Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.
I'm a big fan of DreamHost - they are the webhost for the successor to RantPro (which I have taken offline-ish while I sexy it up a bit). The front of the new version of the site that used to be named RantPro, has a little box of my own making dedicated to how awesome DreamHost is as a webhost.
But damn! did someone drop the ball today; someone ran the accounting bill job, but managed somehow to bill pretty much everyone, for the whole of 2008/09, and some of them twice.
The howls of outrage have to be seen to be believed, and someone hit upon the idea that the affronted users ought to DIGG the Status page which referred to the problem.
On one level I am astounded and impressed by what has happened; consumers exercising their sovereignty with no respect for national borders, and taking an errant supplier to task. It is a genuine Mises-ian/Hayekian example of how atomistic consumers can still express their preferences.
At a deeper level I feel for the DreamHost guys; they are a first-rate group, and doubtless they will resolve this glitch in such a way as to limit or even eliminate the problems that appear to have been caused on some subscribers' bank accounts and credit card accounts.
But the most impressive thing remains the power of DIGG and other such 'flagging' sites: the issue was front and centre on the most popular website for user-contributed analysis of stories - along with MacWorld. That is consumer power.
I sincerely wish the DreamHost guys a speedy recovery from this - their webhosting plan is the best going around, and they don't deserve to be slammed in the toilet as a result of one stuffup. (I would not even fire the young lad who is apparently responsible for the error; they ought to be proud of giving such responsibility to the guy, and now they ought to back him to the hilt... otherwise they should rack off and become lawyers or something).
One final thing - having had no access to the USRant script generator today, there will be no improvements in tonight's USRant... but look at the Dow and tell me it's not exciting enough already!!
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