Acenet: Control and Pettiness at High Prices

I am very much a creature of habit and don't particularly look for change just for the sake of change. I am also willing to spend a few extra bucks for something I can find elsewhere for much less money just as long as I am satisfied with what I am receiving, especially if I feel I am receiving extra consideration or care. I am what you would call a loyal customer.

I almost left Acenet two years ago when I discovered my two accounts had been suspended for no apparent reason. What happened is that I had failed to update my credit card information, which had not been a problem the previous years as I had renewed my account manually. When I first opened the account, I had used a joint credit card account that was in both my name and my wife's name. After my ex-wife and I divorced, I removed my name from the account and had simply forgotten to update the credit card information with one of my new accounts. When initially called by Acenet, my ex-wife did not make the connection that the charge had been incurred by me and failed to authorize the charge. However, minutes later, she called back the sales department, stating that she now remembered what had happened, and authorized the payment. Nevertheless and despite the second phone call in which the charge was authorized, Acenet not only suspended the account in question but a **second account** that had already been paid in full (with a different credit card) pending an investigation of "credit card fraud." This was after two full years of uncontested and uneventful payments. Apparently, the sales department doesn't believe in giving a good customer the benefit of the doubt.

Recently, I was contacted by technical support in regard to using too much storage on one of my accounts. After four years of usage, I had accumulated about 67GB of storage, an inconsequential amount of hard disk space by today's standards. The problem was that it was discovered that part of that space was being used for "personal storage."

My wife, a Filipina, recently discovered the old, classic comedy series the Little Rascals. I decided to purchase the box DVD set for her but Amazon.com doesn't deliver DVDs to mainland China. I had the order sent to my friend's house in the States and then asked him to make a copy of the disks and upload them to my account so I could in turn download them for my wife. Even though I produced a copy of my sales receipt, I was admonished against "distributing" copyrighted material--even though there was absolutely no distribution involved. This incident then led to a protracted investigation in which all of my folders and files were combed through and examined for evidence of inappropriate usage. In my opinion, their conduct was unconscionable and completely unacceptable.

While both my accounts were purchased under the old pricing scheme of $95.40 per year (with a limit of only 9 add-on domains per account), the new annual pricing scheme for an Enterprise Account is $154.60. This represents two to four times what the typical web hosting company today charges for the same (or better) set of features. For example, neither one of my former two accounts allowed the use of a php.ini file: The web hosting company I am using now does for literally one-half of the annual fee currently charged by Acenet.

While I have known for quite some time that there were considerably cheaper web hosting solutions available to me--and despite the unreasonably precipitous behavior of the sales manager mentioned earlier--I had always been very happy with Acenet's technical support. They always respond within minutes of submitting a support ticket and I was always very comforted by this. However, if I can't expect to receive just a little bit of extra consideration as a long-term and loyal customer, then they don't deserve my business--or anyone else's for that matter.

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Note: I awarded 5 stars for "Quality of Service" based on the quality of technical support services and very consistent access (virtually no down-time) for four years. The one star for "Professionalism and Reliability" is based on having had my two accounts suspended two years ago for no good reason and the inconceivably absurd and insulting fuss made over a few measly gigabytes of personal storage.