After a year of buying webhosting service from fatcow, I am posting this fatcow review and my verdict is ‘fatcow sucks‘. Be warned however that I’m only focusing on one aspect of fatcow and not all of their services and products. I have yet to check out how they fare in other areas like uptime, support*, etc. And treat this post as a personal rant by me to release some pent up anxiety after a particular experience.
Researching for a new webhost to place my future additional websites on, I remember having read about fatcow from some blog which gave glowing praises and accolades at the company. Most importantly, the blog mentioned fatcow’s “Free Domain For Life” for anyone who purchases webhosting from them.
I thus went to fatcow’s website and indeed emblazoned on their main page was that ‘free domain for life’ enticement for all prospect clients. Of course there are other webhosts that offer free domain for life but fatcow at that time also offered a promotional low first year rate. Needless to say, I was hooked.
Fast forward to one year later.
Fatcow emailed me about my webhosting account about to expire and so I checked the billing and lo and behold I found out I am to be billed for my domain for $12+. What the…! What happened to ‘free domain for life’? I researched further and I found that one has to enlist the domain in fatcow’s DomainGuard for it to qualify as free domain for life. I went searching for fatcow’s domainguard and found out it’s been non-existent for God knows how long ago.
All hairs bristling, I emailed fatcow’s support and started asking questions. Here are some of the messages that transpired.
[note]
05/19/2011 11:48 AM EDT
What happened to Domain For Life?
My account is to be renewed on June 13. When I browsed around my account, I found that the ‘DomainGuard’ has no entry for my supposed free domain and ‘DomainGuard’ is no longer to be found and that I am to be billed $12+ for my domain wirelessii.com.
I got convinced to get an account with fatcow firstly because of the free domain for life bait. Now, is that only a trick to fool us into opening an account?
Please help me register my domain into your domainguard.
Thanks.
[/note]
[tip]
05/19/2011 12:01 PM EDT
Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Support.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Unfortunately, we do not provide the DomainGuard feature now. We have discontinued this feature. We do provide only one year of free Annual Domain Registration with the new hosting package. You can register the domain name or transfer the domain name using that. However, from the next year onwards you need to pay for domain renewal.
I could see that the renewal type of the domain ‘*****.com’ is set to Automated Domain Renewal Service. On our platform, if the credit card is up-to-date, the Automated Domain Renewal Service will renew the domain automatically 15 days prior to the expiration date.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
P_____ S_____y
Customer Support
[/tip]
(Then they marked the above post ‘Resolved’)
[note]
05/19/2011 8:30 PM EDT
In that case, I think I was duped into believing your bull of ‘free domain for life’ crap.
“Great Webhosting. No Bull.”
Well, I think I’ll have to live with this. I’ll charge this to experience and take care not to fall for misleading marketing next time, eh?
The promise sometime ago was free for life domain. And since it is free, it can’t be transfered to another webhost. Now that I am paying for my domain, can I now be able to transfer it someday to another webhost?
Please respond.
(This exchange would be good blogging material).
[/note]
[tip]
05/19/2011 10:06 PM EDT
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Support.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Per the information provided earlier, we do not discontinued the DomainGuard feature on our platform. The renewal type of the domain ‘*****.com’ is set to Automated Domain Renewal Service. Hence, we will renew the domain automatically by charging your credit card.
If you wish to transfer the domain, then you need authorization code of the domain. To get authorization code, please follow the steps given below:
1. Log into the control panel with the account username and password.
2. Click on ‘Domain Central’ under the ‘Domain’ section.
3. Click on the domain name.
4. Click on the ‘Transfer’ button.
5. You will get the Authorization code in the textbox. If the Authorization code is not listed in the textbox, the ‘Send Auth-Info Code’ button will be displayed. Click on that button to send Authorization code.
To unlock the domain, please follow the steps given below:
1. Log into the control panel with the account username and password.
2. Click on ‘Domain Central’ under the ‘Domain’ section.
3. Click on the domain name which you want to lock.
4. Click on ‘Security’.
5. Click on ‘Lock Domain’.
To disable Domain Privacy, please follow the steps given below:
1. Log into the control panel with the account username and password.
2. Click on ‘Domain Central’ under the ‘Domain’ section.
3. Click on the domain name for which you want to disable the Domain Privacy.
4. Click on ‘Security’.
5. Click on ‘Disable Domain Privacy’.
Could you please let us know what exactly you wish to do?
Thank you!
Sincerely,
C______ K____n
Customer Support
[/tip]
[tip]
05/20/2011 9:12 PM EDT
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Support.
I am writing this email as a reminder on the Support ticket #8319544. I had requested you to get back to us with more information on your issue; however, there has been no response from you. We would be happy to assist you on the issue, but we are unable to do so without your follow up on the ticket.
For the time being, this ticket will be resolved. However, you have the option to reopen the ticket by going to your Support Console.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
C______ K____n
Customer Support
[/tip]
(And they marked the above ‘Resolved’)
[note]
05/21/2011 12:56 PM EDT
The issue is about the ‘free domain for life thingy’. I thought my domain was free as long as I continue my hosting account with fatcow. Why is there a $12+ renewal fee for the domain?
[/note]
[tip]
05/21/2011 1:06 PM EDT
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Support.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. I have checked the account ‘*******’ and I was unable to find ‘Domain Guard’ feature. We provide 1 year of domain credit using which you can register, renew or transfer the domain. This is the reason we have charged for the renewal of the domain.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
A____ B____n
Customer Support
[/tip]
[note]
05/21/2011 1:14 PM EDT
Can you just tell me straight? Does fatcow actually implement ‘Free Domain For Life’? Is this just marketing crap? If there is such a thing as fatcow’s free domain for life, how do I avail it? This damn free domain for life, again, is what drew me to fatcow. Answer me straight now.
[/note]
[tip]
05/21/2011 2:00 PM EDT
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Support.
We apologize for providing you with inaccurate information earlier, and we regret any inconvenience that it may have caused you. we do not provide the DomainGuard feature now. We have discontinued this feature. We do provide only one year of free Annual Domain Registration with the new hosting package.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
D____ L______
Customer Support
[/tip]
(‘Marked Resolved’)
[note]
05/23/2011 9:09 AM EDT
Then for Pete’s sake bring all those pages within your website about your furqin’ free domain for life’ and ‘domainguard’ down as it has duped more than enough people already. As of this moment, all those pages in your website are still there bragging about non-existent services and promises.
[/note]
If the ‘free domain for life’ was in effect at the time I purchased webhosting, my account should have locked in on the offer and my domain would be free for life. Fatcow however reared its fat arrse instead. Or, more likely, they have discontinued their fatcow ‘free domain for life’ a long time ago but continued to market it to lure unsuspecting folks into buying from them. This is evident in the pictures I’ve captured from their pages which are in effect as of this month. If you can’t find it now, they’ve probably scrambled to take it off before the evidence gets exposed. Because a few days ago, the pages I captured images from were still there.
I’d like to reiterate here that I really am irked at being duped in believing their crap about ‘free domain for life’ . Other than that, I still have to find some fault in their services as webhost. So far, things are going smoothly in my site, which tells me that fatcow, in fairness, may not be that bad as webhost. Perhaps, the marketing department of fatcow needs to be revamped. They’ve been sleeping on the job and leaving a lot of work un-updated. Yeah, their ineptitude brought some naive clients (who believed their marketing crap) but also earned them irked folks who now looks at them with distrust.
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*I actually had prior experience with fatcow support. That was a few days after first buying webhosting from them. I remember rating them 9/10 then. Now, I am not sure whether to give them the same rating or not.