Brinkster Hosting Service Sucks

I have been using Brinkster for website hosting for a while now and must admit that their email and web hosting service is worse than all the others I have tried. 

Email outages are becoming a daily occurrence.  My website and email are down right now (thankfully this blog is on TypePad and I have alternate email providers for outgoing mail).  As usual, they say it is because of a DNS issue and just for a few hours.  At least this time they did not ask me to check my email or browser settings or reboot even when they know the problem is on their end (usually the dead giveaway is that their own site is not responding).  My Brinkster hosted websites have often been unavailable during important demos.

Brinkster has even been losing email messages lately.  It's one thing to not be able to retrieve or send messages for short periods, but it is another entirely to actually fail to accept incoming messages.  This is unacceptable.

The good news is that if you complain to Brinkster Billing they will issue you a refund.  I actually email all my complaints to them and CC support - I get a faster response that way.  The bad news is: it ain't worth it.

Obviously I'm not the only one suffering with "service provider" growth issues.  Tom Evslin, who writes one of my favorite weblogs, has blogged (twice) about his problems with Vonage.

Can anyone recommend a better hosting provider?  Everything I have is ASP at the moment, but it would not be a big deal to change it over to PHP.

Sign up in the comments if you want to form a group of dissatisfied Brinkster users.  Maybe we can get a better setup deal as a group from another provider.

Addendum: when I went to spell check this post, it was suggested that the word "Brinkster" should be "Prankster".  I agree.

Comments

[Chris F R]

I would certainly recommend readysethost.com

-C.

[Chris F R]

Woops.

I just found a definite no-no on their site: Brinkster advertise unlimited web traffic.
This is a no such thing as unlimited bandwidth, despite this dishonest industry's attempts to convince you otherwise.
I know that all too well: I was a web host for several years and saw countless small companies die either because they made such assinine claims -which always backfire eventually- or because they lost all their clients to such fly by night outlets.

-C.

[Markus]

My friend Eric has recommended Dreamhost for PHP-based hosting. They look pretty good (but then they all do at first). I'll check out readysethost too. Thanks for the info!

[Charlie]

I switched from Interland to Brinkster. Brinkster sucks! Too much down time abnd ongoing email problems as well as non existent support. Their email servers last forwarded my mail 18 hours ago -- and they are saying the problem 'should' be resolved tonight.. and they added that there is a 'possibility' that all email will be lost. Their technicians are 'studying the problem!'

Please wait for a site operator to respond.
You are now chatting with 'David'
David: Hello, how may I help you?
Charles: Anything new on when email will be resotred?
David: The server should be up this evening, but it may be as late as tonight. (Eastern Time, U.S.A.)
Charles: Willall email be delivered at that tinme? Will any be lost?
David: There is the remote possibility that the emails on the server might have been lost.
David: The server administrators are investigating this issue

[Markus Sandy]

I switched from Interland to Brinkster too. Now I am trying BlueHost.com. So far things seem pretty good (they always do in the beginning, eh?). Lots of cool webapps and easy install in config. Very inexpensive. So far, so good.

[Praga Khan]

I was with Brinkster for four years before I finally got off my lazy ass to move my huge site elswhere... I recommend u stay FAR AWAY from Brinkster. Too much downtime, terrible email problems, and even billing mistakes (!) - Terrible....

[EJ]

I faced great problems with brinkster, so I send em an email that goes like this

"You guys are amazing. I have never experienced such immense Downtime from any other hosting company. You are by far the worst hosting company I have dealt with . I have had terrible email lags with more than 5 accounts, you guys lost the freak1n addressbook of my client who almost got me into court, You had some lame migration excuse, i dunno what, most website show a pathetic SERVICE UNAVAILABLE when we need it most, sh1t, every freak1n error has a whole new saga to it, you guys are crapp man. I have lost money and time on your wretched setup and wish you guys end up in hell with your servers.

I'll be your host in hell damned bloody freak1n sh1t."

They then replied this
"Hello,

I apologize for the problems that you are having with your Brinkster hosting account. What is your Brinkster username? We need this information to better review your errors and correct them. Please let us know what specific errors are you experiencing? Please send us links to the error messages.

Thank you,

Jason
Brinkster
"

I replied this

"Its too late now. As of now, I am currently taking a back up of all my source code, and am in the process of transferring them from your servers to other servers. I dont even want you guys to look into it and fix anything as I am already suffering the financial damages. One of my client has withheld around USD 3000 that he owes me in balance payments for my web development service coz his online address book got deleted thrice from the brinkster servers the 'I' recommended. we contacted your wretched support and they just silently recovered the addressbook. What kinda joke was that ? Thrice man ? You wanna hear his words ? He said " I dont know which f**kin backyard these brinkster guys are operating from" He was yelling at me man, and you guys werent there

You want me to sue you now ? I am overseas. Dont even have the time to pursue those funds, no thanks to you guys. Can your 'specific error correction services' retrieve me my money back ? Can I buy his trust back ? To the pits with your goodwill, I've lost my goodwill as well.
---------------------------------------------------------
You want more details ? Ok, another client, I had some critical updates that were to be made online. The site just kept returning a big black Service Unavailable. What the hell was that all about ? Its freakin downtime man, and that was for 4-6 days in a row ! Let me see how you make a saga on that. I missed the deadline due to these delays and the client thinks that I cant deliver !! What do I say ? He is reconsidering giving me future development deals. His current project was worth around USD 3000 as well. I was expecting business from him for atleast another USD 3000 in the next 3 months
---------------------------------------------------------
Third client

This guy has hired a data entry guy who makes additions to the site often. Same sh1t as above man. He just sits looking into the monitor and this sh1t pops up after every few records. Hours lapse and only very few records are entered. Dont blame it on the connection coz all other sites work fine. And this happens from multiple locations, with only one common element. BRINKSTER !!

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

Email lags

Pathetic 6 hour lags experienced with 4 different clients. Sh1t man.
---------------------------------------------------------

And there's more to list man, dont have the time or the interest...


I aint gonna give you any details yet. Let me take all the back up I can before you guys make things worse. Dont worry, I am just one meagre customer with around 15 clients hosted on brinkster. My absence wont even make a difference to your oh so huge marketshare. Just mark my words, I am gonna scream as loud as I can and till my last breath every damn sh1t you guys made me go through to every prospective, existing and ex client of mine.

At the beginning of this mail I was just pissed off, now, to tell you the truth, I feel like crying that I had selected you guys in the first place. I dont talk like this to nobody, but nobody's hurt me the way you guys have."

They were moot...

[Mike Joe]

Brinkster is absolute sh1t

[Soon to be former brinkster customer]

Right now, our site has been down for over 2 1/2 hours. This started maybe a month ago when I noticed that I had worked on a particular file one night. The next morning, I started to continue to work on it, but I noticed that none of the work from the previous night was there. It had reverted back. I remembered that something like this had happened a few nights ago, but I thought I messed something up. But, this time, I specifically remember working on and saving this file. So, I contacted Brinkster and they made it seem like it was our fault. They told me that if someone has our password they can delete it, but "Brinkster does not delete files." Bullshit, because I read something from one of their admnins in their support section saying that they WILL delete files without notice if they're against tos, audio files, etc. The latest two-yes, two-incidents have really pissed us off. Yesterday, most of the files in our store were corrupted because of a "hardware malfunction" according to one of their guys. I managaged to upload all of our files again. This morning I get back to work and what the fuck? The content of most of the same files have been deleted. Just when you think Brinkster can't fuck things up even worse for us, we can't reupload our files to fix their mistake. Why? Because their ftp service is unavailable. I finally got an answer from someone who said that ftp would be available within 90 minutes. Well, that was over 14 hours ago. Still no ftp. Don't go to Brinkster. They mess up your site and half of their representatives will deny that it was their fault and try to pin their incompetence on your employees.

[hvrsolutions]

Hi I can agree Brinkster is the worst i ever have.
info: Please wait for a site operator to respond.
info: All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
info: You are now chatting with 'David'
David: Thank you for contacting the support department. How may I help you?
Hugo: Hi David I have a really big problem with my email account I received to day already 150 emails from demmon that they not could reach this email adress and i didn't send one email so dombody is using this email account
David: The "from" field of an email is not authenticated by email servers.
David: Anyone can put any address in the "from" section
Hugo: all this emails in my outbox are not sended by me
David: You can use the header information included in the returned messages to track down the sender.
Hugo: ok i send it
Hugo: Return-Path: <> Delivered-To: info@hvrsolutions.be Received: (qmail 22270 invoked from network); 24 Apr 2006 16:13:04 -0000 Received: from elpis.telenet-ops.be ([195.130.136.17]) (envelope-sender <>) by gaia.telenet-ops.be (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 24 Apr 2006 16:13:04 -0000 Received: from in-mx1.telenet-ops.be (in-mx1.telenet-ops.be [195.130.132.46]) by elpis.telenet-ops.be (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id k3OGD4fU003991 for ; Mon, 24 Apr 2006 18:13:04 +0200 Received: from sendmail2.brinkster.com (smtp7.brinkster.com [65.182.99.18]) by in-mx1.telenet-ops.be (Postfix) with ESMTP id 42602683C7 for ; Mon, 24 Apr 2006 18:13:00 +0200 (MEST) Received: from smtp.unipr.it ([160.78.48.164]) by sendmail2.brinkster.com (Brinkster Mail 2) with ESMTP id IYG74540 for ; Mon, 24 Apr 2006 12:18:51 -0400 Received: from localhost (localhost) by smtp.unipr.it (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.10/SuSE Linux 0.7) id k3OGCTBf012335; Mon, 24 Apr 2006 18:12:57 +0200 Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 18:12:57 +0200 From: Mail Delivery Subsystem Message-Id: To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=delivery-status; boundary="k3OGCTBf012335.1145895177/smtp.unipr.it" Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details Auto-Submitted: auto-generated (failure)
David: For example, you can send the message ID to the administrators of the mail server that was used to send the message
David: Is there anything else I can help you with at this time?
Hugo: thats coming via brinkster when i see
Hugo: its mail2.brinkster.com
David: Is this the header information of the original messages, or is it the header of the bounce-back?
David: The following line shows that Brinkster received the message from a different server.
David: Received: from smtp.unipr.it ([160.78.48.164]) by sendmail2.brinkster.com (Brinkster Mail 2)
David: Any one can put any address in the "from" and "reply-to" fields. It does not indicate that the messages were sent from your account or from Brinkster's servers.
Hugo: yes but before my email adress was forward to info@telenet.be
Hugo: How can i have messages in the send box when i don't send anyone
David: If the messages are showing in Webmail's Sent box, then you should change the password (in the Email Manager section of your Control Panel)
Hugo: can you explain how sombody can use my email account for spam if we are not able to send email with asp script and the brinkster reply no relay if we want to send to a other domain
David: If you s
David: If you see the emails in your Sent folder in Webmail, then they were sent using Webmail.
David: Do you see emails that you sent in the Sent folder?
Hugo: no one
Hugo: in the time that we are chatting there are already 54 messages in my inbox
Hugo: sorry it's not so much
David: Are the messages also in your Sent folder?
Hugo: i am checking
Hugo: can't see anymore because now my send box is empty
Hugo: I go change my pasword but i am not sure it will help because a bit ago i haved the problem with a guestbook to and i needed to but code to verfy so that automatic messages not vould be send
Hugo: I hope you would send a message to your security people because i guess thats really bat the security on brinkster maybe that they can know something more because spam is not what brinkster need
Hugo: and i don't want the name that i am sending spam
David: You can change the email account's password in the Email Manager section of your Control Panel.
David: Please make sure the password is unique (not something you use for other accounts) and that it includes letters, numbers, and punctuation.
Hugo: ok i go change it but i guess it would be good to see how that can because its every 1 minute that there sending emails and that can't manual
David: If you require further assistance, please log back into Live Chat or email us at Support@Brinkster.com.
David: Thank you for contacting Brinkster Support.
info: The chat session has been ended.

[Virtualdude]

Read my blog regarding current Brinkster problems.

[Virtualdude]

Sorry, here is the link to view current problems I am having with Brinskter.
http://www.weblogs.co.nz/?p=51

[Brinkster's Hard disks are full!]

MP3 file of Brinkster conversation:
http://media.odeo.com/files/5/4/4/998544.mp3

Read below for the blurb...

This is the epitome in a series of annoying failures on behalf of the Brinkster.com webhosting service.

The most frequent (and perhaps serious) problem of theirs, has to do with their e-mail being down or crashing or losing e-mails (!!)...

Some times, it takes more than 10 minutes of waiting to get into their WebMail system!

But today's problem was the most interesting one so far...

I was happily working away doing changes to my website when all of a sudden, my FTP client gave me a OUT OF DISK SPACE message while attempting to upload a small 50kb text file to the Brinkster Server!

I thought... Surely not.

I am on an account that gives me 3 gigabytes of storage and I was only using around 800MB of them...

That's less than a third!

So I originally contact their technical support via their Live Chat IM.

The transcript follows further below.

What I found out was shocking to say the least!

Their server has run out of disk space!

A "Professional" web hosting company with users like myself who are hardly using much of their web space has bloated hard disks and I can't upload as much as a single kilobyte anymore!

...and the guy's response? We'll look into it from Monday... (I noticed this on a Saturday).

I asked for an immediate resolution and the only thing they could offer was to move all my websites to other machines, something that would involve going through code and changing absolute paths to databases since Brinkster doesn't support DSNs (!!) as well as staying in line with customer support for at least an hour while trying to reset write permissions to so many different folders I have requirements for since Brinkster doesn't allow me to do that myself manually either and of course won't transfer permissions across!

Not to mention the hours of downtime as a result of this and the even more hours spent afterwards debugging each and every website to make sure the transfer worked correctly!

What's worse is that when in the past I requested a transfer to a new server they cocked it up in two different and equally frustrating ways...

1) They lost data!
That's right. Not all files were copied across and I found out the hard way (no easy way of telling when your web apps have hundreds of files).

2) They have different versions of PHP and MySQL running on different servers and I actually got downgraded on the PHP front to an earlier version which was incompatible with my code (from 5 to 4 to be precise)!!

So, my choices were to either risk losing my data due to full servers causing corruption or risk having broken websites after incapable techies do another one of those disastrous "server transfers"!

So I call them up...

I thought I'd share my audible frustration with you in this way...

Thanks for listening and draw your own conclusions...

Cheers!

P.S. Below is the transcript of the chat, interrupted when I finally called them up...

Chat InformationPlease wait for a site operator to respond.
Chat InformationYou are now chatting with 'Darb'
Darb: Thank you for contacting the support department. How may I help you?
myNickname: Hello. Username is [....] password is [....].
myNickname: Your FTP service has all of a sudden started playing up.
myNickname: Whenever I try uploading something to my site, it gives me this error:
myNickname: 125 Data connection already open; Transfer starting. ERROR: > [28/10/2006 23:23:24]

Can't write to data socket. Socket error = #10053. [28/10/2006 23:23:24] 426 Connection closed;

transfer aborted. ERROR: > [28/10/2006 23:23:24] Connection closed; transfer aborted.
myNickname: The server I'm connecting to is: xxxxx.brinkster.com
Darb: I was able to upload a test file name test_upload.txt directly into your webroot. What

program are you using to connect via FTP?
myNickname: xxxFTP. Try uploading something that's larger than 100k. That's when the problem seems

to occur....
Darb: One moment please
Darb: Thank you for your patience. I am looking into this for you.
Darb: The server you are on is currently out of disk space.
myNickname: Are you serious?!
myNickname: There's serious data corruption issues associated with this!!
myNickname: The machine must be absolutely bloated if it can't even save a few kilobytes of data!
Darb: I can transfer you to another server. If I do this, your ftp address will change and so will

your absolute path. You will get the new settings when the transfer is complete. Would you like to

be transfered or wait until our administrators take a look at it?
myNickname: What are you running your services on? Home PCs??
myNickname: ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!
myNickname: I have several websites running and I will not spend my entire weekend sorting your

mess out.
myNickname: Can you please sort this problem out?
myNickname: I'm paying for 3 gigs of space and I want my 3 gigs of space or a refund until this is

fixed!@
myNickname: I am seriously frustrated by this!
Darb: I personally can't do anything about it at this moment, but I will have an administrator

look into it right away.
myNickname: It means I can't do any work until you guys get your act together and come up with a

solution that doesn't involve requiring your customers to change code in their websites.
myNickname: I'm waiting...
myNickname: Is this affecting my e-mail too?
Darb: No, your email is on another server.
myNickname: Have you heard back from your administrator yet?
Darb: An administrator will not be able to look at this until Monday.
myNickname: You have to be kidding me!
myNickname: OK. You have two options. Either you guys get your act together now and start coming

up with a solution while I'm on the chat with you or else I start publishing our conversation all

over the blogs.
myNickname: Brinkster is already gaining bad reputation steadily and believe me, this isn't going

to help one bit!
myNickname: It's your call. I am very frustrated and I intend on making full use of my consumer

rights.
Darb: The only option we currently have is moving you to another server.
myNickname: That's not an option. That's a convenient way out for you guys at your customers'

expense.
myNickname: You are offering me several hours of downtime and debugging due to reconfiguring my

websites (at my expense) or the option of having my data corrupted.
myNickname: I find it hard to understand which of the two is a "technical support" solution!
myNickname: Are there any websites on this server that you can delete?
myNickname: From inactive customers?
Darb: I understand your situation and am sorry for any inconvenience. The hard drive on the server

is out of space. The only option we have at this moment is to transfer you to another server. If

not, an administrator will look into this Monday.
myNickname: ...and what if my data get corrupted during this time?
Darb: If your data gets corrupted, we keep daily backups.

[Roderik]

I am with brinkster for several years, started with a free package. Since my bandwidth usage was too much quite often I upgraded to the paid personal package. The bandwidth statistics never worked in the admin section, they didnt fix it after complaining about that. Later they were changing packages in June 2006. My package would no longer be available. I could not upgrade since then the url would change and I rely on my incoming links and I could not downgrade to personal since it has too less bandwidth. For the URL issue, which was the most important I said it should degrade to personal again for holding urls. But it is now october and the personal package seems to be still running and I am still paying for it (although it shouldnt be available). But so far the small annoyances, the bigger is their terms of service. I have some users on my website which have posted their image, which is not hosted by brinkster, on my page. The image contains some nudity (where nudity is still quite descent, no genitals e.g.), therefor I moved the whole page to another hosting company and linked it in the menu. Then there was no nudity on their pages, but now it seems that I may not have hyperlinks to remote sites that are not complying with their TOS. Theoretically this would even mean you may not have hyperlinks to Google.com, because even Google.com is not complying with their strict TOS. They can have hyperlinks (when searching or using directory of Google) to partly nude content. No nudity on their accounts is something I can understand, although it seems to be far to strict to me, but the demands on the hyperlinked remote content are far too extreme in my opinion. The only reason that I stayed so far is thatI make money by the visitor which link to that brinkster url. But it is a huge effort to stay in line with their TOS. Therefore, be free, no brinkster!

[unclefunta]

Let me add to the frey...
I've been with Brinkster for a few years now and absolutely hate it. Their email service is the WORST ever and their support is non-existent. The only thing that has been keeping me on with them is my own laziness. But I have to say that reading this blog has definitely motivated me to move to another service ASAP! I was on intermedia.net and they were much better, but definitely more expensive. I think I'll take a look at readysethost.com.

[Joey]

Brinkster Sucks... what else is there to say. I found this message board while searching for answers concerning my brinkster account email problems. The Brinkster support team just gives you the constant run-around, with no real answers or time frames of when issues will be resolved. Stay away from Brinkster... if you've read this you've been warned.

[BRINKSTER'S E-MAIL SERVICE DOWN AGAIN! 13TH OF FEBRUARY 2007]

Chat InformationWe would like to apologize for any mail interruptions you have experienced today. We are working as quickly as possible to have these resolved. If you are contacting support for something other than email, please hold.
Chat InformationWe would like to apologize for any mail interruptions you have experienced today. We are working as quickly as possible to have these resolved. If you are contacting support for something other than email, please hold.
Chat InformationWe would like to apologize for any mail interruptions you have experienced today. We are working as quickly as possible to have these resolved. If you are contacting support for something other than email, please hold.
Chat InformationWe would like to apologize for any mail interruptions you have experienced today. We are working as quickly as possible to have these resolved. If you are contacting support for something other than email, please hold.
Chat InformationWe would like to apologize for any mail interruptions you have experienced today. We are working as quickly as possible to have these resolved. If you are contacting support for something other than email, please hold.
Chat InformationYou are now chatting with 'Patrick'
Patrick: Thank you for contacting the support department. How may I help you?
myusername: Hello. My username is myusername and my password is xxxxxxx Can you please give me an explanation of why this new old problem with your mail server has occured and when you estimate to have it fixed by? This is the nth time that Brinkster stuffs up with their e-mail. How can you run a professional service and have so many problems with your e-mails year after year after year? Surely, any decent organisation would have fired whoever is in charge of this mess and reorganised itself in order to avoid loosing any further customers? Also, are any incoming e-mails going to get lost as a result of this?
Patrick: I was told that incomming emails are not being lost they are working on correcting the issue if I had more information I would give it to you.
myusername: Can you please give me an explanation of why this new old problem with your mail server has occured and when you estimate to have it fixed by?
Patrick: I am sorry I do not know the cause and if I had that information I would gladly give it to you but I do not know.
myusername: Do you know when you estimate to have it fixed by?
Patrick: I am sorry I do not know.
myusername: What do you know?
Patrick: Nothing past what I have told you.
Patrick: I am not the one working on this the administrators are.
myusername: Which is nothing... Your company has left me without e-mail for several days now, this is only the 100th time Brinkster's mail service goes down for several days and for every single time this has happened, I get the same useless response...
myusername: "I can't help you. the Administrators are the ones who can..."
myusername: So, can I talk to the Administrators then?
Patrick: I am sorry you can not talk to the administrator. You can talk to a supervisor mon- fri 8:00 - 5:00 est His name is Ryan
Patrick: Thank you for contacting Brinkster Support. If you require further assistance, please let us know.
Chat InformationThe chat session has been ended.

[Jose Jatem]

I am a customer of Brinkster. I admit the service isn't the best.
In means of hosting, it has its problems from time to time.
The e-mail? Yes, it has been going from one trouble to the next.
The support operators either don't know much or they just are not polite to customers, to say the least. The attention in Brinkster makes the site a place where clients are never right, contrary to what expected after the universal rule.
Considering the annoying work it would mean to transfer all codes to a different site, I have remained there for longer time I think I should have to.
But since a couple of weeks a long time expected upgrade in the poor mail system they had was finally performed. The mess the mail service became after this upgrade surprised nobody, because they always fail when installing new hardware or software.
This time, however, the clients were forced to transfer the data stored in the old mail server to the new, what is obviously part of the job of their support department. No explanations were accepted, no arguments listened, as if you were talking to Idi Amin.
That's why I am looking for other clients of Brinkster not satisfied with the service provided by the site, to unite and discuss measures we can take to stop Brinkster's abuses against the clients.

[James T]

I'd been with Brinkster since 2003, and like many others, had occasional problems since the beginning, but felt moving to another provider was too much work. The issues I encountered include:

- Constant issues with email, unreliable service
- No notifications sent during system or server upgrades - my sites were unavailable for days on one occasion. Using the live chats normally end with something like "I'll forward this to our system administrator to look into" or words to that effect, and of course, no courtesy email is sent once the problem is resolved.
- When asked for an 'upgrade' to another package, was moved to a different server but none of my files were copied over. The FTP did not work either, and after a live chat with a support rep, was told IT would correct this. They never got back to me.

Reading the old chat transcripts with various Brinkster support reps would be really funny if it didn't happen to me. I'm now with BlueHost, and it's been ok so far.

I don't normally make complaints, but feel it necessary to warn others about using Brinkster. You can find a better hosting provider.

[Tom]

FUCK BRINKSTER.

I have three sites hosted with them and for the past two weeks there have been hours of downtime per day.

They keep feeding me some bullshit about their ISP and router problems and how it's been resolved but even now the mysql server is slow as shit and keeps going down.

And talking to those support people makes me want to stick a fork in my eye.

I also tried to complain but they could not have sounded less interested.

[Anonymous]

My company recently switched over to Brinkster and so far it has been a horrible experience. I use Outlook and a Blackberry for my emails, and something is obviously going wrong.

Every now and then some emails will end up in my Outlook but not in my Blackberry, and some will end up on my Blackberry but not in my Outlook (mind you, Brinkster's web mail matches my Outlook). Accordingly, I am also very concerned that some emails are simply not being received at all.

To make matters worse, I tried to use their live support chat. Instead of helping me, Patrick managed to change my password and lock me out of my email account. Brilliant. Of course, he wouldn't own up to it but I'm 100% sure he did it. How do I know? I had a gut feeling as to what he did. It turns out I was correct and I was able to regain access on my own.

I was planning on calling his supervisor to tell him about this incident, but after reading these comments I'm not sure if I should bother. It doesn't seem like Brinkster cares.

[crab]

Welcome to the Brinkster Dissatisfied Usergroup.

========================================

This post & comments thread lasts so long which tells us that Brinkster did not improve their services at all.

It seems that everyday there is a customer feeling sick about Brinkster and leaving them apart. Congratulations to them because you have chosen the right path!

========================================

OK, let me tell about my story.

I was a free user account of Brinkster. And one day, I suddenly find that my sites (applications) hosted in Brinkster were all gone! I was very sure that I could use it the day before.

This made me so nervous coz I had data besides the source codes in there.

I wrote an email to Brinkster as faster as I could, before they removing the backup. But the feedback was disappointing.

They told me that I have not logged in to my account for 6 months, so they suspended my account and DELETED ALL FILES & DATA without any notification! Things just happened in one night.

Then I quickly live-chatted with the support and told him about my case. But the staff was so irresponsible and kept telling me that it was my fault because the terms-of-condition stated this.

I was so sure that in my day of registration, I have never seen this terms.
(I registered 7+ year ago.) And I could swear that I have never received any acknowledgment about the change-of-terms.

Then the staff did not response to any of my words but stopped typing and waited me to give up and quit the chat.

I was so regret I have choose Brinkster. If one cannot to small job well, how can he do big job well? If one cannot treat free customer good, how can he treat paid customer good?

Wish everyone who are deciding a hosting company can see this blog post.

Here I attached the details of my chat with Brinkster staff. Hope you enjoy.

========================================

Chat InformationPlease wait for a site operator to respond.

Chat InformationYou are now chatting with 'Roland'

Roland: Thank you for contacting the support department. How may I help you?

crab: Hi Roland

crab: Yup

crab: I cannot get to my site today

crab: couple of days ago is ok

crab: I just logged in and a message showed

Roland: What is your Brinkster user name?

crab: it said my account was de-activated because i didn't login for a period of time

crab: my account is "crabbrinkster"

Roland: This account has been suspended and the files have been removed from our server.

crab: oh

crab: what's happend?

crab: i keep using the site

crab: i just didn't login to the account

crab: and i didn't received any mail from you

crab: about this arrangement

Roland: If you do not login to a free account for over 6mo we remove your files from the server and suspend the account

crab: i've never heard about that

crab: did brinkster mail the client?

crab: anyway

crab: you guy must have some backup

crab: i have some data in the direct

crab: directory

crab: though i backup it once a month

crab: i will lost the data of this month under current situation

crab: any thing we can do?

Roland: No after the account is removed from our servers the files are no longer kept at brinkster.

crab: Com'on

crab: there must be some way, right?

Roland: I am sorry there is nothing I can do to get them we no longer have those files stored.

crab: ok

crab: Then can you explain to me why i didn't receive ANY alert from brinkster before the action was taken?

crab: I am quite mad about this.

Roland: This is stated in the TOS that is you do not login in 6 months your account will be suspended

crab: Very good

crab: Who will dig into every word in TOS?

crab: And who will expect there will be no alert before the file and data get removed?

crab: Even the cell phone company will warn you before they are going to cut your service because you haven't pay the bill.

crab: I never expect this

Roland: http://www.brinkster.com/hosting/FreeDeveloper.aspx

crab: And I suppose no one will

Roland: If you look at the limitations it will say 6 month login requirement

crab: 6 month requirement of what?

crab: 6 month requirement of file deletion without any warning, right?

Roland: 6 month login requirement

crab: I believe it is not hard to retrieve the data back from the backup.

crab: Big company should keep backup a week to a month

crab: That depends on whether you want to or don't want to do it.

Roland: I'm sorry we do not keep backups of accounts that have been suspended

Roland: Is there anything else I can help you with at this time?

crab: All I need is to get my file back. And nothing more.

crab: Just want to let you know a free account could have some (human) connections to the paid accounts.

crab: Do you want to get back to me later for any better arrangement?

crab: No comment?

crab: I am going to copy our conversations and spread on the Internet.

crab: And let the public judge Brinkster's service.

Roland: I am sorry but we do not keep backups of our free accounts

crab: Thanks for your help, Roland.

Roland: Thank you for contacting Brinkster Support. If you require further assistance, please let us know.

crab: Wish Brinkster every good fortune

crab: (damn services)

[Brian]

I have been using Brinkster for many years now. I first started when they offered free websites with DB access to developers about 5-8 years ago.

It was a great place to learn basics of web creation using database back end.

About 3 or so years ago they offered Web sites for Life. I coughed up $300 and got a place to park my stuff for life - no other fees saving the yearly domain fee.

It was and still is a good deal.

But admittadly Brinkster can longer handle my needs (and I'm just a guy putzing around). On thier website they offere quicky articles on how to implement big packages like Wiki.

Surprisingly enough that's what I wanted to do. So I followed through. But to my dismay you cant use thier emial system on brinkster for Wiki Authentication - they dont allow that type of backend operation.

Yes I know there are ways around this - like using a personal ini for pearmail. But I dont want to go through those hoops.

I too am looking for a new host and I am seriously considering GoDaddy. Partly because it is supported by Google apps - another thing I am interested in.

B

[Truthbio.com]

Brinkster shut down my site because someone complained that there were some bad words in the forum. And someone posted a pic of a girl in a bathing suit. No nudity at all. I mean come on its a Forum, people are going to post things. If it illegal or what ever of course I would delete it. What happened to freedom of speech? They told me "well if someone says that a girl in a bathing suit is being naked then that is what we have to go off of. What the hell!!! They told me that they will not turn my site back on untill I change it. But catch-22 They will not let me access my site for me to even change anything. Brinkster sucks big time!!!