So, here’s my side of the story. I can only imagine what PowWeb’s side of the story sounds like, but I really don’t care at this point.

So, the problems started right when I signed up for an account: There was downtime for every reason in the book, including DDoS attacks, hardware failure, hardware upgrades, MySQL rollbacks, server failures (PHP and MySQL), and finally a corrupt zone file on its DNS servers caused the Web site to be unreachable.

The downtime alone drove me insane, but what had compounded my frustrations was PowWeb’s apparent lack of ability to answer its customers’ questions.

The preferred method of contacting PowWeb is through its support ticket system, which is just a joke in my opinion. The idea is that you submit a support ticket, and customer service will look into the problem and get back to you in a timely fashion. In theory it’s a good idea, because you’re not wasting anybodies time; but, from what I saw, this system turned out to be a joke. After submitting several support tickets, there’s only one left in the system, and I’m told that problem was “resolved.”

Defeated by the ticket system, I decided to try and give the phone number a call – big mistake. I don’t have a transcript of the call, but I was basically told that the problem was on my end, and informed that I must be “really stupid to think otherwise.” Being from New York, and having one of the shortest fuses around, I pretty much lost it on the phone.

Finally, I tried getting support from their forums. While most of the users did want to help, the majority of the answers were always “cross your fingers and wait it out.” Users helping users is a great idea, but when the majority of the problems that arise are server-side downtime, there’s no answer that would satisfy my questions. More specifically, I want to know what the problem is and how long the anticipated downtime will be.

As you can imagine, my frustrations only grew when the DNS server decided to go nuts my domain name would not resolved. The time estimated to restore service: upwards of 72 hours.

I posted a message in its forums asking when the downtime would be over and how much credit we would receive for this absurd downtime. Expecting to be told the usual line of “PowWeb does not guarantee any uptime,” I was surprised to find that my thread had been deleted. Apparently, speaking ill of the company is more easily handled by trying to shut people up.

However, being a stubborn New Yorker, I wasn’t going to take that shit lying down; I filed a complaint with the BBB of southern California (where PowWeb is located).

I heard nothing back from PowWeb. Not even a “hey we’re sorry.” Nothing, nada, zip. So, I contacted its customer support.

This is where the story becomes… involved. I had called PowWeb’s customer support line, and after going through numerous people, I was basically told to piss off. More accurately, I was told that PowWeb doesn’t deal with “problem customers” directly.

Any sane person would’ve given up a while ago, but I was stuck between a rock and a hard place – every other hosting option out there that would fit my site’s needs costs way too much to justify even having the Web site; but I made a decision to start saving for a new dedicated server (our original one was lost in a blaze of glory). Until I found the right server/host setup, I was content with riding out the numerous problems with PowWeb.

That is, until it blocked my machine from accessing its servers.

Yes, folks, PowWeb blocked my IP. At first I thought it was just more downtime, but several friends informed me they could still access the Web site. Confused, I loaded up an anonymous proxy and, sure enough, the site worked.

I don’t know why, and at this point I don’t really care. I still can’t access its site directly from my machine, which means I can’t access my control panel in order to cancel my account.

Thankfully, I have a few really great friends. SubWolf and Pierce from the IRC channel decided to help me out. Pierce has provided a temporary home for Geekstreak, and Subwolf was nice enough to FTP into my old account and download all of the files to the IRC server and allow me to download them in a nice tarball.

So, this is a warning to everybody – stay away from PowWeb. It is not reliable, does not take responsibility for its actions, and ignores you when you start to complain loudly.

[Provided by Geekstreak]