price-range. Granted, with one’s own, remotely managed server there has been no need to deal with CI Host’s non-existent customer service, at least to the same degree as with shared hosting. But co-locating introduced its own issues, such as periodic loss of A/C while the server power is still available (this has happened three times in last six years) where the server almost cooks before they either got A/C back online, or I found out as my server’s environmental sensors started sending high temp alerts and I was able to turn off the server before hard drives started failing.

Being now aware of all these problems as well as to save money I started recently a project to consolidate servers into a different, much better data center.  I had some credit left on my CI Host account, and it was enough to keep the service up through the 20th of October, this month, or so I thought. In late September I contacted CI Host billing and told them I was planning to cancel the service in early October. “No problem,” they said, “we’ll erase your credit card info to prevent automatic billing on October 8. Just submit your cancellation notice with instructions so that the service won’t be terminated when the billing doesn’t go through.” So I sent in my cancellation on September 23, and faxed in the signature form (mind you, the fax number they provided on the cancellation confirmation email was “no longer in service”, so I had to find their current, functional fax number first).

Today — on October 8 — I received an invoice from their billing department, with the difference between the total amount for the month and the remaining credit due immediately.  Surprised, I called them, and was told that “CI Host does not pro-rate credit for part of a month,” and that “your invoice is due now,” (or we’ll terminate the service and won’t relinguish the server when you come to pick it up) no exceptions.

Arrgh!!  What is this?!  There was also “nobody else to talk to” than “Sheila” with whom I spoke. No supervisor – she was the supervisor. The fact that I’d been a customer for almost seven years, had referred several customers to them (which I now regret), had stated that I don’t need the remainng credit (about $20) refunded after I’ve removed the server, and that I had been told otherwise couple of weeks ago (when I still would’ve had the time to remove the server before the end of September and the beginning of a new billing cycle) made no difference.

I nearly removed the server from the center last Saturday after their network (and cleverly also the customer service phones which probably operate over VoIP) had been down for three hours. I wish I had, because then I could’ve simply refused to pay. Now I had no choice since my server was being held hostage, and I had not demanded it on the paper that the remaining credit would indeed have been good through October 20th without an extra payment.

Now, some $36 I had to pay is not a huge sum of money, but the way they treated a long-term customer was plain wrong. Considering the number of unsatisfied customers and some major gaffes over the last decade or so, it’s miraculous that they’re still in business. My guess (and hope) is that they won’t last much longer, they don’t deserve it. I will never refer another person to them, and am sure to tell the story to as many people as possible. Was it worth the $36 for them?

P.S.
If you need top-notch co-lo service, look into VIRTBIZ (starting at about $10/mo more than CI Host per month), or Colo4Dallas. Both have excellent level of service. For managed hosting try out Rackspace. Using a sucky hosting company like CI Host is simply not worth the grief!