NB: Hosting problems [Archive]

rpm

25-05-2004, 11:49 AM

Hi Folks

I have just received some shocking news from Webonline. Although I have paid only R 365-00 for hosting every month up to now, they have just send me a bill of R 5126.10 for this month’s hosting because of traffic usage (no warning of excess usage etc.). This is obviously problematic since I did not even have access to website stats, but they refused to lower the charges and maintained that it is fair that I pay this amount. I will obviously have to move the site and will keep you informed about any progress. If anybody had a similar experience please let me know.

Regards,

RPM
rpm@myadsl.co.za

TheRabbi

25-05-2004, 12:00 PM

Are they refusing to give you access to your usage logs?

Bandwidth is not fee. If you used it then surely you have to pay for it?

Their bandwidth seems great as you have a super fast forum.

rpm

25-05-2004, 12:03 PM

Hi Rabbi

I did not have access to logs up to the only a few days ago. I assumed my usage was within the limit since I only paid the normal fees every month and did not receive any warning. I think it is quite unfair not to warn somebody about such problems and then simply send them a bill for R 5000-00. Simply not on.

Regards,

RPM
rpm@myadsl.co.za

candykiller

25-05-2004, 12:04 PM

Dude ... such is life.... i agree with the rabbi ... the forum is super fast and bandwidth isnt free in this lovely country of ours.... you get what you pay for .... or is that not the case ?

I think if your looking for cheap bandwith then you have to go international..... but what would that do to the forum ?

buriedUnderGround

25-05-2004, 12:07 PM

A very long time ago, when webonline was still small, they did this to the company where I worked...

The hosting package that my company subscribed to was advertised as having "unlimited bandwidth" - what this meant was that there was a 2Gb limit per month (tho this wasn't stated in any fine print) which we were only told about after the damage had been done.

Aswell, the surprise bill of thousands (can't remember exact numbers) of Rands was a severe shock to the system. They claimed that if the site used that much bandwidth it should be generating enough income to cover the hosting costs...

Needless to say, the bill was payed and the site was moved to a more "friendly" provider.

It seems as though their methods have not changed.

I will mention however, that besides this, their service was very good.

rpm

25-05-2004, 12:09 PM

Hi Candykiller

I would have gladly paid this amount if I knew what was coming. I had no warning of such a tremendous bill and had no access to such information. Why not send a warning about excess usage? This is certainly a service that is of value to users…

Regards,

RPM
rpm@myadsl.co.za

TheRabbi

25-05-2004, 12:09 PM

I also have a few of my own servers and I'm surprised that you refer to traffic as a "problem." Most popular sites have lots of visitors and they use lost of traffic - that is the whole point of creating a site after all.

Their bandwidth seems good, so why don't you ask them to sponsor you or why don't you sell some advertising on your site.

How many GIGs do you push a month and what would you like to pay for bandwidth?

lewstherin

25-05-2004, 12:16 PM

RPM, I for one don't mind kicking in a few bucks to help you carry the cost - I'm sure if we took round a collection from forum regulars you would get your R5000 quick [:)]

Telkom needs a leash, ICASA needs some guts, and the SA consumer needs to make it happen

TheRabbi

25-05-2004, 12:19 PM

Hi lewstherin,

Sounds great. I'll chip in to, but adverts or sponsors will work to ;)

BTTB

25-05-2004, 12:21 PM

I will donate R500.00 to RPM.

<hr noshade size="1">You can take Telkom out of the Post Office but you can't take the Post Office out of Telkom.

martin

25-05-2004, 12:27 PM

Count me in as well. I'll be happy to chip in.

25-05-2004, 12:32 PM

Gladly donate something

CONSPIRACYTHEORY ON

Telkom had a hand in your bandwidth useage

/CONSPIRACYTHEORY OFF

buriedUnderGround

25-05-2004, 12:37 PM

haha kb... nice conspiracy theory switch...

rpm

25-05-2004, 01:01 PM

Hi Lewistherin, BTTB and others

It is always a pleasure to see that others believe in this forum as much as I do. Although I did not budget for an additional R 5000-00 this month I feel very uncomfortable to ask members for anything. It is great to have such an open discussion area and a place where we can coordinate consumer action where members can feel safe from junkmail, popups or being pestered for money all the time. I feel that Webonline should have warned me about this excess usage or at least have given me access to stats… I hope a solution avails itself soon :-)

Regards,

RPM
rpm@myadsl.co.za

kaspaas

25-05-2004, 01:09 PM

Maybe Steve White and friends will be will to sponsor![:D]

Telkom is anyway smiling - they supplied all the bandwidth!

South Africa needs World Class Broadband at World Competitive Prices.

lewstherin

25-05-2004, 01:11 PM

I also hate spam/popups etc, and am happy with the forum as it stands. RPM if you can make available some kind of sticky account details, then ppl can donate as they feel - it doesn't have to be in anyone's face. Also you can take the sticky off when you've got enough to pay the account...

Telkom needs a leash, ICASA needs some guts, and the SA consumer needs to make it happen

TheRabbi

25-05-2004, 01:15 PM

Hi RPM,

I don't think that you can blame them for not warning you. Telkom, CellC, MTN and Vodacom don't warn users about usage. They simply bill you at the end of the month.

I have two servers at UUNET and IS and they don't warn me about bandwidth. They simply bill me once a month for what I have used.

The same happens with my water and lights. No warning, they simply bill.

buriedUnderGround

25-05-2004, 01:24 PM

I think the point trying to be made here is that YOU use your cellular phone, your electricity, your water, etc... If you called overseas, filled up your swimming pool and left on all your eelctrical appliances for the whole month you would EXPECT high bills.

With bandwidth you are not directly responsible for the usage, which means that you should be able to monitor it more closely and take appropriate action when things start getting out of hand.

martin

25-05-2004, 01:33 PM

Yip, our ISP always informs us when we've gone over our limit. I assumed it was standard practise.

candykiller

25-05-2004, 02:20 PM

Well you know what they say about assumption ...........

martin

25-05-2004, 03:15 PM

....it's the mother of all screw-ups to put it politely. [:)]

candykiller

25-05-2004, 03:28 PM

Thats it! :)

BTTB

25-05-2004, 03:47 PM

But still RPM sits with a fat bill. If RPM wants to put up banking details on a separate thread, he will soon see the support that’s forthcoming. As I said before, I will put in R500. And I’m going to get my business to pay for it as I see it as a investment in my business and South Africa's future. Secondly my contribution to the Telkom ADSL saga. And lastly the feeling of satisfaction when we break the back of this monopoly. That sort of satisfaction is priceless.

But what seems odd to me is that for many months the account was stable. What made such a sudden difference. Surely from one month to the next the usage couldn't of escalated so much. Perhaps their is an admin hitch or webonline are getting flak from Telkom Re MyADSL. Just a thought.

<hr noshade size="1">You can take Telkom out of the Post Office but you can't take the Post Office out of Telkom.

Myrrdin

25-05-2004, 06:42 PM

Post those account details.

Of course I don't look busy.....I did it right the first time.

Strobemeister

25-05-2004, 07:38 PM

I am also willing to contribute. Also, i think some of the members are a bit harsh here. Its a huge hike on the normal monthly charge, he should have been given a heads-up after the first grand or so.

Telkom - South Africa's Handbrake to progress.

Perdition

25-05-2004, 07:41 PM

I think it's absolute madness that Webonline does not notify its customers when they exceed their quota. To me it seems impossible that after many months of not exceeding the quota that the site suddenly generates traffic to the tune of R5000. Even at a cost of R0.50 per megabyte it equates to 10GB of traffic. Now unless something dramatic has changed with the site in the past month there's not a hope in hell you'd suddenly generate an extra 10GB of traffic.

rpm, while it may temporarily put the forum in jeopardy I would certainly dispute the amount with Webonline. If they don't allow you to monitor traffic to the site then in my opinion they are responsible for showing you exactly where this "extra" traffic has come from. Also if they mislead you into believing you had unlimited bandwidth then you also have a case against them.

MaD

25-05-2004, 07:44 PM

Ja, WebOnline are crap, I had a few sites with them - the one site was 2MB over the limit and I was charged extra.. no warning. If you had no access to your log files THEY are liable. Don't pay, speak to your lawyer first. Chances are the log files are WAY wrong - that's why you didn't have access to the data, because these buffoons were having problems!

Try Hetzner -
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5GB should cover it?? AFAIK extra bandwidth over & above the limit is 29c/MB. They will warn you of anything if you ask them beforehand. Anyway every time I used to call Webonline they had 5FM blaring in the background... veeeery professional.

You should craft a good robots.txt file - all the search engines sucking every single page out of your site once or twice a month chows a lot of bandwidth.

Where others have progress, we have Telkom.
Hellkom website - http://telkomsucks.0catch.com

MaD

25-05-2004, 07:57 PM

WebOnline website says:
Additional Bandwidth - SA servers R0.49 per MB
Additional Bandwidth - US servers R0.10 per MB

5 times cheaper in the States, 14,000 km's away. Telkom, boy are you gonna get it..!!

Where others have progress, we have Telkom.
Hellkom website - http://telkomsucks.0catch.com

TheRabbi

25-05-2004, 09:06 PM

Perdition & MaD

You are making wild accusations.

You don't have all the facts & you only have one side of the story.

Perdition - I had a look at there site and they do not claim to offer unlimited bandwidth (there is no such thing.) Their bandwidth prices are indeed listed on their site as MaD pointed out.

Perdition

25-05-2004, 09:23 PM

TheRabbi, I based my post on the information given to us by rpm so far i.e. the fact that there was no notifaction by Webonline that he was exceeding his allowable usage. On the "unlimited bandwidth", grant that I had not read the site at the time of my posting, also I stated "...IF they mislead you..." not "...they DID mislead you...".

Given this I don't think my accusations are wild at all. It is irresponsible business practice not too keep your clients informed or at the very least employ a mechanism to allow them to inform themselves.

mbs

25-05-2004, 09:33 PM

Ditto for me regarding contribution to costs - make banking details public as necessary...

Strobemeister

26-05-2004, 07:28 PM

I agree with Mad, they must have made an error, how could you possibly have generated that amount of data transfer on a forum site?

Telkom - South Africa's Handbrake to progress.

MaD

26-05-2004, 07:42 PM

RPM compare this month with last month, there cannot *possibly* be such a jump in bandwidth usage (unless you hosted the Hellkom site hehehehe).

They most likely had problems. Would be interesting to mail a few people who use WebOnline and ask them if they are experienceing the same 'anomaly', for want of a better description.

Where others have progress, we have Telkom.
Hellkom website - http://telkomsucks.0catch.com

candykiller

27-05-2004, 01:09 PM

God.... i have never such a buch of bitches and moaners in my life before... get over it !

Such is life .... i have been shafted before ...many times... but like i said such is life ... move on and get over it... if ur not happy with something get rid of it.

That is My OPO

Strobemeister

27-05-2004, 01:27 PM

And with that attitude, you'll continue 2 get shafted. You don't just accept it when you get ripped off, you do something about it.

Telkom - South Africa's Handbrake to progress.

Nickste

30-05-2004, 01:57 PM

Agreed Strobemeister.
I would have no problem with a banner on the homepage of www.myadsl.co.za and with the amount of hits the site makes, i'm sure it would cover the hosting costs? I for one would click it everyday!

Chow, Nick

Nick Smit
broadband@nicksmit dot za dot net

TheRabbi

30-05-2004, 07:42 PM

Hi RPM,

What happened with Afrihost? The site is sloooow :(

Is it a temporary problem? It seems that it could a server side issue.

============================================

Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0113'

Script timed out

/forum/topic.asp

The maximum amount of time for a script to execute was exceeded. You
can change this limit by specifying a new value for the property
Server.ScriptTimeout or by changing the value in the IIS administration
tools.

===============================================

Maybe webonline weren't that bad after all ;-)

asmith

30-05-2004, 11:11 PM

Hi RPM

I agree, is totally impossible for the forum usage to sudenly jump such that 10gig is used out of the blue. It must have been building up over time and Webonline had some error where they did not bill you for it, OR some event took place that used a lot of bandwidth this month. Either way a decent hosting company provides stats on at very least a daily basis so you can track your usage if they plan to bill you for it.

I would dispute the figure with them saying
1) No stats were provided
2) They had not billed for traffic in previous months and thus you had a reasonable expectation that things would continue that way
3) They need to provide detailed proof of usage

candykiller

31-05-2004, 10:40 AM

mmm strange how messages have just disapeared !

TheRabbi

31-05-2004, 10:55 AM

candykiller

It was probably due to the move. I don't think messages have been removed intentionally ;)

candykiller

31-05-2004, 03:07 PM

mmm i dont think so Rabbi... ive seen it on other forums before... anyways....

Luke7777

31-05-2004, 03:18 PM

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by candykiller
 mmm i dont think so Rabbi... ive seen it on other forums before... anyways....
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
rpm explained this over the weekend....db version from thursday afternoon was used

TheRabbi

31-05-2004, 03:24 PM

Hi candykiller, I also remember the superjuice "incident" ;) - I just think this is a issue with the move.

TheRoDent

31-05-2004, 03:30 PM

I'll happily sponsor RPM for 500 bux as well. Perhaps you can make available some banking details to all those that have volunteered so far?

In addition, I might be in a position to offer you hosting on a Linux system if you don't mind converting...

<center><h5>Oo. MyWireless <s>Hacks</s> Tweaks & Tech Info (http://rodent.za.net/MyWireless).oO </h5><h6>Have you checked the fawking FAQ? (http://rodent.za.net/MyWireless)</h6></center>

TheRoDent

31-05-2004, 04:03 PM

Also, RPM, for your information: I have been using one of these Virtual Dedicated Linux machines from jvds.com (http://www.jvds.com/35unmetered.php) with unlimited traffic per month (yes, as in the REAL deal) for well over 6 months now, and am very happy with their service. I chose jvds.com for this since I needed a US backbone based server for my game development (http://www.legendsthegame.com/) We host a CVS server, build system, and a website from a single 35Unmetred system without hassles.

You get root access to your own 3gb/64Mb ram Linux machine for $40 a month. That's just over R260 per month. Extra disk/ram can be purchased at $5 per month, though I've never had need for the extra ram, and I run a pretty busy site from it.

Flat-rate flat-fee no hidden bandwidth charges. I higly recommend them, if your current "new" provider has hidden costs too. I'd be more than happy to help you set things up.

<center><h5>Oo. MyWireless <s>Hacks</s> Tweaks & Tech Info (http://rodent.za.net/MyWireless).oO </h5><h6>Have you checked the fawking FAQ? (http://rodent.za.net/MyWireless)</h6></center>

allann

23-06-2004, 10:57 AM

maby you should try www.host4sa.co.za

you will have online stats and traffic usage

wols

07-07-2004, 12:09 AM

I have had endless problems with Webonline, their incompetence has cost me a lot of frustration and money.

Thinking my case was unique, I tried to sort things out on my own but anyone who has dealt with them will know that this is near impossible.

I have since discovered that my case is certainly not unique and there are a lot of people who have been similarly messed around by the self proclaimed "BETTER HOSTING SOLUTION"

I am currently in the process of compiling a list of people and their complaints against webonline so that perhaps as a group we can get something done about the way they conduct business.

I'm prepared to go to court if that is what it comes to as they have really gotten up my nose.

Please email me on webonlinesucks@ananzi.co.za if you have similar problems or complaints.

kram

31-07-2004, 05:20 PM

Hey rpm,

Sorry, I have to ask [B)]

Are you hosting the site in the US purely because of costs?

Are the myadsl.co.za members & stats affected by the BIG FAT CAP issue?

Were there no providers locally that were prepared to help you or work out a solution that suited your traffic model?

What type of traffic per month does the site generate? I read somewhere - 10Gb traff and 1.1 Mil Hits (not sessions)?

---
Kram

rpm

31-07-2004, 05:45 PM

Hi Kram

The traffic is now more in the region of 15 Gigs per month, with far over a million hits. It is simply not viable to host the site in South Africa because of costs. I have had many offers regarding hosting in SA, but traffic will always be an issue since these companies must still pay for the bandwidth. I am still using a South African company, but the site is hosted on one of their international servers.

Regards,

RPM
rpm@myadsl.co.za

Cosmic_Nomad

03-08-2004, 08:52 AM

Please change it from co.za to .net or .com As you don't host local and ,if I see .co.za I want to be able to read the web pages when capped..........

kaspaas

03-08-2004, 08:59 AM

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by Cosmic_Nomad
 Please change it from co.za to .net or .com As you don't host local and ,if I see .co.za I want to be able to read the web pages when capped..........
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

I don't agree with this:

myadsl.co.za is in exile due to Telkom's pricing policies. Therefore it should stay co.za.

The co.za's in exile opens the doors for the media to start some new stories.

If Telkom's pricing policies were market related, they would have saved at least 15 GB of their precious and expensive international cable.

South Africa needs World Class Broadband at World Competitive Prices.

rpm

03-08-2004, 09:21 AM

Hi CosmicNomad

Although I can understand your frustration regarding overseas hosting (especially when capped), the site was moved overseas because it was simply not financially possible to keep it here any more. To change to .com or .net is unnecessary, and as Kaspaas pointed out this site is in ‘exile’ because of hostile local hosting conditions. I am still using a local hosting company in order to support the local IT industry and will continue to do so although direct overseas hosting packages are much cheaper. The site is also targeted at South African Internet users, which further justifies the .co.za domain…

Regards,

RPM
rpm@myadsl.co.za