How many people do you think "we" is? Could the person that runs the twitter be an employee? They advertise 24/7 customer support. Even if it is an employee, and he is terminated because of this, would that allow you to trust the company again?

If it turns out to be the founder/CEO, then we have no hope for the company. But how devastating would it be for your startup if one of your employees did something like this, without your permission. We all know how difficult it is to recruit the right people, but should a mistake like this be un-recoverable?

It depends entirely on how it's handled by the actual owner, assuming this is just an employee.

If you're good at spinning PR and responding correctly, the right apologetic stance can flip this from a PR nightmare to free good PR. The trick is responding fast, responding apologetically, responding honestly, and more than making up for the original mistake.

"We apologize for the lack of respect our CS rep has shown you; he's been terminated and we'd like to offer you a free two years of service and we'll do our best to recover your lost data."

Not very likely. Go and have a look at the rest of their Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/#!/thiswebhost

https://twitter.com/#!/thiswebhost/status/102087912497221633

https://twitter.com/#!/oscargodson/status/102092891979132929

That is amazing. Based on their twitter stream you know they are bad news. They would be better off if they spent less time "defending" themselves, and more time making their customers happy enough so they don't want to make "incorrect public statements."

https://twitter.com/#!/thiswebhost/status/102089336509562881

No kidding. I really love this line from their latest blog post:

"I would like to remind people that contacting us with abusive e-mail messages is in fact illegal"

"You suck" is not illegal, gents.

Man. What slime.

My favorite part is where he says he'd like to unsuspend the one guy's account, except that he used a Naughty Word and so there's no way he can do that now. I mean, what the, ahem, fuck?

thiswebhost.com appears to be hosted on LiquidWeb's servers, which makes me think it might be a reseller account for Sonet7 (reseller hosting owned by LiquidWeb).

I know a couple of people who resell white-label cPanel hosting, and it's definitely not a full-time job, so I would guess it's probably just one guy (the WHOIS will tell you who).

I know from experience that it's nigh-impossible to stop yourself from using the Royal 'We' as a lone entrepreneur.

If it's on liquidweb shared hosting then there are four levels of backups with rotations on an external drive array. They don't mess around.

Not sure if they could do an end-run around a reseller to liquidweb and prove ownership, but the backup is definitely there and undeleteable at a reseller level.

Someone should point that out to the former customer.

I did some looking. The Twitter account appears to have been used by their "Technical Director" Jules. Jules is the same person who replied to the tickets. I then got ahold of their company documents, Jules is not listed as a company owner (or Director) whereas 3 others are. Therefore I am making the assumption that he is indeed only an employee and not someone associated with the higher up management.

Jules is also listed as the company owner on the reviews:

http://www.webhostingreviews.com/thiswebhost-reviews.htm

And is the registrant of the domain name (and the only contact).

WhoIs lookup shows him as the domain owner

Registrant Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson ()

Fax: South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB

Administrative Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson (domains@thiswebhost.com) +1.5555555555 Fax +1.5555555555 South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB

Technical Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson (domains@thiswebhost.com) +1.5555555555 Fax +1.5555555555 South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB

Also he appears to be using a fake phone number on the WhoIs, am I right in thinking you're not allowed to do that?

Technically you are not allowed to provide fake information, although you may use an identity proxy as long as they provide the means to contact you in case of a dispute. In reality, enforcement of valid identity information is essentially non-existent.

I'm personally aware of at least one incident in which someone who had their domain revoked for 'joke' contact details in the whois db. Then again, istr they did piss off an old-school sysadmin (in the a.s.r sense).

As a Brit, it doesn't surprise me at the British address here. I work primarily with US companies but the most obnoxious service I get tends to be from the British ones. An idea of "honor above money" seems to be more prevalent here in the UK, whereas in the US it seems you're more likely to just get ignored.

It's against the rules to use false info so feel free to email contact@namecheap.com with that little bit of info.