The Dommel.com support nightmare
This story is getting incredible. I've been trying to get an authorisation code to transfer the .com domain name for one of my clients that's currently hosted at Schedom/Dommel.com. A decent provider will be able to provide that code in a matter of minutes. Not so with Dommel. It took me a whole week of emailing and calling to finally get someone at their so called support desk to give me the damn code. Good news you'd think, after all I've got the authorisation code and no longer need to worry about them. Guess what? They provided me with the wrong code ... Man I was pissed. So I called their way too expensive weekend phone number, only to hear that this is an "administration issue" (which means they can only "help" me as of Monday). Aaaargghhh ...
Although I've never been their client, I had to deal with Dommel a few times before while transfering a new client's domain or website. Their unprofessionalism is nearly shocking. Do yourself a favor: never ever buy services from Schedom/Dommel.com. Not only will they be inferior to what the competition is offering, Dommel will do everything (in fact they'll do nothing at all) to keep you stuck with them.
16 comments so far
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.
@Bart: I've always been hosting at Combell, mainly because of their 24/7 support. I can't think of many reasons to switch.
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
I've been getting good support @ in.be, although they're cheap. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes cheap, can be good. Anyway... dirty tricks... or carelessness like this is reason enough **NOT** to do any business with Dommel at all for me, whether it's just an ADSL account or regging a domainname through them. Certainly if it starts to look like company policy, just hogging domain names, in fact, is simply pathetic and I'm sure bad publicity like this post will cost them more registrations in the end than their hogging-business. One word: lame.
Posted on 23 September 2007 at 03.01 h by Arne - 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
@Esse: I heard about that spam issue yesterday. As far as I experienced, email support doesn't work. Calling them (continuously) seems to work after some time but visiting their office really got things moving.
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
Hello everybody,
For about a month ago, my internet is not working anymore. As I am not an expert with regards to computers, I tried to contact them via e-mail. However, of all the 10-emails I wrote, no single one has been being answered. In addition, if I try to call them, no one picks up the phone.
Horribly, service. I will change the internet provider.
Posted on 22 August 2008 at 11.20 h by Mr. Unsatisfied - 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
I should have figured this out from the first fiasco I had with them just getting the account set up. I'm now sitting on a ticket with their billing department that they haven't looked at in 16 days. 16 DAYS?!? Yet they keep sending me payment warnings (the last being my "final warning")... yet I prepaid by 3 months already.
If it weren't for the low bandwidth limits I've seen since moving to Belgium, I would have gone elsewhere... what's the best provider for about 200gig DSL transfer per month?
Posted on 23 November 2008 at 15.55 h by Philip - 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
Hello,
I reached the same conclusions as you did about Dommel. It has the WORST customer service I've EVER seen.
I've been waiting for two months for my internet connection to be restored and now that it finally is (unbelievable!!!), they refuse to pay me back, pretending that they aren't at fault, which is totally incredible!
Don't EVER subscribe to a Dommel internet connection or whatever they propose!
Details here: http://forum.adsl-bc.org/viewtopic.php?t=61265
Posted on 22 January 2010 at 19.52 h by Sébastien - 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
I found your website over google, since I was looking for dommel experience. I`m living in Leuven and the Kotnet kills me here. It is so slow and almost never stable working. Does one of you ppl know, which is a good internet provider besides Telnet, which are extremely expensive compared to our german prices?
Best
Posted on 9 February 2010 at 02.15 h by Bk - Permalink
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So what do you think about The Dommel.com support nightmare? Leave a comment and let me know. Make sure to fill out all fields marked with an asterisk (*). Your email address is not shown (and I won't abuse it to spam you either).
Whenever I talk about the cost of a domain (or hosting) there is always an individual that says "Hey, I know a much cheaper registrar". It seems many people think there can be no added value to domain registration but this story shows the client should have payed a little more to avoid this kind of hassle. Cheap = crap, it always has been like that. Tijs, to which registrar did you transfer?
Posted on 15 September 2007 at 15.54 h by Bart - Permalink