Are We Collateral Damage?

Buying and selling hosting companys is an very active market. To get some insight see:
http://www.resellerguide.com/articles/buying-selling-hosting-company/buying-selling-web-hosting-company/233

This the third time my hosting company was acquired by another. All of my migrated sites were Windows. Each time, I experienced a major reduction of tech experience for the Windows Server environment at the new owner's facilities.

Simply put, the technical people are deficient in their working
knowledge of Windows Server in a commercial environment. I
realize hiring experienced techs of that caliber may seem costly.
However, trying to bootstrap inexperienced techs into a migrating
environment, is a ghastly mistake in providing a seamless transition
for Windows customers.

This deficiently is so blatant that I believe the new ownership of
WebHost4Life, et al, decide Windows hosting customers were not worth the
investment. We are collateral damage in the pursuit to low-cost techs
& users of Unix, which has a better bottom line.

Let's face it, most of us are not mega-sites with a grand income. We can't afford the time and frustrations to obtain compensation of our losses, which realisticaly are in the $1000's range. So, we place our tail between our legs and move on to another hosting company.

Is is not time we take a stand to prevent this collatoral-damage strategy in acquisitions of hosting companies of the future?

Please, if you have a few moments, share your experiences with us about the current WebHost4Life acquistion-migration. (I know reliving it can be painful). See the first blog post below titled: "Describe Your Hosting Problems At WebHost4Life"

SAN Storage Backup Removed ?

If you purchased the "TurboCharge" from WebHost4Life it included the following:

“All your files will be stored in High Performance SAN storage. Our million dollar SAN Infrastructure is simply the best in the market. With SAN storage, all your data will be protected against hard drive failures and degraded performance from old hard drives. Also, the SAN solution will deliver your site content much faster than before. You will see great improvement in both speed and reliability.”

I purchased this feature. One of my sites is a Cloud where back-up of my user's files is critical. I built this Cloud because of the SAN storage capability.
See bottom of the page at:
http://www.svgDiscovery.com/

WebHost4Life is, at this time, totally clueless about the SAN Backup, and suggested I buy their current daily tape backup. SAN backup is for 30 days and much more desirable than magnetic tapes.

Customers Leaving WebHost4Life in Droves

Over 600 sites/week exiting WebHost4Life, and the numbers are increasing dramatically.

Total Domains Webhost 4Life [Estimated only] Situation [Gain domains or Loss domains]
March 1, 2010 68546 domains -653 domains
February 22, 2010 69199 domains -489 domains
February 15, 2010 69688 domains -451 domains
February 8, 2010 70139 domains -259 domains
February 1, 2010 70398 domains -271 domains
Quick and brief overview of few months from previous years
December 28, 2009 70669 domains -11 domains
December 21, 2009 70680 domains +1746 domains
December 29, 2008 68934 domains +50 domains
December 22, 2008 68884 domains +6808 domains
December 31, 2007 62076 domains +40 domains

See:
http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-hosting/web-hosting-top.webhost4life.com-reviews?

WebHost4Life Owners : Accel-KKR/Endurance International Group, Inc.

This is specific information on the new ownership of WebHost4Life
Address:
70 Blanchard Road
Third Floor
Burlington, MA 01803
Phone:
781-272-6470
Key Executives
Mr. Steve Sydness
Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Hari Ravichandran
Founder and Executive Vice President
Ms. Christina Lane
Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Eric Ritvo
General Counsel
Mr. David Bryson
General Counsel and Vice President

This is a report from October 2008:
BURLINGTON, Mass., Oct. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- The Endurance International Group ("Endurance") today announced that Accel-KKR, a technology-focused private equity firm, has purchased a majority equity stake in the company. The acquisition positions Endurance to continue to grow through both acquisitions and organic marketing, and to diversify its product portfolio.

This is an announcement from May 2007:
PHOENIX & BURLINGTON, Mass. -- IPOWER and Endurance International today announced the completion of their merger.
About IPOWER
Headquartered in Phoenix, AZ, IPOWER provides Web hosting and Web services for small- and medium-sized businesses worldwide looking to build, manage, promote and profit from an online presence. The company was founded in October 2001.

Cancellation Fee of $35 Illegal?

I received email notification on Feb 15th that my site had been migrated. At the bottom of the email there was the following statement:
"Be sure to take a moment to review WebHost4Life's Terms of Service.
By maintaining your account, you are agreeing to comply with
and abide by these Terms:
http://www.webhost4life.com/legal/index.bml "
I looked at the "Terms" today and saw they added a $35 cancellation fee. This was not originally in the Terms Of Agreement when I renewed my contract with them back in December. I'm almost sure they cannot assume agreement after the fact of migration unless there was explicit agreement by me.

A previous customer who wanted to cancel, recently posted their commentary with WH4L, in which WH4L agreed NOT to charge the cancellation fee. He cited the above.
See :http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-hosting/web-hosting-top.webhost4life.com-reviews?

(February 26th comment by Xxbbcc)

Describe Your Hosting Problems At WebHost4Life

Please list your problems and indicate if your plan is Windows. Provide an estimate of the time invested to date trying fix the problem. Also, provide an estimate on financial losses attributed to the problem.