Hosting A to Z abruptly dumps Guns Save Life website

So, folks probably noticed GSL’s website was down this morning.

We weren’t very pleased.

And even less so when we found out the folks at Hosting A to Z killed our site with no notice or warning after finding the issue that caused the site to hang up earlier in the day, and saying they would fix it permanently for us.

They fixed it permanently, alright.

They killed the site.

Our web guy does web work professionally for large companies and he was quite suspicious of the take-down.  The people at Hosting A to Z didn’t deny that the reason for the take-down was political in nature.

Here’s the correspondence from him.

John,

Here is the responses from the site administrator. In re-reading the email where he informed me that he shut the site down it looks more diplomatic than I had initially read. He did offer full backup and a full refund. That being said he still:

1. Shut our site down with no warning and did not give us any time to prepare or add a message stating that the site was in the process of being moved. To shut someone down like that is incredibly bad business and in certain circumstances could give us ground for a lawsuit. Probably not in this one since he offered a refund of $$ paid. Covering his ass maybe? Either way, this is hosted in a different country. I am sure of it.

2. Did not even attempt to help us troubleshoot the error and actually get it resolved.

I have been doing this type of thing for a long time. I have not seen service like this. Ever. I may be jumping to conclusions but it just reeks of “personal/political” motivation. I could be 100% incorrect.  Even if that is not the case, this action has showed us that this is not a company that is professional or equipped to handle what we need.

Email #1 from last night indicates that he knows what the issue is and how to fix it.

This has been fixed.
I think I have found the exact issue.
I will be working on this shortly to fix it permanently.

———————————————-
Ticket ID: #177201
Subject: SITE DOWN
Status: Answered
———————————————-

But then the email this morning just basically states “F.U.” politely and turns us off.

I have been monitoring the server for last few hours and found that it is www.gunssavelife.com which is causing all the issues.
Your site keeps on generating PHP processes and finally crashes the server than we need to restart it which kills all the process run buy this website. But as soon as the IIS is restarted your site start creating new PHP Processes and does the same thing (consuming all the server resources).

I am attaching 2 screen shots to support this as well.

I am sorry but we cannot allow this site to be running from our servers. This is already caused issues to our servers for a last many days.
We will issue you refund and provide you full backups.

Kindly confirm your Paypal address so that we can issue you refunds.

Regards,
William C.

———————————————-
Ticket ID: #177201
Subject: SITE DOWN
Status: Answered

 

This does make sense to me. We went from “I know how to fix it” to “It is your problem and by the way I am shutting your site down”. Something is fishy here – and I am NOT a conspiracy theorist in any way. These are just the facts.

My Response (keeping it classy):

Ok, I am able to log in and pull down the files. Thank you for leaving them on the server so I can get them. We are in the process of migrating to a new server. We will swing the DNS over within the hour. Is there any way you can bring the site online for at least 48 hours while DNS propagates?

Since we are migrating anyway, could you please let me know if the removal of gunssavelife.com is due to this php issue or is it that the AtoZ admins object to the content of the site? We are just curious as it seems like with some help and troubleshooting we could correct this problem.

This issue may be with PHP & WordPress – but we want to fix it permanently. Is there any indication of what caused this?

 =================

His response – again – cryptic.

I have activated your site for the time being.
I will reply you further shortly.

———————————————-
Ticket ID: #177201
Subject: SITE DOWN
Status: Answered

Well, Hosting A to Z, we’re back after less than 12 hours down.

And we’re encouraging gun owners that utilize web hosting services NOT use Hosting A to Z for their needs, because at best they are less than competent and at worst, so anti-gun that they would kill a gun rights website because they disagree with the content.