Webhostingstuff.com

Omnis review. Does omnis.com suck? Omnis Web Hosting Review

July 22, 2010

Next on the list was number 13 in May 2010, but now they are number 8 with webhostingstuff.com. The first thing that strikes me is webhostingstuff’s information on omnis,

Site Established: 18 Jan 1996 (14 years and 179 days ago)
Traffic Popularity: #200 of 10,292 companies

Then there is this on omnis.com’s site

Serving over 200,000 accounts since 1999.

I can only take two things from this. First of all what about the time between 1996 – 1999? The second is exactly how many accounts is currently hosted with them. Sure they have served 200,000 accounts since 1999. Its like how many McDonalds telling you how many burgers they sold. While the strategy works for McDonalds as you can see their fast food chain every where. Nothing near that level of visibility with this webhosting company. There is nothing indicating how many accounts / customers / domains are currently hosted with the company.

But that is not really got my attention, what got my attention was that they have an asterisk next to the free domain on the first page.

* Free domain name offer is limited to 12 month or longer hosting packages for the initial year of domain name registration of TLDs priced at $8.95 or less per year.

Its not exactly clear, but I think its safe to say that the domain is only free for the amount of time paid for on the first payment. In other words you buy one year, you get the domain free for the first year. Every year after you are charged for the domain. This has to be the first company that I have seen do that. But there is a real problem with buying a domain with this company:

http://www.omnis.com/dnregistration.php

Domain name registrations do not auto-renew upon expiration. Renewal must be explicitly requested through the current renewal process prior to the expiration date. Domain name registrations will be deleted 30 days after the expiration date. Deleted domain names may enter a Redemption Grace Period status. The Redemption Grace Period provides an opportunity to restore the domain name and retain ownership. Restoration from the Redemption Grace Period requires a fee of $50.00 in addition to the renewal fee and must be paid prior to a domain name being restored from Redemption Grace Period.

This is a rather absurd policy. Its practically begging for a $50 retrieval fee. Perhaps this is where I don’t play customer advocate. But if you don’t want to manage your domain you should not bother with hosting. You might as well be on some obscure directly or sub-domain by some free hosting company that makes its money off of advertising on the content you create. I realize this is not much of a point as I own hundreds of domains. There is not a week that goes by that I don’t pay for a domain. I make it a point to review the domains that will renew in the next 30 days to decided which will be renewed and which will be allowed to expired. Out of most of my business expenses domains are the lowest cost, but most worth keeping on automatic renewal.

This is another company where they create a lengthy multi-segmented terms of service. Frankly I tend to think customers that buy unlimited space hosting are going to pay as much attention to the terms of service as they paid for their hosting account. But here is the part I find funny:

Omnis Network provides no guarantee or assurance to the time in which a new order will be processed.

Located at http://www.omnis.com/policies/hosting.php

I find this absurd, there should be a max amount of time of when to accept an order no matter how cheap it is.

On the same link I also find

Omnis Network uses Network-attached storage devices to store Customer’s files. The nature of this type of storage requires that Omnis Network limit the number of files Customer can store with the hosting service to prevent exhaustion of the total number of files permitted on the storage device. This limit is 81920 files. Customer acknowldeges that this limit exists for all hosting service and can not be adjusted.

There way along with CPU usage another way they use to close accounts down, but I tend to doubt they have ever shut account down for reaching the file limit.

Also here is a reason to maintain your own back ups if you decide to host with them:

A fee of $100.00 may be charged should Customer require any files from system backups. Omnis Network does not guarantee that the files contained in the system backup are the most recent copies for a given site. System backups are available for at most 6 days.

The omnis affiliate program

Is another high payout, at least on the hosting account which they hand out $75. On domains a more reasonable $1 per domain.

This is the first company that I have seen, or perhaps I missed it when reading the terms of service for other companies, but they do not allow you to use their name in search engine marketing strategy:

Affiliates are prohibited in utilizing our protected keyword “OMNIS” or any variation, misspelling or combination of words with our keyword, in advertising and search engine sites.

This means I should not find any sites with does omnis suck? Read my review to find out.

http://www.hostingsthatsuck.com/omnis-sucks/

I know to many hostingsthatsuck.com appears to be a webhosting review site. But underneath the surface they are really an affiliate that is better served by making companies appear in the best positive light. By the domain name I would assume this would be the place to go to find webhosts that do indeed suck. After spending an hour on their site I am having a hard time finding anyone that they don’t approve of. But they are clearly violating the affiliate terms of service by utilizing Omnis in their search engine results.

Are Greenvillehost.com and Webhostingpad.com the same company?

July 10, 2010

In May 2010 Greenvillehost.com was number 12 on webhostingstuff.com’s top 25 list. Now they are not on the list. That does not mean I forget. This is another so called green company. Their focus is on green energy credits, going paperless, furniture from renewable or recycled materials, and energy efficiency compliant technology. Though I am, suppose to take them at their word from this page with limit information to prove they are green.

http://www.greenvillehost.com/greenhosting.html

Plus a few well known green facts that seem more like fillers to make a full page then actual facts on what makes their company green. To me it seems they are using “green” as marketing gimmick. There is nothing in regards to recycling of old equipment or details in what makes their data center green. While many companies such as my bank don’t send paper statements, that does not stop them from sending marketing to my mail box, nor is it going to stop employees from bringing cans of soda to work. The one word that does not come into play is recycling. There are a lot of elements from the periodic table in computers. Some of which you don’t want to end up in a land fill.

Interestingly enough they bought their domain in 2008 and they have no problem with stating that. To forgo the problem of not using an aged domain they claim to be formed by “web hosting industry experts”. Which I assume would be webhostingpad.com. Webhostingpad shows up on the network whois, and when you go to webhostingpad.com you find a similar single unlimited package. No signs of the ability to resell on their network. I think the finale part that tips me off is the award(s). http://www.greenvillehost.com/awards.html

This link takes you to http://www.upperhost.com/webhostingpad_web_hosting_review.htm

Greenville hosting has no awards of its own. Not even the one from webhostingstuff.com on their site, though that might have to due with greenville no longer being on the top 25, no telling as I did not review the site before they were off the list. Webhostingpad has a bunch of awards from paid spots as well as their affiliates. If I was to choose who to be an affiliate for it would be greenville for a $100 per sign up, versus upperhost which is $75 per sign up.

But lets get in to my phone call and there terms of service. Clearly when any company tells you they are unlimited, their not being honest. Here is the dandy I found in their terms of service.

http://www.greenvillehost.com/terms.html

Server Resources
Any Web site that uses a high amount of server resources (such as, but not limited to, CPU time, memory usage, and network resources) will be given the option to reduce the resources used to an acceptable level, or upgrade its service to a VPS plan. Greenvillehost will be the sole arbiter of what is considered to be a high server usage level. Please see ourabuse terms for a detailed listing of our resources. Any Web Hosting account deemed to be adversely affecting server performance or network integrity will be shut down without prior.

And at http://www.greenvillehost.com/billing_policy.html

VPS Server Billing

VPS servers are billed on 1 month or 3 month cycles. Payments are made in advance based on the billing cycle selected. Accounts are automatically renewed at the end of each billing cycle for the next cycle to avoid interruption of service.

To cancel service, you must confirm the cancellation by completing our cancellation online cancellation form at
https://secure.greenvillehost.com/cancellation.htm

In the Reason field, please state”Canceling VPS service”. No refund is issued for cancellations or for termination of VPS account.

Here is the thing I find fasinating, while the terms of service mention VPS, there is no vps plans listed any where on their site. I called them because there were two things I wanted to find out . 1. How much it cost to keep the free domain if you planned on leaving (which is $14.95). 2. Specs and a page for the vps plan listed in greenvillehost.com. On number 2 I pretty much stumped the new sales person. It took 8 minutes to find out Greenvillehost does not offer a vps plan, or remedy should you go beyound the unwritten resource limit. I decided to go to webhostingpad.com and find that unlike greenvillehost.com they do offer chat. I did a screen shot of this rather slow chat. I was able to get a link to the vps plan but it did not cover quarterly billing.

http://www.webhostingpad.com/vps-package.html

I think the most disturbing thing is that when I click on the bbb link on the bottom I get the following screen:

Going to the BBB’s site I get an even less favorable view of webhostingpad.com:

http://www.bbb.org/chicago/business-reviews/internet-web-hosting/web-hosting-padcom-in-rolling-meadows-il-88274902

Looking for greenvillehost bbb I get this interesting link:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-934275.html

I too have had a lot of trouble with the WebHostingPad affiliate program, I have not been very impressed with them in the past but recently they got a new affiliate manager. The new manager seems to respond a lot more quickly than the old one; however, I still think they have a lot of work to do.

What I find humorous is that alreadyhosting.com (in my sights) a company that works much like hostaz.com (Also owned by Micahel Low of webhostingstuff.com) a site that claims to be “AlreadyHosting.com is an independent web hosting review site.” is complaining about webhostingpad.com.

04-21-2010, 09:50 PM

04-22-2010, 03:58 PM

Hi,

I also agree that you better join an affiliate network like Commission Junction. The commission rates at CJ are higher than those inhouse affiliate program of Web Hosting Companies.

I would have to disagree.. I really dislike CJ. A host that I deal with has a CJ affiliate program as well as an in house affiliate program. They ran a test and estimated that affiliates who chose the CJ route lost about 15% more sales than those who did the in-house program.

NOW.. If you have a dishonest host you would be better off going with CJ.

http://www.alreadyhosting.com/reviews/webhostingpadreview.php

“WebHostingPad recently was moved up to the #3 spot on our site! WebHostingPad.com is known for their affordable web hosting package that includes a free domain. Web hosting for only $1.99/month!”

Is 3essentials.com essential to your hosting needs, read to find out!!!

July 8, 2010

When I first started the reviews I thought I would do 1 or 2 a day and spend no more then 2 hours per post. But here I am at number 11 of 25 for May 2010 of webhostingstuff.com. Way over the thirty days I intended to have this all done. As of this weekend I had learned that webhostingstuff.com is having people bid on spots. I learned this from one of the hosts that are on my lists. I am debating as to rather posting that email even though they asked me not to. But there is indeed a post tomorrow in regards to what they have told me. They told me that they are contacting webhostingstuff.com to remove them from their list, I have advised the host that they can plead their case on my site.

Anyway, number 11 of 25 for May 2010. As of today they are now number 6 host. 3essentials.com is not exactly a site that I find appealing. But then again some of the best sites are not the best design. As with some of the other sites in the top 25 doing a search on 3essentials does not lead to results unique to 3essentials.com. So for this review I am going to stick to the webpage, perhaps in the future I will do more of a

The first thing that grabs my attention is a bunch of links at the bottom of the page where normally the terms of service, about, and contact links are. Instead they are amongst these links.

Most of those links look like they belong in a faq section and not at the bottom of the website. Though I do find a rate our service link an appealing idea.

Next stop is the terms of service for 3essentials.com. Here are the parts that stick out for me.

6.e. Maintenance. 3Essentials may, at its own discretion and without notice, temporarily suspend all service for the purpose of repair, maintenance or improvement of any of 3Essentials’ systems. 3Essentials shall restore service as soon as is reasonably practicable. Client shall not be entitled to any setoff, discount, refund or other credit, in case of any service outage which is beyond 3Essentials control or which is reasonable in duration.

I wonder what does not qualify as “ reasonable in duration”

7. Auto Upgrade Of Plans. Client agrees that in the event the clients plan exceeds its allotted data transfer or storage that 3Essentials may automatically upgrade the clients plan to the next plan that will cover such transfer or storage. 3Essentials agrees that in the event of such an upgrade notice shall be given in the form of email. In the event the client does not receive the email, the client shall not hold 3Essentials liable. Client further agrees that no refund(s) will be given.

What bothers me here is that it seems there is not a method to stop a person from using more space then they have paid for. Instead there is monitoring so they can charge you should you go pasted a given amount of space. IT was pretty much my operation that person could not use more space then they paid for. To use more they would have to pay for more. No surprise bills.

9.b. No refunds will be given, for any reason, to accounts that are older than 30 days, this includes, but is not limited to data loss, server or systems being unavailable, or websites being unavailable.

9.f. Pre-payment. Accounts that pay in advance for a specific period are not eligible for a refund if the client cancels the account prior to the renewal date, or the account is terminated by 3Essentials due to a violation of these terms.

9.h. Auto-Renewals. Client agrees that the term of the plan automatically renews on the renewal date for the same term. Cancelations that are received after the plan automatically renews are not subject to refunds.

Translation no refunds regardless if 3essentials is at fault or not. Something I am finding in a lot of terms of service for cheap hosting companies. I am tempted to say to avoid companies that state no refunds regardless of the hosting companies fault or not should be avoided. My own policy was to charge a customer under monthly terms if they broke quarterly or longer commitment after the thirty day guarantee. Then provide a prorated refund. No refunds were issued after 6 months. I have to wonder if merchant providers are willing to back them up on this. Generally the max amount of time to pursue a charge back is no later then 3 – 6 months.

According to the BBB they only have 3 employees and they have been in business since 2004. Unless this is just a failure to update details, this is a good indicator that this company is not growing. I know that Fat Cow and iPage who are own by the same corporation have several employees, and clearly so does HostGator. Yet back in May 2010, 3essentials with three “essential” employees was six spots away from Hostgator.

Their profile page on webhostingstuff.com is no better then the one written for ioxhost.co.uk.

http://www.webhostingstuff.com/company/3EssentialsHosting.html

Here is the thing I find interesting:

How We Operate

3Essentials takes pride in providing quality support to our customers. Our technicians are available 24×7 via email or online chat to resolve problems that our customers may experience. Each ticket is read by our staff and the problem is researched to determine the correct method of assistance to provide.

With three employees they have to research issues. I don’t recall my techs having to do research every time they had a ticket. Perhaps that’s because they had experience to deal with issues and rarely had to learn on the job. Most of the learning came from new things. I am not sure I would be in business if my techs had to “research” all the time “to determine the correct method of assistance to provide”. I would sooner have an experienced staff over staff that has to learn as they go.

3essentials affiliate program is a bit more interesting.

http://3essentials.com/affiliates.asp

You get up to 50% of each sale, but the commission would be no greater then $100. I feel that there is a play on words in the affiliate. It seems they are implying that if you make 20 sales you get $2000. But clearly you would have to sale 20 packages that ensure you get $100 each. Their lowest package is $24.96 for 1 year the personal Linux Hosting, which has a $15 setup fee which I am sure there is no commission on. That’s $12.48. commission. I decided to chat with them to make sure there is no commission on the set up fee. I was correct.

3essentials.com chat session

Benjamin: Curious about commissions through your affiliate program.

You are now speaking with Paul of Server Sales.

Benjamin: Hello Paul

Paul: Hi Benjamin.

Benjamin: I was wondering if I would make 50% off of all sales I refer to you, including setup fees

Paul: Affiliate commissions are 50% up to a maximum payout of $100 per sale

Paul: hosting plans must be active for 90 days to receive the commission

Benjamin: yes I can see that, but I do not see what is considered a commisioned item

Paul: any item that is purchased via your affiliate link can earn comission

Benjamin: including the set up fees?

Paul: ah.. good question. you are not payed 50% of the setup, just 50% of the hosting plan price.

Paul: the setup fee is passed to the customer to help us pay your omission.

Paul: *
commission

Benjamin: is there a link to fine print for your affiliate program?

Benjamin: ie terms of service

Paul: not that I am aware. we do have a general TOS for all “3Essentials Customers” but not for affiliates

Paul: If you have a specific question about the affiliate terms, please send an email to sales@3essentials.com

Paul: the questions will be directed to the manager in charge of that program

Benjamin: ok thanks

Benjamin: how long have you guys been in business?

Paul: since 2001.

Paul: and a BBB member since 2005

Benjamin: and where are you located?

Paul: our coorporate offices and staff are in NC.

Paul: our servers are in Dallas texas

Paul: we also have hardware techs on site in Dallas

Benjamin: ok

Benjamin: have a good day

Paul: you too

Paul: thank you.

Paul: and let us know if you have any more questions.

Paul: bye.

Your party has left this session.

As you can see the chat operator did not bother to read my initial question. Anyone that has worked with me knows better then to pull such a stunt. You answer the initial question, if you feel there is something else to add you do it after answering the question. When someone does not answer my question, I tend to wonder if the person on the other end knows what they are doing or if they understand English. There is no agreement for the affiliate program that outlines the affiliate and 3essentials parts in the affiliate program. Something that would outline setup fees are not part of the commission program. Not to mention that making it clear that the affiliate can’t make claims such as buying hosting will make them rich, cure baldness, make you thin……….

Well the chat operator did not know what he was talking about as I did find Terms and Conditions:

https://partner.3essentials.com/scripts/signup.php

If your reffering from a free hosting account you may want to pay special attention to the terms of service.

3. Commissions. We will pay you a commission of %50 of the plan price.

There is nothing in here about $100 cap, or for that matter nothing in regards to not getting a commission on the setup fee. So this is where I stop on the review of their affiliate program as their staff and the initial page to get you to sign up do not agree with the conditions.

Their are alot of things that strike me as quirky about this company, such as this text I received while waiting for someone to chat with me:

Welcome Benjamin! Please hold while we contact a representative. If a representative does not respond in a few seconds, then he/she is not available at this time.

Who is ioxhost.co.uk?

June 28, 2010

If you have not figured out by now the titles from my blog posts on hosts have been adapted from affiliates trying to sucker people into buy so they can get a Juicy commission. But the more I look into this host, the more I ask myself who is ioxhost?

Number 10, ioxhost.co.uk. The first red light that comes up for me is:

Domain Whois record

Queried whois.nic.uk with “ioxhost.co.uk”…

    Relevant dates:
        Registered on: 06-Mar-2010
        Renewal date:  06-Mar-2012
        Last updated:  06-Mar-2010

This is a company that was supposed to be the the number 10 host out of 25, and now 17 out of 25. For that matter Alexa lists the Traffic Rank at 1,476,372. Which by webhosting terms is not impressive.

Going through the site I see several things that are not right. For one you can’t actually login to the customer service area. My browser tells me there is a error connecting or no such page.

Then there is this the top right hand part of the site:

1-505-796-8710

LIVE HELP (LEAVE MESSAGE)

Clicking on the live help takes me to a chat window that quickly turns into a UK version of the site with a UK number. Clearly things are not what they appear. I gave them a call. I guess I woke someone up after 10 rings as I got a hello, and then a “uh” when I asked if this was iox hosting. After bringing up the login not working for the customer service area I am refered to cPanel. Honestly it did not seem worth it to go any further so I just hung up.

Here is the thing that puzzles me. Webhosting stuff.com claims to have monitored 520 days since Jan 2009. Then there is review:

IoxHost Hosting is excelent (Excellent)

– by Carlos (guaridaarcana.com) on 22 January 2009

The domain name is expired. Three review from April of this year, and one from May 2010. I can’t help but wonder since the domain whois info says created March 2010 if Webhostingstuff.com fabricated the data then. When I first started my video I tried looking for ‘webhosting reviews exposed’ and ‘webhosting review scams”, back then it was hard to find people who complained about sites like webhostingstuff.com. These days sites like mine are appearing in the top of search engine results. I am more then certain that the hosts that use services like webhostingstuff.com are starting to realize that its not a good idea to be associated with webhostingstuff.com. Which might make web hosting stuff more inclined to fabricate information in addition to deleting positive feed back for those that would pay for top listings. But I am not beyond thinking that the domain register for ioxhost screwed up some how. After all according to webhostingstuff.com ioxhost.com was down for 41 hours in February 2010. Perhaps they forgot to renew their domain name. I am not sure that recovery of a .co.uk domain work the same as a .com in terms of recovery. Out of the 2 domains I have recovered they did not lose their creation date.

But there is also this, a site they link to that shows you their uptime:

http://www.pingdom.com/reports/puq9oug0dofg/check_overview/?name=IoxHost+Alpha

It starts April 2010. Asides for a review from 2009 and uptime history from webhostingstuff.com I have doubts that this host was a round last year. Then there is the company profile on webhostingstuff.com as well as http://ioxhost.co.uk/about.html which switches between first and third person perspective.

About IoxHost:

We provide low cost and reliable webhosting to customers across the world,

Established in 2006, We have never faulted in providing the high level of quality customer service and product that customers have come to expect.

We are a team of experienced web developers who couldn’t find reliable web hosting service to host our websites so we founded our own business.

It has been a great success right from day 1 with more and more clients joining us every day.

IoxHost still has the clients they started out with in 2009, which just shows the commitment to their customers.

We caters to the needs of every client, our sales team are professional, well spoken, understandingly sympathetic and knowledgeable – they make great first impressions, that last. Have a problem? Have a query?

Our sales team are very happy to converse with you to get everything resolved, it is afterall in everyone’s best interests.

We have big plans for the future to expand on our business to suite our clients needs.

We take all suggestions seriously and actively encourage our customers to tell us what they would like us to improve on and what suggestions they may have.

Here are the parts I have trouble with asides for this not being a well written or thought out company introduction:

Established in 2006

So far there is nothing that shows that they were around before 2009. What evidence there is that they were around before 2010 seems dubious at best.

IoxHost still has the clients they started out with in 2009, which just shows the commitment to their customers.

This is where they switch to third person. What about the customers from 2006, 2007, and 2008? Are they trying to say they did not lose a single customer from 2009? What about customer that wrote the review 2009 on webhostingstuff.com whose domain is expired? Frankly even the best companies are going to lose customers.

Our sales team are very happy to converse with you to get everything resolved, it is afterall in everyone’s best interests.

That statement brings to mind movies about mobsters, but then again I have a very vivid imagination. But still its not something I would use in the wording of an introduction to my company.

Then there is the show case on ioxhost.co.uk

http://ioxhost.co.uk/showcase.html

There is only one site there rmb-scripting.com, which changed their dns to ioxhost this month. Never mind there are 4 glowing reviews with active sites on webhostingstuff.com (though I suspect those were from the employees, friends, and family). But their sites are not show cased on iox.

Then there is the ioxhost terms of service:

http://ioxhost.co.uk/termsofservice.html

This has to be one of the shortest terms of service. But I think the most mind boggling part is:

Change to the Terms of Service by the Company shall not be grounds for early contract termination or non-payment.

They offer a 99.8% up time. I am not sure most people do the math but .001% down time is 43.2 minutes. Ioxhosting.co.uk can have 1 hour 26 minutes of down time, but there is no clarification on what iox will do to remedy any down time suffered beyond that. Most hosting companies do not consider maintenance such as hard ware upgrades and reboots in the percentage.

Refusal or Termination of Service

ioxhost.co.uk reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason not prohibited by law. We reserve the right to terminate service to any Client for any reason not prohibited by law.

Any deliberate attempt to cause damage to ioxhost.co.uk or any other Internet servers may result in immediate account deactivation without prior notice. No refund is given in this case.

I am not sure anyone at this company bothers to read what they post online. Clearly there is no formatting, broken English, and in this case repeated text. For a terms of service its surprisingly small.

Funny thing is a chat window opened up while I was looking at the terms of service, the chat operator’s name is Daniel. Which is the same first name for the owner of the domain ioxhost.co.uk.

Just a simple chat with Daniel of Ioxhost

I decided to chat with Daniel, whom I assume owns the domain ioxhost.co.uk. Unfortunately I lost the chat session. Daniel claims that they are a small company with a small customer base. This was in response to a question about his showcase where he disclosed the only site on there rmb-scripting.com is his site. Which apparently is where they started hosting sites on from 2006 til 2009 where they bought ioxhost.com and then replaced it with ioxhost.co.uk. Keep in mind that ioxhost.com is not coming up with a webpage at this time, but appears to have had the dns changed this month. This information does not make me any more confident in the company. As it has gone through three name changes in 4 years (if what he told me is correct). I can see starting up a domain dedicated to selling hosting. But starting another domain up after a year and abandoning the one that was started last year seems like a bad idea. I would have atleast taken a few years to migrate people to the new domain, and have the old domain redirect to the new one. The annual fee of a .com is easily a small cost to pay to not have customers wonder what is going on.

Odd relate search engine tidbit that some how relates to ioxhost

http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-hosting/web-hosting-top.firstnetserv.co.uk-reviews

May 11, 2010

Daniel ( daniel[at]ioxhost[dot]com ) Very abusive kid, (child) threats to ddos.

Reporting to police and the datacenter you co locate in.

All do not choose this host if what he says about dept collectors are true

60 out of 68 Top Web Hosting users found this web hosting reviews to be helpful!

First i must add, i am not a child, Second your Customer ID isnt in my database so i prosume your review is Incorrect. Do you have any proof of the Threats? I certinaly dont know you. And why do you bring the dc into this, they cannot do anything, And yes i do use collections do you have a problem with that? Feel free to Contact the police. as you have no proof or evidence. Once again who are you and what is your customer domain? You may contact me @ 0843 289 6357, ow i have also taken a record of your IP address incase of any future abuse towards my company.

Have a nice day…

— firstnetserv.co.uk representative

I am not sure what to make of that at all as it seems Daniel of ioxhost is making a complaint against firstnetserv.co.uk.

Finale Thoughts on Ioxhost

I have a feeling this is a one man operation. As for the reviews being solid on this company I could go 50 / 50. Reviewing the site does not give me any confidence. Broken links, poor formatting, incomplete pages, a phone operator that may very well may be Daniel himself as he seemed to be the chat operator, and a customer service area that when you attempt to use takes you to a page not found screen. This is one of those cases where I kick the tires and I am not happy with the reaction I get from a car that falls apart. From the 4 reviews I can see on webhostingstuff the dns was changed in the last few months, possible due to dropping the .com in favor of .co.uk. If that is not the case, these people did not bother to look and see if the site was legit before signing up. I would love to hear why webhostingstuff.com justified this being in the 10th position and then the 17th position. Clearly they were paying less for their advertising.

Webhostingstuff.com Top 25 Best Hosts for June 2010

June 24, 2010

I am starting to wonder when it is that web hosting stuff changes their rankings. It seems that it was the middle of this month.

These are the hosts that were on May 2010 top 25 list but not June 2010 list:

12 Greenville Host

14 Identity Website Hosting

17 Green Geeks

24 Netmar

25 ThePrimeHost

While they may be off the list, that does not mean I stop my review of their sites. I am still going by the order of May 2010.

Here is how the lists reads now

1 iPage

2 Just Host

3 FatCow Web Hosting

4 Arvixe Web Solutions

5 HostGator

6 InMotion Hosting

7 3Essentials Hosting was 11

8 MochaHost was 7

9 Interactive Online

10 Omnis Network was 13

11 ServersAndDomains new

12 nativespace was 8

13 Site5.com was 15

14 2GB Hosting was 16

15 Cloud.bg was 18

16 iWeb Technologies Inc. was 19

17 IoxHost was 10

18 Indichosts.net was 20

19 Scala Hosting was 21

20 Steadfast Networks was 22

21 LFC Hosting was 23

22 WebInternetHosting new

23 Plexihost Affordable Web .. new

24 Fire Dragon Hosting new

25 i7net inc. new

As you can see 5 new companies, one of which I covered earlier was i7net.net. A company that webhostingstuff.com’s own site says has no reviews and 72% uptime. Which is what caught my attention as I was looking over their list. The site has a lower rating then hosting-reviews-exposed.com Alexa rating. The domain was also registered March 2009.

My current problem is I don’t have access to webhostingstuff’s site because they seem to block you after so many visits to their site. So I can’t see where these sites rank in webhostingstuff.com’s in popularity. I was able to see that i7net.net was “unknown”, yet some how a top 25 webhost. I tend to believe that i7net.net is my hostdawgs.com. This will be a site to keep an eye on. I only have 21 hosts to go til I review it again and this time I go to the site directly.

Interactiveonline.com: Testimonial – Is Interactiveonline.com good or bad?

June 24, 2010

As I get back in the swing of things with the May 2010 top 25 list of webhostingstuff.com I find interactiveonline.com in the number 9 position. This is another one of those sites when you try to do a research on the company name you get results unrelated to the hosting company. They do not appear to be registered with the Better Business Bureau, not like I would hold that against them. But it seems a bit of a desperate search for even positive reviews on this site. I found a few complaints in regards to getting a response from this company, which might have to be because there is no other contact then the support board. What reviews and for that matter affiliates sites are scattered by anything relevant to “interactive online”. So I am going to spend most of my time on their site. I am going to break this into two separate parts, the first part covering:

Merchant Service

Affiliate Program

Meanwhile I have put a ticket in with them, to see just how fast they will respond to me. These days I can’t say I am too thrilled with a hosting company that does not offer chat support.

In the second part I will cover BeGreenNow.com and their relationship to Interactive Online.

Terms of Service for Interactiveonline.com

http://interactiveonline.com/about/policies

I am only skimming here, and I really am not focusing on the whole terms of service. But here is what sticks out as I skim for certain pieces such as uptime guarantee, refund, reasons to have your account shut down…….. Pardon my random approach at this.

The first thing that sticks out is “We reserve the right to remove any account without advanced notice for any reason Interactive Online sees fit. “. That’s ….. friendly. Keep in mind this is a unlimited space hosting company.

Then there is the 90 day guarantee, exclusions apply:

Money back guarantee is only available on our Shared Hosting, cPanel Reseller, Hosted Spam Filter & Exchange Hosting accounts. Setup fees are non-refundable. The 90 day money back guarantee is waived on all Special Offers including the free membership to YouJoomla.

Please note the special offer of 25% off on their order page, and they charge a $25 setup fee if you sign up for less then 2 years. I am willing to bet they will charge you the setup fee should you cancel prior to 90 days.

Backups – While they do back ups, the restoration of those back ups are not free unless of hardware failure. Other wise the cost to restore a back up is $25. I see a lot of hosts that don’t charge for that.

Then there is their uptime Guarantee.

Interactive Online’s 99.9% Uptime Guarantee & Credits

In the event that there is network outage*, Interactive Online will credit the monthly service charge for the following month’s service as calculated below and as measured 24 hours a day in a calendar month, with the maximum credit not to exceed 25% of the monthly service charge for the affected month.

I would advise paying attention to the Service credit and Claim Review Process. In essence you have to put a ticket in to request the credit and you have to document the down time. It may take 10 days for them to accept or reject your claim.

FEES!!!

If your account with your old hosting provider does not use the cPanel control panel there will be additional fees.

Real-time Block List (RBL) Fees & Fines

If a customer’s site is hacked, spammed from or there is any other reason why the server gets listed on an RBL, the customer will be responsible for all fees and fines related to getting removed from the RBLs. Customer will be billed $100 for every RBL the server is listed on.

If the customer refuses to upgrade the scripts to the newest stable version we will upgrade the script for them and charge a $25 upgrade fee. Interactive Online is not responsible for any problems the upgrade may cause.

Interactiveonline.com’s Merchant services

My first thought of signing up with webhosting company for an affiliate program is not to. You might wonder why. Looking through the list I see PayPal.com, Interactiveonline.com gets a referral fee from PayPal if you sign up under their link. I would just go to PayPal.com directly and sign up for their system. As much as I hate to say it, PayPal is a must for business. Too many people trust them over handing out their credit cards to people.

The same is true for every merchant account they get set up, and they may very well get a cut of all your sales. I first learned about this from a company called Total Merchant when they tried to get me to refer my customers to their service. It was not til I started receiving checks that I learned I was not just getting a referral fee I was getting a portion of their sales, which I am not really all that fond of the idea. I soon realized that the company that refereed me was getting a cut of my transactions. I wish I would have learned this 5 years earlier.

I soon realized it was a good idea to shop around for a merchant account every year, and even pit merchants against each other. Not to mention pit the merchant I was with to compete with them for a better offer. Sometimes the current merchant will give you a better deal if they see the other offers. Even still when they made an offer that claimed to be better then my previous offer I had to read the terms of service to make sure they were not compensating someway with a new fee.

These days it is easy to find a merchant (well easy if your in the United States), then when I first started 11 years ago. For that matter I got better at figuring out what a good service was and the last 5 merchant accounts I signed up had no set up fees. No middle man between me and the merchant service. Which is why I would advise avoiding Interactiveonline.com for merchant service if you decided to take them up on hosting I had a friend that was burned by Homestead and went from a $19 a month account to over $120 a month.

I recommend contacting your bank about merchant account, as opposed to your host. Especially looking at the some of the set-up fees here ranging from free to $949. Clearly you want to make every penny you get from your customers count, and there is no point in giving your webhost a cut of your credit card transactions.

Interactiveonline.com’s Affiliate Program

They pay $90 per referral on shared hosting

6% reoccurring fee on other services.

They have lots of wonderful “green” webhosting banners for you to use.

No secondary affiliate program that I can find at the moment.

Affiliate commissions will not be paid for accounts that are canceled within 90 days.
Affiliate commissions are only paid for new customers that are referred to us
Affiliate revenue will not be paid until referred customer has been an activated customer for at least 90 days.
Referred customers must be active, in good standing and all past due invoices paid in order for affiliate to collection commissions on the referred account.
Affiliates can withdrawal earned revenue once their affiliate revenue reaches $90 total
If an account the affiliate referred used a promo code, the affiliate commission will be discounted by the same percentage or fixed amount. If the offer is a savings percentage , then the affiliate commission will be discounted for the same percentage. If it is a fixed amount savings the commission will be discount for the fixed amount.

On that last point, it pretty much means they are not willing to pay an affiliate and discount the customer at the same time. Say for example they have a offer for 25% off:

Use promo code SAVE25 to save 25% on any billing cycle. Offer good for new accounts & first billing cycle only.

So instead of $90 the affiliate would get $67.50 that is $22.50 less.

Next stop the Interactiveonline.com ticket system

So far the only method I can find to contact this company is via this link

https://interactiveonline.com/support/submitticket.php

It took them 47 minutes to send me a response. Timing wise its not too bad, but this is a sales question and other companies that provide chat and phone sales support are going to beat them to the sell.

One of the things I would give my techs grief for if they had done this ticket is not greeting the customer, and not closing with a signature. I felt it was that you had to make the customer feel welcome. Especially during the holiday season I would have everyone use something along the lines of wishing you the best in this holiday season. I wanted my techs to look like human beings and not robots. With this, I feel like I got a response from a robot. No hello or anything here. Or acknowledgement of my name. For that matter my business partner would have sales staff give out information to entice people in, such as good reasons to sign up for service. As you can tell from my writings I am not a sales person.

I am not sure I buy that they have been around for 13 years, or had any long periods of down time. Perhaps they have been around that long. I tend to doubt it as the only package I see are unlimited accounts. I have to wonder if they were around for the last 13 years what were the packages they offered before.

My thoughts on what I found

When I first saw the name of this company I thought I had a short review, considering search engine results are not the best for “interactive online”, the words can apply to a lot of things like games and virtual tours. But a little digging into the site and I find an overwhelming amount of detail. Anyone that reads the terms of service would pause before ordering. The cost of having to pay for repairs from a hacking attempt regardless if it was the customers fault or not would defiantly make me avoid the host.

In my next post I uncover claim to claim to be a green host is overboard. Details on their green program are limited at best as they have a certificate for 8 metric tons of carbon and something in their terms of service about buying one tree per customer. Looking at my email it cost them $112. There is no listing of how many trees have been planted. Frankly based off what I found I find it hard to trust this company.

Mochahost.com is the worst host? Check this review out before you buy!!!!

June 18, 2010

If you were to mention Mochahost.com to me, the phrase “like shooting fish in a barrel” comes to mind. They may be the worst one that I have found, defiantly worst out of the first 7of webhostingstuff.com top 25 hosts you should avoid. This indeed the first host I find valid complaints with just “mochahost sucks”

The first of which I looked at:

http://hostjury.com/reviews/mochahost+

Shamefully this is one of the Mochahost.com’ staffs responses to a customer:

Mr. Voorhees,

Before we respond to your actual review I have to say that we are shocked that a person who is associated with a Christian church is actually making false statements, lies, and means harm to others. We are sure that this behavior is not what they teach at your church “Colber Church of Christ” and are 100% positive that the Bible does not teach you how to harm other people and how to be a liar!

We should probably contact the teachers at your church and warn them about what person you are actually are?

Bottom-line: Don’t ever bring a person’s religion in to business, and for that matter use it to shame a customer. This is wrong on multiple levels. Stick to business. But frankly I think there is little weight with this Mochahost Representative claims that Mr. Voorhees is a liar. As it seems he / she is the one who is trying to cover up complaints against the land slide of complaints for this company. I would chalk this one up to just a disgruntle tech if I did not see more counter complaints of the same nature against other customers.

Mochahost even has negative reviews on amazon.com, which I think is rather weird

http://www.amazon.com/mochahost-com/product-reviews/B0001WRHDA/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

And there is more:

http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-hosting/web-hosting-top.mochahost.com/type/add-review

http://www.vistainter.com/reviews/M/mochahost.com/

http://www.webhost4lifereview.com/mochahost-web-hosting-reviews-coupon-code/

They have a C rating at the moment with the Better Business Bureau, though from some posts it was d – and f.

http://sanjose.bbb.org/Business-Report/Mochahost-235786

Even Webhostingstuff.com can’t hide all the negative reviews for Mochahost.com that are pouring in for the last 30 days.

http://www.webhostingstuff.com/review/MochaHost.html

Just to be on the safe side I figured I will copy a sample of those complaints in the last 30 days just in case.

support muppets (Poor) – by Chris (commonfx.eu) on 17 June 2010

MochaHost is the worst hosting ever (Poor) – by A (running-ball.com) on 15 June 2010

very bad support (Poor) – by sandeep (sarthi.net) on 11 June 2010

Too many layers between customer and true support (Poor) – by Rob (droppingdeuce.com) on 5 June 2010

Very poor support and billing system (Poor) – by Helmuth (ozwa.info) on 3 June 2010

Stay away from this host! (Poor) – by Bert(whitesiteservices.com) on 21 May 2010

Only Hostingsthatsuck.com is the only one without negative reviews for Mochahost, or do they?

http://www.hostingsthatsuck.com/mochahost-sucks/

Clearly they did not do enough research as all of what I found in regards to complaints greater then 10. Thats unless you scroll past “So our verdict: Hostingsthatsuck.com Recommends MochaHost for beginners “, You find:

Updated: Due to the more recent negative comments and feedbacks from our visitors, we are now also recommending an alternative hosting plan byInMotion Hosting. See below for their custom-fit packages priced from only $3 monthly! You pay for what you need and all packages come with cPanel and eCommerce-ready support. Our InMotion hosting review is as good, if not better than about the above webhost. If you have any doubt at all about the above web hosting service, get inMotion hosting instead. If you are asking for another webhost recommendation, inMotion hosting is your answer.

They did not bother to remove their glowing review, and still have a coupon to use to buy hosting from this company. Looking through there is only one thumb up review, which I suspect was planted by the hosting company.

So you say Mocha Host has awards (Well three awards)

One of which is from C/NET:

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6616_102-0.html?threadID=272415

My Finale Thoughts on Mochahost.com

I think it is safe to say that I can close on “mochahost sucks”, there is no point in going any further because I found all of this information in less than 20 minutes. I spent the last 2 hours in reviewing it, and there is still more to review. I see lots of complaints about them not paying their affiliates, and there are not a lot of pro mocha host sites that are using sucks as advertising so I have to wonder if they are true, Like Arvixe Web Solutions, I am bothered by the hostile response to customer complaints. It was simply uncalled for, and worse than Arixe. Going after a customer based on their religion, race, gender, country, and sexuality is simply off limits of any good company. I think it could be possible to forgive a company for a lot of negative reviews, but such an attack is not that easy to forgive.

Webhostingstuff.com, where it all began

June 5, 2010

This is the site that got me involved into exposing the evils of web reviews and top of lists for pay.

First off lets take a look at their whois information:

Registrant Contact:

   W3Centric Network Pte Ltd
   Michael Low ()
   Fax:
   9 Bukit Batok Central Link
   27-10
   Singapore, SE 658074
   SG

While I can’t off hand back up with facts, I am going to say that the bulk of webhosting companies are from the United States. Especially those that webhostingstuff.com lists in their top 1 – 25. But unlike those companies, this website is clearly not from the United States. Though at this time they appear to be on SoftLayer Technologies Inc servers.

Here is the link I get a kick out of, and I am sure it was not there when I looked2 years ago.

http://www.webhostingstuff.com/our_ranking.html

In a nut shell they claim to be pure of heart and that they would never delete negative comments (though no claims on not deleting positive feed back on people they do not get paid by). That there system can keep tracks of the traffic on the 10,530 webhosts listed in their data base (though the site only lists 10,293). Which is hard to believe, but if it were true they would have number to back up their claims. But at the same time they have lied about not deleting feed back. Which when you look at host gator.

Back in September 2008 according to youcanhost.com http://blog.youcanhost.com/host-reviews-exposed/webhostingstuffcom-consumer-reports-for-hosting-or-advertising-for-web-hosting/ They had a 80% approval rating. Now some how we have to believe that they are never deleted any negative feed back. After all Hostgator now has a flawless 5 star rating. Regardless a 100% rating is really hard for me to believe. In my years of webhosting I would say that atleast 90% of my customers were happy with my service I was providing them. But finding positive feed back from them posted online was next to impossible. It was always easier to find negative feed back from people that I, or for that matter no one could please.
Then there is this tidbit of interest at youcanhost.com,

http://blog.youcanhost.com/host-reviews-exposed/webhostingstuffcom-consumer-reports-for-hosting-or-advertising-for-web-hosting/comment-page-1

“admin,

September 8th, 2008 at 10:54 am

Number 2 HostDawgs.com is defiantly new according to WhoIs Info: Creation Date: 24-feb-2008“

This is a company that is not even in business, but yet its listed still in webhostingstuff.com’s data base

http://www.webhostingstuff.com/company/HostDawgscom.html

The only person to have given them a review appear to have an inactive website.

Here is what Webhostingstuff.com says about HostDawgs:

HostDawgs.com Uptime: 0.00%
Site Established: Unknown Traffic Popularity: #3,920 of 10,293 companies

Somehow a site with zero uptime is 3,920 out of 10,293 sites.

Does this mean that webhostingstuff.com is keeping track of close to 7,000 defunct websites? When you goto hostdawgs.com it takes you to GoDaddy’s generic landing page for newly registered domains.

Also keep in mind that HostDawgs.com used to be number 2 on webhostingstuff.com’s top 25 list, search engine results are few and far between, and seldom taking me to anything relevant to hostdawgs.co.

However if you go look up GoDaddy.com’s ranking’s at webhostingstuff here is what it says:

Site Established: 2 Mar 1999 (11 years and 99 days ago)Traffic Popularity: #2 of 10,293 companiesThe GoDaddy site was established 11 years and 99 days ago since 2 Mar 1999.

Their website’s popularity is ranked #2 of about 10,293 hosting companies listed here – based on the estimated number of visitors to GoDaddy’s website.

I am a bit confused, JustHost.com was supposed to be number 2, and I don’t see GoDaddy.com on the top 25 at all.

Site Established: UnknownTraffic Popularity: #21 of 10,293 companiesTheir website’s popularity is ranked #21 of about 10,293 hosting companies listed here – based on the estimated number of visitors to Just Host’s website.

It looks like JustHost.com gets to stay on the top 25 based off of what ever number that webhostingstuff.com is not willing to share with its vistors. But still it does not make sense. So I figured lets try a few others:

Site Established: 15 Nov 2002 (7 years and 205 days ago)Traffic Popularity: #8 of 10,293 companiesThe BlueHost site was established 7 years and 205 days ago since 15 Nov 2002. Their website’s popularity is ranked #8 of about 10,293 hosting companies listed here – based on the estimated number of visitors to BlueHost’s website.

Another host not in the top 25 ,Bluehost

Site Established: 27 Apr 1998 (12 years and 43 days ago)Traffic Popularity: #11 of 10,293 companies The Network Solutions site was established 12 years and 43 days ago since 27 Apr 1998. Their website’s popularity is ranked #11 of about 10,293 hosting companies listed here – based on the estimated number of visitors to Network Solutions’s website.

Wow, Network solutions is not on the list, but according to the traffic popularity it should be 11.

So what about the one thats listed number 1:

Site Established: 24 Mar 1995 (15 years and 78 days ago)Traffic Popularity: #60 of 10,293 companiesThe iPage site was established 15 years and 78 days ago since 24 Mar 1995. Their website’s popularity is ranked #60 of about 10,293 hosting companies listed here – based on the estimated number of visitors to iPage’s website.

So, in conclusion: Webhostingstuff.com can not even by their own numbers validate where websites rank in regards to their popularity. They are just as bad as those companies they claim are not legit. But just for fun, lets take their actually rankings and stack them against those in the top 25 list. Bold face lie does not even cut it, this is a web of lies.

Its pretty funny, but there is only one site that has the right position according to its rankings and that is HostGator, and only one other site that should be in the top 25 and thats JustHost.com which should be number 21 not number 2. All the others are 51 – 3555.

Listing in top 25 – actual ranking – company name

1 – 60 – iPage

2 – 21 – Just Host

3 – 46 – FatCow Web Hosting

4 – 77 – Arvixe Web Solutions

5 – 5 – HostGator

6 – 51 – InMotion Hosting

7 – 92 – MochaHost

8 – 2633 – nativespace

9 – 349 – Interactive Online

10 – 3555 – IoxHost

11 – 298 – Essentials Hosting

12 – 1065 – Greenville Host

13 – 200 – Omnis Network

14 – 2271 – Identity Website Hosting

15 – 59 – Site5 com

16 – 232 – 2GB Hosting

17 – 172 – Green Geeks

18 – 909 – Cloud bg

19 – 74 – iWeb Technologies Inc

20 – 530 – Indichostsnet

21 – 365 – Scala Hosting

22 – 103 – Steadfast Networks

23 – 764 – LFC Hosting

24 – 3382 – Netmar

25 – 1180 – ThePrimeHost

Curious about who would be number 1? I found out by accident. I wanted to see where Yahoo ranked, and surprise surprise they were number 1.

Webhostingstuff.com clearly states:

Web Hosting Stuff uses a Quality Scoring method to rank hosting companies featured within each hosting category.

The Quality Score for each web host is calculated using realtime visitor statistics and other quality indicators.

By using quality indicators such as visitor statistics, the system is able to determine which web hosts visitors liked.

To build a fair and honest ranking system, ranking is always performed automatically by the system – free of human interference.

Unlike some dubious “top 10 hosting sites” that promote web hosts based on affiliate commissions, our fair and honest ranking system helps visitors find the real top web hosting companies.

I wonder what these other quality indicators are, perhaps this link can point us to it: https://www.webhostingstuff.com/advertise.html

I have not actually seen any advertising on their site, so this is a bit of a curious link.

Webhostingstuff.com Top 25 Best Hosts for May 2010

May 26, 2010

If you reviewed my last post you will see that I got data that showed that Webhostingstuff.com was deleting negative feedback from people that are in their top 25 rankings. At the same time the post I showed the link to, which I hesitate to post again because that link belongs to a hosting company. But if your incline to look you can go to the previous post. Granted I am going to turn the authors idea into my own, I doubt there is a problem as we both seem to be on the same page in regards to webhosting review scams. I will also be posting links of other companies into my blog. The author of that post said that the September 2008 rankings made no sense. I am incline to agree with the author. Clearly any review site that allows outside input should be base off of hosting customer rankings, data sorted by approval rating / amount of ratings. I am excluding the rest of the data as there is no relevance in regards to customer satisfaction. Not to mention I am not a big fan of unlimited hosting, but that is a post for another day. Based off their data that they publicly disclose, this is the order, this is ideally how their rankings should look:

My suggested rank . company / webhostingstuff.com rank /number of ratings

LFC Hosting / 23 / 100% / 52
Essentials Hosting / 11 / 100% / 50
HostGator / 5 / 100% / 39
Arvixe Web Solutions / 4 / 100% / 38
Scala Hosting / 21 / 100% / 32
InMotion Hosting / 6 / 100% / 21
Omnis Network / 13 / 100% / 16
ThePrimeHost / 25 / 100% / 13
iPage / 1 / 100% / 11
nativespace / 8 / 100% / 11
Interactive Online / 9 / 100% / 9
Identity Website Hosting .. / 14 / 100% / 7
Greenville Host / 12 / 100% / 6
Netmar / 24 / 100% / 6
IoxHost / 10 / 100% / 5
Steadfast Networks / 22 / 100% / 3
Cloud.bg / 18 /100% / 2
Just Host / 2 / 80% / 141
MochaHost / 7 / 80% / 79
Site5.com / 15 / 80% / 25
2GB Hosting / 16 / 80%/ 21
FatCow Web Hosting / 3 / 80% / 9
Green Geeks / 17 / 80% / 8
Indichosts.net / 20 / 80% / 7
iWeb Technologies Inc. / 19 / 60% / 9

Strangely the site that should be number 1, is listed as a ranking of 23 making it almost dead last. While at the other extreme 2 would be number 18. I have no idea why any site with less then 80% are even listed in this ranking. Let alone a site with 60%. In all honesty its been my experience people are less likely to say nice things about you, so a 100% approval rating seems unlikely especially with 52 reviews. Given Hostgator’s supposed reputation, I find it surprising that they only have 39 reviews. Perhaps that is the amount that are willing to say 100% nice things about them. Strangely 4 and 6 are the only ones in the right spot, as I am sure that this is nothing more then a coincidence.

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