July 09, 2003
FeaturePrice Chaos
The collapse of FeaturePrice has been a chaotic mess, leaving customers confused, frustrated and offline. Since the company announced its closure in April, the best source of information for customers has been message boards such as Web Hosting Talk where site owners can share information. A sale to Atlantic.net has led to further chaos, as Atlantic.net now says all FeaturePrice hosted sites are out of service. Site owners say their domains are displaying a statement from Atlantic.net urging them to shift their services. Meanwhile, the FeaturePrice.com domain points to Yahoo! web hosting. What the heck is going on? Here's what we know:
According to a July 1 statement posted on Atlantic.net's web site, "the former entity of Feature Price denied Atlantic.Net employees access to FeaturePrices equipment. Shortly after this occurred, all service to FeaturePrice's customers ceased due to unknown factors at this time." Atlantic.net says it is "working closely with all available professional, legal, and law enforcement channels to restore services."
According to a local TV report quoting a representative of FeaturePrice, the dispute involves obligations from Edison Telephone, a shuttered Ft. Myers, Fla. provider that is apparently controlled by FeaturePrice's owners.
Data from Netcraft shows that about 8,000 of FeaturePrice's 40,000 hosted sites moved to other providers in a 30-day period spanning mid-May to mid-June, with Verio gaining more than 1,000 of those sites while Rackspace (730) and Rackshack (606) also has large gains from former FeaturePrice customers. The other 32,000 are probably wishing they had as well. Stay tuned.
I lost my web sight about 3 months ago with Feature price, and I think it is interesting that I just received a notice from them yesterday to renew my listing with them. One thing I never liked about FeaturePrice is there was no alive person to contact about money or problems. Like a robot ran the system.I wrote a nasty gram back but even the letter got sent back with a message that there was no address for my message to go to.
I wonder who is sending the reapplication notices out if they are down? Someone hoping this would be like an ATM machine gone haywire, where the money spits in, and they don't have to work for it? And since there is no one on the other side of the machine, you lose your money once sent. Interesting, and annoying, very annoying.
Well, guess I will do like the others and find another host.
How do I get my money back?
I lost my service 2 weeks after paying for it.
Posted by: Russ at October 22, 2003 04:22 PM