Earlier this year this website, mybiggestcomplaint.com had a major breakthrough. Our website got a great review from a prestigious blog, Download Squad, which had lots of push power and influence. Our little site went from a fledgling site with a few hundred hits a day to thousands of daily visitors quite literally, in a matter of minutes.
We sat back and reveled in the traffic. New users were signing up; complaints were coming in at unprecedented rates, and people were happy complaining. Just what we set out to do – complaining had become fun for thousands of people. Our one month old idea was breaking through. What more could you want when you start a web site?
Enter Polurnet Communications, the web hosting company that was hosting mybiggestcomplaint.com at the time.
About 24 hours into the breakthrough, everything came to a grinding halt. Every visitor to the site didn’t reach mybiggestcomplaint.com. Instead, each visitor saw a page that said our account was suspended.
The last thing that any web startup wants is to have a site go down when thousands of people are getting their first taste of what the site has to offer. In the first 24 hours after the Download Squad review was posted, we received hundreds of hits per hour. We never received a single note or caution from Polurnet that anything was wrong. Then, without warning, Polurnet pulled the plug and cut mybiggestcomplaint.com off.
Naturally, we felt that we could work this out quickly with a reputable company. Immediately we scrambled to contact Polurnet Communications. We began a long process of emailing and attempting to use their help ticket submission system. We probably sent a dozen requests for an explanation and for support. Nobody ever answered the “Live Chat” feature that is a major selling point for Polurnet. We might have been a little lax in doing our research when we signed up, but we never realized Polurnet had no telephone support before our emergency.
Meanwhile, hours went buy without one single response to our requests for support and our site was still down. To make matters worse, Polurnet locked us out so that we could not get our databases and files to move them to another host.
Thousands of people interested in our site were turned away. In our minds, Polurnet was holding us hostage. It seemed to us that Polurnet, and any hosting company for that matter, is in a unique position of trust when it comes to a website. A hosting company holds all the cards, pure and simple. If they want to shut you down, they can. If they want to help you, they can.
What would Polurnet do for our site in a critical moment of growth and opportunity for one of their customers? Drum roll, please…
Polurnet tried to sell us another hosting plan. Ta da!
It took about 5 hours to receive the first email from the company – and by the company we mean one person – Anand A, the “President, Founder and Director” of Polurnet -according to Polurnet’s site. Curiously we wondered, why was the “President, Founder and Director” of the hosting company emailing us instead of tech support?
Hold that thought for a moment.
The first email we received tried to sell us a dedicated hosting plan for what amounted to thousands of dollars a year. In fact, the first email we received from Anand A. closed with “If you want a quote for such a solution, let us know.” At this point, Anand A. was signing emails as “Chief of Operations”.
So there you have it. That’s how you hold a breakthrough site hostage. Watch their traffic, shut them down, and then sell them dedicated hosting. That’s a hosting model we never thought of, but brilliant nonetheless.
Suddenly all our past dealings with Polurnet made sense. The reason we were not getting support at the time when we needed it the most was because there really was no real support department or sales department or abuse department or billing department. Anand A., in addition to being the “President, Founder and Director” of Polurnet, was also now the “Chief of Operations” at Polurnet. This was starting to sound at worst, a lot like a one man show, and at best at grossly understaffed and mis-managed company.
Why would we feel like Polurnet was a one man show? Obviously, Polurnet’s website list other people in the company, six to be exact bringing the total number of people “behind Polurnet Communications and its continued success” to seven – four of whom care enough about Polurnet’s success to list their complete last names instead of just a simple, mysterious letter like “Anand A.”
There are other reasons Polurnet seemed to be a one man show, or at least a poorly staffed hosting company beyond the mysterious lack of full and complete last names listed on the site. For example, the “Live Chat” system that looks like a handy support system. We tried to use this dozens of times, and on average it is staffed about 1 out of 20 times (if you don’t believe us, try it yourself, it goes to email almost every time).
Likewise, nearly every email correspondence we received from Polurnet was from Anand A. Check the Polurnet forums and you’ll see that Anand A. answers a majority, but not all, of the posts. Don’t stop at the Polurnet fourms, check any other web hosting forum for any response from Polurnet and you’re likely to find it signed by, you guessed it, Anand A. It seems there are three possible explanations:
- Anand A. is the hardest working man in web hosting
- Polurnet is a one man show
- Polurnet is terribly understaffed
But enough about that, back to ending the web hosting hostage crisis.
It was natural then that Anand A. would be the person that we would have to deal with to fix this problem, and it was clear that he wasn’t in any hurry to help us. The first thing Anad did was tell us that we were “abusing” resources. As we said earlier, nearly 30 hours after our breakthrough, Anand A. invited us to discuss terms for the hostage release … errrrr … a dedicated server (hundreds of dollars a month).
All we wanted was to get the problem fixed and get the site back up, OR just simply get access to our databases so we could move them to another host. Meanwhile, Polurnet wanted to use the crisis as a time to sell us something that cost thousands of dollars a year and would not even discuss resolving the problem in any other way.
Anand was then kind enough to send us some data that our site had a problem as it was using, among other things, 104% and 130% of the cpu cycles (how does one use more than 100% of a cpu??) and that it crashed a quad core server several times during the traffic deluge.
We did not and do not dispute this. My Biggest Complaint probably was crashing the server. We were more than happy to work with Anand and/or Polurent to resolve the problem. That’s why we began emailing Anand A. to such effect.
Email communication with Polurnet and Anand is interesting. For us, it worked like this: Anand would email us, we would receive the email within a few minutes of him sending it (evidence d by the time stamp: believe me, we were waiting for any response from him), and then we would respond to Anand’s email shortly thereafter. We would then wait hours for Anand to follow up with us.
We would immediately email Anand and it would be hours later before he would respond again when we knew, in all probability, that he was sitting right by his computer because he just emailed us. It was obvious that he was purposely delaying his response. His responses were caustic, accusatory, and all of them had a retaliatory sound to them. His response to our original email asking him to unlock our site began with “No …”. No niceties, pleasantries or bull****. Just “No …”.
Don’t get wrong, Anand can write a nice email. When we were talking about signing up for a plan, how to pay him, or basic support issues, our turn around time on emails was typically less than 30 minutes (often times it was just a few minutes). After we sent Anand a note which addressed the issues he wanted us to address before he would unsuspend the account, it took him almost 24 hours to get mybiggestcomplaint.com back on line. In the meantime, we found a way to hack in and unsuspend our account ourselves, get our files, and move them to another web hosting company (Dreamhost).
We totally understand shared hosting. We agree that our site was probably causing other sites on the server to have issues and we sincerely apologize to those sites for any problems we caused. However, it seems to us the proper course of action and just plain good business sense, would have been to send us a note a couple hours after Polurnet knew our traffic was off the charts. We could have easily fixed the problem and everybody would still be happy.
Instead it seemed like Polurnet shut mybiggestcomplaint.com down, held us hostage, and allowed the problem to continue for 18 hours in a cheap effort to get us into a dedicated hosting plan. Polurnet suspended our site without warning, and their poor customer service and tech support (read – Anand A., “President, Founder, Director and Chief of Operations”) took another 6 or so hours to respond to our multiple requests for help. Polurnet then accused us of abusing resources (as if we could control how many people were coming to our website), showed little interest in getting our site back on line (or even unlocking the files so we could move the site elsewhere), and then tried to sell us a dedicated server plan (after one day of traffic increase, which honestly could have easily been a spike but thankfully wasn’t).
We were a fledgling site. We bought the appropriate hosting plan from Polurnet and then we had a breakthrough. That’s how it is supposed to work.
My Biggest Complaint‘s biggest complaint about Polurnet communications is that Polurnet Communications has horrible, even seemingly non-existent tech support, barbaric customer service and seems to be either incredibly understaffed, a one man show, or just plain misrepresenting the true identities of those responsible for the operation of the hosting company. Polurnet’s web page makes it look like they have a huge support system, but they don’t.
If you choose Polurnet to be your hosting provider, we want to warn you about a few things. If Anand A. is sleeping, taking a dump, or out to dinner with his wife, your request for support might have to wait. Take a number. If your site suddenly breaks through like ours did, you might find yourself in a hostage situation. Be prepared.
In our eyes, no hosting company should ever do business the way Polurnet does and no customer should be treated the way we were treated. Choosing a web host can be confusing, difficult and time consuming. We hope that you, the reader, consider our input and our complaint before making your hosting decision about Polurnet or any other web hosting company for that matter.
And as always, we look forward to hearing your complaints.
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Wow. It’s a good thing you managed to free the hostages, because i need to complain a lot. Since I signed up I’ve noticed an increase in the users. This site is just what a lot of us need; an outlet. We toil all day long and deal with tons of crap from various people, then we come home and make a choice. Grab the rifle and climb the bell tower, or piss and moan on the net? Thankfully, everyone here has chosen the latter. Anand A could’ve caused a lot of senseless violence through his indifference and inactivity. But I imagine it’s hard to run a hosting service from your mom’s basement, especially on those days he’s gotta work a double shift pumping gas at the Gulf station down the street. I’ll keep this story in mind and shed a tear of joy as I write my next complaint. Congrats on your success!
@DBlock, keeping people out of the bell tower is what we’re all about.
This thread appears to be questionable after reading the full context and explanation of the situation at
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/.....t=polurnet
Having worked at a webhosting firm in the past, using over 100% CPU and disturbing other clients is grounds for legitimate suspension. From the above thread link, the context seems to be very clear.
Just my 2c’s
WHT Forum User on August 21st, 2007 at 9:38 am | Link
@WHT Forum User, thanks for taking the time to post the link to that discussion.
We encourage everybody interested in the topic visit the thread suggested above. We think the people from Polurnet believed that if they screamed loudly enough, contradicted themselves over and over, posted only the support tickets that made them look good, demonstrated that they really had no idea what was going on (then or now), and called us liars, that it somehow made them right.
Mostly, Polurnet has continually said that we deserved to be suspended for our increase in traffic and attempted to suggest that we had problems with this. As stated in this compliant and in that thread, we believe we deserved to be suspended.
The way Polurnet handled the issue and the support from the company was our issue.
If you are considering choosing Polurnet to be your hosting company, my advice to you is to read this complaint and our review. Then go to the thread and read the Polurnet’s postings. You will begin to see a pattern.
First, Polurnet’s own words support virtually everything they we stated about them and this incident here. Second, you may start to wonder about the professionalism of their staff. The tone that they exhibit in the thread is the same one that we got AFTER we had a traffic spike. And lastly, our experiences with them indicates that this is a small company. Make sure you understand that you are dealing with a company of a few employees and this has both negative and positive
ramifications.
Honestly, we don’t care if you chose Polurnet or not. You may read all this and still believe that Polurnet is the right company for you.
That’s what reviews are all about.
the site is pretty cool cause its my very first time to encounter a site whose open for complaints which makes it different from other website! nice one!-marchy_mojo
Hubport hosting on August 22nd, 2007 at 4:09 pm | Link
I came across this thread from a search on google, and I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. You definitely overused resources, and they took action appropriately to defend the interests of their clients. From your perspective, sure, you want your site online, but I fully can see why your site was suspended.
In fact, I think they’re a fairly large company, as I’ve seen them active on several domain forums with literally hundreds of people saying good things about them… for many years. It’s no joke they;re established, although I’ve seen some infrequent issues occur. I myself have been a long-time customer in the past, but recently did not have a use for my website. Anyway, it’s expected there will be people trying to criticize a service, but honestly this seems to be overblown from what I read on the thread on WHT.
IMO, it seems you have been jumping conclusions on that thread and even this one, and according to a neutral third-party perspective, your logic/attitude does not add up from what I’ve read. For instance, many of the things you point out were interestingly contradicted on the forum …
In any case, it’s important to know there are two sides to a story, with only one side posted here. — Brian
(Note from MBC Administrators: You’ve got to love it when somebody claims to be a “neutral third-party” as if that gives them special insight and skills. It is clear that Brian didn’t even read our complaint/comments or the complete thread on WHT, because he is quoting things here that we discussed numerous times and which we stated wasn’t even part of our complaint. You can claim to be some sort of neutral third party, but if you are going to do so you should at least take the time to read and study the thing(s) that you are claiming to independently judge). Sorry, our review of Polurnet stands.
Brian on August 27th, 2007 at 7:34 pm | Link
hostgator is a hostage taker also. I have been trying to cancel my account there for the last 48 hrs. 24 hours after the first request I get an email asking me to elaborate on why I wanted to cancel. I did that. Nearly 24 hrs later still no cancellation. After making a second phone call to support for an explanation I was told no one works in the cancellation department on the weekend. Bull****! I made the initial request to cancel in the early a.m hours of Friday morning. Hostage taking is becoming a trend with webhosting and domain registration.
Clyde Swann on November 18th, 2007 at 3:14 am | Link
Wow, wish I had read this before I signed up. Having some teething problems at the moment. Hopefully it will work itself out though. I f I have some problems I may post here again…after I move to a different host though.
Are you using Dreamhost and Hostgator now? If so, so you recommend them? Which plan?
Al on April 19th, 2008 at 2:28 am | Link
I am just about to start with exactly the same circumstances i.e. I am going live within a week and expecting to blow up within a month after that. Who did you finally host with? It is very hard to find “truthful reviews” of hosting companies. For you “they were within their right” people…GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE dictates that 1. They already have a plan in place for this situation 2. If they don’t; fix the problem without interrupted service to the consumer. Please advise on who you host with. Kudos to your sight companies have forgotten the consumer, the end user.
rizhii on April 30th, 2008 at 9:04 am | Link
@rizhii, Dreamhost.