Dreamhost Billed Me Too!

In my debut post, FALEAFINE dot COM, I had shared that I had selected Dreamhost to host my website. It’s been a total of fifteen days, and I have no complaints. In fact, I recently completed a customer service survey after receiving a prompt and precise solution to a minor problem. Last night, as I was logging off and turning in for the day, I noticed an email from Dreamhost about a billing.

A billing? It’s only been two weeks, had a garnered that much traffic to warrant and exceeded my bandwidth? If I had, fantastic, bill me. But, obviously it had to be some kind of error. I read the email and thought maybe sleep had got the best of my comprehension, so I read it again. I read it correctly the first time when it said that I owed money for “charges not due until January 31, 2009.” It also said that I could opt out and permanently close my account otherwise my account would be suspended for non-payment.

Panic did not set in, I knew it was an error, my only concern was the importance of every bit of traffic for my newly launched site. I followed the additional suggestion of replying to the email to “resolve whatever the problem may be.” My email was short and friendly, remember it was a bill not a receipt, and I went to sleep.

This morning I saw this post from Ryan on Twitter and realized it wasn’t just me. I then checked my email, and received an apologetic email titled Accidental Multiple Billings which read:

Hi L.P.!

Ack. Through a COMPLETE bumbling on our part, we accidentally attempted
to charge you for the ENTIRE year of 2008 (and probably 2009!) ALREADY
(it was all due to a fat finger)!

I'm really really realllly embarassed about this, but you have nothing
to worry about. You can just ignore any confusing billing messages you
received recently; I already removed all those bum future charges on
your account and fixed everything up.

Thank you very very much for your patience with this.. I PROMISE
this won't happen again!

Please let me know if you have any other billing concerns or if I missed
something or if you have any other questions at all!

Sorry again,
Josh!

I thought the email was overly apologetic, but then I read Todd Cochrane’s credit card was “whacked $800″ and then Champuru shared how her debit card was short over $500 and then I read this article that it was a $7,500,000 error!

Prior to reading the initial email, I posted on Twitter that while sitting in the dark with the only source of light from my laptop screen, through my padded earphones I heard a buzzing. In the corner of my left eye, I saw something flying and in reaction reached up with my left hand and caught a fly between my fingers! I wondered out loud in amazement. Perhaps I was lucky and only received a bill, and wasn’t actually billed. If you don’t believe in Mr. Miyagi’s luck of catching flies, then read this great post on taking precautions on using your debit card for auto-bill paying.