I have several web-based proxy sites that I run to earn a little AdSense cash. I’ve had them for several years now.
My proxy sites require minimal maintenance, but the hosting is expensive (proxies are extremely resource intensive) and as such don’t end up earning me a whole lot. Most hosts don’t allow proxy sites on their servers for this reason.
I’ve been with 4 different proxy hosts over the past few years, and all of them have ended up disappointing me. I always end up experiencing an unacceptable amount of downtime – We’re talking multiple days per month, sometimes weeks.
Anyway, I switched to FusedHosting.net with the promise of unbeatable uptime and fast servers. For the first few months, this seemed to be the case.
And then the downtime started.
I realize that even a day of downtime is unacceptable and should be more than enough reason to make someone switch hosts, but switching ~10 sites to a new host can be somewhat of a pain, especially when you’re as busy as I am.
Communication always sucked with Fused Hosting, but sometimes the downtime was so bad that even the FusedHosting.net domain would be down for days at a time, and emails to their “support team” would bounce back entirely.
On March 17th, I got in touch with someone at Fused Hosting and let them know that I wanted to cancel, and would also like a refund for the obnoxious downtime. They told me, of course, that they would not provide a refund, but that my account had been cancelled. Thank god.
This past month, I was looking at my PayPal account and realized that I was still being billed by FusedHosting. Surprise surprise! They billed me for 4 additional months of hosting for a total of $120.
I attempted to contact them several times regarding this “oversight”, and I wasn’t making any progress. They took days to get back to each email and clearly this was going nowhere. I called several times. Finally I got ahold of someone on the phone.
He took a look at the situation, aka pretended he wasn’t familiar with me, my account, or the situation at hand, and that he had to look it up and familiarize himself. He told me that my paypal account would be refunded, and that it would take 2-3 days to go through. Near the end of the call he also sounded pretty sarcastic, and actually laughed at one point. I wasn’t sure how to react to that, so I just thanked him and decided I’d wait and see what happened.
Well here we are, almost a month later, and nothing. I haven’t been able to get in touch with anyone over there either – They’ve ignored all subsequent calls and emails.
I’m not the only one who has had a bad experience with (or was straight up “scammed” by) FusedHosting. Here is someone else’s story.
I doubt that many of my regular readers are in the market for a proxy host, but I felt obligated to get this out there. Hopefully no one else will get screwed over or scammed by these guys.
ad-man
thanks for posting this review, i was skeptical having seen their very pretty website (far nicer then the competition) + all the other perfect reviews seemed fake claiming zero downtime in 3-5+ years (my fav part lol).
did you report them to paypal for unauthorized charges? you could get their account closed for that.
Justin
I have been checking out your site for years and as it so happens am looking for a new web hosting company. Thanks for the tip, I was seriously considering them. P.S. I contacted them and told them to refund your money! Good luck man I hope everything works out.
Justin
PART 2.
So I contacted Fused Hosting in an effort to make things right with you. I told them I have been going to your blog for years (which I have been) and told them that “you’re good people”. I told them that your review of Fused Hosting has made me look elsewhere – which it has.
So get this…Instead of trying to make things right, or deny that they have done anything wrong by stealing from you; they told me they are “fully aware” of your site.
An employee at Fused Hosting then proceeded to look up MY email address (gmail account) until they found MY website, did a WHOIS look up on the URL, discovered my web host, then looked for negative reviews of it, then sent me a link while sarcastically stating “Good Luck with 1&1.” LOL!!!!
You wonder why it took so long to get a response from them?!!?! Instead of trying to improve their service or respond to their actual customers, they spend their time on the clock trying to investigate (read: “digitally stalk”) anyone who is dissatisfied with them and then try to insult them and push them away more.
You weren’t kidding about Fused Hosting – sarcasm and all. I can’t believe any company would go through this much effort to LOSE customers.
Since I know they will be back to read this comment (what else are they going to do, help their customers? LOL), please note that, if they would have spent more time actually reading my comment instead of just immediately jumping into attack mode, they would have seen that I am “looking for a new web hosting company” (I am with 1&1 now and looking to leave)
Thanks again for convincing me not to use your company. Suddenly 1&1.com doesn’t look so bad! Wow, now I feel like doing a blog post.
I really feel bad for you John, you’re in a bad situation, and sadly this is pretty much your only discourse. I hope Fused Hosting recognizes the errors of their ways and gets their act together. Let me know if you ever do get your money back. Take care!
John
I did report them to PayPal. Oddly enough, I “lost” the dispute. The email from PayPal that informed me of this was clearly automated, as it didn’t address any of my concerns. Pretty bummed about that, as I’ve been a loyal paypal user for a very long time. More surprised than anything.
Want to verify here that we are talking about fusedhosting.NET and not fusednetwork.com. Just wanna make sure there is no confusion.
Justin, thanks for your efforts. It’s under $200, so it isn’t the end of the world. It’s just the principal. I hate to see a company continue to do business and potentially (definitely) rip off other honest customers. I did what I could by making this post, and plan on going to the BBB as well when I have time to file a report.
Joe
Damn.. Sorry to hear about that Jiglet. I agree its the worst when you pay for a service a professional company can’t deliver. The worst is, they’re costing you money! And that sarcastic rep… no comment there.
You have any hopes on another potential hosting company?
pmaster
Sorry to hear about all that John, have you found an alternative yet? Seems like there is always a catch to those proxy hosts. What surprised me is how long they have been screwing ppl over. The other guy’s rant dates back to 2009.
John
Yeah, I found an alternative pretty quickly. Not a hosting company per se, but a dude that had some servers he wasn’t using. I’ve been working with him for 2-3 months now and I haven’t had any issues. Thanks for your concern!
brandon
thank you for posting this, i googled their name and this result came up. i’m glad i didn’t place an order.
brandon
I wrote them an email linking to your post since it made the front page of google for their name. Maybe they’ll try to clear things up now that it’s impossible not to read facts about them instead of the propaganda they spread about their uptime.
brandon
Now that it’s possible* idk if you can edit my comment to fix my grammar.
pmaster
The power of the internet! I’m glad you came across Johns Crawlspace before you lost money. Stick around Johns always posting extremely useful/interesting material.
John
brandon, I appreciate your effort, but based on what Justin said in his earlier comments, I wouldn’t expect much. The fact that smart consumers will be able to find this review prior to making a hosting choice is enough for me – I’m just glad to be able to help others out at this point.
beads
I’m so sorry to hear it.
Prig
Be sure to post a review at webhostingtalk.com It’s the main forum for the web hosting business. If they have any staff that care at all, a negative post on there will be sure to catch their attention and they will probably try to correct their mistakes. If not, other’s who search for them will see your post.
free proxy site
Hi I am Mr. Soldoni, I think that someone know me and my proxy business 😉
I suggest to all that are new to the proxy business to invest some good money for the hosting! buy a Dedicated or VPS … you can see more good results
Monsterprox Hosting
It would be good to know that if you have paid via paypal subscription, you would need to manually cancel your paypal subscription in your pp account. Canceling your account with FusedHosting alone does not cancel your pp subscription hence why the billing continues.
It would be difficult to win a dispute against FusedHosting in this event as well because paypal does not refund payments made for digital service which includes hosting.
I hope this info helps.
Secure Hosting
Have you tried canceling your host subscription? I would be infuriated if I were you. I would also be wary of not being charged there after, if they’ve had such poor customer service in handling just your problems.
Peter
Thanks for the update. Maybe they’ll try to clear things up now that it’s impossible not to read facts now.
alex
why dont you change web host provider….!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rodney
Like Alex said, why not switch hosting providers????? So many better ones out there.
Lee Woodruff
The reality is you will get downtime with any host, even the big boys fail now and again. However several days outage is totally unacceptable.
Local SEO Ireland
That’s a disaster. Thanks for taking the time to warn other people about your experiences. I’m not sure if they offer hosting for Proxy sites but i use “hostable” for all my sites and they’re pretty good to deal with. They’ve got a live online chat support and I haven’t had much downtime with them. (PLUS THEY”RE CHEAP AS CHIPS!!!)
Christian
You are absolutely right fusedHosting.net is very bad for hosting services and their customer support is really a nightmare. My website was down for more than two days and they were telling me that problem persisting my side and from their side every thing is all OK. So I am very dissatisfied with their services and planned to move on to another Hosting service.
David
Just wanted to reiterate — the fused hosting referenced here is fusedhosting.net, not the ‘other’ fused that doesn’t offer proxy hosting.
I see several posts that seem to confirm there is an awful lot of confusion regarding our brand & fusedhosting.net — just wanted to clear that up.
If you wouldn’t mind Justin: could you edit the original post & clarify that? Would be happy to compensate you for your trouble 🙂