iPowerWeb (iPower) has surprised us yet again this morning. Recently we have had several blog posts about them here on HostJury. With their company being purchased, 35% of their systems being hacked & their obvious decreasing support quality they have been fueling lawsuits against themselves on a daily basis.
However their latest attempt to attract new clients is an interesting, yet fraudulent one. Upon checking the reviews posted about iPowerWeb this morning we saw that both had been posted from an internal network at their company (gateway.phx.ipower.com) in Phoenix. This is one of the few times that a company has been so brazen that they've posted multiple reviews at the same time giving flawless ratings to themselves.
In this case they've been caught red-handed but on a number of other websites we have found their reviews have remained online. Luckily we have a very thorough auditing process & removed them immediately. It is sad to see a company as large & once renowned for it's great service to suddenly have to resort to posting fake reviews about their own services to gain traffic.
It's a new low.
Thu, 7 July 2011, 16:02
Fixed that one, Richard.
Mon, 27 June 2011, 21:10
Whenever I try to read reviews of ipowerweb on hostjury, I get redirected to their website. That's likely to dissuade me from ever doing business with them.
Mon, 7 March 2011, 19:16
That's a pretty despicable practice. I've seen a couple of hosts resort to doing this lately, especially on the discussion forums.
Wed, 23 February 2011, 06:04
I am sorry that such publicity against Ipower/Ipowerweb is reported and ongoing.
I have remained a client of Ipower now for over 10 years.
I have had my ups and downs with them and have even gotten very angry at times. Yest I get the best results when communicating with Ipower reps with respect. It is also my responsibility as the webmaster of my sites to research and to learn to control my more than a dozen domains. Their tutorials in addition to writing to the Ipower support team has been helping me.
I found their support team to be imperfect but so am I. This growing company strives to provide us with usable and working tools for healthy website management.
Their requirement to provide a credit card number in order to have an account can be satisfied with a direct bank debit card number also. So my rating is “Not perfect Just very appreciated.”
John Knapp
Sun, 12 December 2010, 19:10
Yae, good for you! I noticed on the ipower website that only great reviews could be found! I was shocked and surprised as I have had nothing but trouble with ipower. Last year I cancelled my subscription with them, only to find that I had been billed a few months later on the credit card that I had orginally signed up with. They would continually say that I had cancelled this, but hadn't canceled that...it was ridiculous! I had to call and email numerous times, and finally threaten them with a lawyer if they didn't cancel my subscription totally and completely. Lo and behold, just a few weeks ago, I received an email from them saying that I was going to be billed within a week for a site they no longer hosted!!! I had to spend another hour on the phone, backing it up with an email for legal purposes, and explain to them that I would not hesitate to call my lawyer if they billed me for a service that they were no longer providing!!! Unbelievably corrupt! ipower...Capitalism and greed at its finest!
Thu, 25 February 2010, 15:12
Kudos to you for posting this. I have read quite a few negative reviews about this company, I'd be curious to hear if anyone has any recent findings - are they clearing up their act or are they beyond help?
Wed, 20 January 2010, 06:17
Look, iPowerWeb resorts always do the new things those are really attract the visitors so it is my suggestion that you should at least visit once here.
Mon, 19 October 2009, 22:51
Nice catch on this. i've spent over an hour on this site reading reviews and I think I've spotted the same thing once or twice. It would be nice if you could check IPs posting against IPs of hosting companies.
Sat, 27 June 2009, 02:08
I-Power sucks as a comany they ripped me off and I wouldnt reccommend them to anyone, the auto payment is unfair and will not refund if they see a mistake..
Ripped Off
dont go with them for anything
Thu, 25 June 2009, 20:22
All in all HostJury is a pretty lax review venue. This just adds weight to the fact. Actually I have a feeling that HostJury is just another HostGator company - self serving?
Tue, 12 May 2009, 22:14
This does not surprise me at all. Ipower treated me horrible as an account. Generally there are many other great hosts out there and this move by Ipower to post fake reviews just shows how desperate they have become as a company. I am still also surprised they are in business. Thought they would have been gone with the end of 2008 by now.
Sat, 4 April 2009, 19:38
. I have three websites hosted by Ipower web and ever since they arbitrarily changed my password I have been unable to access my site riteworks.com.
After demanding credit card numbers for credit cards I no have they insisted I fax a copy of my drivers license. This proved not to be enough. Instead of sending a password to the address I included on the fax they now said I would have to wait 5-7 business days for a response. The reps were like brick walls using the word "policy" to avoid discussion.
Sat, 12 July 2008, 06:46
I know I'm a little late in piping in here re: affiliate relationships on this site, however: David, you deserve high praise for your response to Sam's concerns (and I admire Sam's diligence).
I want everyone reading this to know that this website is the 'real deal', and you can count on the reviews here- they are impartial, completely community driven and after having visited what seems like a million such sites in the past ten years; when I discovered the launch of this website in an e107 forum 2 years or so ago, I loved what they were doing from the start. It was fresh, honest and a BIG step in the right direction. Clean, uncluttered very Zen... not a thousand flashing clicky things trying to lure you in and banner ads all going crazy for your cash.
I fully expect and WANT these guys to succeed and make money (like the craigslist and google guys) from the traffic I bring here- I think this is the RIGHT way to rate hosts. Do you?
Aren't we all trying to make a living doing what we love and providing a valuable service in the process? Here, it's done elegantly and completely without regard to the hosts financial standing in the community.
It doesn't matter how much iPowerWeb is paying to HostJury (or has in the past); when they screw customers, it costs them the business of every single person who finds this website and the reviews filed under them. They can't alter that and as we've seen in recent events, neither can sneaky employees or desperate managers there.
I love HostJury and I pray that you guys make buckets of money on every visit I make here.
I'm off to find out if Fused is as awesome as they seem. A little more $, but worth it for anyone looking to MAKE A LIVING on the web!
Fri, 11 July 2008, 11:25
Sorry my contact email did not publish. It is jdrconsultant@hotmail.com any lawyers representing a client would be preferred. I need to get my business back and recoup some losses
Fri, 11 July 2008, 10:10
Does anyone know the names of the plaintiffs or preferably their lawyers? I rented a faulty server, lost very important domains, websites, and have spent endless hours waiting or speaking to people who do not help me. I lost most of my internet presence not to mention an extreme amount of money............Their support acts kind but then once they get off the phone or place you on hold-that is the end of that!
Sat, 7 June 2008, 21:11
I had them too, but my site kept getting hacked. When I contacted tech support, they told me to contact abuse@ipowerweb.com. How am I suppose to send them an email if my website got hacked?
Wed, 14 May 2008, 01:52
I just stumbled on this. I too have been having problems with iPower/Startlogic recently. I started hosting my website with them in 2005 and was quite happy with their excellent customer service. Since the transition to this Vdeck 3.0 it has been all downhill.
I accidently deleted my image file the other night and searched in vain for the recycling bin. Not there. I called Customer Service and was told there was no longer a recycling bin and didn't i have my original images on my computer anyway? Huh? I do, but that's a lot of extra work to upload them all again.
And...when I go to upload I almost always get a 500 error stating that the page is temporarily unavailable. It's ridiculous. This used to be such good service. Figures. I'm no expert on this website stuff and it annoys me to think I have to start over with another company. Go Daddy? I guess....
Wed, 26 March 2008, 18:54
We have been suffering for website and mail service malfuncition from ipower a couple of times since 2006. Recently, they are driving me really crazy. Our website and email have been down since March 16th, 2008. I called everyday and waited for half an hour even one hour, asked them to get our website and email work. I was gaven ticket number, repeat our security answer. it turned out to be nothing moved forward. This webhost is really not to be recommanded! Stay away from ipower.
Thu, 13 March 2008, 21:41
I manage 9 websites - 2 are mine - all w/ipower which was ipowerweb.com. All was fine until Jan 2008 & the new vdeck. 2 of my clients sites which were transitioned failed to let me publish - that was finally resolved. I sold a new site in Jan 2008 which I published 1/14 - by 2/14 it had absolutely dissappeared - gone. I too did the phone dance, submitted tickets, resubmitted tickets, resubmitted tickets over & over & over. Their page public_html under Filemanager failed to open w/error 500 for 2 1/2 weeks, finaly was repaired 3/3 & I was able to publish. By 3/6 all was lost again & still is at this date. I am so sorry I asked my client to transfer - that was a DNS nightmare also - since I cannot in good conscience bill her for a site that has been up only 1 of 3 months & it is a business site. I have talked to ipower - found out they hired over 100 new employees - most do not know anything about any of the webdesign programs at all including ones that have been around a very long time like Frontpage. I am always asked to backup my files - luckily they are all on my computer as they surely were not on their servers anymore. At this point, cross my fingers, 8 of the sites are working. I found no way to complain to corporate headquarters about this so here I am - thinking of ditching ipower & transferring this client back to her old domain & hosting - not to mention the appology I had to make & also making me look like an idiot for suggesting ipower - where is the company I used to love?
Thu, 31 January 2008, 13:46
Sam,
The url isn't obfuscated or obscured for any purpose other than organization, primarily. It makes it easier on us to manage (and even track) outgoing clicks so we can assist in seeing which aspects of our own sites are popular.
Now on the other hand it definitely does have it's added benefits as we can setup outgoing links to go to affiliate programs where possible. We've got companies who pay out the largest affiliate payouts down on the bottom, in fact there's very few up top!
We certainly don't organize our list based on affiliate payouts. Instead, 100% of our list is based on end-user reviews - if a company with an affiliate payout just happens to get near the top, bravo!
If we can pay for lunch & help users find QUALITY providers, we've killed two birds with one stone. It allows us the ability to concentrate on Hostjury as a dayjob rather than a side project, we can only expel more effort and make the site better for you, the visitor.