Cancellation Satisfaction

The transition from iPowerweb to Dreamhost is complete. I got an email from iPowerweb telling me that they were happy to renew my subscription to their service for another year. Well, considering I’d already migrated the site I thought that might be a little silly. I had to call them and let them know that they were fired.

As I sat there on the phone listening to muzak, I went over how this conversation would go in my head. I figured that they might ask why and I thought that I’d just mention all my issues from last summer. I’m not an unreasonable person, but after having to explain to their brain dead staff half a dozen times that my problem was not an inherent problem in WordPress or any of the plugins I was using with it. If their attitude was going to be that the problem was that I didn’t use their provided software, I knew I’d be having a problem.

I woke from my reverie and told the representative that I didn’t want to renew and that I was canceling my account with them. May I ask why? I heard her say. For some inexplicable reason, a flood of reasons emerged.

• Support problems from last summer
• Poor performance
• No SFTP support
• POP only accounts (no IMAP)
• No shell access
• The number of databases is limited
• Space allotment was jacked for new subscribers but mine stayed the same
• They lacked the features of other hosts

I managed to restrict myself to the first five, but I couldn’t control myself. I felt like kicking them while they were down. Maybe it was payback for being treated like a child last summer (and having to make simple test cases to prove that they were the children). After I said a few and I could hear her typing furiously in the background, I felt bad. It wasn’t her fault. It still felt so good. It was like spitting in the greeter’s face after waiting for half an hour in line at Wal-Mart. Take that old man!