Hosting Blues with Bluehost

Last November, I moved all my websites from Site5 to Bluehost. The total cost of the hosting package with Bluehost was $95.4USD and I paid it using PayPal. A few minutes (could be seconds) later, I received my account and access info as well as my PayPal receipt for the transaction. I was very excited. I immediately started the transfer process which was completed with minor problems. DNS transfer and propagation were quite fast too.

There I was enjoying my newly transferred websites when suddenly and without warning all my sites got a “Suspended Account” page. Upon seeing it, I immediately contacted support. I asked the CSR (Customer Support Representative) why my account was suspended without notice and after checking my account status, he told me that there was a problem with the credit card used to pay for the hosting cost. I told the CSR that what he said was impossible because I didn’t use a credit card to pay for my hosting, I used PayPal, not a credit card. I then asked why I didn’t receive a notice or a warning so that I could have corrected any mistake that needs correcting (if there was any) instead of just immediately suspending all access to my account where I can’t do anything. The CSR told me that they do that in cases marked as fraud. FRAUD!?! I was shocked to hear that. I’ve been doing online transactions for more than 5 years now and that was the first time the word “fraud” was used on me. The CSR further instructed me to contact their Verification Department but, unfortunately, it wasn’t open on weekends.

OMG! My websites will be down for 2 days, even more, because the weekend just started for them. I kept contacting their CSR trying to find other ways to resolve the issue more quickly but all they can say is to contact their Verification Department when it opens on Monday which was Tuesday for me.

I can’t leave my websites down so as a temporary solution, I switched my websites’ DNS from Bluehost back to Site5 and in a few hours they were all back up but it also means that I won’t be able to do any major update on them but it’s better than having an Account Suspended page on all my websites.

I still can’t believe that my account was marked for fraud and what I didn’t understand was the credit card thing. How can there be a credit card when I used PayPal? I even showed the CSR my PayPal receipt with invoice and transaction numbers on it. It was a really frustrating experience but there was really nothing I can do except wait.

The CSR did tell me the require documents for verification and I immediately e-mailed them to their Verification Department. After 2 days, my account was still suspended so I contacted them again but this time I was able to login into their support site and I was able to create a support ticket under verification. My account access was restored but not yet my cPanel access and my sites still display the Account Suspended page. Having access to my account information, I found out that the country information was wrong which was weird because my PayPal receipt clearly indicated my country. I corrected my country information and contacted the CSR again. The CSR asked for my PayPal receipt information for verification and my account was released from suspension.

Immediately after getting my account back, I again updated my DNS to point from Site5 back to BlueHost. It took a few more hours but my sites were once again live.

2 days was a really long time for a site to stay down and I’m really surprised to find out that BlueHost’s important departments like billing and verification have no office on weekends. For a fast growing company like BlueHost they should at least have a 24/7 support available for these departments. Billing and account issues are critical issues and should be addressed immediately. Having their customers wait 2 days is a really big turn off.