CubeSoft not only "accidentally" deleted our accounts and data, but totally ignored email and phone calls afterwards before literally rejecting email. Once I left, they continued ignoring me and running up my visa, forcing me to cancel my card. All this and so much more (read on)...

In the beginning...

I was attracted to CubeSoft by price and because I wanted web hosting by techie geeks rather than corporate dorks. What they offered for the price seemed good and they seemed like a security-minded sort of bunch. After searching around dejanews etc and not finding any bad press about csoft, I signed up for their $15/mo plan. I was up and running, for now.

Clues...

I start to notice odd downtimes once in a while that can last for hours, downing www.csoft.net and hosted sites, and telnet/ssh access. When this happens, I ask friends in other states and on other servies to confirm, and they do. My friend hosting his new business web site with csoft sometimes calls me up to confirm his site is down. When things come back, stats.csoft.net reports no downtime. No big deal since it didn't happen too often, but some explanation would have been nice. But then csoft contacts me about a logging CGI I installed on my tiny web site, telling me the DNS lookups are loading things down. Odd, I think, but whatever. They enable server logs for me instead, which worked fine.

Chaos ensues...

My web site has been down (403) for hours. When I try to login it's as if my password has changed. I call a friend with a business site hosted on CubeSoft and he reports the same problems. We email csoft and call the number (long distance) listed for csoft.net in the WHOIS database. We wonder why stats.csoft.net reports no problems as we continue calling (long distance) and emailing for nearly TWO WEEKS. No answer. I make up some common names and finger those accounts at csoft. I email who turns out to be valid users and Cc: csoft support. I asked if my account was still there, and if anyone knew how to actually get a reply out of csoft. I got replies (by users, not csoft) telling me finger returned my account nonexistent. Then my mail to csoft.net starts bouncing back "550 Sender Rejected." After weeks without access to my mail and with a downed web site, I switch to another web host. At this point, I just want to reach someone at csoft and get my money back. I think about how nice a customer support phone number would be (csoft doesn't have one).

@#%*$!...

I create another cheap account through their web site, thinking I can login to "write" root, gets things squared away, then cancel the account right away. So I create the account, get my email billing receipt, but it seems it never gets created. I email sales to say the account should not be charged, and revert back to calling and mailing. Then, at stats.csoft.net, I see that csoft put up an irc server for support. So I connect and manage to reach the one and only csoft admin type I had luck with in the past. He confirms our accounts are gone with no backups. He tells me about "abuse reports" against my account I was never aware of. First, the "never ending FTP connection" from my webcam uploading some 20k every 10 minutes placed me on a "ban list." Then an admin files an abuse report because I "emailed some users" in an attempt to figure out why my account is down and why I'm getting ignored by csoft. And finally a "billing error" causes sales to close my account for non-payment. And since my friends account gets accessed from the same IP, csoft killed it too, just to tidy up. I made it clear that I wanted a refund for my two months of remaining pre-paid service, and made sure that second account I tried to create wouldn't be charged. "I'll make sure it gets done."

Reality...

CubeSoft in general is still ignoring me, never apologized, I never saw that refund, and they charged me not once, but twice for that second account that was never even created. I went back to their IRC server several times to get the same old lines with no action, got ignored by sales over and over, and finally had to cancel my card to stop the charges. I also came across lots of fed up csoft users furious about getting ignored when they have a problem. Good companies just don't pull this sort of crap. If I hadn't been so ripped off and ignored by csoft, this page wouldn't even exist. But I don't think I'll feel even until someone reading these paragraphs decides to avoid csoft and look for hosting elsewhere. Maybe then I'll feel even. - cracked at n0de dot org