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/showthread.php?t=624312&page=3&highlight=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.
Here’s an email I sent to Polurnet 4 times before I got a response. “This is my 4th attempt at sending this email; however no response from the otherwise prompt customer service Polurnet has given me in the past. If billing isn’t the department which i should send this information, then please inform me of what direction to take to resolve this issue.
I have noticed my account has been suspended despite the invoice stating that I would have web space retained from Feb. 14th, 2008 to Aug. 14th, 2008 as stated on Invoice 10172; however it has been suspended 2 days prior to when it should have expired i.e 3 days of downtime. I understand you have financial obligations of your own however based upon the previous invoice my site should be up until 14th. Nevertheless I would rather my billing for shared hosting be reverted to the monthly rate of $3.89.
Numerous times I have attempted to log into my account and I constantly have to reset my password to a string of alphanumeric characters; at times even then I can’t log in. There’s no “log in” hyper link on Polurnet’s site, which makes for a cumbersome experience when trying to navigate for customer service. The inaccessibility of the site means I can’t “change” the naming of my password to my choosing nor can I change my web hosting plan when needed.
I have sent a copy to the billing, sales, support departments, in addition to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in hopes of getting this matter settled. However i am no longer inclined to use the 6 month billing cycle for your services only monthly. If this can’t be settled then I am no longer concerned with using Polurnet’s services in any context.”
——————————————-
Here is the 1st reply to my email. Take note the representative wrote a 4-paragraph response and never addressed the issue I clearly stated and went on to further insult me.
“This is the first email we have received from you, we don’t have any other tickets regarding this on file from any of our departments. I’m also not sure why you’re emailing the “Canadian Chamber of Commerce”, this is the first time I’ve heard any user trying to do this without trying to email us first from an alternate email address or using our other contact options.
We always require payment in advance of the renewal date, this is the same policy as when you signed up. If you did not pay for a renewal when the invoice was due, then your account gets suspended after numerous warning emails sent to you. Ignoring them without contacting us can lead to the suspension of your account by our system automatically.
You didn’t include your account information for us to change the billing cycle, so let us know these details. Moreover, I’m not sure why you’re looking for a control panel link, since it is mentioned in the Welcome Email you received. There’s no way for us to include such a link either, since we have dozens of different servers, and there is no uniform link for this. There is also no need to change your password unless you explicitly want to.
Finally, I’m also not sure where you’re going for customer service; it’s clearly visible on our main website under the Support link, and all the options to contact us are listed. I suggest reading our Welcome Email again since it appears you have overlooked much of the information we provided you to contact us directly and to access your account.
Regards, Richard P., Administrative Representative, PolurNET Communications”
——————————————-
“I’m really not sure why you sent 4 different emails within the span of a few hours to our billing department, without even waiting for a response, then stating you never received one. Did you read our support pages that replies are made within 12-24 hours? We can reply earlier, but it really makes no sense at all to send multiple messages within hours of each other, then accuse us of not replying. Anyway, this has been responded to on the helpdesk already by another technician
Regards, Brian S., PolurNET Communications”
If another technician already responded to the issue, what is the point of Brian S. taking the time to insult me? Mind you Brian didn’t address the issue at hand nor absorbed what I was trying to convey to him. I decided to choose Polurnet web hosting services b/c of favorable opinions from consumer review boards. I have dealt with them for so long b/c of the same reason. When questionable dismissive customer service was rendered I just pushed it to the side as an isolated incident. I am far from stupid as their email responses would suggest. Even if I was a misinformed customer there is no reason under any circumstances to treat a long-term paying customer so disrespectfully. I wouldn’t be surprised if they acted out vindictively, if they were to see this message. I guess you get what you pay for. Their site has usability issues and huge customer service issues which most message boards mysteriously don’t suggest. I would suggest paying more money for a reputable company or going local for web hosting.
Disrespected Customer on August 12th, 2008 at 10:18 pm | Link
Hello,
I read your responses thoroughly, and don’t see how this can be interpreted as an insult or ‘disrespect’ when you sent us 4 different emails within the span of around 2 (TWO) hours to our billing department _during the same day_, each time stating that we didn’t respond. Then you go on to insult our website, complain about customer service and invent stories about how other customers should feel, when the reality is that several thousands of our customers have been more than satisfied with our services for the past 4 years, as many review sites and discussion boards demonstrate.
We’re obviously not robots, and all customers we’ve had so far give us a chance to respond before escalating an issue further. Not to mention, no one ever threatened us to contact some Chamber of Commerce association on the basis of not receiving a reply within a few hours of sending a message. In reality, it appears you purposely made up your mind prior to contacting us, then collected our responses to paint a completely different picture on a forum such as this, which directly violates our Privacy and Confidentiality policies that you agreed to when signing up.
As you say you’re a long-term customer, it is extremely surprising to see a defensive response where you attempt to put the guilt on our company, even though your actions clearly speak volumes of your character: sending us multiple emails within a short time span, writing threats, posting our responses on a public forum, and then defending yourself as being not having done anything wrong.
Our service has NEVER received customer service complaints simply because our clients never acted in a way that you have, and because we have mutual understanding with each of them. However, just as the original experience that started this website post, certain customers look forward to posting completely unfactual statements, omit the circumstances and invent stories that appear to portray themselves as perfect, while ostensibly showing the company is at fault. This has long been a tactic used by negative customers using a high-ranking webhost. We didn’t expect this behaviour from such a “long-time customer”, and we certainly hope not to have any customer like you again.
PolurNET Representative on August 13th, 2008 at 12:05 pm | Link
Polurnet always seem to reply to these posts no matter where they pop up. I wish they would reply to their customers instead of spending their time here. The attitude seems pretty much the same. I can’t complain too much about their service but I found them to be very rude and when they didn’t do something they said they would do when setting up my web sites they blamed me or my site. They did it but they made me feel that they were doing me a huge favor even though they said they would do it when transferring my sites to their service. I will be transferring them away from their service when I get time. Less attitude and more service polurnet.
Anon on August 13th, 2008 at 4:01 pm | Link
We obviously have to respond to users posting false, biased and inaccurate information about our services, especially since we have a loyal customer base that is still growing. When such comments by negative users are posted, they not only present a one-sided story, but also fail to take into account the circumstances of any problem.
I’m really not sure where you’re getting the “rude” part, as we always reply cordially to customers even when they try to insult us directly. Not to mention, we also replied to you several times within a few hours, yet you still complain about our customer service with baseless accusations.
In fact, to shed light on your “story”, it seems you asked for a site builder to be activated, which a technician did for you. Then you asked how to access it, and he explained where you could find it in your control panel. You replied accusing us of not telling you enough information, apparently because _you_ lost the Welcome Email, and expected this technician to know that you lost it somehow, and give you all the information right away. Then you tell us you’re “begging for information”, which is a really silly way to describe the interaction to say the least. Anyway, we did resend the Welcome Email, then you complained that the user details didn’t match. We replied again letting you know that we reset your account password, then you post a complaint here without even acknowledging our email. Were you acting professionally or giving respect? By your own characterization of events, your own actions would be considered “extremely rude”.
Honestly, it seems like we’re getting more customers these days with an intent to post slanderous comments, and make false accusations without any regard for the truth, simply because we’re a high-ranking webhosting provider. Even though incidents like these are rare, it’s extremely disconcerting to learn that some clients can never be trusted, and the valuable customer service and technical expertise you provided them for years often becomes downplayed or disregarded for no reason. Even by your own admission, we have had 100% uptime on the server you’re located on AND replied to your tickets within a few hours, yet you post a complaint as soon as given the opportunity and try to criticize our services with baseless comments, despite the numerous positive feedback we have received from hundreds of customers over the years.
We’re really into helping our loyal and honest customers, not the ones that are out there to purposely cause problems from day one or those that invent customer service issues then cry about it on public forums.
PolurNET Representative on August 13th, 2008 at 4:57 pm | Link
The rude comment was not by Disrespected Customer but rather another of your dissatisfied customers. I see your point about the emails though.
Anon on August 13th, 2008 at 8:02 pm | Link
I just cancelled my Polurnet account and I 100% with this entire post. Jeff L. at Polurnet is really the one who was the last straw. The fool had the nerve to threaten me about a contract that doesn’t exist and we all up in arms when I was annoyed that me 40 sites on thier server had gone down 10 times in the last two weeks. Yeah, who would be annoyed by that? Instead he was defensive and abrupt. I copied part of his email below. Thanks to Jeff L., there is one less customer, 40 less accounts and lots of feedback from unhappy customers. Anand, wake up - your company is tanking from people like this and fooling people into thinking that your crap company has a “team” is a joke. I believe you make those names up to pretend you have a large company, when here you are selling garbage. Go back to the used-car market. At least people expect that type of attitude there.
Here’s Jeff’s email reply to a 2+ year customer, with my comments in brackets:
—–Original Message—–
From: PolurNET Communications Administration [mailto:info@polurnet.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 11:06 AM
Subject: Re: Email still not working
Threats to the BBB or any other organization will not persuade us to
answer your ticket any faster. In fact, the threat you made is a
violation of our Acceptable use Policy, Section 18, which you
contractually agreed to. [MY COMMENT: that’s bull***t, never signed anything. He made those numbers up. He is talking to a lawyer, douche bag]
We won’t be able to respond to your ticket until a full retraction and apology of your apparent “threat” is made, otherwise your action would constitute a breach of contract. [MY COMMENT: more lies, breach of a contract that doesn’t exist] We also noticed your flagrant and unacceptable attitude on the forums, which has also raised the warning level on your customer file. [MY COMMENT: empty threats, but he is basically, ‘only say nice things on the forum’] We will have to take appropriate action on your account if you decide to breach our contractual policies.
Regards,
Jeff L. [MY COMMENT:who is probably Anand with a different sig]
Administration Department
PolurNET Communications
————————————————————–
Lastly, my regret is that I didn’t see this post sooner.
Lee on July 23rd, 2009 at 11:24 am | Link
Cheap-ass 2GB server?
TOS contingency clause should allow for “overage fees”. Just like banks charge for overdraft. Automatic load shift for unexpected traffic increase. Site stays up, customer makes money, host makes money.
“Can’t we all just get along”?
Cal on December 23rd, 2009 at 8:45 pm | Link
Oh, man! I wish I had found this page *before* signing up with PolurNet!
The ’support’ has been HORRIBLE! Slow, rude and dismissive. I won’t go in to details - but basically everything that went wrong was my fault even when it very clearly was not.
I also became suspicious that the different names from different ‘departments’ were the same person. Very similar writing style and all the same attitude that accused me of being the problem - and not the tech ’support’ that gave me bad advice - or simply told me it was my fault.
AVOID POLURNET!!!
Jack Mildam on May 6th, 2010 at 10:37 am | Link