The DreamHost Fubar, and Why I am Not Mad.
DreamHost fucked up. Big time.
However, I am not nearly as mad as (seemingly) every other customer. Sure, I got the several hundred dollar charge, and yes, I was confused.
What happend:
DreamHost had an automated system that billed customers. A detailed account can be found on the DreamHost blog, but essentially what happened was they had an issue with their billing system. It was not charging customers on recently upgraded servers. While investigating they found the problem to be a 64-bit incompatibility issue and corrected it. They then went back to start billing the accounts. Starting from now backwards. For example, 1-16-2008, 1-15-2008, … 12-31-2008… and there was the problem. The biller, although robust, had the feature/flaw of billing up to future dates. All their customers were then billed for the entire year.
Yeah. Big fuck up.
Why am I not mad?
Well, in my experience as a developer, I have realized that “Shit Happens”. I still remember the feeling of when I accidentally sent out a non-approved blatantly “test” version of an e-mail to all of a Xerox mailing list. Wow. I thought for sure I would be fired. Was I? No. Now, was that a $7.5 million dollar screw up? No. Definitely not.
DreamHost has guaranteed to refund the money (I still can’t see that I have even been charged yet, maybe in a few days), and also requested that anyone who has incurred additional fees contact them, implying they will also refund those. For me, everything is fine. I have a high enough limit on my credit card, and plenty of money in reserve that this does not affect me nearly as much as some.
Others however, are furious. They have sworn to leave DreamHost, and are furious at the ‘mildly comical’ blog entry that DreamHost posted explaining what happened.
For anyone that has been a member of DreamHost for any period of time, you learn quickly that they are light hearted and silly in ALL of their customer correspondence. This is one of the reasons why I like them so much. I know that there is actually human beings that are working there, and chances are I wouldn’t mind having a beer or two with them (Although, I suspect after the other day they are likely going to be ingesting lots of beers). Why was this serious topic presented with a light hearted humor injected? Because that is how they communicate with their customers. It’s that simple.
They strive to be transparent when something goes wrong. I much prefer to read about what happened, and what they have done to fix it over a generic “There has been a billing error, it will be corrected shortly and you will be refunded” that I would expect from other hosts (and companies) that we usually encounter in today’s hush hush business world. Other companies would not tell us what went wrong, and surely would not tell us why it went wrong. They would merely state that a problem occurred and it will be corrected.
I hate companies like that.
So I ask these questions:
Did DreamHost screw up? Yes.
Did DreamHost fess up to the screw up? Yes
Did DreamHost explain what happened to cause the problem? Yes.
Is DreamHost correcting their mistake? Yes.
Is DreamHost going to do their best to make everything right? I believe so.
Is DreamHost going to lose a lot of money in lost customers and bank fees? Oh dear god, Yes.
I feel bad for the situation that DreamHost is in right now. You can not mess with someone’s money and come out unscathed. I can’t imagine the feeling that Josh (the person who hit the button) has. I am not mad at DreamHost for this. I know screw ups like this happen all the time - they just hit the jackpot of when and what to screw up. I am not leaving DreamHost anytime soon… although I do recommend they start putting more sanity checks on their internal software.
Lots more sanity checks.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Dreamhost is my ISP and I’m sticking with them. Their response made me laugh. True, I may have several bounced checks as a result. (It’s looking mighty close), There will be bank fees. I’m sticking with them anyway.
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I really like them has a provider. Whenever I have a question and I email them I always get a response within 2 hours or so. In terms of the billing mistake, I was notified that they billed me and was confused because I had already paid for a year, but within a couple days they sent out an email apologizing and my account as been refunded. It did not really affect me all that much except to create a little confusion.