A Small Orange Hosting - Do not trust!

[JackChap]

I recently came across a webhost called A Small Orange. They looked very professional and their packages looked almost too good to be true. After much thought (especially considering that I had bad experience with a previous unreliable webhost), I decided to purchase hosting with A Small Orange.

I used PayPal as my payment method. After registering, I eagerly awaited my welcome email. But instead, minutes later; I received an email from PayPal with the following subject :"Your payment has been refunded.". The email also contained a note from the seller: "Sorry, we don't host spammers".

At this point I was clearly confused. My site is a fairly popular technology enthusiast community, with microsoft releated news and has never had anything even remotely to do with spam.

I opened up a ticket with A Small Orange, saying the following:

Would you like to enlighten me as to why my money was just refunded with a note telling me that "We do not accept spammers".

Thanks

Minutes later the ticket was closed with no response. So, quite upset - I decided to give up.

What's worse is that PayPal charged me to reinsert the funds into my bank account. So in a sense, A Small Orange stole from me.

In short - DO NOT TRUST A SMALL ORANGE WEB HOSTING! They are clearly an extremely unprofessional company and are clearly not serious. There is no valid reason why they would refund me and not even explain themselves unless something is very wrong with the company.

After this, I checked around their forums and found nothing but complaints in the company forums, about bad speeds, unreliability , etc...

If you're thinking of choosing ASO, think again!

I hope I save a lot of people a lot of hassle with this post.

 

[webfreak08]

Jack, thank you for taking the time to write a detailed review on HostingDiscussion.com. I have to note two things, however:

1. A Small Orange did not steal from you because you had to pay a fee. You should be fully aware of the fees that your bank charges.

2. I don't know of a single company that wouldn't want to take a customer's money unless that customer posed a major risk to them somehow.

 

[ldcdc]

In all honesty, I find it weird that you found the motivation to join multiple forums and post this story. In the end, all they did was to refuse service to you, which is one of their most fundamental rights IMO.

 

[Exon]

JackChap,
You tried once, the ticket was closed. I don't know how A Small Orange works, but if a ticket is opened you have to be a customer with ExonNet.

I don't know. I wouldn't mind hearing ASO's version of the story before making any decisions.

 

[commit1anthony]

I do think that A Small Orange should have informed him in detail as to why his payment was "denied" and why they refused to offer him services. Something a bit more then "We dont not host spammers". Maybe he could have clarified this issue? Not good. As far as the bank account, that's on your part. Atleast they did the right thing by refunding the money. Look at how much people get robbed daily through garbage "webhosting providers".

 

[webfreak08]

A Small Orange should have informed him in detail as to why his payment was "denied" and why they refused to offer him services. Something a bit more then "We dont not host spammers".

There's really no more details needed. ASO believed he was a spammer. They didn't want to host him. End of story.

 

[Blue]

I agree they have the right to choose not to host him but it could have been handled better on a diplomatic level. It really would have been no more difficult for them to explain their reasoning. It certainly may have prevented this discussion on a bunch of forums.

 

[webfreak08]

It really would have been no more difficult for them to explain their reasoning.

As in why they suspect him to be a spammer?

 

[Blue]

Yes. I would want an explanation even if they were choosing not to host me.

 

[commit1anthony]

Yes. I would want an explanation even if they were choosing not to host me.

Exactly. Thats like me walking into a restaurant, and being stopped by the manager saying that I can't eat there. What is the reason? If you have a reason, where is the proof? What makes you think that? This post could have been avoided by a more detailed reason.