(I apologize for the repeat rant, but I wanted this archived in my main blog; for those who saw this in my LJ thread, please just ignore it)
I used to host this website on Blue Virtual servers.
I thought this was a good service. I even recommended it to people!
Though, to get a responsive machine, I did have to pay more than, it turns out, than I might otherwise have had to. Their cheap services were way too sluggish for my Wiki-based website.
But you know what really burned my biscuit with Blue Virtual? Why I'm extremely mad at them, why I've cancelled my service and considered LETTING them put my unpaid balance into collections just so they would lose money on it?
Because, at their core, they suck. They don't care about the user, and they don't patrol their resources in any reasonable or expected way.
In even the lowliest most basic account in school, you had disk limits. Every web host has, of course, disk limits and bandwidth limits.
Every webhost will be very interested in patrolling these limits; monitoring them. Blue Virtual is no different. They know exactly what you are using on any given day.
So they noticed when someone found a writable directory in Wiki (an icon directory, buried deep in the tree; these people have too much time on their hands) and wrote about five gigs of movies into it, putting me way over my limit.
Did Blue Virtual enforce their disk limit, preventing this explosion in my website? Did they send me e-mail telling me that my limit was being approached? No, they did not. And paying them $50 a month for their service, I expected... service. Wouldn't you?
Instead of enforcing the limit, or notifying me, or basically doing ANYTHING USEFUL AT ALL, they billed me $275 for the disk overage.
That's bogus. That's Bullshit.
I called around. Other services warn you, and cap you. They don't charge you unless you agree to go over and to be charged. They don't steal money from you without asking.
Blue Virtual is different. Apparently a lack of proper system administration is a profit center for them.
Now I am at a decent web host, that does what it's supposed to. It monitors, e-mails, and enforces a cap.
Like most web hosts do.
Except Blue Virtual.
I apologize if I ever recommended Blue Virtual to you -- and I suggest you leave them soon if you are with the now, before their lazy policy bites you in the ass, too.
Right now I'm at 8bucksamonth.com, which is not a name that inspired much confidence, and moving over from TWiki to MediaWiki. I've had dreamhost.com recommended to me, and they look very promising.