This is a long story but hear me out... First of all, I was the system admin for a guild on EverQuest called the Divine Reapers. The only thing that our server with CalPop was ever used for was forums, and teamspeak. Believe it or not, it was cheaper to host a teamspeak server + website in a $130.00 per month server than $20.00 for website, and $10.00 per 20 people for teamspeak, which sometimes we had more than 50-70 in teamspeak at the time. We never had anything back on our sites other than the occasional member dispute with another member, which we tried to keep cleaned up, but for the most part, we never broke a policy or did anything remotely illegal on the server.
What first caught my eye about CalPop was their price per transfer. I thought at 10mbps unmetered is one heck of a deal. Its not if the customer service is not there to back it, which is what I soon found out.
My first year with CalPop was horrendous, in fact I suggested to the guy handling the billing that we NOT go any further with them after the contract ran out, but the guy passed away in 2007, so when the time to reup in 2007 came about, I took initiative and called CalPop and told them that supposedly the widow of the billing contact was paying the bill, and if they had ANY problems whatsoever to call, email, or US Mail me.
That first year though I won't comment much on, because in the past year, I hadn't seen half of the problems; just mainly network outages for 30m-1h 1x per month at most. But it was the billing and customer service that really got me.
Today, at exactly 2PM EST, my organization's server goes offline. We have someone that's paid the bill right? It should be current because no one from CalPop has contacted me for over 2 years now; and on top of that, they have my phone number, email address, and US Mailing address so that they could get in contact with me right?
Ok, I call them, "your account is more than 2 years past due". Now I have yet to get ahold of the widow of the guy that owned the account and taking care of the billing, but I told the guy right there, "Why was I never told?" They responded with "Its not your account." Ok, thats cool right? So get me another account going and we'll all have a Merry Christmas right? No... "Oh, I'm sorry, you were added as the primary to this account 2 years ago." .... huh? "Yes, you are the one thats responsible for the billing, and you own the account." Seriously? I wasn't told of such a switch, received any invoice, nothing? You guys just make this sort of switch of responsibility and expect me to have psychic powers and know that I should send in a check? Which reminds me... How do you make such a change without having one's physical address? (as a baiting question) "Oh we do... you're address on record is...." Oh! So you knew my address, and obviously my home phone number because that is what you called me back on after creating this ticket, but you couldn't do me the damned courtesy of letting me know this bill is now in my hands that has not accumulated to over $5,000.00? "well sir, you are now responsible for it, if you don't pay it promptly we will send it to collections and it will hurt your credit."
W - T - F ! Isn't there some law out there that prevents this from happening? How can a company screw someone over this badly? If companies are allowed to do this with no legal repercussions, then there is no wonder why the economy is so bad off; I'm literally scared to get any invoices going with another company now.
This is JUST THE TIP of the iceburg. If you're the type of person like me and you don't like doing stuff twice... and want your data... Oh boy... "So, can I pay for say 15 mins so I can get the last 3 days of data from my own personal folder?", Matt "No sir, until this balance is paid in full, this server stays in the locked position. If you can't pay this bill by January 2010, we will destroy the data." You know I know movies similar to this, a series really comes to mind, "Flashpoint" where there is a team that specializes in hostage situations; does this work for data as well I wonder? Because what he just gave me is a ransom, and they said very plainly that they ARE holding my data hostage - when I had no frappin clue I owed a dime or "owned" the account for that matter!
So, unless you're wanting to deal with a company that has the same capacity of rhythm and consistency as of a monkey playing a piano, AVOID CALPOP AT ALL COSTS. No matter what, nothing was worth what I've been though today, and over the past 4 years.
Network Quality: 6/10
Support Team: 4/10
Sales Team: 1/10
Reliability/Uptime: 3/10
Price: 6/10
Final Grade: 1/10
written by Mike W.
Learn more about CalPOP.com, Inc. company. Wednesday December 23, 2009 18:31:32
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CalPOP.com, Inc. Review(s)
CalPOP.com, Inc. review Mike W. Two Words: RUN AWAY! This is a long story but hear me out... First of all, I was the system admin for a guild on... Wednesday December 23, 2009 18:31:32
Final Grade: 1/10
CalPOP.com, Inc. review Jacques Philip Programmer I have had a dedicated server with Calpop for several years and have been very happy with them. ... Thursday April 16, 2009 13:08:01
CalPOP.com, Inc. review Amy Blake CALPOP is the best server company ever. I have had nothing but very excellent service at Calpop. They are open 24/7/365 and so whenever I... Saturday November 15, 2008 11:38:46
Final Grade: 10/10
CalPOP.com, Inc. review CalPOP Collocation Customer Cheap, but random network outages (about 1 every other month) CalPOP is definately the low-price leader when it comes to collocation space. They were very... Saturday February 16, 2008 23:37:32
Final Grade: 7/10
CalPOP.com, Inc. review Eric Baldwin CalPOP.com better than ServerBeach I have a few servers at ServerBeach but I am switching those to CalPOP -- why? Because CalPOP is... Tuesday September 5, 2006 04:48:29
I have two servers colocated at Calpop. They are on the hybrid bandwidth plan- which is... Tuesday April 25, 2006 23:14:03
Final Grade: 10/10
CalPOP.com, Inc. review Adam Ellis Just don't do it... We originally were going to purchase a server from calpop (LA), but their sales people would not... Wednesday March 22, 2006 14:40:18
Final Grade: 5/10
CalPOP.com, Inc. review vasanth do u still having the 99$ dedicated server hellow sir im looking for 100mbit connection server aorung 99$ with out setup fee please email md... Tuesday March 7, 2006 04:41:36
