I've had some horrible experiences with web hosting companies in the past, but when HollandLife.NL owner Esat Cancel refused to refund my money and sent me a taunting email he made himself the worst web host I have ever done business with. It all started with a purchase and some technical difficulties before escalating into a series of hostile emails and a PayPal dispute.
In early March of 2011 I needed offshore Windows VPS hosting, needed it fast, and signed up for a HollandLife.NL account. After signing up however I found it impossible to restore my databases and traced the problem to a backwards compatibility issue. My databases were formatted for SQL Server 2008 and Holland Life was still running SQL Server 2005. I submitted some support tickets requesting an upgrade, but did not get a satisfactory response. To be fair they did offer to move my sites to a SQL Server 2008 compatible shared hosting package eventually, but that was not what I wanted and by then I had moved on to a different hosting provider.
I canceled my Holland Life account and requested a refund. Holland Life refused to give me a refund stating that VPS purchases are outside of their "15 day money back guarantee". I was surprised and appealed to them on the grounds that the server failed to work in a way that the customer could not have predicted and said that I would be ok with a prorated refund. Holland Life again refused to refund my money, so I told them that unless I got my money back I would publish articles about their practices on RipoffReport.com and other consumer complaint sites.
Several unpleasant email exchanges ensued before I finally filed a complaint with PayPal on the grounds that the service did not work. Eventually I got an email from PayPal stating that my claim had been denied and before I could call PayPal to find out why I got an email from Esat dated April 5th taunting me with profanity.
Esat's email was as follows:
Title: Keep Walking Twat
From: trytosurvive@gmail.com; on behalf of; Esat Cansel esat@hollandlife.nl
Body (censored to get past the profanity filter):
"Son of a bitch stop sending f*ckin mails to my company and go f*ck of do what you want... mother f*cker you tried to abouse our nservice and u complain to PayPal and paypal realize what kind of twat you are lift up limit on our fund now you f*ck off and do your best and never visit again our website son of BITCH"
I called PayPal a couple days later and they explained that being a "twat" had nothing to do with why my claim was denied. My claim was denied because online services are not tangible assets. PayPal compared my situation to that of a World of Warcraft user who played the game for a few days and didn't want to pay for a whole month as opposed to someone who ordered a product. On the other hand if I had ordered a box of tampons for my "twat" that never arrived in the mail a tracking number would have made my claim valid.
PayPal did agree with me that threatening to write a Ripoff Report if someone continues to rip you off is not blackmail, websites about illegal drugs are not themselves illegal, and refusing to refund money for services that don't work is not a good business practice. I responded to his email asking one last time politely for my money back, but have not seen a dime.
For the record Esat did not break the law. As is the case with many ripoffs what Esat did was not a crime, but some may consider his policy and service agreement unconscionable.