ComplaintsforSiteGround

• Initial Complaint

  11/26/2021

  Complaint Type:

  Sales and Advertising Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  SG hosting continued charging me even after I cancelled ALL of my services and sold my business. Initially they cancelled my service and refunded the money as I had requested. But 3 months later they started sneaking in svc charges onto my credit card without my authorization or my knowledge. I've emailed them AGAIN requesting refund AND to confirm cancellation of my service. But no response as usual. Reached out on website and ensured my auto renewal is NOT sat. But they continued to charge my card. A full refund of $483.32 is requsted.

  Business response

  01/06/2022

  Hello ****,
  
  After thoroughly checking your account history, we see that your account was automatically renewed for one year in August 2019. When you contacted us later to issue a refund for the hosting cancellation, the agent assisted you with posting a pro-rated refund. Unfortunately, she failed to stop the auto-renewal of your hosting plan, which resulted in the consecutive 10 quarterly billings.
  
  Please accept our sincere apologies for the improper handling of your case! It has already been discussed with the involved operator for ensuring she addresses our clients requests with the necessary care and attention going further. 
  
  We are glad to confirm that we have successfully reverted (refunded) two of the hosting payments in full, (Feb 2021 &  May 2021). 
  The payment in the amount of $15.95 from April 9 was for your domain name renewal and it is not yet refunded since you have not requested its cancellation. Would you like to cancel the domain and get the fee refunded as well?
  
  Despite our best intentions, we would not be able to revert the 5 payments from Nov 18, 2019 to Nov 18, 2020, as they were collected outside of the system-established refund timeframe. Please contact us via email at [email protected] or reply to the email that we just sent you for discussing how to do it.
   
  Lastly, we have received a chargeback request for the last two quarterly payments. As you have submitted a dispute for this payment via the official channels, the funds are now blocked until the respective financial institutions review the case. You can either contact the bank to stop the chargeback, so we can refund the funds from these two payments, or you can wait for the dispute to be settled. 
  
  Kind regards, 
  
  Gergana Z*. 
  Community Manager 
  SiteGround

• Initial Complaint

  11/24/2021

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I have been user siteground since so many years.. and its been rubbish but this is not the case at the moment someone emailed siteground saying that they own my website and they have blocked my access to the admin area just because that person emailed.. i ve been using one email in siteground since i joined and now my up and running business is screwed because siteground gave access to a person who is tryng to hack my website

  Business response

  01/06/2022

  Hello ****,
  
  We appreciate you being a long-term customer! We can assure you that the ownership disputes are being reviewed extremely carefully by our Compliance Team. Normally, when such dispute cases occur, the ClientArea in question is immediately locked until the dispute is settled between the two parties. The website remains publicly accessible in the meantime. This way, we ensure your contact, billing and hosting data is protected from any changes until the ownership dispute is settled.
  We are glad to see that as of now your case has been successfully resolved and that you are able to access your hosting account once again. 
  
  Kind regards, 
  
  Gergana Z*. 
  Community Manager 
  SiteGround
  

• Initial Complaint

  10/26/2021

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I used this company services over a year and a half ago. They recently charged my credit card for services that i am not using or received. I never authorized this charge and when i try to contact them i can not reach a live person. I get the run around thru an automated service on the phone and an online service that says i am not a member. but the automated says i have to get an authorization code from online to speak to a live person thru the phone

  Business response

  12/07/2021

  Hello ****, 
  
  We are sorry to hear you were unable to reach our Support!
  
  Based on your explanation, it seems you were trying to reach our Phone Support reps without your client verification code displayed in the HelpCenter. The use of the access code authorized the operators to help with any changes requested over the phone while ensuring your clients' data is well-protected. 
  
  As for the unexpected fee, please note that all hosting plans are set to automatically renew. We send three early notices before the expiration date to let the account owners take action if they do not wish to use the service. 

  Still, we understand that it is possible to overlook some emails. To help you out and expedite the process, one of our Customer Care reps contacted you over the phone to confirm the account in question. The hosting plan has been canceled effective immediately, and the last payment has been refunded in full (299.88 USD). You can expect the funds reflected in your card statements within the next 7-10 business days. 
  
  Kind regards, 
  
  Gergana Z*. 
  Community Manager 
  SiteGround

• Initial Complaint

  10/07/2021

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I have been using Siteground Webhosting  services since 2010. They recently did some upgrades that affected my business website. When I asked for help support to fix the changes that they made they refused and asked me to do it on my own. They asked me to go get my own developer to fix the changes. In the previous years they did help with customer support but as of today, my website menu has been disabled besides other technical problems that they created for my business website.

  Business response

  11/08/2021

  Hello *****,
  
  We are sorry to hear you are no longer satisfied with our services. We can see that you have been our customer since 2010 and our team has assisted you with various types of issues throughout the years.
  
  The recent name server changes applied from our side were strictly related to our DNS service. Yet, there were no actual changes applied to your hosting account, the website files or the folder structure that might have caused the issue with the broken links on your website, and the inaccessible administrator area.
  
  Our records show you contacted us a few times in October to request help with the nonworking website. The chat operators looked into the matter and correctly concluded that the name servers update was not related with the non-working ****** admin area. They offered you to restore from one of the recent backup copies created automatically for free on our end or to consult with a web developer of your choice. However, it seems that they have failed to explain why this request was considered web development assistance and to define the current scope of our support, for which we apologize sincerely! While in the past we have helped our clients with any types of issues encountered, we would also want to ensure we provide an equal and fair share of support to all our clients. Thus, although the agents involved might be able to assist you, the fulfillment of such requests is not gonna be professional and would set wrong expectations in our clients for the provided level of assistance.
  We are glad to see that you have used the restore functionality included in your hosting plan, and that the website is working as expected now.
  
  Kind regards, 
  The SiteGround Team

  Customer response

  11/09/2021

  [To assist us in bringing this matter to a close, you must give us a reason why you are rejecting the response. If no reason is received your complaint will be closed as Answered]
  
   Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because: 

  There are various websites that I have hosted with  Siteground. And many times the servers have been changed during the course of years. When the website functionality gets affected due to the upgrades the  client needs to be notified of the problems that occur with it. greatadvancement.com website was not restored by the Siteground team. I restored it by changing the *** Version and using an earlier backup. Please read the service chat comments on record for that particular website. Do not take credit for something that your team has not done.

  Recently after I filed this BBB complaint another website of mine ******.com on Siteground was hacked even though I pay extra for making sure the site is clean. However I did the needful to remove the bad files that affected my website and restored a previous backup and changed the *** Version. Due to this data breach my database had replicated and Siteground support gave me 3 days to reduce the data size. This was harassment. Even after knowing that my website was hacked they chose to give me just three days while I had a lot of other things to give my attention to which were of more importance. However I managed to reduce the database which was hacked, but will always link this bad experience to Siteground.
  

  I am losing trust in Siteground. I hope that they learn to respect their clients and do not tamper with their website's JUST because a BBB complaint was filed against them. For now I have taken care of the problem but I am sharing it with various developers so that they know what kind of service to expect. 

  For now my websites are working fine. But If there are any more bad experiences I will do my best to notify Siteground via BBB. Since there is no other forum for customers to contact with the management.

  Sincerely,

  **** ***** *************************

  Regards,

  *********************

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩