Ordered 4 days ago, and NO response!

I registered for a "Crazy domain insane" plan on 09/05/2007, yet now my order hasn't been progressed. I tried to contact DreamHost by Contact Form, but again no responses. This discussion board is the last attempt. I am too much disappointed in this Hosting service.

BTW, this is a customer-to-customer forum, so we can just help with anecdotal information about what makes some accounts take longer to process than others.
1. What form of payment did you make? A credit card, PayPal, or Google Checkout?
2. Did you use the correct address for the form of payment you made?
3. What country are you from and what country is the issuing bank of the credit card you used to fund the transaction, if it was a credit card transaction?
4. Sometimes processing requires manual intervention and I'm not sure that occurs on the weekends, but again, I'm not sure.
5. How is 9/5 four days ago? Isn't today the 8th? Have I missed a day again? Oh no!

This account was denied by the fraud system. If anyone is waiting a long time and getting no response from us that is always the case.

As michael mentioned, a fraud may be detected in your area. It could be caused by many reasons.

As suggested by some other customers, DH prefers google checkout. If you did not use google checkout to make the payment. You may want to try that.

There are two things i would like to say:

Firstly, I am NOT a fraud, I am just a customer from Viet Nam, I ordered thru Google Checkout. My VNese friends also can register DreamHost account with their own money, so why can't I ? I am willing to receive any verification phone call from you, I have been waiting for 5 days for a phone call and not even one.

Secondly, if you found a fraud order, at least you should inform the customer. Do you take the customer the 1st priority, or is it just your very self ? When you see a suspicious order then you consider it as fraud and NO reponse. What if the one were a true customer ?

I am waiting for one more response, see if DH would make me as a customer or not. If not you just speak it out, I will transfer to another provider right away and never get in business with you guys again.

Quang Dang.

I am sorry, but you will need to acquire hosting elsewhere. No one claims to be fraud. If you would like to have an effect on fraud, lobby the credit card companies for an Email Verification System that works like the Address Verification System. Then we could just send email to people whose email matches the one on file with the credit card, to verify the account.

Okie, farewell Dreamhost.

Ironically enough, I having the same issue. I ordered mine account late Thursday and I am still waiting, though I'm figuring that it is due to the fact that only two business days have passed. Hopefully Texas isn't marked as fraud, though my CC was charged by Google check outs. Oh well, should be set up soon I guess.

I hope too: i'm italian, 24 hours ago i have sent money via Google for an account Level 1 but until now..nothing!!
I have tried other providers and them activated an account within a few hours...
if in the next 24 hours the account will not be activated, i want my money back and i put my site on another provider, surely faster than dreamhost.

Edited by Emulman on 09/11/07 00:12 AM (server time).

I got mine activated in 2 days.

If you have waited more than 3 business days, you can send an emergency ticket to DH support via

Patrick, I don't think it makes sense to encourage our fellow users to artificially inflate the priority of support tickets because they're impatient. We've heard from Michael that the slowness of DreamHost account approval isn't due to any actual *support* issue but is purely related to extra fraud prevention checks that they must do - or related to something having to do with Google Checkout.

As we've also read recently in another thread on this forum, there are unscrupulous people out there encouraging others to game the DreamHost signup process to get free domain name registrations. Anything DreamHost does to try to keep fraudulent signups at bay is fine with me.

Anyway, I just wanted to discourage people from submitting high priority support tickets for what might be an unfortunate but unavoidable situation. It will only gum up the support system and slow down response time for actual *technical support* tickets and give people false hope that there's something that can be done to speed up an otherwise somewhat slow and tedious process. I have sympathy for the people waiting, but I wouldn't want them to call 911 (or whatever the equivalent is in other countries) in the false hope that this will do something other than make them feel better (that is, in itself valuable, but can be achieved by other means).

I did give two conditions.

1. more than 3 business days
2. if the person is really in a hurry

I agree too and I am ones that this is effecting. I wait till the end of the day then I'll email support with a low priority ticket. Though I am guessing it has to do with Google Checkout, but that is the preferred way to pay, so its ok. In any case, I have heard too many good things about this host to just give up on it due to what is possibly the same thing that happens on Pay Pal at times. So I wait :).

> my CC was charged by Google check outs

If a card was charged and service is not starting, then it's a high priority issue.

In reply to:

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If a card was charged and service is not starting, then it's a high priority issue.

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It's claimed that Google Checkout has received the funds but that somehow either the confirmation or the funds haven't hit DreamHost's account yet.

I don't have any experience as a Google Checkout vendor so I can neither confirm nor deny the reports.

As I said, although I'm sympathetic to all parties involved and would be happy if everyone could have their service started up instantaneously, I'm just trying to pass along what other people have already reported to us here on the forums - that if you use Google Checkout (which many of you do have to if you're homed outside of the US), you may experience a delay in startup of your service. Your experience with online retailers using Google checkout may not reflect what non-goods dealers have to deal with with respect to fraud detection as the algorithms may be more lenient when you're shipping the goods to the physical address of record for your method of payment.

I agree with your comments on this, lensman! While I understand and appreciate that is is an "urgent" issue to someone who is anxious to get their new account set-up, it is not in the same class and an issue that is keeping a live site from functioning or email from getting delivered or received.

I also can't help but notice from browsing around the web that Google Checkout has already developed a reputation for being extremely aggressive with it's algorithms for detecting potential fraud. There are many frustrated vendors who report having had Google checkout flag long-time "known good" customers a "potential fraud".

Whether or not this is a good or a bad thing probably depends quite a bit on your own priorities and your own loss experience. Certainly, it can be frustrating to both buyer and seller when it interferes with completing a sale that would otherwise be "good", but I don't doubt there are circumstances where a merchant is willing to take that risk in order to protect themselves.

In my experience, being U.S. based and providing accurate and correct information while using a major credit card issued in my name with the same billing address and phone credentials as I provide the vendor at purchase time, I have had *no* problems.

The reality of fraud from certain locales, and the difficulty in collecting defaulted payments from some areas, is likely to always present special challenges to online sales, and *any* information presented at purchase time that "fails" heuristic scrutiny by an automated system is likely to result in some false positives. I think this is a reality of doing business online, and sometime transactions are, for one reason or another, either going to take longer to process or be rejected out of hand because of perceived risk.

--rlparker

until ytd, exactly one week from the last time i signed up for DH, did I get an apology email and info about my hosting package, my host is activated now.

I dont mind this alot but, Dreamhost sure is slow...

Well, I'm glad they finally got you sorted, and I hope you enjoy your new hosting! Welcome!

--rlparker

Congratulations! You've recovered from the deepest caves of the anti-fraud system, a rare and admirable achievement. And I know it did seem slow to you, but if your account was activated on the 10th, it was done in three business days - a record for a recovery from fraud detection!

Welcome and let us know if there's anything we can help you with!