UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Programming Web Hosting Bad experience at CWI

We have two people at least who haven't had trouble with CWI, but I have had plenty, so in the spirit of this thread which I think is really useful for getting across your experiences at different hosts, here is mine, reposted from a reply to another thread.

CWI Hosting is GARBAGE. They gave me a full month of ****ty service and have not replied to my e-mails to billing or the CEO to request a refund. I was plagued with 29 days of services failing, and several downtimes in the first few DAYS of hosting (They have a 100% uptime gaurentee, f-ing propeganda, they were up for maybe 80%, which is intolerable). Lets see, the website stat program doesn't update on any apparent schedual...averages about once every 4 days, they BROKE their compiler, and when I TOLD them how to fix it they replied with "We don't see any errors on our end that would cause this problem" well I program for a living and when the libraries fail, it's their fault. (they didn't even TRY to compile a program to reproduce the errors I was getting - they probably don't know how to compile in the first place). Not only that, but their system fails to parse SSI when it gets loaded, never had that problem anywhere else, CGI failed for the 3 days before I finally called it quits, (for these as well the support message was always "We don't see anything wrong on our end" well, news for them is that when someone leaves a website running and doesn't update it for two days, during which SSI and CGI fail repeatedly, it's THEIR problem). Their server also went down so many times it makes me sick (they keep their own site www.cwihosting.com on a cobalt RaQ which I only saw crash once the whole time, but the server I was on was flakey as hell), and they contest EVERY downtime trying to blame it on routers and anything else that will get them out of refunding money (again, I'm not stupid, a simple tracert revealed every time that there was no router problem). Now maybe Lucia got lucky and got on a different server, but I had a months worth of contats with their technical staff which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that this company doesn't know how to run a server, and is most likely one or two people who installed some servers but don't know how to maintain them. Their Tech Support replies to inquiries via the support system fairly quickly, but for any actual "technical" problems they are useless, and their phone line is rarely answered, and when it is they direct you to the support form.
Current status for me is waiting for a reply to my refund request, and they will probably contest it and rob me of a full years payment in advance for a ****ty months service.
I have moved to CQHost.com (they run RaQ's) and am having no problems, no downtime, and it's a VERY fast server. Their rates aren't as good as LiquidWeb (that's the best place I've seen, and I have looked everywhere having been going from host to host for 5 years no), so try LiquidWeb first. 500 megs is normally plenty, and what you really want is that 30gig transfer a month, very generous (my CQHost gives 15 gigs).
If you want FULL details of ALL the problems at CWI Hosting, drop me an e-mail and I can elaborate, but right now I'm waiting for that refund reply and if it doesn't come soon and they continue to ignore my e-mail and not answer their phones I'll be reporting them to the Better Business Bureau.

Again, check out LiquidWeb (link at the top from the original thread poster), and you can also check out CQHost.com and compare offers, but I do think LiquidWeb looks better, and know a few sites that are hosted there as well (dragonseek.com as one).

Colin Poole, Co-Founder, FON
http://www.fantasyonline.net
colin@fantasyonline.net

same here!

Mastermind, are you saying you had problems with them also? I just ordered a year of hosting this morning based on the recomendations here. Am I screwed?? Maybe I should try and get out of it before I use them

Hey Sting, I would be weary at the very least. Check out liquidweb.com, I have only heard good things about them, and second to them is my current host, cqhost.com. They have had two downtimes over the past three weeks for about an hour each, and they tell you exactly why the downtimes occur rather than blaming it on someone else.

As an update on CWI, they never replied to any of my 5 e-mails requesting a refund, 2 to billing, 2 to the CEO, and a final to billing. Very hard to get through on their phone lines, and I'm sure they are going to contest refunding my money, so I will most likely have to go to small claims court if I ever want to see it again.

[ March 20, 2001: Message edited by: Silmaris ]

My friend used to run a site on CWIHosting ... not anymore. They had two consecutive downtimes it was too much:

The first one they blamed on a hacker and the second one they responded "We don't see that your website is down".

Needless to say, CWIHosting was ditched.

And wasn't this host the host that MasterMind recommended about two-three months ago???

qasic

Damn, sorry if anyone signed up on my recommendation, I still haven't had any real problems with them, they always answer the phones etc..

Sorry Now I feel bad..

Yea i reccomended their service but if i could take it back i would.
I already filed a complaint with the BBB.

I heard last night they were bought by freeyellow.com this week... a borderline company at best. Anyone else know about this?

Haven't heard anything, but we've been having problems with them too now.. I'm looking for another host, but so far, all the ones that offer the kind of space my site needs are either disreputable, or too expensive..

How much space do you need? And what other requirements?

1200-1500mb, the usual like cgi etc.. at a reasonable price..

Lucia try burlee.com or hostingdeals.com they're pretty good hosters

CWI sucks. They couldn't even get my domain name working properly. Requests to www.epinionaddicts.com would fail, but epinionaddicts.com would resolve fine.

Plus, they had a bunch of hacker wannabe's hogging up the cpu by running loads of java jobs. I left them and went back to jumpline.

Jumpline now wants to charge us for the extra bandwidth we use; so we are considering our next move.

Amy

I know www.webhostingtalk.com has helped me in my decision as to what hosts are legit. You can ask about anyhost and if their is dirt to be spread you'll hear it from someone;)