It occurred to me that SiteLock is some kind of scam, which is odd, because Bluehost is a widely used and seemingly legit hosting service.
When I googled ‘SiteLock reviews,’ I discovered an impassioned community of SiteLock victims, who were justifiably furious. Some complained about SiteLock harassing them with phone-calls. Some described the difficulty of cancelling the service, and being told they needed to speak to a cancellation agent.
Some complained that in trying to remove malware, SiteLock completely destroyed their websites beyond repair. No one could get their money back.
Some even suggested that SiteLock planted the malware just to charge for removing it!
So now I’m fuming. I call SiteLock and someone says to call back during business hours. I call Bluehost and ask them to cancel the service, since they set it up in the first place. No, only SiteLock can cancel the service.
In the morning, Rochelle at Sitelock explains that only Bluehost can cancel the account, since they made the $500 charge on my credit card. She seems genuinely apologetic.
Rochelle offers to get Bluehost on the phone, and to stay on the call with me.
It is then I meet Steven, in billing at Bluehost. He sounds young, dumbish, and bored. He is the definition of the word sullen. Steven reports that he is unable to ‘terminate the service until it expires in January.’ He repeats this with the exact same inflection at least 20 times. I keep saying, ‘Rochelle, can you hear this?’
Steven puts us on hold to speak to a ‘supervisor.’ Rochelle has gone to look at my blog and we start chatting about Prince. She loves him too.
Steven returns to the call and says in the deadened tone of an executioner, “I can’t cancel the service. It will end when it expires.”
Now I scream, “WHO CAN CANCEL IT, GOD?” Steven is silent. I repeat, “Are you saying only god can cancel it, or that He can’t cancel it either? Are you fucking crazy?” I add, “I’m not asking for my money back, just to cancel the fucking service!” I’m getting sweaty. I’ve lost control.
Steven leaves the call again and returns. “I am now able to cancel your service, ma’am. I can send you an email to confirm this has been done.”
Rochelle gives me her contact information so I can confirm with her later. She genuinely wants me to be happy.
I will be happy when Steven is broke, hungry, cold, alone, and desperate, while some little piece of shit on the phone tells him, “I can’t cancel your service. It will end when it expires in January.”
Shared the “Pissed Consumer” link on my facepage, I suggest your other readers do so as well.
Also, I can tell I’m about to lose precious hours to pissedconsumer.com.
I’m a bit confused by the very premise that you’d need malware protection for your website. Is this not something your host provides seeing as it’s their server that would be the target and they couldn’t allow this to be infected or everyone’s websites would be harmed? I’ve never heard of an individual having to buy malware protection and we ran a website with a built in merchant account. So you’d think we’d definitely have needed it to protect peoples CC info.
Unfortunately, I think it sounds like a total scam 🙁
I just had to say, that picture is as haunting a thing as I’ve ever seen. It’s terrifying and heartbreaking, with the strange combination of filthy walls and crisp(ish)-looking sheets. Man or woman? Woman, I’d guess, because of the hair and slight build, but maybe not. I’ve seen plenty of appalling pictures of people in ‘asylums,’ lots of them more graphic and grotesque, but this one seems more powerful. Probably because I’m projecting all kinds of stuff into it, but, still.
Bevitron – Oh god, I have seen so much worse. I think I figured this image was pretty harmless, relatively. But you can’t tell, right? It’s so visceral and personal. Sorry!!!
That’s no criticism of your picture selection at all, Sister. It really is quite benign, I’m just in an every-cloud-must-have-a-sinister-lining state of mind. Loved this post.