Topic: Dreamhost billing debacle

So you guys heard about the serious dreamhost billing debacle?

Seems the charged a lot of accounts for about a year of future services, by accident,
and are now working hard to get the credit card transactions reversed.

Lot's of customer's seem annoyed by the light hearted tone in dh's blog - but,
we laugh because it hurts... personally I'd appreciate their openness.

So what's your take on this?
Does DH do the right thing in 'damage control'?

hmm well it's an interesting approach to business. My take is that people don't usually appreciate a joke being made over their money.

Light-hearted tone?

I just read that post, and it didn't seem excessively light-hearted. It seemed very open and honest. I mean, what do you say when you screw up like that? Once you've said, "We are all *extremely* sorry for the mishap," there's not much else you can say.

I think you might be misinterpreting some of the comments. Apparently the original message was posted with a severity tag of "medium," not "high," and some of the commenters took offense at this. I can't say I blame them--overcharging is a very serious issue.

I don't use DH and so have no stake in this pot, but I think we should get a few things clear:

1) The tone in the blog post was not overly light-hearted.
2) They did not make any jokes about people's money (I agree with Blaise here--making jokes about people's money is indeed a bad thing).
3) They did underestimate the seriousness of the issue when they first posted about it.

That's really all that happened. Whoever posted that first blog post stupidly listed the severity as "medium" rather than "high." Other than that, most of the commenters who are upset simply have a problem with a mistake of this magnitude being made in the first place, and there is nothing DH can do about that after the fact. They can promise that it won't happen again, but that won't change the fact that it happened this time.

[Edit: I read some of the other comments, and I think it's important to realize that some people are suffering more than others due to being overdrawn, missing other payments, etc. The Asylum may not have been hurt too badly, but this mistake has likely cost the DH customer base thousands of dollars collectively in various fees and penalties.]

[Edit2: OK, I've seen a few comments that complained about DH's "silly and lighthearted" tone, but they seem to be in the minority--although I don't plan on reading all 1000+ comments. ]


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(Edited by Suho1004 on 01-16-2008 03:53)

(Edited by Suho1004 on 01-16-2008 04:03)

I can speak as a Dreamhost client. While I am disappointed such a error could happen. It did and there's nothing left to do but fix it, which they are doing. I appreciate their honesty and diligence setting it right.

I've had my share of big mistakes, ( i.e. Making a very, very, wrong call on a 1.5 million dollar catalog run. Wasn't my best day, I can tell you. ) So I understand and can forgive. And after all it just money, sure I don't have much, and mostly live paycheck to paycheck. But there are a lot worse things happening to those alot less fortunate then I.

Sure blog was little lighthearted, but not inappropate. It's is a blog after all, not an official communication.

And it's exactly what I would expect from Dreamhost. That additude is a major part of their brand along with openness, and honesty. It's very important and the additude needs to remain, it's what makes them unique. That's why I choose them out of the flock for inexpensive hosts. If I need stuffy, IIS, and corporate, I have my Infosaic account.

The only thing I wish Dreamhost would have done diffrently was, let us know via email that such an error occurred. I shouldn't have to log on to their status website, blog, or subscribe to a RSS feed to find out there was a problem with something as critical as billing.

I hope it doesn't negatively impact them too much.

J. Stuart J.

(Edited by jstuartj on 01-16-2008 07:50)

I find the honesty and admittance to be a breath of fresh air, to be honest.

That DH reacted swiftly to fix the problem, as well as being honest and up-front about it, is rarely seen in today's business world (re : Sony, Microsoft, etc).

We all know that mistakes can happen - human nature, yadda yadda yadda. What really counts, is taking responsibility for one's actions, and how one deals with the consequences.

I think that DH conducted themselves admirably in this regards.

WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles

People need to relax a little bit. I'm a DH user but find the problem to be a minor one at best.