If you want to tell me a good experience you had with Host I Can, I'm certainly willing to entertain the idea that a company even as messed up and with crappy service like them can improve – but if you want your comment to have any value – use a REAL email address that I can verify and include a link to this wonderful website that is supposedly hosted on their site without any issues. I'd LOVE to monitor it for a while to see how often you go down.

Otherwise, expect bogus comments to be deleted.

Much like yourself I signed up to host a community gaming site, Bought a large $99 / month VPS host that boasted unlimited bandwidth just to make sure we'd have no issues, after a month all was going well and we decided to pay up 3 months in advance (thank god we didn't have enough for a year in advance).

As of this point our service went to hell… They took us offline due to a small DDOS a few times for as many as 4 days at a time, no notice was given to us about this and it took us dozens of calls to their supposed 24/7 support line to get so much as an answered call, that said we stayed patient and worked on the issue as best as we could with them, after a while we got fed up of the consistent downtime and opted to go with their suggestion of moving to another host so long as they would refund us what was left of our hosting (about $180 USD), They said to simply put in a cancellation form and we'd have our money back within 2 weeks.

So two weeks on, we'd long moved on but not so much as an email saying our request was being processed, Since then I've once again tried to contact them via email, phone, etc and only ever been answered once, the guy had no answers to my questions and was pretty much along the lines of "oh ok, well that's the billing departments issue and they're not in so bye".

Not only am I being stonewalled and being given no response at all, they've deleted my account from everything to do with them, So I can't login to their forums to ask about the issue or into my account to see if there's some sort of status update, basically it appears they've taken my money and run and just expect to be able to keep it…

I'm now at a point of complete frustration with trying to contact these people and somewhat at a loss as for what to do, if anyone has any advice on where I should go to from here please email me – pegasus_leader@hotmail.com.

On top of the above I've noticed that all their supposed testimonials that float around are the biggest load of shit I've ever seen, every single one appears to be as scripted as hell and they will delete any and all complaints from their forums on sight.

All in all DO NOT EVER SIGN UP WITH HOSTICAN, EVER, EVER, EVER. I'd be happy to link you to a much more reliable host that we've since found.

On my first day with Justhost, I started to learn that most of the statements on their site are false. Please look at this link on their site http://www.justhost.com/guarantees. Within that link, they claim, "We guarantee that you will be able to reach us and speak with a real human being, someone who speaks English and can answer your questions, fix your problems and help you resolve your issues." This is a FRAUD. All members of their support team I have talked to do not speak good English and cannot help you resolve any issue. They are only there to advise you to send an email, which is usually answered about 6 hours later.

The money back guarantee is a fraud. For cancellation, you have to send them an email, which is not answered days after of your request. I have not yet received my refund or a cancellation confirmation email.

The accredited with Better Business Bureau is new as of 03/23/2009 and I assume their intention for joining was another fraud for new members to trust their site. There are already 10 similar reports of refund FRAUD.

On May 14, my account was suspended and I was asked to sign up for a dedicated server because I have exceeded the 10% usage. I contacted them on the phone to advise them that I was not planning to upgrade and need to remove my files. I was told that I needed to send an email.

I immediately sent them an email and they never replied. Six hours later, I sent them another email to ask for my files so I can cancel my account. No reply. On day two, I sent another email no reply. So far, I have sent them over 8 email with no reply.

Justhost.com is a FRAUD. They get you to sign up, suspend your account, and then force you to upgrade to a dedicated server. Their claim of me exceeding the 10% CPU is false because from my cpanel, I have never exceeded 7% and my site does not have the much traffic.

As of today, they have not confirmed my cancellation request or allowed me to get my files. I think this company is operated outside of the USA but is a reseller of another company like ThePlanet.

Please stay away from this company.

Heard many horror stories about this place …

Thanks for the tip re: Media Temple, they have a decent choice of storage options although as you say, it's fairly pricey. I think it's sad no-one seems to be offering a better range of options on their VPS packages. You might have thought as they're selling 'virtual' machines someone somewhere could get an edge offering machines to suit different projects priorities i.e. more disk and less memory or vice versa. Oh well!

I know what you mean about recommending people too, my clients are always asking who does the best value laptops / broadband and I have to explain to them that all laptop makers make both dogs & peaches and all broadband providers are flaky and unrepentent from time to time. Every now and then you'll come across a brand that seem reliable or great value but it's scary how fast some companies can go off the boil. The only consistently excellent IT brand I can think of in the last ten years has been IBM's (and now Lenovo's) Thinkpad, and for the price you pay for them they ought to be nothing short of amazing!

HostICan is working very hard to hide their problems. They remove threads from the forums that clearly illustrate what their problem is. They spend a lot of time in comments on blogs and forums defending their bad service. That is the point of this article. To warn other people who are doing research. So – good for you for being able to find this before you got into a mess.

As for recommendation, while I kind of hesitate to ever do that again, I have a number of clients now on Media Temple, and with only one specific customer service rep, their support has been superb. But yes, they are more expensive. Surely you know too: you get what you pay for.

I'm looking into getting a VPS from these guys – they look to have a good deal ATM with loads of disk space (which is my main concern) but I'm going to do a bit more shopping around now that I've read all this!

I have to say though, I'm surprised you assumed you could get a pro rated refund when they clearly mention 30 days – I would assume the opposite and check with them first, especially before signing a 2 year contract! When you sign a contract you agree to be bound by it's terms for the specified length of time, your only redress being to sue them if they have breached the contract themselves.

TBH I'm not sure if I'd ever sign such a long contract with a webhost again. Paying monthly might cost more but if things go wrong and you need to jump ship you avoid problems like this!

Can anyone else here recommend a VPS with lots of HD space (CPU/Memory not so much the issue). I'm finding it hard to seperate the real reviews from the shill reviews! Grr.

Roger