Ten Seconds With Homestead April 12, 2007

What is it: It’s supposed to be a review of Homestead, a U.S.-based website hosting service that offers a free first month, and then $5 a month thereafter.

My verdict: Don’t bother unless you’re willing to hand over your credit card for a ‘free’ trial.

My ten minutes: I test a lot of services and I hate wasting my time. For example, I hate not being told up front that ‘free’ does not mean ‘free as in the sense of not having to pay anything’, but free as in ‘we won’t tell you until you’ve committed to the signup process and entered some personal details that free actually means giving us your credit card details so we can charge you when you forget to cancel at the end of the trial period.’

I can understand why companies would request some personal details, and I can actually understand it if web site hosting, as in this case, requires credit card details to prevent fraud. But what I can’t stand is their not being upfront about it. In this case there is nothing on the homepage that suggests I’m going to have to hand over my credit card. In fact the big yellow button sounds like it’s free:

Or maybe I misread that. Maybe I miread the next page too, which offered no indication I was about to be asked for a credit card either (although I guess the ‘no obligation’ should throw up a flag):

It’s only after filling in all that stuff that I’m taken to another page and the switch is made: I need to hand over my credit card deails.

Now the thing is, I don’t really mind handing over my credit card. I don’t like it, and if I can avoid it I will. But if I’m given a good reason I might do it. If the reason was “we get a lot of short-term spam sites that abuse the 30–day trial so we need to know you’re serious” I would probably say yes. But Homestead don’t say that, or anything like it. They fudge it:

To me that’s not a reason. At any time during that month Homestead could ask for the credit card details to ensure the website would continue running without interruption. (They were very quick to ping me when I didn’t complete the sign-up procedure, so their automated email service is working OK.)

Based on experiences with sites like Napster (check out this litany of abuse here) I’m always very skeptical of companies that claim they won’t charge before the trial period is over. More pertinently, I’m very skeptical that companies will conscientiously remind customers they’re about to be charged for something they may well have forgotten about, or, heaven forbid, actually seek permission for the card to be charged when the month is up. Somehow I’ve not heard of companies doing this. Perhaps there are. But if they do I’d like to see it in writing: We won’t charge your credit card until the trial period is completely up — not a day before — and we will give you plenty of warning and the clear option to cancel before the charge is made.

And if websites argue they’re just avoiding scammers setting up dodgy websites, it’s a fair argument. Except, of course, good scammers have plenty of fake credit cards at hand, so I’m guessing that unless homestead actually confirm the card’s authenticity this is not much of a deterrent.

Anyway, I don’t mean to be too hard on Homestead. They’re not the only ones doing this. But as a point of principle, I’m guaranteeing readers of tenminut.es here and now I’m not going to be reviewing sites or online services that don’t let me assess them without handing over credit card details. And no ‘we’ll give you a special account’ stuff either. What I see is what you’d see if you tried it. Promise.

Score: 0 out of 10