I had a very similar experience.  Migration failed, never got any response from support except "do it yourself".  I went through a similar process of trying to cancel, only to get the email that said "your credit card couldn't be processed".  

It took a phone call, during which I was told "oh, yes, I can see in the notes that you tried 3 times to cancel.  I can't do that, but I'll forward the request".  That finally cleared it up, at least.

WH4L was a total disaster for me too. They must have created a hotkey for " I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. ". I must have heard that 20 times. Of course, that never solved any problems. I dumped them for Arvixe.

So they should change their name to WebHostBilling4Life :-)

I just moved to winhost.com

Great help in migration.

By the way I hate migrations...some plums get lost everytime :)

I had the same disaster at the same time as Mike.  My swimming club website was down for 3 weeks all the time I was being told the migration issues would be resolved in a couple of hours or the next day.

I moved the site to another provider and cancelled by package with WH4L.  However, even with all the emails that said my account would not be renewed they did!

When I contacted Live Support, they said by account was scheduled to termininate in May, but not May 2010 as the email mentioned, their records had May 2011 so they billed me.

I got my money back quick enough at least.

Note when I went on to Live Support to query why I had been billed I went for the Sales option and not the Tech Support option.

btw I noticed Mike moved around the time I had the problems with my swimming club website and I moved to Cyberhostpro as well.  I have to say they have a fantastic service. :)  Of course after I moved, WH4L emailed me to tell me they had tested my site is all the issues were now resolved!  I was so tempted to reply..."That's because its not on your servers anymore!"

Same problem, I had my client cancel, and theywent and chargedmy credit card instead! I was the webmsater for the site and did pay with my card the first few years, but the client had been paying for the last four or so! They credited my year back to me but it cost me a extra 35.00 cancelation fee! What a rip off!

I been with them 91 I beleive, they're service and support was really great until the payout. A real shame. I did not appreciate they're tactics at all :(

They migrated one of my accounts two weeks ago. Removed one account, changed the mail servers, changed my DNS.

All in all a bit of a *** up. Will be moving when I get sorted

Mike,

Just change your credit card details to 4242 4242 4242 4242

its a dummy number that passes the check digit - used for testing.

For companies that "fall apart" and "just happen" to bill you, it's a way to guarantee that your funds don't get taken - a bit of a last resort, but at least it gives you back control of your money.

In a weeks time, I lost access to our websites for an hour, lost or FTP access (or it was pointing to the old server and not syncing).  Lost SSL, lost PERL support, Lost email access for 48 hours (and get this, 4 different reps gave me 4 different pop/smtp addresses and none worked... they even gave the original back to me... to this day, the Control Panel still lists a non working pop/smtp address).

Worst of all, we lost access to our webservice which is the lifeblood of our product fulfillment.

What burns me is that they never warned me the switch-over was occurring when it did.  Nor, did they send any instructions on how to manage the migration from out end.

If someone bought them... they SUCK!  I have always loved webhost4life.  What happened??!!!??!!!

Oh, and their live chat support is the worst.  All canned messages.  And they know nothing about what is going on.  It's like asking the government what BP is doing!

I've been a customer at WH4L for 7 years. Recently a migration failed and support was much slower than in the past to fix the problems but they eventually got it fixed. The control panel also seems to be more limited. But it's still a good deal for MS SQL and my email has always been reliable.

Looking out for a better host now.

Our site was migrated to the new platform without our knoweldge on 30 May. The site has been inoperative since then. We were not advised that the migration was taking place or that there could be problems. We have lost emails because of the botched migration. We contacted technical support on June 10. The ticket is still outstanding. At first we were told it might be a browser issue, then that it was because of where we were looking at the site from Australia and India, and then it was because of a uninstalled joomfish plug in. The whole time the truth was that our site was not working because of the migration but this was never indicated to us. After multiple phone calls to the US it was finally established that all of the problems related to the migration, and the DNS was pointed back to the old platform to get the site going again. We have lost 3 weeks of a website and lost data entered into the site after 30 May. The assistance from Webhost has been abysmal and time wasting if not a bit dishonest in that people know what the site had problems but did not advise of this but blamed other irrelevant factors. That this has occurred is unbelievable. As soon as we get our site back, we are out of there.

Our site was migrated to the new platform on 30 May. The site has been inoperative since then. We were not advised that the migration was taking place or that there could be problems. We have lost emails because of the botched migration. We contacted technical support on June 10. The ticket is still outstanding (23 June). At first we were told it might be a browser issue, then that it was because of where we were looking at the site from Australia and India, and then it was because of a uninstalled joomfish plug in. The whole time the truth was that our site was not working because of the migration but this was never indicated to us. After multiple phone calls to the US it was finally established that all of the problems related to the migration, and the DNS was pointed back to the old platform to get the site going again. We have lost 3 weeks of a website and lost data entered into the site after 30 May. The assistance from Webhost has been abysmal and time wasting if not a bit dishonest in that people know what the site had problems but did not advise of this but blamed other irrelevant factors. That this has occurred is unbelievable. Is there a consumer complaints body in the US to take matters like this to?

Well I don't have any personal experience of this particular company but it does seem that there are some companies out there who have what appears to be a deliberate policy of making it very difficult and complicated to stop using their services, presumably in the hope that you will just give up trying. I have experiencd this several times with online businesses.

I had twelve different accounts with WebHost4Life comprising of about 20 different web sites.  The new platform did not even include some of the components that were on the old platform--components my sites relied on.  If you had two different web sites on one account, in the new platform you can't even get stats split out between the two sites!  So I had to move to a new host (I went with Dotster).  

The original WH4L terms of service spell out clearly that if you cancel at any time, you are entitled to a pro-rated refund of unused time (since you pay for a year at a time).  They are refusing that for me.  The amount comes to about $400 or so.

Plus, as with Mike, they keep renewing these accounts even though I've cancelled them several times.  They do at least refund the accounts when they cancel, but are still refusing the pro-rated refunds on the others.

It really ticks me off.  As others have said, the old company was pretty good.

Our organization put all of our DotNetNuke hosting platforms over at 3Essentials Hosting.  They fully support DNN.  Customer service is excellent and the best part is they are not owned by some venture capital company... according to the sales rep I spoke with.  www.3essentials.com