Complaint Review: EarthLink - Atlanta Georgia

Since 2001, I've been a loyal and happy Earthlink web hosting customer, for my site which features original music I've created in the form of MP3s which people can download.

Earthlink charges me $15 per month, and whenever there is a need for assistance, their tech support and customer service were top notch.

All this changed in May of 2012, when I was overbilled on my monthly account.  And by overbilling, I mean over debiting.  They have my bank information and I've authorized them to take the $14.95 out of my account each month.  So imagine my surprise when I see that they've taken $34.95 out of my account.

I called customer service, and talked to a nice Indian person who had no idea how this could have happened.  They got a supervisor on the case, and the supervisor advised me that there was excessive downloading coming off my website that month prior, and I had gone over my bandwidth quota.

I reminded them that I have my account settings set to "Shut my site down when I reach my quota".  So, the moment I've reached my monthly 20GB download limit, as in, when someone downloads something from my site at the moment my monthly download limit has been met, it causes the site to get shut down for the remainder of the billing cycle, so as to prevent getting charged for overbandwidth.

They looked at my settings and confirmed for me that this was the case, and began the process for issuing me a refund.  The refund took two weeks to arrive in my bank account.

This happened repeatedly for the next two months, and both times for $34.95.  I repeated the process and complained to Earthlink, and they refunded me in the same manner, apologizing for the mixup, and promised me that it wouldn't happen again, each time it happened, and promised that they would check their own technology to make sure this error didn't happen to other customers who had the shut down setting enabled like myself.

The nightmare stopped for many months.  But this summer it happened all over again.  Except this time I got charged $500!!!!  I repeated the process described above, and was issued a refund in two to three weeks.

Can you imagine losing $500 from your checking account?  I'm not rich, and it's super inconvenient, annoying, and infuriating to be out $500 for no reason other than Earthlink's screwup.  Hello?  This is a technology company!  Why doesn't it manage to get this right?  How many customers have gone through this, and how many are unaware that they are being overcharged??

This $500 debit nightmare happened twice more this summer, and while I managed to get my money back each time (within three weeks), I had to cancel my debit card and reissue it just to make sure Earthlink can't get into my money anymore.  I canceled the account altogether, very disappointed.

I wonder if Earthlink enjoys the benefits of this 'glitch' in their system?  I wonder if they enjoy the extra money that they have NOT EARNED?  I wonder if everyone picks up on this issue, and they are BANKING on that?

I have told all my friends to not use Earthlink for anything anymore.  They are NOT the company they used to be.  They totally suck nowadays, and have caused a lot of financial grief for me.  Screw Earthlink.