Daniel Marino

I'm Down with Dreamhost

I had a couple of duplicate emails waiting for me in my inbox this morning from Dreamhost saying that I owed them a past due bill and a current bill – both to the tune of about $120! My first reaction was Ugh, I hate bills. My second reaction was Hey, wait a minute. I signed up for a year and am not due for another three months! I sent a polite message to Dreamhost explaining that my account should be current and received a pleasant email in return:

Hi Daniel!

Ack. Through a COMPLETE bumbling on our part, we’ve accidentally attempted to charge you for the ENTIRE year of 2008 (and probably 2009!) ALREADY (it was all due to a fat finger)!

We’re really really realllly embarassed about this, but you have nothing to worry about. Please ignore any confusing billing messages you may have received recently; we’ve already removed all those bum future charges on your account and fixed everything up.

Thank you very very much for your patience with this.. we PROMISE this won’t happen again. There’s no need to reply to this message unless of course you have any other questions at all!

Sincerely,
The Foolish DreamHost Billing Team!

This is the proper way to respond to a customer. First, it’s not an automated response, it was written by a human being (notice the misspellings). Two, they went way out of their way to apologize and admit that it was totally their fault. And three, it was humorous to read, which is always a bonus. Thank you Dreamhost.