A Dilemma with the [Scarab]Web

Scribbled by Lethal Illness @ 5:23 PM on February 14th, 2012.

The following is my personal experience with ScarabWeb, your experience may vary. This article is to inform people in the market for a new web hosting company of a bad experience so that they have the knowledge to educationally make their best choice.

I’ve finally escaped to my own company’s server and out of an overall terrible experience with my previous hosting provider. I’ve had plenty of hosting providers in the past including small companies, private servers owned by friends, and even GoDaddy for a short period of time. However, my most recent ex-provider has to be the hands down worst I’ve ever experienced.

It all started back in February of 2009, when a friend recommended I move away from GoDaddy’s mediocre services and switch to his current [at the time] hosting provider. I agreed for a few reasons like I was missing cPanel, it was an affordable reseller account, and [at the time] they had great customer service. I sat on the decision to switch while working on my next big project at the time. After finding some discounts, I bought the domain for what was then my main focus, the now defunct ThatsMySpin, and signed up for my reseller account with ScarabWeb. I was immediately welcomed, set up, and offered help if I needed it. I didn’t but the thought was appreciated and made me happy to know I have help when I need it. Everything was going great – right? Wrong! About 6 or 7 months into my affair with my new hosting provider, the owner had some medical problems and was on a temporary leave. It was completely understandable, and wasn’t a big problem as he had a reliable staff. That was until he sold the company to another company overseas, this was a sign that the end was near.

A company called “MadeIt Inc” purchased my hosting provider. They immediately announced an the prices were nearly triple (although I was locked into my current agreement) and transferring all the shared resellers and sites to one cluster. Being that I was actually locked into the same price I didn’t this would affect me, I pretty much blew it off. Sometime later, they were actually in the process of transferring sites and as expected my sites were incredibly slow at the time. Unfortunately, they never improved when fully transfered to the new cluster. Although extremely disappointed in speed, I figured it was an attempt to have me upgrade my agreement – which wasn’t happening. A few days later, my sites weren’t working because they forgot to announce the IPs were changing without informing anyone until after this has happened. Alright, so I contacted customer service for the new IPs and got an answer a day later (which under the previous owner would have been 2 hours max). Whatever, sites were working and I just thought switching was too much hassle and costly. I kept quiet with all my problems until sometime last year, when this medium to large sized company stopped renewing their servers SSL. My reseller accounts were no longer connecting to their local cPanels but rather the company’s default one. Eventually this turned into an IP address, which technically there is nothing actually wrong because cPanel has it’s own unverified certificate, but it was extremely unprofessional for a company of their size. Being ticked off about it, I voiced my opinion about how unprofessional it was and stated a single month of my payments to them was enough for an SSL certificate for them. The reply I got back was as if they were trying to downtalk me like I didn’t understand about SSL certificates and basically told me to deal with it and if I would like it to return to going through an SSL certificate I could pay it for them.

After such rudeness, I determined it was the last straw and I decided I was going to get my own server for the many benefits it offered me. Unfortunately, the time to research my choice, buy the server, pay for the collocation, and related tasks took me up until only recently to get it all set up and running. Once the server was setup and ready host my websites it was time to transfer everything. In order to do this I had to log into my old resellers WHM (Web Host Manager), but when I went to do this it seemed my password was changed. I found it kind of odd that when I’m ready to transfer my sites my WHM password was mysteriously changed, but I can’t prove that anyone has done it. The next logical step was to login to my client panel at ScarabWeb. Though, this password seemed to be changed too. Upon trying to reset that password, I got no recovery email. I verified the email address and done it several times after, checking my spam and making sure it wasn’t accidentally blocked. Hours later I still got nothing in my email. I figured I would make a support ticket and I did so requesting a solution to my client account password because I needed to reset my WHM that was mysteriously changed. I provided my PayPal transaction ID with when I last paid to prove my identity so that they can send my email a recovery link. Unfortunately, they send the link to the ticket thread to your email, which again the company is not sending me emails. Luckily, I was able to figure out my thread number from the URLs and get to it. Figuring I spent some time figuring out this URL, I thought they might have responded by then. Instead, they closed my ticket with no reply shortly after posting the problem. This took me to a whole new level of pissed off, that resulted in another ticket stating I made a thread about not getting their emails to my email and that I was extremely pissed off about them closing tickets without replies and that I would just like to login to my account. After that, I received some more down talking that I was used to since their switch. They kind of stupidly asked me to supply my client account login and they would help me with my WHM. I again restated my the problem that they could have easily read above about I don’t have that because that too was changed. I was then told they were going to update my other thread that was closed, but I don’t have the link to that anymore as they closed it and I don’t get their emails. After explaining it and asking for a link to the other thread, the down talking “staff” member posted the title of the thread without pasting the link to it. Presumedly, the same person (since none of these people have names in the ticket and are labeled “staff”)  who talked to me like I was stupid and didn’t understand how to reset my password. I politely informed him that wasn’t a link to be told that he has to forward my ticket to the “concern dept”.

I couldn’t bare this stress and more. I was so fed up at this point, I logged into my PayPal canceled my subscription to them and began backing up all my sites the manual way. Even though it would of took 5 times longer and mean I’d have to start from scratch with making databases and such, it was my last resort. Hours later, some bright “staff” member of the “concern dept” didn’t have a concern about me and decided to post my WHM username and password in the open, where anyone with the URL can get my login. How do I know this? Two reasons: the first is because I wasn’t logged into their client area to make this ticket, meaning anyone could of technically went in and requested this. I also simply tried on multiple computers the URL, which did work. The second reason is proof of how alarming this is; by the time I seen the thread and logged in it appears someone from out of the country was logged into my WHM, according to the IP address logged. Fortunately, it was only a minute before I was logged in and I immediately changed every accounts usernames and passwords before transferring anything.

Don't Let This Ignorance Happen to You!

Surprisingly, it is a week or so after when my next payment would have been due and they have yet to even email me about missing a payment/cancellation of the account. Then again, who knows if I would get those either. The moral of the story is that some hosting providers are unreliably foolish, unprofessional, and suck at customer service. I hope a similar predicament doesn’t happen to any of you because you might be as lucky as I was to catch an intruder before it got worse. Do some research before you decide on a hosting provider, or if you can afford it go out and get your own server. I can attest that being on a safe, reliable, private, and unbelievably fast server is awesome and I have no regrets.