I have had all of my domains hosted with Cedant.com for over ten years and although they were priced higher than the plans that have come about in the past six or seven years, I never had a complaint about their service and in all that time my niether my sites nor my mail service had ever been down.
I had called several times over the past six years to ask about getting on one of their lower priced plans which offered more bandwidth and more advantages all the way around. I was told that I was on an older server and in order for me to move over to the newer servers, I would have to completely rebuild my sites and would have to pay yearly instead of monthly as I had been doing. They made it sound so complicated finishing it off with the warning of my business mail going down for an indefinite period of time. Time is not something I have a lot of these days so I had always put it off as it seemed like such a huge ordeal.
Well, almost two years ago now, I had started to experience a lot of undeliverable mail messages and bounce backs in my domain mail inbox. The headers all indicated that it was coming from my email accounts instead of the normal spoofing or joe jobs scam. I called Cedant and they were so incredibly rude telling me that I was paranoid and that I didn't know what I was talking about and one rep actually hung up on me when I asked him to check it out. He first made sure that he told me that he didn't have time for anyone who didn't know what they were talking about.
It got worse and what started out as online pharmacies spam bouncing grew into child pornography. I called my ISP who informed me that I was right and these were not spoofed at all. I went into my C-panel and found a slew of unknown aliases under my account all forwarding to various Eastern European email addresses. I then called Cedant and let them know but was told that it was my fault and that I should change my passwords on a monthly basis rather than three months before which had been the case.
Then each month without fail, I would receive emails from Cedant telling me that I was within 10 megs of my disc storage limit. I knew this was impossible as I didn't have very much mail on the server and certainly much less than I had ever had before. I called and left numerous messages and emails but they went unanswered for the most part. When I did get someone, he would go into my mail and say that he found one account out of twenty five that had over 100 emails and that it must have been the attachments. I tried to point out that overall there was more than enough space left and it didn't compute at all. I would then either be hung up on or given a support ticket number to nowhere.
The hacking became much worse and I had an FBI investigation opened. It was very real and turned my life and business upside down. After a year or more, there was an arrest made and I had a month of peace. However, the storage emails began again and then I was told that I was on a very old server and the only way to lower my price and up my bandwidth would be to move over to the new server on Aplus.net. I said I would when I had time to do all that they told me I had to do in order to move over.
Like clockwork, more emails started coming in at the rate of five to eight per day telling me both that I was out of disc space and that my credit card had been declined. I kept emailing back that there was nothing wrong with my card and in fact, the charges had been going through. No response just more and more email warnings. Then I receive a call fom Tom Sebastiani there on my cell phone while I was out of town. I found this very odd considering it was a rare moment to ever speak to a live person there let alone have them call me. He told me it was a courtesy call to let me know that my domain which I had parked with Cedant for 8 years was about to expire. I commented that it didn't seem right and that I swore I had another four months on it. I explained that I had just renewed another domain with Network Solutions whom I had registered all my domains with always and they confirmed this over the phone. He gave me a song and dance about how he was looking right at it and why would he bother calling if it weren't about to expire and that I should be thankfui for his thoughtfulness, blah blah blah. I said, okay, I will renew it but then was told that it would have to go through Aplus rather than Network solutions because of the short time left before expiration. I obliged and gave him my card number to pay for it. Mind you, the very same card number that they kept saying was no good any more is the one I used without a hitch.
Two months later, i was explaining to a client how you can have a domain redirect and or parked and pulled up that same domain I had just renewed only to find that I no longer owned it and it was now with rebel.com. I called Cedant furious and was told that there were no guarantees and it was my fault for waiting until the last minute. I then called Network Solutions and they confirmed that the domain was in no danger of expiration at all and in fact there was four months left at the time of the Cedant transfer to their domain service. I then was wondering how it could be transferred to Cedant at all if I had lost it totally. I called and called and could never get Tom Sebastiani on the phone again but instead would get various guys in Eastern Europe who didn't care what I had to say, would put me on hold, or just laugh out loud before speaking in their native tongue and laughing while I'm on hold.
I then got a call from American Express who were concerned that I had three to five charges each month from Abacus, Cedant, A-plus.net and names4ever each month. I explained that Cedant was the only legit one there and was shocked to find out that they were all the same company. I called Cedant and emailed about this and lo and behold Tom Sebastiani resurfaced via email to tell me that they would refund the additional charges once I gave them another credit card to bill. I responded that it was unnecessary obviously since it was that very same Amex that was being double billed. That's when the calls and emails began from the Europeans. They would go in circles and repeat themselves and contradict themselves all for their own amusement. They asked me to prove any of my story so I sent them every email ever sent them and every email they had ever sent me and copied their legal department on it. I then got a call from Russ Gilman who apparently couldn't take my email flooding any more and agreed to refund my money. This was in November and they refunded me over 7 months worth of fraudulant charges.
Here is the kicker... One of the monthly charges that had no place on my account was for hosting of that very same domain that they made me renew only to have them lose it. So, Not only did I lose a domain I had paid for over 8 years and was essential to my services and products but then i was paying to host that very same domain. Essentially I was paying to host air. Talk about adding insult to injury...
But wait, that's not the end of it. I have found that they now went back and began billing me again retroactively for all the charges that I had refunded me in November. When I called them, they insisted I requested an additional FTP again for a domain that I no longer owned. When i asked them to prove it, they sent me a fake email supposedly sent by me saying nothing more than "Give me space." Apparently, this has a much deeper meaning in that they knew exactly what I must have meant and sold me an FTP for a non-existent domain on their server.
I can't get a hold of this Russ Gillman anymore who quite openly admitted to me that because i am a woman, I am being played with and descriminated against by his outsourced Eastern European employees and he was sorry but it is their culture to look down upon women.
Nice!!! I am looking for an attorney to sue the living hell out of Aplus and Cedant et al. I am not letting them get away with this and will do all that I can to make sure they are put out of business.
UPDATE... Just learned from my web guy who is moving me off their crappy old hacked server that there has been a malicious application called WebGlimpse in all of my html site files which allows a hacker to track my mail and subsequently access whichever computer that mail is associated with. The install date coincides with the onset of all of my intrusion issues. It was either Cedant themselves or done with their blessings as I had them confirm time and time again that my files and mail were pristene (according to them, of course!) Talk about anit-privacy issues and unethical practices... This one takes the cake. This is a lawyer's dream and soon to be Cedant's nightmare!!!
Hacked Sidgy
Austin, Texas
U.S.A.
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