The Dommel.com support nightmare

been there, done that. We used to host our projects on dommel hosting a few years ago. After a few support issues and downtimes we moved all our accounts. Best decision ever. A good support is allmost priceless. I agree with Bart: cheap = crap (most of the time). if you pay peanuts… you'll get monkeys.

Posted on 15 September 2007 at 23.53 h by Jente - Permalink

We had the exact same problem.
My customer wanted to transfer his .com domain to my registrar, and was kept on hold ... until the domain expired.
He had to register a new domain and forget about his well known domain.

Looks like standard Dommel policy to scare customers into staying with them.

Bastards

Posted on 16 September 2007 at 11.31 h by Stijn - Permalink

Same dreadfull experience. Dommel support is is truly a nightmare. Currently their domain is blacklisted for sending spam which means that all smtp servers of our domains hosted with them are blacklisted too. I logged a support ticket for it, it has remained unanswered for already more than 24 hours now. And I can go on and on with stories like this. The worst case was last year when their security got compromised and a whole bacth of sites hosted with Dommel got injected with some malicious code that redirected from input to a server in Russia.

I have had enough of it, I am moving all my sites to another host. Will check out Combel and Hostbasket. Heard good things about those.

PS: Worthwhile checking:
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=schedom.be
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/sbl.lasso?query=SBL59409

Posted on 12 October 2007 at 16.29 h by Esse - Permalink

I had the same dreadfull experiance with Dommel.com so I transferred all my hosting needs to another cheeper hosting. This did not end the nightmare. I keep getting payment bills for services they are not delivering anymore. I wonder if this is legal. When I mail them saying I'm not receiving any services from them and asking to stop me sending bills I get no reply what so ever. Their customer service is unreachable so I tried to contact technical service but after listening to the music on there phone system for about 20 minutes I gave up. i moved to a mush cheaper service witch doesn't have a good support service eighter but now at least I am not paying for support I'm not getting.

Posted on 19 August 2008 at 12.32 h by Mack - Permalink

I can only agre with all the remarks here. We've been hosting websites at Dommel for a few years. Everything worked out well the first year - quick support, friendly people, good pricing, ...

But one day it all fell to pieces - the day they started offering ADSL.

Phone-support was zero (The frustrating 'send a mail' answer over and over again). After sending a mail getting an automatic response telling me there is a 5 to 7 day timeframe to answer support tickets. In the meantime all MySQL databases kept on crashing several times an hour.

.com domains were a hell. Mails for auth. keys were neglected, domains were lost. After a while I found out Dommel works with joker.com to get their .com domains. I simply registered there and could get my keys for the .com domains myself.

Horrible service with an attitude.
Never again.

Posted on 5 September 2008 at 13.52 h by Dominique - Permalink

It might be interesting to read my blog post on the same issue:

devexp wrote about the Dommel support

Posted on 16 January 2009 at 09.43 h by Kenneth Van Rumste - Permalink

Good thing to know to never host something at Dommel. I host my Dutch sites at Yourhosting and I never had problems with them. Does anybody has experience with hosting companies in Spain?

Posted on 5 February 2010 at 19.14 h by Gerrit Wol - Permalink

@bk: both Telenet and Belgacom recently updated their packages, prices remained equal though. A friend living in Leuven is on Dommel. It's cheap, but don't expect any support when things go wrong.

Posted on 10 February 2010 at 08.04 h by Tijs - Permalink

Well, do you want to read a dommel nightmare?

See the excerpt below from a complaint I filed with the Telecommunications Ombudsman re dommel (any advice you can offer is more than welcome):

"...
• In my letter to you of 22 March, I mentioned that and unknown at the time ISP had laid a claim on my line and Belgacom disconnected me from my new but existing VDSL connection with dommel and reconnected me to an unknown at the time ISP as Belgacom was refusing to provide me with identification
• On 23 March 2010 I finally established that my line was claimed by EDPnet, who were my former providers. When I contacted EDPnet, I was told that indeed they had received my letter requesting termination of my subscription with them (N.B.: This letter was sent to EDPnet on 5 March 2010 and was acknowledged indirectly as EDPnet sent me an early cancellation fee invoice of €125) but accidentally my termination request was not registered with them. Furthermore, I was told that dommel acted in a haste as I still had a subscription with EDPnet active until 7th April 2010, a fact that is beyond my comprehension since at the end of the day I wrote my letter to them and I have the choice to move where I want and not to be ‘digitally enslaved’ by anyone (this is the point of having a liberalized telecoms market and not a monopoly, isn’t it?). However, EDPnet confirmed that on 23 March at 14.30 they ceased to have a claim on my line and therefore dommel was free to ask Belgacom to reactivate the VDSL connection. The email by EDPnet customer service is at my disposal and attached to this email as Exhibit 1
• I immediately conveyed this information to Dommel asking them to reactivate my line and was told that they would do so with Belgacom
• On the evening of 25 March, upon returning from a business trip, I returned home only to find that my VDSL connection had not been restored. Please also note that the weekend of 27 – 28 March involved a major business project for me and I needed to have a home internet connection at any cost!
• On 26 March I contacted the technical service department of dommel who claimed that they could still not reactivate my VDSL connection as EDPnet was still claiming my line. I then contacted EDPnet who reassured me that they had ceased and desisted from my line
• However, given that it was a Friday, no restoration had been made from dommel, I urgently needed an internet connection and EDPnet already ‘had’ my line as dommel had not acted, I asked EDPnet to just connect me to the Internet (since my subscription had already been paid until 7 April 2010) just for the weekend pending resolution of my case and EDPnet complied
• Less than an hour after this had happened, dommel sent me an invoice no. 302341 by which they were asking me to repay them €625 as early cancellation fee of my contract (!). I contacted the dommel customer service and was told that I would either have to pay a reactivation fee of my line of €75 (for which they had not bothered to send an invoice!) or the €625. I told the dommel representative that I do not see it how I should pay for reactivation of my line which was disconnected without my knowledge or authorization from EDPnet who – incidentally – have also admitted this as an error. The dommel employee replied that this was not of dommel’s concern but that I should pay dommel and then ask EDPnet for my money back (!). Dommel’s position was that I either paid €75 or €625 for all they cared
• After being given this dilemma – which l consider it as blackmail – I sent dommel an email on 29 March but then left Belgium for a business trip. In the meanwhile, I also paid all outstanding invoices with dommel, as I wanted to still give them the benefit of the doubt since there was an outstanding invoice for activation of my line (N.B.: Please note that this invoice pertained to me becoming a customer of dommel and switching from EDPnet). The email I sent to dommel on 29 March is attached here as Exhibit 2
• Dommel responded on 2 April with a delay of 4 days to simply state the obvious; i.e. pay €25 for reactivation or €625. If I was willing for the former then I should let them know so that they would invoice me
• As I am left with no options, although I would like to just stop my collaboration with dommel who have proved to have extremely low standards in supporting (or respecting?) their customers, I replied today (6 April) asking them to invoice me with the reactivation fee (See attached Exhibit 3 for the communication by dommel on 2 April and my reply today)
• As I am writing this, and after contacting dommel by phone, I am still to receive such invoice
• Furthermore, in my telephone communication with dommel’s technical department today I was told that they would take no action unless the reactivation amount showed up in their bank account and even then it might take up to two weeks to reactivate
• The aforementioned point functions well to show nothing more than bad faith from dommel towards me as:
1. They were extremely fast in activating my VDSL connection when I first subscribed with them but
2. They are being as slow as possible now with reactivation and in the entire course of this problem, showing no interest whatsoever in their client but only in his money

I come from Greece, a country that unfortunately is being exhibited as an example of irresponsibility, but being a member of a telecoms consumer association in Greece and having led a successful campaign for the reduction of ADSL prices in Greece in 2005, I can state that no such behaviour would be tolerated in Greece. Indeed, this is a perverse source of pride, were it not for the problems this is creating for my professional efficiency.

Ideally, I would like to have nothing to do with dommel whose behaviour has shown at the very least indifference and at worst malice as their entire procrastination and the ‘dilemma’ they have created could be construed as an attempt to make more money off me. I wish I could sever my relationship with them if indeed you can assess that there is bad faith on their part but nevertheless right now, in order to perform my work, I need to have an internet connection.

Finally, the problem that remains even if I do finally get my reconnection which looks like it will happen at an unforeseeable point in the future, who is going to reimburse me for the €75 I will pay dommel?

I apologise for the length of this email but I wanted you to have as clear a picture as possible

Posted on 6 April 2010 at 14.45 h by Konstantinos - Permalink

I absolutely agree with all of the comments above - I have placed my order for VDSl in February and I have still not even received an activation code. I am going to cancel on Monday for sure, but all the crap and lies I was being told by their support in the meantime make me always so angry that I would like to get into my car, drive up to the village of Diepenbeek and release it right there. Never in my life have I been jerked around like this before... I hope I will at least get my money back now...

Posted on 24 April 2010 at 11.38 h by Ivo - Permalink