Warning! Hostgator Hosting , help is very welcome.

[meesterweb]

Dear Readers

We’re writing this message because of the very bad experience we have with Hostgator hosting company and we want to warn you all for this company. We spent more than €1000 on running an advertising campaign for this company and transferring our domains to this company. We got about 120 signups in this period with their affiliate program. Which should have resulted in a payment of 120 * $125 = $15000. In the end we received nothing! Please take some time to read this message and draw your own conclusions.

In October I decided to host several domains at the Hostgator. I read many good reviews and decided that Hostgator would be a trustworthy company to host my domains.

At that moment they offered $50 tot $150 per sign up in their affiliate program. Since I’m an experienced advertiser in Google Adwords and Overture, I decided to set up a campaign for this company. 15 October 2005 I started up an advertising campaign for the Hostgator Hosting services. From the very beginning my campaign was very successful.

Because the campaign was costing me quite a lot of money, more than €500 in the 2 months. I asked in October if the campaign I hosted at downdiscount.com was ok. They confirmed the campaign was ok. They also warned me that some appeared to be fraud. So I asked them how many are fraud to see if my campaign was ok. They told me at 20 October that 1 was a fraud. Till that moment I sent around 20 signups, so I decided to go along with this campaign. If 5% is fraud it’s acceptable for me. To be complete I add our email contact, so you can see for yourself.
--------------------------------------------
>>> From: "Hostgator Sales Department" <sales@hostgator.com>
>>> To: < >
>>> Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2005 5:24 PM
>>> Subject: [HGSales #DKN-11533-734]: Affiliate Question
>>>
>>>
>>>> Yep that is fine, It was just one so far so no worries, they could have
>>>> called too and verified they were not, we run an audit and email you on
>>>> the 1st too with how many you have.
>>>>
>>>> Anything else I can help with?
>>>> Thanks, Ben
>>>> HostGator.com
>>>>
>>>> HostGator.com/help
>>>> Please check our new knowledge base, it answers 90% of sales and support
>>>> questions!
>>>> HostGator.com/help
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, 20 Oct 2005 10:21:44 -0500, wrote:
>>>>> Hi Ben,
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for your reply. Good to hear the site is fine.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not using email to promote my website. I'm using
>>>>> Google Adwords and just started using Overture to promote the hostgator
>>>>> offer. I hope this is ok.
>>>>>
>>>>> What do you mean by fraud signups? Have you got an idea what kind of
>>>>> percentage this is? So I can decide is the promotional investment is
>>>>> worth
>>>>> the revenue.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
------------------------------------------------------------------------


I ran the campaign and spent more than €500 during this time to advertise the campaign in Google Adwords. I got about 3 sign-ups per day. I was happy with the hosting and transferred some other domains to HostGator as well. For the transfer of the websites and the conversion of the database I paid a Dutch company. €491,28.

Till I noticed all of my websites hosted at hostgator were offline! Due to this reason I lost valuable data and money. My websites have been offline for this reason for 2 days. I even paid my bills for the hosting! I received this message on 25 November 2005. By that time I had more than 120 Sign-ups. Which should have resulted in a value of $125 * 120 = $15000

This was the reply I got.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of your affiliate accounts have been deleted today, good luck defrauding another company.........


At the end of the month, we call up every single sign up via phones to check for fraud before paying any commissions.

Thank you for allowing me to work with you!

Sincerely,
Brent

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This sounded very strange to me since I asked in october if my campaign was ok. As I told you I sent about 20 signups by that time and they told me “only one appears to be a fraud”.
I’m very certain I didn’t do anything wrong in promoting HostGator. This is no way of dealing with business contacts, with people that spend lots of time, energy and Money on your company.

During the last 2 month the advertisements for Hostgator where seen almost 2 million times and they were clicked 4931 + 617 = 5548 times. These people were redirected to our website and about 120 people used the offer. I don't think these figures are very strange.

For two months afterwards I had contact with Hostgator, but without any result. I haven’t received one penny. I got screwed for more than $16.000.

I’m very, very disappointed. I hope my story will help you in making a good choice for a hosting company. Any help or legal advice in this situation is very welcome. We’re a company from the Netherlands, so it’s quite difficult the get into system of the USA.

Thanks for hearing our story. We hope this story will help you in making a good choice.

Yours sincerely,

[G10]

I am sorry to hear about that.

If all you say is true then I would suggest going over to WebHostingTalk.com as people over there would be quite happy to know this also.

[Mong]

Happy to know ???

[meesterweb]

Dear readers,

Thank you for the replies. I feel bad that what happened is told in bad way and the conflict seems to get only bigger. I’m not at all willing to do anything bad with this post. I’m just telling what happened to me. I just felt bad and frustrated of all that happened and wanted to tell my story. I prefer to work normally and don’t have these big conflicts. To be more complete and answer some questions I’ll describe some things more clearly and display my thoughts on this matter.

Beginning of October 2005 I was looking for a hosting package for a website. I decided to go for Hostgator. I read many good reviews on Hostgator. After I saw the offer on your website: $50 to $125 per signup. I thought this is interesting: "there is a business opportunity".
I setup a webpage and went advertising for this webpage on Google Adwords.

At that moment Hostgator had an offer for a free month on Hostgator. I decided to advertise with this action of Hostgator. This might be the cause of our conflict. Let's say Hostgator is talking the truth when they say didn’t receive any money from the 120 signups. It might have got something to do with this free month. People could have come in to my website and went to Hostgator, not to take hosting for a full year but just for a month to try it only. That is why I asked if my campaign was ok. They have seen my website and said it was ok. That’s why I trusted it was ok and I went along with the campaign and invested so much money in advertising on google (see screenshots).

Before Hostgator send me that email on the 25th of November. I was really thinking: Wow this is going very, very well. I received a confirmation from Hostgator that my site was ok and thought all was well. They said only 1 is bad from 20. The money was just coming in, I got more than 120 signups in these 2 months and read online in the affiliate part of Hostgator site that this was a value of $15000. I just calculated even if 1 in 20 is bad, this is still a very good score. And I thought I'm really doing a great campaign on Google, having a great website and am making good business for Hostgator too. I have no insight in the leads I sent to hostgator. The only thing I see is numbers and the money I will receive on the Hostgator website.

Then I received the mail. "Good luck defrauding another company" I hope you can understand how this must have felt for me. At that moment I expected a check of several thousands of dollars and this was happening to me! I really felt robbed at that moment. I had just been working very hard for 2 months, investing time and money in making a good campaign and website for Hostgator. And then at once all is gone. My websites are offline (where I paid my bills for), the statistics of signups I brought in are offline, the websites that I transferred were deleted. Without a warning all I built up during 2 months is gone.

For Hostgator I think it must have felt different by then. They saw many signups coming in, which must have felt good for them too, good business. They gave the people an account, also invested time in the new signups. But in the end they told me none of them converted into real customers. For me this is still difficult to believe because of the mail in October where they said only 1 was wrong from the 20, but let’s stop about that. It’s all about trust in this matter because I can’t look in their administration. They must have drawn the wrong conclusion then that I was frauding and probably they were angry at that moment, when they deleted all my accounts and websites.

I’m trying to understand how Hostgator must have felt and have been thinking and why they have reacted this way. I hope you can understand my feelings and conclusions too and understand. The thing that frustrated me the most was that we didn’t get any conversation going. I felt like I got no chance to explain my story to them. My websites were just deleted at once, so I couldn’t save important information and I couldn’t log into the affiliate program anymore, because everything was deleted without a warning. They could have contacted me earlier instead and talk about it. I am a reasonable person and we could have thought together on what might be the reason of the bad conversion.

We had some contact afterwards and we just couldn't get together in any way. They never provided me with a full list of people that signed up through me. I would be willing to check them myself. I felt I can do nothing from the Netherlands. I wanted to be heard and I decided to post my story and feelings about it online and how I think of it. I have no bad intentions with this.

I wish Hostgator good luck in their business. They are obviously a great company because of all the good reviews on their business that are online. They proved in their past they are good at what they do. But I find it also important too that people and businesses listen to your story before they judge and get into action like what happened to me in November. This is a forum where people tell their experiences and this my experience. Maybe I should just accept that the cooperation with hostgator worked out bad for both of us, because of a bad communication.

I hope this message gives some more clarity to the story and I hope you appreciate this message. I wish you all good luck in your businesses and life!

Greetings

[geek-design]

thats bad... I run an affiliate scheme, and as far as im told all my members are pretty damn happy monkeys !

I dont make it complicated, like other sites do... i dont see the point !

[Sabeur]

Thanks for sharing, report them to some sort gov or sue them.

[meesterweb]

Dear readers,

I just wanted to let you know. Hostgator and I solved our conflict.
Hostgator paid me out for the very few signups that were good on the condition
that I will have to pay them back any chargebacks they get.
This is fair to me.

Greetings