Featureprice Follies
The latest on Featureprice? I’m waiting to hear back from American Express after sending them my 40 pages of documentation on why I should get my money back. I also got an email from Featureprice this morning, apparently in response to one of my many emails that had complained that the helpdesk didn’t work.
I’ll post the mail here, highlighting the funny part.
Return-Path:
Delivered-To: xxx@xxx.net
Received: (qmail 31176 invoked from network); 5 Mar 2003 19:18:16 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO ….com) ([x..x.x.x])
(envelope-sender
by xxx.xxx.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP
for
Received: from xxx.xxx.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by xxx.xxx.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1A380754A8
for
Delivered-To: xxx@xxx.com
Received: from ssl.featureprice.com (unknown [64.38.111.240])
by xxx.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E53EB7539A
for
Received: from ssl.featureprice.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
by ssl.featureprice.com (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id h25ExCYo021010
for
Received: (from nobody@localhost)
by ssl.featureprice.com (8.12.5/8.12.5/Submit) id h0C3Q6rp002179;
Sat, 11 Jan 2003 22:26:06 -0500
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 22:26:06 -0500
Message-Id: <200301120326.h0C3Q6rp002179@ssl.featureprice.com>
To: xxx@xxx.com
Subject: Your HelpDesk Access Information
From: “FeaturePrice.com”
X-Sender:
X-Mailer: PHP
Hello Xxx Xxx,
Please do not reply to this email since it was automatically generated by our password reminder program.
As per your request, we are resending the HelpDesk access information. Please find your email address as well as the password below. With this information, you will be able to login to the HelpDesk.
http://helpdesk.featureprice.com
E-Mail Address: xxx@xxx.com
Password: xxx
If you are still experiencing problems logging in to your Help Desk account, please contact our customer service at +1-800-605-4883.
Thank you for your understanding and patience.
Best Regards,
——————————————————————–
HelpDesk Support
www.featureprice.com
——————————————————————–
Online Help Desk: http://helpdesk.featureprice.com
Technical Inquiries: 800-605-4883
—
Can you believe this? They back dated the email to make it look like they sent it on January 11. How clueless does a hosting company have to be to think that the headers don’t have the correct date? I hadn’t even sent the email saying that my helpdesk login was broken until January 22nd.
What losers.
March 6th, 2003 at 10:13 am
Hi, I’m currently going throught the same problems with Feature Price. I also used my AMEX card for the transaction. I’ve consulted with AMEX and they say their hands are tied and I should resolve the issue with FP. What was the outcome with AMEX and FP? Please advise because I’m at my wits end.
Thanks, MC
March 19th, 2003 at 12:30 pm
My site has been down off and on for the last 3-4 months. Despite my renewal fees that have been charged to my credit card they still claim i need to renew—meanwhile is my site working? Hell no!
DIE FEATUREPRICE, DIE!!!
April 13th, 2003 at 3:12 am
I Renewed Online March 4th with FP before the expiration Deadline of March 15th. After March 15th the website went down and no one will respond to help me get it back
I am in Vietnam so cannot make Long distance calls or 1-800 calls.
An automated E/mail is generated saying a technition will answer me soon. Then an automated answer gives me another number to refer to on my next complaint. Now May 13th 2003 and still no help.
April 13th, 2003 at 10:14 am
My completely developed site has been down for almost 2 months. NOW, after paying for premium teck service to find out what is going on, they tell me “oops, we lost all your data, do you have it backed up?”
Very frustrated and want my money back, but am sure THAT is impossible with this lame ripoff company.
April 13th, 2003 at 8:12 pm
FeaturePrice is currently under investigation by the Florida Attorney Genera. Please refer to:
http://myfloridalegal.com/lit_ec.nsf/2c8e275c590c080e852563cc0010d6bc/767cfb6b7cf1f5de85256cd2006e58a8!OpenDocument
April 14th, 2003 at 2:42 pm
I’m at my wit’s end with them. My website mailserver hasn’t worked in almost a week and they keep saying it is fine. I’ve been cut off of their chat room so many times that I can’t believe it. And when I try to call them, they tell me the office hours are nine-five Eastern time (which is the time I’ve been calling) and then they cut me off.
I’m switching a number of accounts ASAP.
April 18th, 2003 at 3:00 pm
Submitted credit card for renewal…..they billed it but never set me up on the new server and dropped my account on the day it was due. Unable to contact them by phone, chat or e-mail. I moved to a new host and the sales guy said he had taken 15 orders from FP customers that day. Now I get to work with the credit card company to get my money back. They had good ratings when I signed up a year ago and I did not have many problems with them other than they failed to renew my account even though I paid for the service.
April 19th, 2003 at 7:48 pm
Resolved – Finally! I used a Discover card to pay. I attempted to resolve my problem directly with Featureprice to no avail (duh!). I offered a ‘deal’, they didn’t respond. I made numerous attempts to contact them, nada… I disputed the *entire* charge with Discover, they responded and Discover reposted the charge. I then sent about 30 pages of documentation and Discover *permanently reversed the charge*! Keep trying, it *is* possible to get your money back from these scammers!
April 20th, 2003 at 8:46 pm
Feature Price is owned by Hosting Network Inc which also owns Edison Telephone company all of Ft Myers Fla. You can contact Travis and Kimberly Faye Johnson the Owners of all the stock as well as President and VP of all the above comapnies at their Edison Telephone company numbers (239) 622-4444
& (239) 622-3333 You can contact the FLA Attorney Generals office about Case
Case Number: L03-3-1071–started feb-2003
The Head Investagator–Andrea chilton
can be reached at Economic Crimes Division in Tampa, Florida 813-287-7950
Fax 813-281-5515 3507 frontage road Suite 325
Tampa,Fla 33607 The US Attorneys office (FEDS)has just begain to get complaints about these guys violateing the Rico Act
Contact United States Attorneys’ Office
Attn: Chief Assistant Molloy
Florida, Middle District
2110 First Street, Suite 3-137,
Fort Myers 33901
Ph (239)461-2200
Fax (239)461-2219
April 21st, 2003 at 10:22 pm
I am experiencing many of the same problems reported above. Can anyone recommend any reputable, customer-friendly providers with decent tech support?
April 23rd, 2003 at 4:20 am
Try http://www.netfronts.com I just moved there after almost one year of horible Featureprice service. However, at Netfronts I have set upt most of our clients since 2000 and had no complains.
Good luck
Laszlo
April 23rd, 2003 at 4:01 pm
I was nervous about doing business with FP because they are Florida based. A previous experience – trying to get my money back, etc. Finally about 5 years later I got money back. The laws must be easier for scammers in Florida.
How can I get my domain back? The $$$ lost I can handle but all this time and what to do about the domain is what really gets to me.
April 23rd, 2003 at 5:42 pm
I also talked to my bank who supplies my VISA card and they can’t really do much about it. The only thing they can do is after 30 days of the transaction, is to send in an investigation.
May 1st, 2003 at 3:56 am
I don’t know if you guys saw this last week but my site went down. The FP website was also down for the whole night. Later that morning, their website went back up stating that FP was going to be shutting down in April. They explained that there was some big scandal going on internally involving extortion and holding domain names hostage. I have since switched to another hosting service. I too used AMEX to pay for my service but it has been less than a month since I paid for the service so hopefully I will have better luck getting my money back. I had purchased my domain name through FP who in turn buys them from enom.com I called enom.com and explained they situation, which they were aware of and told me that I could set up an account free with them and they then switch my domain name to their service. I was then able to repoint it to my new hosting service.
May 2nd, 2003 at 11:00 pm
OMG! Glad I’m not the only one these people have screwed! I don’t understand what is going on with them. Earlier today there was a message posted on the main page stating they were going out of business, and now the site looks to be operating just fine. With the exception of my site not working. If anyone would like to start a class action lawsuit, I’m game. 🙂 Just email me.
cali_bozz@yahoo.com
May 4th, 2003 at 11:04 am
Count me in cali. I confess I was too tempted by the low prices for multi-domain (virtual environment) setup like this to host several inter-related domains. I’m off to research more expensive hosts with more substantial support standards. goodbye featureprice. thanks everyone for sharing.
May 5th, 2003 at 9:48 am
I had all the same problems. Fortunately, I didn’t reg my DN with them and have full control over it. I did some research at 3 AM the morning they posted the message they now claim was defacing of their site. I switched over to fidelityhost.com. They are cheaper and better for now. Their service guys usually respond in a day and the site is running ok. I have a couple of slow days but they said they had a CPU overload. They’ve corrected it and are monitoring it. I haven’t had a problem since. Great bang for the buck!
May 8th, 2003 at 7:29 pm
I gave you the url but it dont work most of the time. Just wanted to say O my god!!! I cant beleave it. I have never wanted to kill some one until today. I have been going though the some stuff. But I thought it was me and I was not doing something write.
May 9th, 2003 at 10:37 am
My site has been down once again for 3 days now and an avg of 2 weeks for the last 5 months. I never get a response from tech support that helps and any response I get just infuriates me to the point where I just want out. My only problem is they registered my domain name and under WHOIS it says featureprice customer. So does anyone know how to get it away from them? I have absolutely had it with this company and would love to help put them out of business so they don’t rip off anymore people.
May 9th, 2003 at 11:34 am
I’m another pissed the heck off feature price customer (a.k.a. sucker). They got me fine, they ripped me off, cool, I’ll bite the bullit. I just want my domain names released. Dotrregistar.com has a posting on their site about featureprice.com and hostway customers. They are contacting featureprice’s legal people to do something about the domain name problem. If there is any one out there who may have any info about getting your domain name released from these people please post something on the net. Or if you have any methods to getting your domain name(s) PLEASE let me know…
May 11th, 2003 at 1:57 am
Does any body know who is FP’s legal counsel ? We’re trying to contact them about a takeover bid.
May 11th, 2003 at 1:59 am
If you need hosting please check us out at http://SuccessfulHosting.com
May 13th, 2003 at 8:45 pm
featureprice servers seemed to be hacked :
0wn3d bY DiYARBAKIR Hacker TEAM
look for a dht.htm in the root
May 16th, 2003 at 2:28 pm
Does anyone have advice for redpointing my domain from featureprice to my new server?
May 17th, 2003 at 2:47 pm
I got my FeaturePrice account in 2003 and had a good year with them. I wrote them last December (2002) asking how I could renew early and received a rather cryptic response stating that some company executive has made off with millions of dollars… I decided just to sit tight and NOT renew at that time.
In late February of 2003 my site went down. It never really came back up. Oh yes, if I was lucky it came up for a day or two but there was always some problem with it.
For nearly two months I tried working with them but the help desk was totally unhelpful. Their hotline went dead and or wasn’t even answered. My trouble tickets received at best only a token response.
Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. I mean, a website should require almost no attention and here I was working nearly full time trying to get my site to work. I moved to APlus. They offer essentially all the same services as Featureprice for about the same cost and so far the experience has been great.
NOTE: There was a small window of opportunity when FP issued instructions for how to move your domain name to DotRegister. I lucked out and got that move done. You might look around on the help desk stuff and see if you can find that information (if it’s still any good).
One word I’d like to add. I don’t think FP was purposely scamming people. I think they just got in over their heads in trying to convert over to their new servers. Their techs were simply untrained and overloaded and once things started going downhill it simply snowballed out of control. Actually, I feel sorry for them. It’s sad to see a good business go in the tank like that.
Anyhow, I’m off FP and glad for it. Good luck to all the rest of you.
May 19th, 2003 at 1:36 pm
We are unable to use our domain name. Unable to reach the people who have previously used our website for help and contact. This is very sad. Our ministry is unable to receive funds that were coming in through that site. We really need help here.
May 20th, 2003 at 5:38 am
Featureprice is under investigation by the state of Florida for Criminal violations. Don’t be misled. The people who run this company have made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars by cancelling hosting of paying customers and/or not providing refunds to legitimate customers. It is a complete scam company.
May 20th, 2003 at 2:17 pm
http://www.featureprice.com/support.php
Check out their new support page. Pretty arrogant!
May 20th, 2003 at 3:25 pm
I guess I am lucky. I have had an account for over a year and my site is up about 90% of the time. I moved all my expiring account ot pair.com and will move my last 3 as they expire on FP. Pair is a little more expensive but not when you consider how well I have been treated. I get support questions answered within hours. I hope the owners of FP get what they deserve!
May 22nd, 2003 at 11:29 am
Greetings,
Not sure if they are down for good now. First time, from what I can see that the ip address is not responding to pings. It’s a sad situation but certainly not the worse that we will see in the near future. The world situation dwarfs this, that’s for sure.
“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem”.
June 3rd, 2003 at 11:41 am
Atlantic.net has acquired Featureprice. I have three sites with FP and am so confused about where to go. I have been researching and researching and just don’t know who to trust. I got FP because of a referal and was quite happy with my first experience I added to clients to the list this March.
Anyone know of any good reputable hosts that will do a package that will host up to six domains? Or has anyone heard of Jumpline or Myhost?
thanks,
Dianne
June 8th, 2003 at 12:53 pm
Dianne,
I see you moved it already. Me too ! Best wishes Dianne.
January 5th, 2004 at 1:15 am
Well, it appears the hostile takeover of Feature Price.com by Atlantic.net never went through. All that added aggrevation for nothing.