Please avoid hostinger at all costs!

DudeThatsErin

DudeThatsErin

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I shouldn't have pre-paid for hosting, live and learn.

Back on Black Friday of 2020 I paid for 48 months of VPS hosting for $170.88. I thought this was a good deal at the time. BOY was I wrong.

Even with their managed shared hosting, their support is non-existent. You get people who just google answers or look up answers on their knowledgebase and send you links. Like I could do that. You don't get personalized support for your inquiries.
You cannot talk to billing or a supervisor regardless of what happens.

Earlier today, I was asking them if I could get a prorated refund as I haven't been happy with their support for a while and I just wanted to see if it would be a "yes" or "no". They had to forward my concerns up to billing (who I couldn't talk to), told me it would be 1-2 business days, and I asked for an escalation. She did. They came back with "no" (fine whatever) and then CANCELED MY VPS saying I agreed to it being canceled. That was at 3:26pm EST today and it is now almost 5pm and I'm STILL waiting on a supervisor and whomever I was talking to said she handed me off to someone else, didn't, and now I'm stuck waiting for her to return to get any help with anything.

They said they would cancel my VPS "IF" the refund was approved, not regardless.

Now I am 100% working on a refund, even if it is only $50. I'm tired of this horrid company and the non-support they have given me regardless of whether I used their shared hosting or VPS hosting.

I was using VPS hosting to keep my discord bot(s) online while my PC was offline because my server is active when I am asleep and my PC is off and it costs a lot to keep my PC on all the time. I'm tempted to go back to that and give up VPS hosting and go with shared hosting for my websites.

Cause nowadays either hosts are expensive because cPanel is expensive (example being KnownHost and their managed VPS services - $52+/mo is A LOT for a managed VPS) or I get zero support from a VPS (digital ocean/vultr/etc.) or shared hosts are crappy in their own ways (namecheap)... Why is it so hard to find a good host that is not expensive? Like, what happened to $20/mo for managed VPS hosting and $10/mo for good shared hosting?! *sigh*

ANYWAY, rant aside, STAY AWAY from hostinger. They do not have good support and are not customer oriented AT ALL.

I got my VPS back since I wrote that but I am missing a year and 2 months on my expiration date, the supervisors are only available via email, and I lost 3 days worth of work and time and if my husband's business was online, that would mean we would lose 3 days worth of pay.
 
Och, that's just painful to anyone. Paid that amount of money to get crap. I would get a refund and whatnot.
 
Empire said:
Och, that's just painful to anyone. Paid that amount of money to get crap. I would get a refund and whatnot.
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Still trying. Their managers already left for the day so they said I'll get an email tomorrow so I'm contacted them at noon if I don't have one by then and I'm not letting up.
 
Well, you can say in the email to make them scared that you will contact o and so
 
I don't know what the laws are like in the US, but can you do a chargeback on your payment card to get the money back?
 
Demon_skeith said:
They seem to have decent reviews, I wonder if their support went bad recently?
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It's been happening to a fair few hosts, something changes and then suddenly they're not the same service anymore. BigScoits were my go-to for a long time, but their prices kept going up and up and soon their network started having issues, and then support quality dropped. It's such a shame. KnownHost are my go-to these days.
 
PGen98 said:
It's been happening to a fair few hosts, something changes and then suddenly they're not the same service anymore. BigScoits were my go-to for a long time, but their prices kept going up and up and soon their network started having issues, and then support quality dropped. It's such a shame. KnownHost are my go-to these days.
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Is knownhost really the only “affordable” good host these days?

I keep hearing them and I know they are good. But what about hostdime or any other host?
 
DudeThatsErin said:
Is knownhost really the only “affordable” good host these days?

I keep hearing them and I know they are good. But what about hostdime or any other host?
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I've heard decent things about host dime, and I believe our former admin, ChrisGrigg's USHost247 is also decent. Can't confirm, as I haven't used them, but I'm positive there are good, affordable hosts out there beyond KnownHost
 
Just now heard back from all of this...
Hey there Erin! I hope this message finds you well.

I would like to start this message by thanking you for your patience so far, I'm here to speak on the behalf of our Compliance team about your latest request.

We have gathered all the information on your request in order to make our final decision, and this is what we have learned:

  • On November 27th, 2020 you have purchased a Premium Shared Hosting that you, later on, decided to refund to your account's balance, and on December 06 you used the credit to purchase a VPS 1 for 12 months;
  • 8 days after this purchase, you again refunded your payment for the VPS 1 plan back to your account's balance, the reason why you decided to refund in the first place was that you realise the VPS 1 didn't have enough RAM power for what you needed, so you had already mentioned upgrading to VPS 3 to other agents;
  • Then, on December 14th, you proceeded to purchase your VPS 1 plan for 48 months (HG29676396) with Paypal, and this payment was also refunded, on December 15th;
  • Now, in January 2021 you purchased yet another VPS 1 plan (HG29962013), this time for 24 months, and from January to October, you were satisfied and used your VPS for the many months to come.
Now, this is where the confusion starts.

In September 2021 you asked us "How much of a credit would I receive if I switched to shared hosting for multiple websites?", you were referencing your purchase made on January 2021, meaning you were 7 months past our Refund period of 30 days, considering switching plans, and to please you we were prepared to make an exception for you, to which you responded:

"I will keep everything as is then. Thank you"

On October 13th you bought another VPS 1 for 48 months (HG33708110) and on the next day, you came to us to request that the 24 months of the VPS 1 (HG29962013) that you purchased back in January, were added to your VPS 1 expiration date, which was done.

So your new VPS 1 plan expiration date was updated from October 2025 to March 2028, although this was the wrong expiration date, it should only have added 17 months more on your new VPS, since you used your plan from January to October, so the expiration date should be March 2027.

Now on November 14, one day after the refund period had ended, you request a refund for the payment of the VPS 1 of 48 months, not only that, you asked us to refund you this payment and to keep your VPS 1 active with the remaining time of the first payment made in January, which we once again accepted your request and made an exception for you by refunding the payment, and your VPS 1 was updated to March 2024, when it should have been updated back to January 2023.

On December 24 you came to us, once again, asking to refund the remaining time of your VPS 1 plan back to your account, so you could purchase the Premium hosting, but this meant to refund the payment made on January 2021, which we, of course, couldn't make, and we explained why to you. You insisted and we opened a request that this decision was made directly by the BIlling team, who also agreed that no refund would be approved, even to balance, as this situation had already extended itself for long enough.

On December 27, we spoke and I directly explained to you all the actions that had led to this decision and you understood.

Then on January 21, you made another attempt to exchange your VPS 1 for a Premium Shared hosting, which my colleague then follow up your request and activated a Premium plan for you, only for you to return on February 21 to say:

"Hello, I am having a lot of issues with the shared hosting. It is very slow and my websites go down and I am just very unhappy and I want my VPS back. I regret moving to the shared hosting."

And we, once again, did what you requested, canceled the Premium Shared Hosting, and activated the VPS 1 for you.

Two days later, on January 23 you returned saying "I want a refund on my VPS NOW. I want to speak to a supervisor NOW.", at this point my colleague mistakenly stated that the refund would be processed and canceled your VPS, but once the Billing team checked your history, no payment was refundable anymore. You may state that this mistake has negatively impacted you, but there were other mistakes made, due to the confusion created, that beneficiated you, like the over-extension of your hosting plan, which we are inclined to let go of.

So your VPS was again activated and you requested either compensation, although your VPS already has an expiration date of 1 year and 3 months longer than it should've, or a refund, which we can not provide for reasons already mentioned.

I would like to bring to your attention that we have been more than understanding and helpful towards your wishes during this whole time, bending our rules and making exceptions for you, even refunding you a payment that was no longer under the refund period (HG33708110) and this can not continue to happen.

We value you as our customer and we have dedicated ourselves to supporting your needs to the maximum of our capacities, which is why I say that it will no longer be possible to make any exceptions, neither for a refund nor for a change of plans, and this is the final decision.

If you still are facing issues with managing your VPS, please let me know and I will contact our tech team to work on this matter, or if you need any help on upgrading it, I'm sure one of our agents would be glad to share with you all about our discounts.

I would also like to add that if you would like to contest this decision, or has any doubts about it, our compliance team will be more than happy to help you with it, just write back to them in the email "[email protected]".

Please be aware that their work will only resume next Tuesday, and they work on a priority basis, so their reply may take 48-72 hours to be received.

Once again, we appreciate your patience and wish you a nice day!
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It's a long email that I got but I don't even know what to say...
  1. I've never been able to speak to a manager, even from the beginning. Compliance never responds via email. It is only ever support. Even this one she is "speaking on behalf of compliance".
  2. It shouldn't matter if you go between plans or even shared and VPS, they should provide an adequate level of support and a minimum standard of management for their organization that they're not providing. The fact you can't escalate the situation is proof positive of that. Shockingly bad service.
  3. The ending of the VPS that was on 3/24 and now 1/23 was because it was put at 3/24 incorrectly. That isn't my fault. I shouldn't be penalized for something that isn't my fault. I'd still have a VPS with an expiration of 3/24 if they didn't delete it last Monday for NO REASON.
Just ridiculous, hindsight it's easy to say I wish I'd never signed up with them, but no one sees something like this coming. I hope there's a way to get enough negative attention on them that they'll offer a refund or at least a manager to speak to. There's no way management is unavailable as frequently as they're saying.

I'm so done. I just want a refund. I want to speak to a manager. I want to get the word out about how BAD hostinger is.
 
That's completely bizarre of hostinger to have poor customer support. That's why I don't go outside, Namecheap, GoDaddy, when it comes to hosting/domain. I love to trade or transact with companies whose customer service is responsive and not dried.
 
Sharon said:
Wow. That's unfortunate. So sorry you're having to go through this. I've never been comfortable with the technical side of forums/websites myself which is probably why I've opted in a free software like Proboards. I hope you can find an amazing deal with a reputable company in the future.
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Same for me! If I did move out of Proboards, I'd have to have a lot of help.
 
I had hosting a long time ago that went out for a month, something like that, due to a DDOS attack. Nonetheless, that situation wasn't their fault. Well, I don't know if they could have prevented it or not.
 
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